SynthesisInternational journal of obesity (2005)2024
Comparing body composition between the sweet-liking phenotypes: experimental data, systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis.
Synthesis in International journal of obesity (2005), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Free Sugars Consumption and Type 2 Diabetes: What Are the Concerns and How Strong is the Evidence?Current nutrition reports · 2026Review
- Clinical Assessment of Altered Eating Behaviors in People with Obesity Using the EBA-O Questionnaire.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Patterns of sensory and hedonic responses for salty and umami tastes and their impact on food familiarity, consumption, and nutritional status: A gender-based analysis from a large population sample.Current research in food science · 2025Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundLegislation aimed at reducing sugar intake assumes that sweet-liking drives overconsumption. However, evidence that a greater liking for sweet taste is associated with unhealthier body size is mixed and complicated by relatively small samples, an overreliance on body mass index (BMI) and lack of classification using sweet-liking phenotypes.
methodsWe first examined body size data in two larger samples with sweet-liking phenotyping: extreme sweet-likers, moderate sweet-likers and sweet-dislikers. Adults (18-34yrs), attended a two-session lab-based experiment involving phenotyping for sweet-liking status and a bioelectrical impedance body composition measurement (Experiment One: N = 200; Experiment Two: N = 314). Secondly, we conducted an individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis: systematic searches across four databases identified 5736 potential articles. Of these, 53 papers met our search criteria: a taste assessment that measured liking using sucrose (>13.7% w/v), which allowed sweet-liking phenotyping and included either BMI, body fat percentage (BF%), fat-free mass (FFM) or waist-circumference.
resultsA significant effect of sweet-liking phenotype on FFM was found in both Experiment One and Two, with extreme sweet-likers having significantly higher FFM than sweet-dislikers. In Experiment One, sweet-dislikers had a significantly higher BF% than extreme sweet-likers and moderate sweet-likers. However, as these data are from one research group in a young, predominantly westernised population, and the results did not perfectly replicate, we conducted the IPD meta-analyses to further clarify the findings. Robust one-stage IPD meta-analyses of 15 studies controlling for sex revealed no significant differences in BF% (n = 1836) or waist-circumference (n = 706). For BMI (n = 2368), moderate sweet-likers had slightly lower BMI than extreme sweet-likers, who had the highest overall BMI. Most interestingly, for FFM (n = 768), moderate sweet-likers and sweet-dislikers showed significantly lower FFM than extreme sweet-likers.
conclusionThe higher BMI often seen in sweet-likers may be due to a larger FFM and questions the simple model where sweet liking alone is a risk factor for obesity.
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