Taste and Baby Taste Buds

I’ve never really been one for things with really delicate tastes, things like flavored water and often floral foods and drinks were not for me. They just didn’t pack enough of a punch, felt too much like a suggestion of the fruit or flower it was supposed to taste like, they don’t have enough flavor to justify that much texture. However, for Mother’s Day my sister baked a booooooomb rose cake and I have not been able to stop stuffing my face with it. It is white cake with a little bit of rose jam in the batter, rose and strawberry jam separates the layers, and it is decorated with rose buttercream and fondant roses. It is incredible, and as I scarf it down at near violent speeds, and in this moment I am so grateful that my taste buds have grown in their appreciation. I was a very picky kid, with lots of flavors I didn’t like and textures that I couldn’t stomach. In class we discussed how children are often very sensitive to foods, and that their pickiness is often a safety mechanism. In the wild, bitter foods or weird textures could mean poisonous or expired food that could kill a child, so their mouths twist with disgust as their body tells them hmmm maybe not. Sometimes the connections are not as obvious, and of course lots of kids just don’t like things because their taste buds are not designed to like them yet, and their cultural and personal preferences guide them to like and dislike different things. A lot of the time their preferences seem odd or even laughable, take mayonnaise for example. I think mayo is super gross, even though it doesn’t taste that bad. While I don’t mind the taste, and like a little mayo on my sandwiches, its texture and smell combination are unforgivable to me and getting some on my hand often makes my face look like that of a baby licking a lemon for the first time. Disgust towards mayo is actually very common, and many think it’s due to mayos natural visual similarity to a large quantity of pus. Same goes for yogurt and milk, lots of dairy products gross people out not because they taste like poison, but rather because they often look like bodily fluids that we should also avoid contact with. Our bodies and mouths make us grossed out by things in order to protect them from dangerous outcomes to reckless consumption.





Thankfully, our tastes can change over time and open up to entirely new worlds of delicious food. Our preferences change as we age, exposure to our culture and the food that makes it up heavily impact what those changes looked like. We talked a lot about how some cultures will place value on specific types of foods, often ones that are considered odd or unsavory by outside spectators. Take maror, which are bitter herbs (often horseradish) that are eaten at holidays such as Seder. These herbs are meant to signify the bitterness of the lives of the Jewish people who were enslaved and have a role in culture, despite being seen as unsavory and something they actively avoid by those who do not have that cultural appreciation for it. Our connection to food is impacted by the foods we find ourselves eating, we are able to connect with people of the same enthic or cultural background as ourselves because we can vibe over the same dishes or favorite traditional fun street foods. I’m endlessly thankful that, while I’m still kinda picky, I have been able to grow to appreciate a wider variety of foods. I feel more connected to my roots when I eat something that is a common dish in Latin America, and when I have food from somewhere different I learn more about their culture through their cuisine.





Here are some videos of kids being grossed out by stuff:





https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kids+try+dark+chocolate


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIEe0YInIGI