Flickr user See-ming Lee

Today, Science tackles the topics of kids and sugar, and finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that young'uns really like sweet stuff. But it's not just that they like it—they're biologically wired to love it.

Kids are hard-wired to crave sugar from the time they're in the womb, according to Julie Mennella of the Monell Chemical Senses Center. On top of that, Mennella found that sugar actually makes kids feel good—it's a natural pain reliever [pdf]. Many hospitals even sugar up babies before painful procedures like circumcisions or heel stick screenings. Young children have "virtually no limit" when it comes to how sweet they like their food and drink, which is fantastic news for shareholders of Pixie Stix, Inc.

The frequent raids on the candy aisle continue throughout adolescence, until teenagers stop growing up—at which point their taste preferences shift to include more foods, and they just start growing out. [via NPR]