Your Sweet Tooth Is Probably Not Your Fault

Sweet Stuff: Anyone with a sweet tooth knows the struggle of cookies in the cupboard calling your name. The popular wisdom has long been that you can dial down cravings by cutting out sweets altogether, so researchers in the Netherlands and the U.K. spent six months putting that idea to the test. The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, are somewhat surprising.

The Study: Researchers recruited 180 healthy adults and split them into groups eating varying levels of sweetness for six months. None of the groups showed meaningful differences in cravings or health markers. Most people also drifted back to their original eating habits once the study ended.

The Takeaway: Your preference for sweetness seems pretty fixed. Eating more or less won’t rewire your cravings, so if you’ve ever worried that having dessert was dooming you to a lifetime of uncontrollable sugar cravings, you can probably let that go.

Keep in Mind: Some foods might not taste sweet (think fast food) but are still high in sugar, while fruit and dairy are naturally sweet and good for you. The real target, researchers say, is sugar and calorie intake rather than sweetness itself.