It's December! | #SciSparksAdvent

It's finally December, time to crack open the first door on your advent calendar as there's only 25 days to go until the big day!

Every day until the 25th December I'll be posting every day on Christmas science, to the highlights of the year, keep updated by following me on Twitter @Sci_Sparks and keep your eye out for new posts here!

To get into the Christmas spirit I thought I'd start off by looking at Santa - question is, what would happen if he ate all those sweets?

He'd actually have late onset diabetes by the time he was three hours into his night shift! If you assume every household the world over leaves two chocolate chip cookies, he'd be consuming 170 calories, 8g of fat and 14g of sugar in every household. This means he consumes 374 billion calories, 33,000 tonnes of sugar and 151,000 tonnes of fat - enough to keep him going for the new year!!! Still, who said chocolate chip cookies weren't delicious?? :)

Why is sugar so addictive?

We all know how tempting it can be to have that extra slice of cake, but what makes sugar so addictive? Well there are a number of reasons to explain this age old addiction to sugar.

Scientist believe that we are driven to sugar as it plays a vital role in our survival, along with salt, fat and sugar. This is because when we eat food the simple sugars are absorbed from the intestines into our bloodstream, so it can be distributed to all cells in the body. Glucose is also very important to the brain as it provides the only source of fuel to the one hundred billion nerve cells in your body.

These neurons (nerve cells) need a constant supply of fuel from the bloodstream as they can't store the glucose. Diabetics with low blood sugar can collapse into a coma.

Bizarrely scientists have even discovered that just the taste of sugar can give our brains  our boost. They discovered that participants who swirled water sweetened by adding sugar perform better on mental tasks than those who don't!