In childhood and throughout our life, our perceptions of taste are constantly changing. When I was a teenager, I drank cola and similar products on a daily basis. On any given day, you might have found me drinking three or four 12 oz. cans. If you had asked me if they tasted sweet, I might have replied that they were basically sweet but nothing too significant. In fact, if I tasted something sweet immediately before drinking cola, it seemed that the cola wasn't sweet at all.
Since then, I've changed the amount of sugar I consume on a daily basis and it seems that my perception of what is sweet has adapted. Upon drinking a single can of cola, I perceive it as far too sweet whereas previously it would have been about normal. Food and drinks that had sugar but didn't seem sweet now have a discernable sweetness.
I've decided this topic would be interesting to analyze. We know that ultimately it's somewhere in our brain that the perception of taste lies. We also know that the tongue has different areas of taste for sweet, bitter, sour, etc. The tongue also has discrete taste buds that we can count. It's reasonable to assume that our brains have a neuronal circuit that somehow maps our perception to our taste buds. If we assume that our taste buds detect an amount of sugar, it's also reasonable to assume that if all of our taste buds are healthy, we have a sugar detector that doesn't change over time.
To summarize this system, we have a part of our brain that controls sweet perception and can change over time, and a part of our tongue that detects amounts of sugar and does not change over time. In other words, the sweet perception is all in our brain and we can change it.
First, let's describe the mapping of the sweet perception to amount of sugar for the high-sugar content diet that I had in my teenage years.
To make things a little easier, we'll use a number one through ten to describe the perception of how sweet something is, with ten being the sweetest. Additionally, we'll assume that one bite or sip has a volume of about 1 tablespoon, or 0.5 fluid ounces.
The following graph describes my sweet perception with a high-sugar diet. I've added labels for the content of common drinks and some foods for one sip or bite.
As you can see, I was not able to tell the difference between low-sugar items, they didn't taste sweet at all.
Over the years I've reduced the sugar content of my diet by primarily drinking a variety of unsweetened teas and avoiding foods higher in sugar.
The following graph describes my sweet perception today.
Notice how the widest range of perception has shifted to the lower sugar content.
In summary, I believe it is possible for a person to change his or her sweet perception such that the same taste experience is achieved with a lower amount of sugar. In addition, when cooking it may be important to understand your consumers' taste perceptions.