Our cultures, familiarity with certain foods, as well as genetics play a role in why we don’t all like the same flavours.
Parents often vent their frustrations about their children being fussy eaters when it may also be what has been pre-determined for them by their genetics.
Our food preferences are shaped by what we’ve become familiar with growing up and our culture.
For example, Kiwis' traditional love for the outdoors and barbecues may be contributing to recent trends which show sweet smoke and smoky barbecue as two of the top savoury flavours in the last five years for New Zealanders, Massey University consumer and sensory science professor Joanne Hort tells Nights.
This could be because we’ve become used to consuming sweeter foods but there could also be underlying physiological components to our food choice behaviour, she says.
Parents often vent their frustrations about their children being fussy eaters. Photo / 123rf
“How sensitive your parents are genetically will determine what their children are sensitive to.”
Studies are discovering not just one genetic difference but many that could be affecting our food choices, she says.
“Your perception of sweetness is really determined by what sweet receptors you’re expressing in your oral cavity and that leads to how sweet you might perceive things to be.
“That can affect how much sugar you’re consuming in your diet and, of course, we know now that the amount of sugar you consume in your diet can lead to health problems.
“And so if we can understand these genetic differences we might be able to help with people’s diets and understand why they struggle so much to change the diets that they’re eating.”
A person’s sensitivity to tastes - saltiness, sweetness, bitterness, or sourness - can be figured out by a test where a filter containing a bitter compound is put on the tongue.
“Some people will find it abhorrently bitter ... For some people, it will be just bitter, but it’s okay and some people will say ‘oh, you’ve given me a dud, this one doesn’t work’, and they can’t taste it at all,” Hort says.
“What we now know is that’s down to a particular gene that you may or may not have inherited from your parents and it determines whether you can actually taste this bitter compound.”
The more bitter you find it, the more tastebuds you are likely to have on your tongue, Hort says.
“So if you’re a super taster, you’ve got lots of these papillae on your tongue and therefore you’ve got lots of taste buds.
A hot curry for someone with lots of papillae will likely make it a more painful experience. Photo / 123rf
“So things will taste more intense, it’s like if you’re a super taster you live in a fluorescent world, if I use a colour analogy, whereas if you’re a non-taster, if you can’t taste this probe, you’ve usually not got many tastebuds, papillae, on your tongue and so you live in a very pastel world.”
Papillae also contain pain nerve endings, so a hot curry for someone with lots of papillae will likely make it a more painful experience than for those deemed to be “non-tasters”, Hort says.
Your nose also has receptors, which can be pre-determined genetically, and may put you off some food that traditionally split people’s opinions such as coriander, she says.
You can get your brain to learn to adjust, she says, in the way it might take perseverance to get children to eat their vegetables.
On the other hand, studies have shown being a “super taster” might mean that you eat fewer green vegetables because they tend to be bitter, “although we’re starting to breed that out”, Hort says.
“There’s concern that the diet of super tasters may be less cancer-preventing, for example, because a lot of green vegetables are good for preventing cancer.
“Being a super taster is not necessarily a good thing. It can be quite annoying, and it leads to arguments around the dinner table.”
