Your expectations can form your taste more than you realize. A new study found that people expecting sugar thought artificially sweetened drinks were more pleasant.
Researchers from Radboud Univ., Cambridge Univ. and Oxford Univ. used brain scans in their study. They found that people who thought they were drinking sugary drinks had stronger activity in the area of the brain related to reward.
The study started with 99 healthy adults. But, it was narrowed down to 27 people who couldn’t reliably taste the difference between real sugar and artificial sweeteners. By eliminating people who could taste the difference, the researchers were able to study how expectation impacts people’s perception.
“We found that the expectation of them getting sugar was related to the taste being more pleasant,” said co-author Margaret Westwater. “If they thought they were given artificial sweetener, they said the taste was less pleasant.”
Not only did people enjoy artificial sweetener more when they believed it was sugar, but they also thought sugar was less pleasant when they thought it was artificial. They found people’s expectations about what drink they had been handed greatly impacted their ability to identify sugar from a sweetener if they weren’t told what it was.
“Artificial sweeteners can feel like ‘real sugar’ because they activate the same sweet taste receptors on your tongue — often even more intensely than sugar does,” said registered dietitian nutritionist Sandra Zhang.
The researchers said this could be the key to making more enjoyable diet drinks without changing the drinks themselves. “If we emphasize that healthier food alternatives are ‘nutrient-rich’ or have ‘minimal added sugars,’ this may create more positive expectations than using terms like ‘diet’ or ‘low calories,’” said Dr. Westwater. “This may help people align their food choices with the brain’s preference for calories while supporting behavior change.”
Registered dietitian Jessica Cording said, “If you’re expecting that something with artificial sweetener is a ‘diet’ food, that will cause the enjoyment factor to drop, even if the taste is the same. Reframing your thinking about a food can shape your experience of eating it.”
The study has limitations, not just because everyone was young and healthy. Most of the original study group was excluded because they could taste the difference in sweeteners. Would labels omitting the word diet make food taste better to someone who can tell artificial sweetener apart from sugar? A larger study, more reflective of the real world, is needed to know if the research holds weight.
“Sweet” has emotional connotations as well as a physical sensation. “Growing up, our brain starts to associate sweet taste with pleasure — think birthday cake, Halloween candies, Christmas hot chocolate,” said Ms. Zhang. Tying those feelings to “sweet” rather than sugar may make artificial sweeteners more appealing.
