Is the nature of human tasting preferences or ability entirely culturally driven or are there an innate differences in the way various ethnic or racial groups perceive certain flavors?
In other words is the preference for certain flavors and tastes across a human population entirely random and individual and driven by culture and available foods or are there any ethnically or racially wired components to these preferences?
As an example some Scandinavian/Icelandic food is just horrifyingly terrible, but it’s still eaten with relish by natives. Is this all culture?
I doubt it’s racial (i.e. genetic). If it were, people of Swedish descent who grew up in other countries would like surströmming.
Another example: most people who grew up in the U.S. like root beer, regardless of their ethnicity. Many Europeans hate it. A lot of cough syrup in Europe tastes like root beer, so the flavor is associated with medicine (and illness) there. This is entirely cultural.
In Korea fried chicken and watermelon (and Spam!) are very popular, China has many different cuisines, depending on which area of China you’re in. There are obvious cultural and geographical reasons for different preferences of foods amongst different nationalities, but no genetic reasons as far as I’m aware.
My wild-assed guess is that each person grows up in a culture where certain flavours dominate and those become normal for them.
Mixed in with that is the local cultural acceptance of certain foods - cat, dog, snake etc. Outsiders draw back in horror but really, food is food. Almost everything alive is edible.
My father enjoyed fried sheeps brains and sweetbreads and tripe. I can assure you none of his children were up for those.
I read an interesting book several years ago that posited genetic adaptations to different foods. One proposal was that, since hot peppers can keep food from spoiling (or soemthing like that, I forget the details), people in hot climates where hot peppers grew might evolve a lack of sensitivity to them, due to the increased survival of people who ate a lot of them. I have no idea if there’s any truth to that claim.
Dairy has a related phenomenon, in which certain populations have developed the ability to digest dairy into adulthood. I don’t know if taste is affected, though.
There are some genetic differences in taste perception, leading to “supertasters”. While the trait is more common on some continents than others, it doesn’t break out by ethnicity.
Well, there is an apparent genetic component that controls how individuals react to cilantro. The gene, OR6A2, controls how individuals respond to aldehydes. If you are genetically inferior*, you cannot sense the aldehydes and cilantro tastes fine. If, on the other hand, you are more evolved, you can sense the aldehydes and cilantro tastes like soap.
I would suspect that there are other genes with similar results.
Slee
*It should. be obvious where I stand when it comes to cilantro. The stuff is horrid.
You know, it occurs to me that most Australians and Englishmen are of the same race and ethnicity, but Australians take perverse pride in “enjoying” Vegemite and Marmite. I can’t imagine those flying in London to any great degree.
Well… per thisbeing a “supertaster” sounds a lot more like a horrible curse than a blessing. Having an over sensitized palate locks you out of a lot of sensory food pleasures where mainly bland foods are preferred and lots of tasty veggies are off limits.
It sounds like a terrible, limited existence. I don’t think I’d be too smug about it.
I think the most cultural variation comes from fermented dishes. Fermentation is extremely helpful for preservation. But we have a strong aversion to rotting food, and with fermentation it can be a pretty fine line. So we acquire a taste for the fermented food around us, be it cheese or stinky tofu. But other people’s fermented food tastes rotten to us.
Not all supertasters restrict themselves to bland foods - some do, some don’t.
Watched a science show with Allan Alda as host. During a segment they determined he was definitely a supertaster, but it turns out he enjoys things like hot peppers even if they are much more intensely hot to him than to most people. Turns out he was a supertasters with adventurous eating habits. Perhaps such people experience nuances in food the rest of us don’t, and some of them learn to enjoy that?
That is a separate issue than the cilantro thing. I hate cilantro but love all the other things listed in the article except booze. The booze thing has nothing to do with taste, but a rather strong allergy to booze which causes me to breakout in handcuffs if I drink.
The heat from chiles is not a flavor - it’s a pain reaction. You feel the same thing if you get it in your eye, your nostrils, on a cut or abrasion. You can even feel it through your skin if it’s concentrated enough. I question whether being a supertaster has any effect on one’s perception of this type of spiciness.
I know I hate when people do this to my posts, but I grew up in the southern US and I find root beer vile, it tastes like some nasty old medicine to me. My wife did not and I bought some at a import grocery for her to try because she was curious, and she liked it! Said it tasted like mauby Mauby - Wikipedia which she likes but I hate.
Is your wife from somewhere in the Caribbean? Is that why she thinks root beer tastes like mauby?
On another note: there’s a difference between saying that differences in taste perception are partly genetic and saying they depend on one’s ethnic background. There are some genetic differences that are aligned with ethnicity (e.g. skin color) and some that aren’t (e.g. blood type).
