Parents at least partially responsible for your sweet tooth!

Scientists believe that because naturally sweet foods are a safe source of energy and nutrients, over time we have evolved to have a preference for sweet foods.

Of course, this evolutionary process occurred in a time when food was in short supply; today a preference for sweet foods is not such an advantage for survival!

But people do differ in their liking for sweet foods, and researchers in Finland wanted to find out more about those differences and what influenced our preferences.

The researchers studied 146 adults. Participants were given a range of sweet and salty solutions to taste and rate for both intensity of taste and pleasantness. They were also asked to rate the pleasantness and frequency of use of a range of 30 different foods.

Consistent with other research, men in this sample rated the most intensely sweet solution as more pleasant than the women. When the results were analysed alongside DNA analyses, it was found that 40-50% of the liking for sweet foods could be explained by inherited mechanisms.

Source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, July 2007