Sweet taste perception is associated with body mass index at the phenotypic and genotypic level

Abstract

Investigations on the relationship between sweet taste perception and body mass index (BMI) have been inconclusive. Here, we report a longitudinal analysis using a genetically informative sample of 1,576 adolescent Australian twins to explore the relationship between BMI and sweet taste. First, we estimated the phenotypic correlations between perception scores for four different sweet compounds (glucose, fructose, neohesperidine dihydrochalcone (NHDC), and aspartame) and BMI. Then, we computed the association between adolescent taste perception and BMI in early adulthood (reported 9 years later). Finally, we used twin modeling and polygenic risk prediction analysis to investigate the genetic overlap between BMI and sweet taste perception. Our findings revealed that BMI in early adulthood was significantly associated with each of the sweet perception scores, with the strongest correlation observed in aspartame with r = 0.09 (p =.007). However, only limited evidence of association was observed between sweet taste perception and BMI that was measured at the same time (in adolescence), with the strongest evidence of association observed for glucose with a correlation coefficient of r = 0.06 (p =.029) and for aspartame with r = 0.06 (p =.035). We found a significant (p