According to new research published online in the journal Addiction, children with a family history of alcoholism prefer intense sweets. In the study, 300 children between the ages of 5 and 12 tasted five levels of sugar in water to determine how much sweetness they liked.
Nearly half (49 percent) of the children studied had a family history of alcoholism. The researchers paid close attention to the sweet preferences of the children with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, because sweet taste and alcohol activate many of the same reward circuits in the brain.
Children who had both a family history of alcoholism and who reported depressive symptoms liked intense sweetness the most (the equivalent of 14 teaspoons of sugar in a cup of water, and more than twice the level of sweetness in a typical cola). This was one third more intense than the sweetness level preferred by the other children.
The study’s lead author, Julie A. Mennella, PhD, noted that the findings do not necessarily mean that there is a relationship between early sweet preferences and alcoholism later in life. “At this point, we don’t know whether this higher ‘bliss point’ for sweets is a marker for later alcohol use,” she said.
It would be interesting to combine this study with research on alcoholics and hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Dr. Douglas M. Baird, director of the Hypoglycemia Support Foundation, says: “I have never, ever seen an alcoholic who wasn’t hypoglycemic. It just doesn’t occur, it’s the same problem.” The question is: Which came first, the alcoholism or the craving for sweets?
