Sweet Tooth

There is a tremendous societal pressure to lower sugar and sweetness levels in foods. According to the WHO, exposure to a diet lower in sweetness facilitates the adaptation to low sugar diets, and therefore also prevents weight gain. However, the resilience/flexibility of sweetness preferences and the impact on diet quality and energy intake is a fundamental gap in knowledge despite several undocumented narratives by institutes and media sources. Moreover, recent studies do not find a relationship between sweetness exposure and sweetness preferences, and sweetness exposures and body weight status among individuals.