Age and “sweet tooth” genes can make eating sugar less satiating
Apologies if this makes me a bad parent, but I’m not actually sure how much sugar my kids eat each day. I do know that it makes them very excited to do so, and so every possible spike in sucrose and fructose in their daily routine is something to be negotiated, connived or at least celebrated. In the case of my four- and eight-year-old, a lot of this love for sweets is probably tied to their ages— kids taste receptors don’t work the same way adults’ do, and their growth seems to help them use those calories too. If these preferences last past their 16th birthdays though, their mom and I may be to blame, not because of parenting, but because of genetics.
Dessert-oriented DNA
Danish researchers recently isolated what they believe to be a “sweet tooth” gene, FGF21. Two variations in this gene was associated with significantly higher amounts of sugar consumption on a daily basis among the 6,500 people who participated in the study. The more common variations of the gene help produce hormones that calm neurological reward responses, making sugar less exciting to our brains after a certain amount has been eaten. People with this genetic sweet tooth don’t seem to have that same cap, and happily consume more sugar without feeling sated by it. More troubling, there may this reward connection may mean these people are also more likely to consume more alcohol and cigarettes, although that hasn’t been explicitly proven yet.
Before you start blaming FGF21 for the last candy bar you ate, don’t forget the other sweet tooth gene, SLCa2. Identified in 2008, this gene produces a protein called GLUT2, which helps move glucose around the body and help us feel full after our blood sugar levels are normalized. In lab experiments, mice with a mutation on the FGF21 gene were prone to eating more food than other mice, and there may be a correlation with Type 2 Diabetes. Overall, a change in a single amino acid correlated with as much as 25 more grams of sugar than people without the sweet tooth mutation.
Caloric counterbalance
Importantly, neither sweet tooth gene mutation really synced up with serious health problems (although these test participants’ dentists may have a different opinion on that.) People with FGF21 mutations actually had lower body mass indexes on average, so if they were somehow eating more calories due to extra sugar, they were also making up for it elsewhere in their diets. People with SLCa2 mutations were similar— while they may have eaten anywhere from 3 to 15 additional grams of sugar than other people, they weren’t consuming extra calories as a result. They were just making sugar a bigger proportion of their diet. This may be problematic if the remaining calories aren’t providing enough vitamins, antioxidants and fiber, but by itself a sweet tooth isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Source: Crave Sugar? Maybe It's in Your Genes by Dina Fine Maron, Scientific American
