This Is Your Brain On Dessert

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Ever eat a full meal ... and find you still have room for dessert? If so, you're not alone. Sugar is a quick form of energy that many people crave — even when they're full. Today, hosts Emily Kwong and Regina G. Barber dive into a new study on the neural origins of the "dessert brain."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from Bowlen Branch.
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0:14.7	Exclusions apply. See site for details.
0:18.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:23.3	Hey, Short Waver is Regina Barber here and Emily Kwong with our biweekly science news
0:27.8	roundup featuring the hosts of All Things Considered.
0:30.2	And today we have fellow nerd Scott Detrow.
0:33.5	I am always happy to be here, but I'll be honest, I'm only here because I heard we might have dessert.
0:38.8	Okay, we should have brought some in.
0:40.7	There might be some in the building.
0:41.9	We can look after, but we're here to talk to you about why our dessert craving actually begins in our brain.
0:47.7	How elephant seals are helping scientists.
0:50.5	Monitor ocean health.
0:51.9	And then finding water in the desert.
0:54.7	Faw.
0:55.4	That's all well and good, but again, I'm going to stress that I was promised dessert.
0:58.8	Oh, fine.
0:59.8	I guess we lie.
1:00.4	All of that on this episode of Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
1:07.7	This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies.
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