Boy is this the truth. I grew up on a very sugar heavy diet. My whole family would sip on quart tumblers of soda more or less continuously throughout the day. I took that into adult hood with a habit to constantly drink cans of coke.
In my early 20s, my then boss one afternoon suggested I just try cutting nearly all sugary stuff out of my diet, as I was having issues with low energy during the day. It took a couple weeks for my metabolism to adjust, but holy cow what a difference. I've stuck with a diet low on simple sugars ever since.
While I'm sure what some posters are saying about age related sweetness sensitivity is true, what the above poster is talking about is very real, very acute, and very obvious. Likewise, the taste of less sweet things changes dramatically as well. I drank a lot of diet coke for a while during the transition. I remember what it tasted like back when I drank sugared stuff all the time, and I found it disgusting. Now it tastes very sweet. It's also a texture thing: sugared soda feels like syrup in my mouth now.
Overall this is probably the most positive health related decision I've made in life. I still have the occasional bowl of ice cream or such as a treat, but it's like a once a month thing now, if that. Beer is really the last sugar laden thing I have with some regularity. I'd never go back to where I was.