Sound Bites With Melissa Joy Dobbins

The topic of sweet taste and the relationship to diet and health is one that has been of interest to food and nutrition scientists for many years. To assist in reducing sugar consumption, some authoritative bodies currently recommend reducing the consumption of sweet-tasting foods and beverages, regardless of the source of the sweet taste (i.e., caloric or low-calorie sweeteners). These recommendations stem from concerns that human attraction to sweetness may be a potential risk for developing less healthy eating patterns. Despite the need to measure sweetness of the diet to help us further understand the relationship between nutrition and health and sweetness, currently there is no consensus method to measure the total sweetness of the diet. There are well-established sensory techniques in laboratory settings for individual foods, but agreement on the optimal approach for measuring the sweetness of the total diet is lacking, particularly for large-scale population-based studies. Recently a practical approach