Understanding the Effects of Sugar on Eating Behavior 

Michigan Minds Special Series: Women in STEM

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In this episode of Michigan Minds, Monica Dus, assistant professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, discusses her research to understand why some foods change eating behaviors. She also talks about the podcast that she hosts to promote researchers and their work, and reveals some of the best ways to encourage more women to pursue work in science-related fields.

In her lab, Dus and colleagues are working to uncover why foods like french fries, pizza, and cupcakes make people eat more than they should.

“We specifically study the effects of a high sugar diet on feeding behavior, but also on other types of brain activities such as sleeping, or learning a memory. We look at the physiological levels: how do dietary components of processed food change different brain processes? But we also look at it from a molecular level to try to get to the underlying causes of it,” she explains.

Dus says this work is relevant to many individuals as most people can relate to eating behavior changing in different environments. She adds that her work focuses on sugar because it’s one of the main components of processed food.

“Unlike other components of processed foods like salt and fat, it’s very hard to figure out how much sugar is in your food because sugar in the ingredients label comes in 60, maybe even more, different names—glucose, fructose, maltodextrin, high-fructose corn syrup, agave syrup. So, it’s very hard to identify what things are sugars, and unlike other components of your food, it doesn’t have a maximum recommended daily dose,” she says.

With the students and postdocs in her lab, Dus has been conducting experiments to determine how diet changes the ability of animals to perceive the caloric amount of food. They tested the ability of animals to taste to determine how they perceive properties like sweetness, and found that fruit flies that were on a high-sugar diet couldn’t taste sweetness as much as those who were on a controlled healthy diet.

“It turns out that there have been studies where the levels of salt, sugar, and fat in the food have been linked to different abilities to perceive these components in the food,” Dus says.

They found that the animals don’t regain the ability to taste when moved back to a regular diet.

“This is really interesting because you can think of it almost as a form of free trauma, where the environment in which you were exposed affects your future ingestive behavior,” she says.

Dus is also the host of a podcast, How To Science, which she created to break down what she calls the “fourth wall of academia” by letting scientists tell their stories so audiences can learn about the people behind the beakers and microscopes.

“It’s important for the public to learn about science. It’s important for us to make science open and accessible.”

“I think it’s also a work for the soul. I don’t know any scientists who do science just to publish papers, or to get grants, or to go through the sometimes tedious, and in many times, hard work of troubleshooting, rejection, and rewriting,” she says.

“I think most of us do it because we really love learning and we’re really curious people, and we love to tell stories.”

Dus also shares her own experiences as a woman in STEM and emphasizes the importance of making it a welcoming environment for everyone.

“If I could go back to 20 years ago when I started my journey, I would probably tell myself that it’s okay to be myself. So, I would tell the younger students who are getting into STEM to be themselves, that we want the uniqueness and we appreciate them, and not to try to change who they are to fit some idea because that idea doesn’t exist, it’s only a mirage.”

 

This episode of Michigan Minds is a part of a special series focused on women in STEM as we celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11. Listen to more episodes from this series