Sayonara Sweet Tooth

Turns out if you don't feed your "sweet tooth," you lose your sweet taste receptor genome. Guess that's why food processors add sugar to everything - gotta guarantee a market for the sugar industry.

Behavioral biologist Gary Beauchamp first observed that cats have no preference for sweets in the late 1970s. Three decades later, he and colleagues at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia figured out why—cats lack sweet taste receptors. Now, the same team reports that many more mammalian species have lost their sweet tooth: seven of 12 species they examined had mutated sweet taste receptors.

The results, published today (March 12) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that loss of taste receptor function in mammals is a widespread phenomenon that independently evolved multiple times, and may be related to carnivorous mammals’ feeding behavior.

“Genes for taste receptors exemplify the saying ‘use it or lose it,’” said Stephen Roper, who studies taste reception at the University of Miami and was not involved in the study, in an email. The current study shows just how malleable the mammalian “taste genome” is, he said.

Interesting, no?

reply to post by soficrow




Couldn't agree more. Made major changes with my diet years ago and not only do I not crave any of the sweets I used to enjoy, I actually can't tolerate them.

Most of the food industry today is in the business of getting people addicted to a drug essentially.

reply to post by soficrow


wish i could conquer my sweet tooth. My greatest weakness.. Sugar!!! love marshmallow peeps!

Originally posted by veritaslibertas
reply to post by soficrow

 

Couldn't agree more. Made major changes with my diet years ago and not only do I not crave any of the sweets I used to enjoy, I actually can't tolerate them.

Most of the food industry today is in the business of getting people addicted to a drug essentially.

edit on 13-3-2012 by veritaslibertas because: (no reason given)

edit on 13-3-2012 by veritaslibertas because: (no reason given)

Agreed....I can't stand sweets anymore

reply to post by soficrow


Not sugar, HFCS. (google it)
Twice as sweet as sugar and pure evil, really it is.
We have used sugar and other sweetners since the dawn of time.
But just in the past 35ish years have things gone really bad for health, why is that?

A similar article:

MSNBC

Seems to be universal across most species, evolutionary.

reply to post by g146541


Not just high fructose corn syrup, but also highly processed cane sugar. All bad.

reply to post by HODOSKE


Go cold turkey - treat it like an addiction. As stated by others, you'll find that after a time, not only do you NOT crave sweets, you also don't like them when you do taste them.

...Me? I usually just taste the chemicals.