Paul Breslin, who is immersed in the biology of our taste as a professor of nutrition with Rutgers University and a researcher with the Monell Chemical Senses Center, points to our ancestry in this. “Our species is an ape, which is essentially a frugivore. They get 80 percent of their calories from fruit, which is essentially sugar. So, as apes, we are basically sugar freaks, and when you give people diet sweeteners, the body senses that there’s no sugar and it’s not happy with that.”
