Yewww Gross

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Why do some people prefer to have something sweat, some salty, and some sour? We talked about how people can perceive taste differently after reading the Taste chapter in The Natural History of the Senses. I wanted to know more about why that is.

Genes play a big role in an individuals preferences of taste. If an individuals parents do not have a high sensitivity for lets say sweetness it will take a larger quantity of that type of molecule to sense or experience that taste.

On the psychology side children can develop preferences based off what they are exposed to yearly in their life. Let’s say a child is exposed to really spicy food when he or she is really young. They will most likely continue to eat it as an adult.

People can also learn to associate a flavor or even a specific food to how they were feeling when they ate it at one point in their life. Lets say I ate a entire bag of potato chips one day and then got immediately sick. Subconsciously I would associate me being sick to eating the potato chips and not want to eat them ever again or could even feel sick by just smelling them or seeing them. Even if I got sick for a completely different reason and I just so happen to eat those chips before hand I could still associate the chips with getting sick.

Bochnakova, Tia. “Why Do We Prefer Some Foods over Others?” Phys.org, Phys.org, phys.org/news/2007-01-foods.html.

Suren, Amrita. “A Genetic Explanation for Why People Have Different Taste Preferences.” Quora, www.quora.com/How-come-and-why-do-people-have-different-taste-preferences.

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