ELI5: why do we like/hate certain foods or flavours?

r/

Our brain, as wise as it is, shouldn’t like every flavour/food possible? I, for instance, hate fish. I can’t stand the smell and the flavour of it but I wish I could eat it! I really do! But somehow my brain is wired in a way that it’s disgusting for me (again, I wish it wasn’t).

Comments

  1. nusensei Avatar

    Your brain isn’t wise. It isn’t hard-coded to like certain things. As the brain develops, environmental factors will affect how you respond to specific things.

    From an evolutionary perspective, it isn’t beneficial for us to like every food and flavour possible. Certain flavours (and by extension, appearance and smell) are meant as warnings for us to avoid. Our ancestors may have learned the hard way that eating rotten, stinky and sour or bitter foods may have more likely killed them, so the individuals who possessed the genes that allowed them to detect these warning signs lived long enough to pass them on.

    On an individual level, if you had a negative experience with a particular food, this may train you to avoid that food because, as said above, your brain will consider this a risk and will avoid it. You may have had food poisoning from eating undercooked chicken when you were young, so brain has been trained to avoid chicken. Or maybe you grew up eating well-done steak, so your brain has learned to desire it and avoid rare steak.

    Even between individuals, our tastes and preferences are not the same. A classic example is how some people enjoy cilantro, but to others it tastes like soap. That’s a genetic difference. Some people are more sensitive to certain flavours than others, and that can trigger positive or negative reactions.