Chronic sugar exposure increases daily intake of sugars but decreases avidity for sweeteners in mice

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Little is known about how chronic sugar consumption impacts avidity for and daily intake of sugars. This issue is topical because modern humans exhibit high daily intakes of sugar. Here, we exposed sugar-naïve C57BL/6 mice (across two 28-day exposure periods, EP1 and EP2) to a control (chow and water) or experimental (chow, water and a 11 or 34% sugar solution) diet. The sugar solutions contained sucrose, glucose syrups, or high-fructose syrups. We used brief-access tests to measure appetitive responses to sucralose and sucrose solutions at three time points: baseline (before EP1), after EP1, and after EP2. We used lick rates to infer palatability, and number of trials initiated/test to infer motivation. Exposure to the control diet had no impact on lick rates or number of trials initiated for sucralose and sucrose. In contrast, exposure to the experimental diets reduced licking for the sweeteners to varying degrees. Lick rates were reduced by exposure to sugar solutions containing the 11% glucose syrups, 34% sucrose, 34% glucose syrups and 34% high-fructose syrups. The number of trials initiated was reduced by exposure to all of the sugar solutions. Despite the exposure-induced reductions in avidity for the sweetener solutions, daily intakes of virtually all of the sugar solutions increased across the exposure periods. We conclude that (i) chronic consumption of sugar solutions reduced avidity for the sweetened solutions, (ii) the extent of this effect depended on the concentration and type of sugar, and (iii) avidity for sweet-tasting solutions could not explain the persistently high daily intake of sugar solutions in mice.