Animal and human research has focused upon sweet preference as a potential phenotypic marker for genetic vulnerability for alcoholism. While animal models show that greater ethanol intake among some rodent strains and within their segregating crosses depends in part upon the hedonic attractiveness of sweet taste [20–22], data from humans conflict. Some [23,24], but not all [25,26], human studies have found that non-alcohol-dependent men and women with a family history of alcoholism preferred a more concentrated sucrose solution than did those without such history. The intensity of sweetness preferred was characteristic of levels preferred typically by children [6,12].
