Effects of caloric or non-caloric sweetener long-term consumption on taste preferences and new aversive learning

Abstract

Food palatability and caloric content are crucial factors in guiding diet choice and amount consumed; as a result, sweet caloric tastes are associated with a positive hedonic value. Recent evidence in rodents indicates that consumption of artificial (non-caloric) sweeteners, in which sweet taste is dissociated from normal caloric consequences, could induce changes in energy and body weight regulation, suggesting that sweeteners not only modify intake and appetitive behavior, but could also change taste-learning processes. Particularly, there are different properties in some artificial sweeteners, like saccharin, that might differ from sugar in the reward responses that, after long-term consumption, could also be associated with the inability to learn new negative consequences related to the same taste. Thus, the main goal of this study was to determine, in adult rats, the effects of long-term consumption (14 days) of sugar or saccharin, on taste preference, on new aversive learning, i.e. latent inhibition (LI) of conditioned taste aversion (CTA), and appetitive taste re-learning after aversive taste associations. The results showed that 14 days’ exposure to sugar, but not to saccharin, induced a significant increment in the LI of CTA and that taste preference is rapidly recovered during the next 3 days (e.g. CTA extinctions), indicating that long-term sugar consumption significantly accelerates aversive memory extinction during appetitive re-learning of a specific sweet taste; furthermore, high familiarization to sugar, but not to saccharin, promotes appetitive learning for the same taste. Overall, the results indicate that long-term consumption of sugar, but not saccharin, produces changes in appetitive re-learning and suggests that long-term sugar consumption could trigger escalating consumption due to the inability to learn new negative consequences associated with the same taste.

Keywords:

• Flavor recognition
• Latent inhibition
• Extinction
• Appetitive learning
• Saccharin
• Sucrose
• Aversive conditioning

Acknowledgments

We thank Martín García Servin, Leonor Casanova, and Lourdes Lara for technical support. Shaun Harris and Jessica Gonzalez-Norris for proofreading.

Disclaimer statements

Contributors None.

Funding This work was supported by PAPIIT [grant numbers IN201018, IN204615, PASPA-DGAPA] and CONACyT [grant number 252379].

Conflicts of interest None.

Ethics approval None.

ORCID

Gabriela Vera-Rivera http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0447-2502

María-Isabel Miranda http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1823-2152

José Alejandro Rangel-Hernández http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8124-0839

Dennys Badillo-Juárez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7067-169X

Seraid Caynas-Rojas https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0265-4932