A new randomized controlled trial has found that eating more sweet-tasting foods does not increase a person’s preference for sweet tastes.
Researchers discovered that after six months on diets with different amounts of sweet foods, participants’ liking for sweetness stayed the same regardless of how much sweet food they ate.
Lead investigator Kees de Graaf, PhD, emeritus professor in sensory science and eating behavior at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, explained that the study also found no link between diets higher or lower in sweetness and changes in energy intake or body weight.
This challenges the common belief that sweet foods cause people to consume more calories.
Most previous studies on this topic have been short-term, often lasting just a day, and have not provided clear answers on whether sweetness preferences can change over time.
To fill this gap, researchers designed a six-month trial that strictly followed a pre-registered, ethics-approved protocol. They used specially developed foods and drinks to measure sweet taste preferences without including them in the intervention diets themselves.
The study involved 180 participants, split into three groups of about 60 people each. One group’s diet consisted mostly of sweet foods, another group’s diet had fewer sweet foods, and the third group had a mix.
Every two weeks, participants received food and drink packages covering about half of their daily intake, along with menus for guidance. They could eat as much or as little of the provided foods as they wanted.
Sweet foods included items like jam, milk chocolate, sweetened dairy products, and sugar-sweetened drinks. Less sweet options included ham, cheese, peanut butter, hummus, salted popcorn, and sparkling water.
The nutritional composition for carbohydrates, fats, and proteins was matched across all groups, and participants were randomized to balance sex, age, and body weight.
Researchers measured sweet taste preferences before the diet began, twice during the diet, immediately after it ended, and again at one and four months after participants stopped the intervention. They also tracked total calorie intake, macronutrients, dietary patterns, body weight, body composition, and blood markers linked to diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Results showed that reducing exposure to sweet foods did not lower preference for sweetness, and increasing exposure did not raise it.
There were no changes in sweet taste perception, food choices, energy intake, body weight, or health biomarkers in any of the groups. At follow-up, participants naturally returned to their baseline levels of sweet food consumption.
De Graaf noted that this is one of the first studies to adjust sweetness across the entire diet in a way that reflects real-world eating patterns. The findings suggest that avoiding sweet-tasting foods to prevent increased preference for sweetness is unnecessary.
The team now hopes to repeat the study with children, whose taste preferences and eating habits may still be more adaptable.
This study challenges the idea that frequent consumption of sweet-tasting foods leads to a greater craving for sweetness or overeating. By showing that sweetness preferences remained stable over six months, even with large differences in sweet food intake, the findings suggest that other factors — not just taste exposure — influence calorie intake and diet quality.
This evidence could help reshape dietary advice, focusing less on sweetness itself and more on the overall nutritional balance of the diet.
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