HEALTHLINE – Do you have a sweet tooth?
If you consume a lot of sugary foods, research indicates that you may want to reconsider your choices.
In the October 2024 study, which was published in the Journal of Translational Medicine, the researchers found that people who favored sweets had a higher risk of depression than those who preferred healthier foods.
These individuals also had higher levels of inflammation, blood sugar, and lipids, which can indicate a risk of metabolic disease.
On the other hand, those people who had a more health-conscious eating pattern had reduced risk of heart disease and stroke, per the authors.
How having a sweet tooth affects metabolic disease risk
The researchers examined data from blood samples taken from the UK Biobank, a large database containing health and genetic information for half a million volunteers in the U.K.
The data contained information about 2,923 proteins and 168 metabolites that had been measured to look for changes.
The research team used unsupervised machine learning to look for patterns in this data, finding three distinct groups based on people’s food preferences:
Health-conscious (preferring vegetables and fresh fruit to animal-based foods and sweets), Omnivore (preferring all foods), and Sweet-tooth (having a high preference for sweet foods and beverages).
Looking at the various proteins and metabolites, they found those in the sweet tooth group had higher C-reactive protein, a marker for inflammation.
They also had higher blood sugar and worse lipids, elevating their risk of metabolic conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
The team further found that having a preference for sweets was linked with a greater likelihood of having depression, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease compared with the other two groups.
On the other hand, the Health-conscious group had a reduced risk of heart failure, chronic kidney disease, and stroke … READ MORE.
