Perspective: Measuring Sweetness in Foods, Beverages, and Diets: Toward Understanding the Role of Sweetness in Health

Abstract

Various global public health agencies recommend minimizing exposure to sweet-tasting foods or beverages. The underlying rationale is that reducing exposure to the perception of sweet tastes, without regard to the source of sweetness, may reduce preferences for sweetness, added sugar intake, caloric intake, and body weight. However, the veracity of this sequence of outcomes has yet to be documented, as revealed by findings from recent systematic reviews on the topic. Efforts to examine and document the effects of sweetness exposure are needed to support evidence-based recommendations. They require a generally agreed-upon methodology for measuring sweetness in foods, beverages, and the overall diet. Although well-established sensory evaluation techniques exist for individual foods in laboratory settings, they are expensive and time-consuming, and agreement on the optimal approach for measuring the sweetness of the total diet is lacking. If such a measure could be developed, it would permit researchers to combine data from different studies and populations and facilitate the design and conduct of new studies to address unresolved research questions about dietary sweetness. This narrative review includes an overview of available sensory techniques, their strengths and limitations, recent efforts to measure the sweetness of foods and diets across countries and cultures, and a proposed future direction for improving methods for measuring sweetness toward developing the data required to support evidence-based recommendations around dietary sweetness.

Estimated Sweetness in US Diet Among Children and Adults Declined From 2001 to 2018: A Serial Cross-Sectional Surveillance Study Using NHANES 2001–2018

“…The scientific evidence to support guidance limiting the sweetness of the total diet is lacking. These recommendations arise from the apprehension that human's innate liking of sweetness (i.e., detected from the sugars naturally present in many foods or added to foods with or without calories) may predispose the development of unhealthy eating behaviors (6). It is hypothesized that increased contact with sweet-tasting foods and beverages could condition palates to desire sweet, increasing liking for sweet taste, and increasing consumption of sweet foods, which may increase risk of developing obesity or metabolic dysfunction.…”

“…It is hypothesized that increased contact with sweet-tasting foods and beverages could condition palates to desire sweet, increasing liking for sweet taste, and increasing consumption of sweet foods, which may increase risk of developing obesity or metabolic dysfunction. Similarly, this hypothesis generally contends that consumer palates could acclimate to a lower level of sweetness if presented and therefore reduce energy and sugar intakes, supporting weight management (6). Research is needed to test these hypotheses related to the relationship between sweet taste and health.…”

Infant and Toddler Responses to Bitter-Tasting Novel Vegetables: Findings from the Good Tastes Study

“…Notably, this suppression is asymmetrical—an equimolar mixture of 0.1 mM quinine and 0.32 M sucrose cuts perceived bitterness in half, whereas perceived sweetness is only reduced by ∼14% ( 37 ). This phenomenon is one reason (of several) that the relation between added sugars and perceived sweetness is not as straight forward as may be commonly assumed ( 38 ).…”

Finding the Sweet Spot: Measurement, Modification, and Application of Sweet Hedonics in Humans

“…To assess the true impact of sweetness on energy intake and diet quality, it will be essential to better define and measure the impact of sweetness on food and beverage palatability. This article focuses on the effects of the hedonics of sweetness on dietary intake and is complementary to a recently published article on scaling of sweetness and dietary intake ( 31 ). This narrative review will first introduce the problem of excess sugar intake by summarizing trends in sweetener use and recommendations to moderate nutritive sweetener intake.…”