Whether a food tastes sweet and the emotions experienced upon ingestion are complex processes mediated by taste receptors in the periphery and by multiple brain substrates, which are remarkably well conserved phylogenetically [8,9]. Emerging evidence suggests that the brain circuitry involved in the hedonic impact of sweet taste relates to circuitry involved in addictions. For example, like tasting something sweet, drinking alcohol activates pleasure-generating loci in the brain associated with reward (see [10]). Thus, alcohol may be co-opting neural pathways designed originally for seeking sweet tastes [11], our oldest natural reward [12]. Further, the sweet appetite appears to be related to alcohol appetite. Not only is more pleasure derived from eating sweets, which are craved more during early stages of abstinence [13–15], but consumption of candy and refined sugar is related inversely to alcohol intake [16–18], a finding reminiscent of the food trends that occurred during Prohibition when consumption of foods containing refined sugar soared [19].
