Sweet Tooth and Alcoholism

Children who love sweets more likely to be alcoholics

A sweet tooth may make you more likely to become an alcoholic, doctors have found.

While a liking for sweets has long been observed among heavy drinkers, researchers were uncertain whether it was caused, or preceded, by years of high alcohol intake.

Now a study has suggested that a sweet tooth may indicate a genetic predisposition to heavy drinking. Researchers tested 163 social drinkers and found those with the sweetest tooth were two and a half times more likely to have a family history of alcoholism.

The sweet-loving drinkers were identified by asking them to rate a series of sugar solutions for sweetness and palatability. The researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York say a simple taste test of this kind could eventually be used to check whether children were predisposed to alcoholism.

Dr Alexei Kampov-Polevoy led the research, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experi- mental Research. He said the link between sugar and alcohol in some people was likely to be due to a genetic abnormality in the brain.

"Pleasurable reactions to both alcohol and sweet substances are regulated by the same mechanism, namely the brain’s opioid system," Dr Kampov-Polevoy said. "Activation of this system results in increased consumption of both alcohol and sweets, while blockade of this system causes the opposite effect.

"We believe that children of alcoholics have a genetic abnormality of the brain opioid system, which leads to an increased sensitivity to the rewarding effects of alcohol."

The findings could pave the way for the testing of children to help to gauge their risk of developing alcoholism in adulthood.

Dr Kampov-Polevoy said: "A sweet-preference test is a simple and benign test that can be done at any age. If our findings are confirmed, a test may help to identify an individual at risk for the development of alcoholism early in life, way before the first drink.

"With advanced knowledge, it will be easier to develop effective preventive measures. As with any other disease in the world, alcoholism is easier to prevent than to treat."

David Overstreet, of the Bowles Centre for Alcohol Studies, University of North Carolina, said: "These studies imply that a person whose relatives are alcoholics may be at greater risk of alcoholism if he or she likes sweets."