Research

Hormonal

A 2-week exposure to either a low-carbohydrate (LC) or low-fat (LF) diet does not significantly alter sweet or salty taste detection thresholds or preferences compared to each other.

Switching to a low-carb or low-fat diet for just two weeks will not change your taste buds or your cravings for sweet and salty foods. If you are expecting your food preferences to shift quickly as a result of the diet itself, this short timeframe is likely too short to observe such changes.

GoodRefutesHIGH confidence
There were no significant differences between sweet and salt taste threshold nor preference following exposure to LC or LF diets (salt preference P = 0.1849; sweet preference P = 0.8984; salt threshold P = 0.2096; sweet threshold P = 0.1766)
Rosario B. Jaime-Lara et al. · Current Developments in Nutrition · 2025

Why this rating

Randomized controlled cross-over design with inpatient feeding control, though small sample size (n=18) limits generalizability.

Source

The Role of Diet and Hormones on Taste: Low Carb Compared With Low Fat Study Findings

Rosario B. Jaime-Lara et al. · Current Developments in Nutrition · 2025

DOI 10.1016/j.cdnut.2025.107467

crossover · n=18Cited 1×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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