Are you one of those people who loves everything sugary and can quite happily eat cake for starter, main course, and dessert? If the answer to this is yes, then chances are you have a sweet tooth.
One reason for this is due to the make-up of your genetic code – they impact on how you experience the taste of sweetness and so have a direct correlation on how many high sugar drinks you can consume and how many sugary treats you can eat in any one sitting.
If you do have a sweet tooth, then you would absolutely love a gift hamper from https://www.awesomehamperco.co.uk/.
What the science says
When the food or drink that we consume lands on the taste buds on our tongue, the receptors on them fire a signal up through our nervous system and into the brain. This flavor sensation tells us if we like or dislike the food that we are eating.
Over the past 10 years, the genetic research has mainly focused on the genes for the receptors in our mouths, specifically looking at sweets and if we are sensitive to sweetness and also how much sugar we are consuming. Previous studies have found that our genetics can account for up to 30 percent of how sweet we believe the sweeteners and sugars are.
Latest research
A recent study conducted amongst those people with ancestry from Europe, measured how sweet people thought different sugars and sweeteners were. It also looked into if people liked the taste of sucrose or not.
As a result of this research, scientists have identified a number of different genes that are each responsible for how it is that we perceive the sweeteners of a food stuff or drink.
It is hoped that by being able to isolate the exact genres that are responsible for giving some people a sweet tooth, treatments can be developed in order to help those people who have problems with controlling how much sugar they consume on a daily basis.
Evolved to like sweet things
However, your fondness for all things sweet may not just be down to the fact that you are genetically predisposed to find it irresistible but – it is also down to the evolution of mankind.
It is believed that the ability of our great ancestors to be able to identify what foods were sweet, was vital in their pursuit of foods that were rich in energy. They needed large amounts of energy in order to be able to live their energy-intensive hunter-gatherer lives.
So you could maybe view your sweet tooth as not being something problematic at all, but actually, see it as a sign that you are in fact more evolved than those other homosapiens who have not yet got to that point of evolution where they find sugar almost irresistible. At least that is what we tell ourselves as we delve into a hamper full of sweet treats and goodies that take us back to our youth.
