Preference for sugars and nonnutritive sweeteners in young beagles.

Two-bowl choice tests were used to examined preference of puppies aged two to four months for compounds tasting sweet to humans. Puppies found many, but not all of the compounds highly palatable, and were sensitive to both type and amount of sugar or nonnutritive sweetener contained in a semi-moist dog food recipe. Lactose, fructose, and sucrose were well accepted, whereas maltose elicited indifference or rejection. Sodium cyclamate, but not sodium saccharin, was preferred at some concentrations to 15 percent sucrose sweetened semi-moist food used as the standard. Solutions of lactose, fructose, glucose and galactose were preferred to plain tap water.