The research output of SIBG that have been covered by the media

Nutrients front page, Volume 11, Issue 1 (January 2019)

Cover Story: Despite widespread claims that liking for sweetness is innate, behavioral scientists have long known individuals show large variation in their hedonic responses to sweetness. Using hierarchical cluster analysis to overcome subjective or arbitrary classification methods, we identified 3 distinct patterns of response to sweetness: a sweet liker phenotype showing a rise in liking with increasing sucrose concentration, an inverted-U response pattern, and a sweet disliker phenotype characterized by a decline in liking with increasing concentration. Given the ongoing debate on the role of taste, sugar intake, and health outcomes, a robust phenotyping method is needed to facilitate consistency across studies and populations. Present data suggest use of 1 M sucrose with cut-offs of -15/+15 on liking scores (-50 to + 50 scale) may serve as rapid, easy to use, and reliable criteria for future studies. [Link to paper]