Is there a scientific reason humans desire something sweet after a meal or is it just tradition

Question

Is there a scientific reason humans desire something sweet after a meal or is it just tradition

Answer 1

I don't believe there is a scientific reason; in my case, I know it is tradition.  My mother loved to bake and we had dessert after every meal.  To this day, I don't feel complete after a meal unless I have dessert - no matter how full I may be I need at least a couple of bites of something sweet or the craving will drive me crazy!  Sometimes, I have even resorted to eating a piece of toast with jam on it if there is nothing else sweet to eat for dessert.

Answer 2

well in india, the dessert is often eaten before the meal.

in france, salty cheese is often just the 'dessert' (but not always)

so i think it's tradition

but i find that sweet foods after a meal get rid of the aftertaste of whatever the meal contained, especially if there's fruit and/or dairy in the dessert. not the sugar itself.  

Answer 3

People desire sweets before meals. They just eat them after meals because they know if they eat before meals they won't be hungry for what they actually need. (Kind of hard to explain...) Just tradition.

Answer 4

Tradition. Dessert is not eaten everywhere, nor do people like sweet things everywhere.  

Answer 5

Oriental health practices have an answer for this. The sweet after a meal is primarily more in western cultures. The body actually needs food that are balanced (in terms of yin and yang i.e. extremes are no good). Balanced foods are ice, whole grains, seafood, veggies. Extreme foods on teh yang end are meats and cheeses and on the yin side are sweets. So the body craves a balance after eating a yang meal and the balance is yin food.

Another explanation: The body wants a certain blood sugar level and if you eat a big steak or high protein meal, the body will crave something sweet so the blood sugar will increase

Answer 6

i think its just a mental state of mind. It is for me anyway. Sometimes i feel 'incomplete' after a meal unless i eat something sweet, or just anything for that matter. I tried breaking the habit and after 3 months or so of not snacking right after dinner especially i no longer felt the crave. So yeah, its just what you are used to.

Answer 7

Maybe because people before who were rich gave their kids something sugary to eat because they ate food they didn't like.

Answer 8

Well...I personally don't crave things sweet after a meal.  My family doesn't serve dessert, never has.

Answer 9

Hello,

Good question.  I totally think about this every day. Yes there definately is a reason. Sugar fits into a category called Neurotoxins.  These are substances such as refined sugar, salt, msg's etc. that are added to food and are  specifically designed to make us addicted to it. It does this by sending messages to the brain that this food is good. So we get a good feeling throughout our bodies just the same is if we smoked, drank alcohol, have s*x, or did drugs.. It is just another drug that we can become addicted to. Our brain then connects sugar to feeling good.

SOOO.. if one is used to having sweets after a meal, this tradition will become and addiction. If you were to go a couple of weeks without any sweets, or if you were not raised in this way then you would not desire sweets after a meal.

If you are interested, I have many healthy and natural dessert recipes on my web/blog that will not give the addictive qualities of refined sugar and the like.

Hope this helps. Have a great day.

Answer 10

When we eat sweet foods, we are rewarded with pleasure hormones.

Our brains are not fooled by artificial sweeteners and can measure the value of a food by it actual caloric content.

This is an evolutionary response that serves to make us as obese as possible.