The factual answer is unambiguously that there is biology behind different people’s food preferences in addition to the psychological and “subjectively influenced” ones.
There are variants of taste receptors and olfactory receptors as well. These are not rare. We literally experience different compounds differently.
There is entraining to tastes that get into amniotic fluid and then breast milk.
And then there is learning based on experiences through childhood and adulthood both.
I don’t know what kind of diners you go to - I will eat eggs for breakfast occasionally but not every day and I never have a problem finding something other than toast. Every place I’ve ever been has at least one of pancakes/french toast/waffles and most places have at least some of the follwing items - muffins, bagels( with or without lox) , danishes, fruit , yogurt and cereal( hot and cold). Even if you won’t eat the pancakes,waffles and french toast because egg is an ingredient, there’s still plenty of other choices.
That is called “The Garcia Effect.” If you vomit after eating something, even from a virus or chemo, you may not be able to eat it again-- or at least for a long time. This is one of the reasons managing nausea during chemo is so important-- it’s no good to survive cancer if there is nothing you can eat again.
It’s built into our DNA-- people who vomited up something they shouldn’t have eaten, and never touched it again survived to have more offspring.
Does Denny’s near you not have the build your own slam, where you choose any 4 ( I think) items - or is that what you mean by putting together something out of the sides?
Many many years ago during my first ever visit to the US, I was in Florida (visiting the Cape to watch a shuttle launch) and the only place for breakfast was a Denny’s. It seemed impossible to order anything that wasn’t either intended to feed the 5000, or did not include a side of pancakes. Or both. Always enough pancakes to feed a family. Eventually I worked out that they would let me order a bowl of oatmeal and explicitly delete the attached pancakes. The oatmeal was still vastly too big, but was at least an approximation to what I would ordinarily have for breakfast.
My impression was that, in general, you needed to pay seriously more money at a much higher end joint to get food with servings of a sane size.
I hate cilantro. It reeks of stink bugs and overwhelmingly ruins the flavor of things it’s in. The taste also lingers, like bad artificial sweeteners do. There is no way I can see me getting “used to its taste.”
Some people say adults sometimes like foods they hated as children because the sense of taste weakens with age. When I was in elementary school sweet potatoes tasted so bad to me I’d want to vomit if I tried to choke down a bite. Now at 65 they just taste bad. I still don’t like them but the taste doesn’t make me want to puke. Cilantro? I first tried the fresh herb (vile weed) in my forties and it tastes just as vile now!
I first read on this board that “an acquired taste is Stockholm Syndrome for the taste buds.” Since there are no rewards from ingesting enough cilantro to get used to it (unlike coffee or beer), I’m not going to try.
I think that’s a lot is biology behind learned tastes, too. That is, i think you are more likely to like a good you first tasted when you were hungry, more likely to hate a food that you felt queasy after eating, and are more likely to develop a taste for flavors that your body associates with nutrition.
I read an interesting study where they gave some kids a strawberry shake and other kids a grape shake. And some of those kids were given a full-fat version and others a low-far version. And a few hours later, they gave the kids the other one (different flavor and different amount of fat).They asked the kids which they liked more.
Then they invited the same kids back a week later, and gave them a choice of shakes.
The first time, the kids reported liking the strawberry and grape shakes about the same, and didn’t report any preference for the low or high fat shakes.
But when the kids came back, a solid majority requested the flavor that had been full fat on their first visit.
It takes time for our bodies to analyze the nutritional value of a food, but we learn to like foods with available nutrients. That’s biological, IMHO.
When i was in Japan, they told me that natto was a learned preference, and that you have to try it about 5 times to learn to like it. I didn’t think that’s “Stockholm syndrome”, i think that’s a food with a difficult flavor and texture that is really nutritious. And eventually, your gut convinces your tongue that you want it.
Beets taste like dirt, and also are sweet and rich. I like beets. Cilantro tastes like soap, and also tastes fresh and green. I hate cilantro. But i bet i could learn to like it.
And i hate peppers. My mother says i liked them as a kid. But i realized recently that strong exposure to pepper makes me obviously physically ill. I suspect i learned to hate the flavor because even in small quantities it makes me slightly ill.
I dunno if there are biological reasons for sensitivity to textures, but it’s common for autistic people to be very picky about the texture of their food. So there’s probably something biological there, too.
I don’t know whether autistic people taste less, but people who are not autistic, but had dulled sense of taste for various reasons, usually after surviving a very bad infection (from a study I read long before COVID, but may be equally true of long COVID survivors) judged the enjoyment of food largely by its texture and “mouthfeel,” and for everyone, “mouthfeel” affects perceived taste.
If nutrition was a factor in choosing food, no one would eat an Oreo twice.
What about the weird taste cravings and revulsions pregnant women so famously acquire? Surely, there must be a hormonal (and therefore empirical) component to taste?
I wonder how many childhood food aversions might also be shaped by peer pressure. (If all your friends hate spinach, do you really want to be the one weird kid who likes it?)
Ha, as you are a Chef I am somewhat surprised. I made pickled shelled boiled eggs in beetroot with my my kids (then 7 and 9) and they happily ate them twelve months later, even though the outside of the eggs were very much purple.
It took some training to get me back on tequila, and involved chillis. I think I mentioned it upthread. But essentially I would vomit immediately with tequila, but chilli infused tequila was fine.
I think (I am neither a dietician or a doctor) that the shock of capsicum overwhelmed any other response, and I am used to my capsicum reaction.