I just posted in this thread about how I’ve always been an extremely fussy eater. One particular hate of mine is chicken, which usually gets a “Wha?” reaction from most people.
So why does 99.99% of the population love chicken while I have always loathed the taste? There doesn’t seem to be any real evolutionary advantage to disliking a food that won’t harm you.
Most people would hesitate to eat other people, but we can show examples of times it happens to stay alive.
Therefore I’m sure I could put you in a situation where you’d eat the chicken. We’re just lucky enough to have the choice now and you know it.
Evolution can’t be stopped or controlled but we do have control enough to prevent certain traits from being a factor in evolution.
It really doesn’t make sense to not like any sort of food that is not harmful evolutionary wise.
That being said there are a lot of foods I do not like. I do not like fish. Fish. Fish is a staple food of the WHOLE world. Evolutionary wise I should like fish but it taste fishy to me and I don’t like that taste.
Chicken really doesn’t have any real flavor to it for me so I always have seasonings or a sauce with it, but I also put some kind of sauce on pretty much everything. Sauce is good.
I have a friend who will eat boneless, skinless chicken breast but wont eat chicken off the bone.
He says it’s too graphic.
How does one go their whole life with out eating Popeye’s spicy combo #3?
One thought is that – at least in places like New Jersey – there is no evolutionary disadvantage to being picky, because food is plentiful. Picky eaters will not die any more often than non-picky eaters. So, to the extent that genetic mutations could affect the “pickiness” of our tastes, a “non-picky” mutation is not more likely to propagate than a “picky” mutation.
(You might not find as much pickiness, or food preference, in areas where (or in times when) food is scarce. People who have some kind of extreme “pickiness” mutation will be quickly weeded out and will not propagate their mutation.)
Responding more to the thread title than to the specifics of chicken, I’d say that food preferences are based on:
Even with the isolationism involved in forming our “basic tastes” those individual preferences probably involve a willingness to experiment. My brother has a much broader range of tastes than I do, as well as a more educated sense of taste. Those differences suggests to me that even if we are from similar geographical and cultural roots, the desire to broaden one’s tastes is a big factor – maybe the biggest.
If you go into every culture in the world you will find that every possible food is used by someone somewhere as a regular dish or a delicacy. Yet huge numbers of those foods will disgust members of other cultures.
So it’s all cultural. The earth is so teeming with potential food sources that people can pick and choose which ones are pleasing to them.
If an individual doesn’t like a popular food, several effects may be at work.
Some personal experience, remembered or not, that turned them off the food.
Some personal quirk of taste sensitivity. Some people are super-tasters:
It may be an ongoing problem with the taste and smell apparatus in the body.
It may be sheer stubbornness or unconscious rebellion.
I have always required/suggested that my kids at least try a small taste of any new food. This started when they were toddlers and continues to today (they are 11 & 16). They have always cooperated with my “rule” and in exchange, once they try it they can then decline that food forever. We also discuss food; what kind of plant/animal it is, etc.
Turns out they both have pretty refined palates. I have taken them for sushi, for instance, and people around us are amazed that they are so into the cuisine.
When my daughter was about 4 years old, she was eating a slice of bacon in a restaurant. She paused, looked at the bacon, and said (in a philosophical tone of voice), “Wow, it is hard to believe something this good is from a pig.” 
None of this answers the OP, but I find it interesting comparing my kids’ food preferences with other children of the same age.
I think some parents might pass on their own pickiness to their kids. We always bought every variety of vegetable, fruit and meat baby food for our daughter and she ate all of them from the start. We had her tasting other foods as soon as she could manage them. She has eaten just about everything put in front of her since then. Last weekend we were at a Mardi Gras dinner and she surprised me by eating some very, very spicy foods. At six and a half, she only dislikes cooked spinach, but she’ll eat it raw in salad. My wife and I both like spinach so we’re not sure where that one odd dislike come from. She will always try something new.
My sister-in-law and brother-in-law, on the other hand, are both white bread, chicken, green beans, and bologna sandwich sorts. That’s what they like. That’s what they fed the kids. And their kids are now very fussy nine and eleven year olds.
Back in 9th grade, Mr. McGuire gave each of us a little strip of paper, not much bigger than a paper match, to put on our tongues. Most of us reacted to a vile flavor on the paper, but at least one girl did not. Mr. McG explained that she lacked a certain enzyme (??) that prevented her from tasting it.
So, unless I imagined that entire lesson, I’m wondering if there’s something in our chemical makeup that contributes to what we like and don’t like. That might explain why I don’t like hot, spicy foods but my husband loves them.
Just a thought…
It doesn’t have to make sense. For instance, eggplant causes me to vomit. Every time. Why? Who knows? It just does. Therefore, I make it a point to avoid consuming something that others enjoy. Is it a choice? Absolutely. I suppose I could force it down, but I don’t have to. If it was that or death, I’d be eating eggplant.
I’ve always found it suprising that I can’t stand milk, despite drinking it twice a day as a kid. You’d think I would have got used to it. I couldn’t believe it when I went to other people’s houses, and they were asking their parents for milk.
The only foods I’ve ever tried and detested are haggis, kidneys and limburger cheese. So I can only conclude that my ancestors lived long enough to procreate, before their untimely deaths from eating these three foods.
I have a maid who does all of our cooking. Everything seems to taste the same. I think she puts cilantro in everything. There is nothing I like better than to go out to a restaurant to get something different.