It’s an unforgiving world out there for all of us sweet tooths. As much as we want to be able to justify that midnight Snickers or our regularly scheduled ice cream after dinner, the sugar (and the calories) always catch up. And as new research is revealing, cutting out sugar entirely doesn’t actually help curb your sweet tooth at all.
This week, the American Society for Nutrition published the results of a six-month randomized trial that looked at the impact of sugary diets on sugar cravings. Until now, researchers have only looked at the short term impact of sweetness preferences – covering periods of up to one day. This time, researchers sought to understand how cutting sugar out of a diet can impact their preference for sweet foods in the long run – essentially asking, “If I cut out my after-dinner ice cream now, will I still crave it in 6 months?”
Participants were each given diets with mostly sweet, less sweet, or a mix of foods throughout the course of 6 months, and then their preference for sweet taste was tested before the intervention diet began, two times during the diet, and directly after the diet ended. The bad news? Sweet tooths are less changeable than we might think.
The researchers found that lower exposure to sweet-tasting foods didn’t lead to shifts in sweet taste preferences, changes in sweet taste perception, changes in food choice or energy intake. After the intervention, the participants naturally returned to baseline levels of sweet food intake at the 1- and 4-month follow-ups.
But here’s the good news: we can still replace our sugar cravings with foods that will actually contribute to our health. Natural sugar itself isn’t necessarily nutritionally harmful – it’s only when we consume too much added sugar that it can raise blood pressure and increase chronic inflammation, which contributes to cardiovascular disease.
And, sugar exists in abundance in foods that do actually contribute nutrients to our diet, and don’t negatively impact our heart health. For example: fruit. Most fruits are naturally sweet and can satisfy sugar cravings, while containing lots of nutrients and fiber. Fruit skin contains lots of vitamins and flavanols, which help feed the good bacteria in your gut. Swapping out your free sugars for some fruit, like a pear or apple, will improve your microbiome, make you feel full longer, and keep you healthy.
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