Diet foods cause taste bud cues to malfunction

If you're into diet-this and diet-that so you can eat and drink while not ingesting as many calories, some new research may be of interest to you regarding what happens to your sense of energy intake.

In Canada, researchers discovered in a study of rats that the ability to assess the amount of energy (calories) were being eaten was thrown into disarray when the diet of these rodents primarily consisted of diet foods and drinks.

What happened apparently was that, over time, these rats somehow learned that sweet foods (sweetened with non-sugar diet products) did not contain that many calories. When exposed to full-calorie sweetened foods later on, these same rats overate since their systems did not know the difference.

Although humans and rats are far separated in cognitive ability, what do you think about this study? Why do we eat so many "diet" products instead of just consuming less "normal" products?