Genetic and Environmental Influences on Individual Sweet Preference Across Ancestry Groups in the U.S.

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Overconsumption of sugar is associated with obesity and related chronic disease, which in turn cost ~300,000 lives and ~$546 billion annually in the United States alone. Leading health agencies recommend reducing intake of added sugars, but pleasure from sweetness may hinder the effort to achieve this goal. A person’s preference for sweetness is determined by both genetic and environmental factors, and therefore, understanding these factors is a key step towards devising personalized strategies to reduce sugar consumption. While several single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified to be associated with sweet preference within individuals of European ancestry, whether result can be generalizable to other populations warrants further investigation. Furthermore, individuals from the same ancestry group but exposed to different environmental factors may also differ in sweet preferences. The first aim of this study (n = 428) will determine the differences in sweet-related genes in two traditionally underrepresented ancestry groups in genetic research, the non-Hispanic African and non-Hispanic Asian ancestry groups living in the U.S. We focus on these groups because they have the highest and the lowest added sugars intake, respectively. We aim to assess the differences in allele frequencies and effects of sweet-related genes on sweet preference in these two groups. We hypothesize that the African group will have higher frequencies of sweet-related alleles and stronger associations between the alleles and sweet preference compared to the Asian group. The second aim will focus on understanding the effect of environment on sweet preference. The influence of environment on sweet preference may be more apparent between individuals who were born in the U.S. (exposed to the food environment in the U.S. since birth) and immigrants (exposed to different food environments). Immigrants may retain traditional food habits and practices and therefore are less prone to the obesogenic food environment in the U.S. We will compare the difference in sweet preference between individuals who are native-born vs. immigrants within the same group of participants from Aim 1, adjusting for individual sweet intake. We expect to see a lower sweet preference in immigrants compared to their U.S.-born counterparts of the same ancestry group. The overall goal for this proposal is to understand the interactions between genetics and environmental factors on sweet perception and human food preferences, thereby aligns with the NIDCD strategic goal to understand how genes and environment affect food preferences. This study will be conducted at the City University of New York – Brooklyn College, a racial/ethnically diverse university with 79% of the entering undergraduate population eligible for federate or New York state financial aid. If awarded, the support I receive from this project will afford me the opportunity to train students who are traditionally underrepresented in biomedical research. As a new faculty, this opportunity will aid my transition from a postdoctoral fellow to becoming an independent researcher and position me to becoming a leader in the sensory nutrition field.