--- title: How to Eat Less Sugar: You Can Learn to Quiet Your Sweet Tooth description: We all like sweet things, but we should be eating less sugar. Now a study hints that it may be possible to tone down our taste for sugar canonical: https://time.com/4168424/train-yourself-to-want-low-sugar-foods/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-05T22:55:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:56:37.723Z article:section: Health og:title: It May Be Possible to De-Sweeten Your Sweet Tooth og:description: We all like sweet things, but we should be eating less sugar. Now a study hints that it may be possible to tone down our taste for sugar og:url: https://time.com/4168424/train-yourself-to-want-low-sugar-foods/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: It May Be Possible to De-Sweeten Your Sweet Tooth twitter:description: We all like sweet things, but we should be eating less sugar. Now a study hints that it may be possible to tone down our taste for sugar twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # How to Get Rid of Your Sweet Tooth > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Know Right Now: Sugar is Toxic, a New Study Says [Watch (HLS stream): Know Right Now: Sugar is Toxic, a New Study Says](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/NOj31tB9.m3u8) (1:01)  _Published 2015-10-27. High rates of sugar consumption is definitively linked to chronic disease_  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jan 5, 2016 10:55 PM UTC  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Jan 5, 2016 10:55 PM UTC A little-discussed factor that can make dieting difficult is the issue of tolerance. Our bodies get used to a certain amount of fat, a certain amount of sugar, or a certain amount of salt. The more we eat, the more that tolerance builds—and that just makes us need more of the stuff in order to “taste” it. Now a study shows it may be possible to reverse that trend and quiet the demands of a sweet tooth. Other studies have shown that it’s possible to retrain the taste buds to desire less salt — [decrease the amount of salt you eat](http://time.com/3944545/sodium-heart/) for a while and then the same foods you found acceptable start to taste too salty. Now, in a [small study published in the _American Journal of Clinical Nutrition_](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/103/1/50.full), researchers found that the same training to reduce people’s taste for sugar might be possible. They recruited 29 people who said they regularly drank at least two sugar-sweetened beverages a day and asked them to rate the sweetness of some sweetened puddings and drinks. The scientists then asked half of the people to reduce their sugar by 40% (they could do so by eating or drinking whatever they wanted) and allowed the other half to continue with their regular diets. After three months, the people in the study, which was funded by the Monell Chemical Senses Center and PepsiCo, went back to eating whatever they wanted to eat for a month. The scientists monitored any changes in their sugar intake by asking the people to rate lightly sweetened puddings and beverages. **MORE:** [New York City Menus Will Soon Have Salt Warnings](http://time.com/4028311/new-york-salt-warnings/) The people who lowered the amount of sugar they ate during the study consistently reported that the puddings and drinks with little sugar tasted sweeter than did the group that didn’t reduce their sugar consumption, suggesting that their taste or tolerance for sugar had changed after eating less of it. The effect was stronger for the puddings than for the drinks, which the researchers say could be related to differences in the way foods and liquids are processed by the body. The effect did not last when the people went back to eating what they wanted. The group that had lowered the amount of sugar they ate went back to eating just as much as they had at the start of the study. **MORE:** [Too Much Salt May Delay the Onset of Puberty, Suggests Study](http://time.com/3882228/salt-puberty/) Also, even during the study, the people who ate less sugar did not report any changes in how pleasurable the sweetened puddings or drinks were — pleasantness, or “reward,” is one of factors that some experts say may be involved in eating preferences. The study only involved a small number of people, and the fact that the low-sugar group went back to increasing the amount of sweet foods they ate certainly doesn’t prove that the effects of a sweet tooth can be dampened. But they hint that it may be possible, and support the need for more research into how our tolerance or “taste” for foods can be adjusted. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4168424/train-yourself-to-want-low-sugar-foods/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4168424/train-yourself-to-want-low-sugar-foods/"},"headline":"How to Get Rid of Your Sweet Tooth","datePublished":"2016-01-05T22:55:06.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:56:37.723Z","description":"We all like sweet things, but we should be eating less sugar. 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