We all know that tastes are subjective. But I was wondering if there is any hard science specifically behind why a specific food tastes great to one individual but bad to another.
Is this something derived from on purely subjective factors analogous to other preferences (e.g., I prefer brunettes, the next guy prefers blondes, the next one redheads)? Or could there be some empirical biological reason why one person may like one food while another person likes a different one?
For example, I’ve mentioned this on this board before: I don’t really like eggs. I can force myself to eat them in some forms, but generally don’t like them. Admittedly it’s not only about taste but also about their texture and consistency. Still, when not processed into another food, I find eggs a bit putrid.
But when I tell other people I don’t really like eggs, multiple times I’ve gotten a very surprised reaction from people. Apparently I’m a major outlier; tons of people will happily eat eggs done in various styles for breakfast, and there are breakfast restaurants that serve nothing but egg dishes.
Then there’s mayonnaise,which is mostly made of egg. Like I said, I can sometimes force myself to eat egg. But mayo is something I find absolutely disgusting. A rancid condiment that overpowers whatever it’s put on. Nothing like a helping of mayo to ruin an otherwise good sandwich. It’s one of my big pet peeves. But my opinion seems to be shared by very few people. Again, people often express surprise when I tell them I don’t like mayo, and many restaurants automatically put it in their burgers and in BLT sandwiches (why?! The last time I checked, there’s no “M” in BLT) and I have to ask in advance that they not put it there. Could my dislike of mayo unlike apparently the vast majority of the population be explained in any scientific way?
And so on and so forth. Is there any biology at play behind different people’s food preferences or is it just as subjectively influenced as whether one prefers Impressionist or abstract art?
One example of genetics affecting how things taste is coriander (cilantro). The majority of people (80% to 90%) find the taste to be fairly pleasant, a bit like citrus. 10% to 20% of people find it to have a soapy taste, which they don’t like at all.
I don’t like cilantro, but I find it sort of mildewy, not soapy.
I am one of the people to whom the chemical phenylthiocarbamide, which is on the paper they give you in biology class, tastes very bitter. About half the class said it just tasted like paper, maybe 40% that it was “kind of” bitter, but 10% or us found it disgustingly bitter.
People who respond to phenylthiocarbamide are called “tasters.”
Apparently cilantro does not have phenylthiocarbamide, but it has another chemical that tasters are sensitive to, and it can taste “spoiled,” for lack of a better term.
I guess having 2 copies of the taster gene makes it disgustingly bitter, having 1 copy makes it mildly bitter, and no copy means you don’t taste it.
I must have something in coffee (sweetener, and some kind of creamer) for it to be palatable, broccoli must be cooked, and so forth. DH, who drinks black coffee, tasted only paper when his biology teacher handed it out.
So yeah, some people literally taste things other people do not.
People who don’t like cilantro report it as having a variety of tastes. Some say it’s soapy. Some say it’s mildewy. Some say it tastes like dirt. Some say it tastes like bugs. Some say it tastes burnt.
ISTR reading that young children can be more sensitive to bitter flavours, e.g. in green veg, and that this could be an evolutionary response to protect them from poisonous plants..?
And one food manufacturer made a positive marketing theme over loving/hating their product (to the point where it’s entered the language as a metaphor)
I’ve never understood why North Americans insist that every breakfast include eggs.
I hate them, myself. They taste lousy, their texture is yucky, no matter how they are prepared; and why so many people like them is beyond me.
This wouldn’t normally be a problem—hey, if you like them, go crazy—but it means that breakfast, at a diner, for me, pretty much means toast and coffee. Maybe, if I’m lucky, a BLT and home fries. Diners: Stop including eggs with everything you offer at breakfast, offer them as an optional add-on, and you might get more business from me.
Until then, I’ll have toast and coffee, and a BLT if you can manage one.
Eggs are a weird one for me. I have 3 sisters. I and 1 of my sisters hate eggs. Both my parents ate them. Seems pretty much everyone else I meet likes them.
Chilli is an interesting problem. We develop a tolerance for it. (And lose it again without maintenance.) Once a tolerance is developed it adds a desirable colour to dishes. Without and you will spend a miserable time waiting for the burning to subside.
Marmite? Ha! For wimps. Down here in 'Straya we raise you a Vegemite sandwich.
Then again, Japanese kids chug down Natto for breakfast, and that defies comprehension.
So, nature versus nurture. Both matter.
For something like eggs I suspect it might be hard to pick apart the reason. An early bad experience with a food may well wire you for life. Or even later bad experiences. I know a number of people who claim to be unable to stand the taste of a particular spirit after a particularly bad night out, and the after effects. Ouzo and Tequila are common culprits, but it extends to whisky and cherry liquor. Similarly, a goodly dose of food poisoning has led to a couple of people I know never being able to face a particular food again. (No, it does not taste as good coming up as it did going down.)
Quite so. I’m generally willing to try exotic foods, excepting snake and insects, but I’m always open to exotic seafoods when prepared by an expert Japanese chef. But your point about an early bad experience is well taken. As a teen, I once consumed an immense amount of rye whisky at a party. I literally had alcohol poisoning and probably should have been hospitalized. I was really sick for several days.
To this day – many decades later – I cannot stand the smell or taste of whisky.
I really liked fried liver throughout my life. My ex-wife used to fix it for me at least once a month. After my divorce at age 40 I went about 30 years without having it again. When I finally had it again I was really looking forward to that first bite. I couldn’t stand it and will never eat it again. I have no idea why my taste changed so much.
This came up here in a recent “How does taste work?” thread.
there are inherited difference in taste bud receptors (which are actually broadly distributed other than on tongue - elsewhere in the gut, the endocrine system, and in the brain), innate taste preferences and aversions, and development that is experience dependent and expectant, with critical and sensitive periods including in uteroand learned preferences from exposure to flavors that pass through in breast milk. With some fairly typical progressions through developmental progressions, including toddler and preschooler fear of new foods and textures (neophobia).
Genetics such as variants of taste bud receptors, development trajectory variations from exposures beginning with prenatal exposure and including through exposure in breast milk and beyond, and sociocultural learning as we get older all interact.
Taste is different than other senses in a very striking way - with vision we believe that most of broadly share the same experience, the same qualia; barring a minority with forms of color blindness and few optical illusion reactions we think we all “see” red and blue the same as each other. Our internal experience of different tastes though seem to diverge widely more commonly on very fundamental ways.
Hell, I love cilantro and it tasty soapy as hell for me the first half dozen or so times I had it in pico de gallo. I eventually got used to it, and now I still have a faint background note of it, but it mostly tastes “green” and “bright” and “lovely” to me.
I did read a report years back that said whether you like cilantro is, like many things, a mix of genetics and environment. So environmental exposure might be able to overcome genetic distaste for it in certain cases. It certainly seems to me anecdotally that people from cilantro-eating cultures are less likely to have cilantro aversions, but perhaps they are also genetically different.
i think only a small percentage of it is actual biology, such as the examples mentioned of how different people experience the taste of cilantro differently, or how children tend to have stronger taste receptors for bitter flavors. Most of it, I’m guessing, has to do with psychology and experience. Many tastes are acquired; we may not like a certain flavor at first, but once our palate matures we appreciate the richness and depth the flavor adds to the overall taste profile.
As for psychology, I think there are a lot of people out there who are traditionally finicky, unadventurous eaters, and only think they don’t like this or that flavor. I have a friend who has the palate of a 5 year old. Left to his own devices, he only eats things like pizza, spaghetti, hamburgers, mac & cheese, basically everything you’d find on a restaurant ‘kid’s menu’. But once when we were camping on his land up in north Michigan, I cooked up some steaks with asparagus on the side, and made him try the asparagus. Now he loves asparagus.
I was thinking about Scotch whiskies. Some people like “peaty” Scotches like Laphroiag or Ardbeg. To me they have an almost antiseptic sort of taste, like I’m sucking on a band-aid. I do like other varieties of Scotch, just not the peaty ones so much. Is that a genetic thing like cilantro?
Nobody so far seems to have picked up in this bit of OP:
There evidently are many people whose experience of eating is dominated by texture, not flavor. In many of the “fussy eaters” threads over the years it’s clear that there are many, many people who find common food textures disgustingly offputting.
So there’s a whole 'nuther dimension of diversity whose underlying “why”'s haven’t really been explored.
I was going to address texture in this part of my post, but didn’t work it in. I think it’s part of the psychology of fussy eaters:
I probably could have added ‘…or texture’ to the end of that sentence. I think there’s a ‘fraidy cat’ factor involved. for example, a lot of people who otherwise love sushi avoid Uni, sea urchin roe sushi, because of the texture. But to me it’s like a delicious bit of slightly fishy flavored pudding. Textures can be acquired like flavors, I think.
Could be. But peaty Scotch was my favorite when I drank, and I’d describe it as burning rubber bands and (old style) Listerine to people who have never had it before. I happen to enjoy that taste, or at least recontextualize it. But—in general—I tend to enjoy weird and interesting flavors.
The Islay whiskies are often described having an iodine or Dettol smell. I rather like them. But I think everyone is initially taken aback by that nose. It isn’t peculiar to you, and probably not genetic. Its just how the whiskies are.
