Your ‘sweet tooth’ is keeping you fit & fine!

People who have a ‘sweet tooth’ gene variation, that makes them crave and eat more sugar, are likely to have less body fat than others, a study has found. It comes as a bit of a surprise to the researchers, who last year discovered that precisely this genetic variation could be one of the reasons why some people have a particular craving for sweet things. People with this variation eat more sugar than others.

“It sort of contradicts common intuition that people who eat more sugar should have less body fat. But it is important to remember that we are only studying this specific genetic variation and trying to find connections to the rest of the body,” said Niels Grarup from University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

The study, published in the scientific journal Cell Reports, are based on health information from more than 450,000 individuals who have allowed their data to be recorded in the UK Biobank.

“Now that so many people are involved in the study, it gives our conclusions a certain robustness. Even though the difference in the amount of body fat or blood pressure level is only minor depending on whether or not the person has this genetic variation or not, we are very confident that the results are accurate.” said Grarup.

This new knowledge about people with a ‘genetic sweet tooth’ is mainly important in connection with the development of drugs and future research.