There’s A Reason You Want A Donut With Your Morning Coffee, According To Science

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It turns out there’s a reason you go for that buttery chocolate croissant at your favorite coffee shop. It’s not just your carb cravings taking over. A new study published in the Journal Of Food Science by a team of researchers at Cornell University found that caffeine can impact the way we perceive sweetness.

According to the study, caffeine suppresses our adenosine receptors, which promote sleep, so while our body gets a boost, our ability to taste sweetness is dulled. Since we always seem to want what we can’t have, it makes sense that when our ability to taste sweetness is suppressed our bodies actually crave more sweets.

In the blind study, one group sampled decaf coffee, which had 200 mg of caffeine added to it. The other group was given plain decaf coffee. Both groups had sugar added to their coffee and each cup contained quinine to make sure both were equally bitter. The results showed that the group that received the caffeinated cup suggested the brew was less sweet.

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About 15 minutes after both groups of participants rated the sweetness levels, they were given a sucrose solution and the caffeinated group still noted lower sweetness levels. Robin Danto, an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science and the director of the Cornell Sensory Evaluation Facility, said ultimately our sensitivity to sweetness “is a noticeable effect, and that it does stick around after you’ve finished consuming (coffee).”

For people who drink caffeine like it’s water, there might be a cumulative effect on their palates in day-to-day life. The research team, which also included Benjamin Picket and Ezen Choo, didn’t have any conclusions on how long the effect lasted, but it did find caffeine had no impact on the other four tastes (salty, sour, bitter and umami).

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Now we can actually understand why our morning latte makes us crave that glazed donut or chocolate chip muffin. It’s suggested that the more coffee we drink, the more we crave high-calorie snacks. If you’re looking to curb some of these sweets cravings, switch to caffeine-free teas like peppermint, chamomile and hibiscus. These findings can teach us to take a closer look at our cravings throughout the day if we want to make changes to our diets.