Why do we have sweet tooth?

Looking at your tongue closely in the mirror you will see tiny bumps scattered on the surface.
Inside these bumps are small structures called taste buds and inside the taste buds are cells called taste receptors.
The taste receptors detect the presence of certain molecules and send messages to your brain about them.
The sensed food molecules contribute to the taste of sweet, sour (acidic), salty, and bitter.
Some taste buds specifically respond to amino acids, triggering a taste called umami or meaty.
If food in your mouth stimulates your bitter receptors, the brain will respond by initiating movements that lead you to spit the food out.
But if a mouthful of something stimulates the sweet or umami receptors, your brain will probably respond by directing movements that result in you eating more.

These receptors respond more strongly to some sugars than others.
The six-carbon sugar fructose is the sweetest of all sugars.
If we read the list of ingredients on food labels very well, we may have noticed that most foods are sweetened by high fructose corn syrup.
Adding fructose to a food can help the manufacturers make the food sweeter while lowering the sugar content. A synthetic sweetener.
NutraSweet is even more potent in its ability to stimulate our sweet receptors.
It is about 200 times sweeter than Sucrose (table sugar).

Carbohydrates serve so many vital roles in our cells that the ability to sense them and the desire to take in more is beneficial to individuals.
Responding to sweets should be an adaptation that increases the fitness of individuals in most environments.
People who sense and respond to sweetness should survive better and produce more than individuals who do not.

Historically, simple sugars were extremely rare in our environment.
In many cultures, honey was the only source.
But with the recent invention of techniques to refine large amounts of disaccharide Sucrose cheaply, the developed nations are flooded with it.
Our taste receptors keep responding strongly, just as they did when our ancestors occupied sugar-poor environments.
Now, overdoses of sugar are contributing to obesity and problems with regulating blood sugar levels.
As humans as we are, we love sweets for a reason, but in our current environment, we probably love sweets too much.

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