WHAT IS TASTE?
There is no one food that is consumed by everyone on earth. Taste is
determined by culture, anatomy, and genetics. Almost everything we
eat, and when, and where, is culturally determined, so taste is taught.
Some people pay top dollar for escargot in fine restaurants while others
stomp on the same snail when they find it in the garden. One person’s
haute cuisine is another person’s pest.
Taste is also anatomically determined. Scientists categorize people as
“tasters” or “non-tasters.” Which category you fall into depends on how
many taste buds you have on your tongue—an inherited trait. Nontasters with few taste buds don’t taste bitter foods like grapefruit and
broccoli very intensely.
They can eat chile peppers and not suffer. Tasters, on the other hand, have many more taste buds and are sensitive to bitter and sweet tastes, and to sensations like carbonation and fat. Then there are “super-tasters,” people whose tongues are covered with taste buds and who are extremely sensitive.1
“We are what our ancestors ate and drank,”2 according to Gary Nabhan, director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern
Arizona University. If our ancestors lived in one area for a long time,
then chances are good that we are genetically adapted to the food from
that environment.
When our ancestors moved to a place with different
plants and animals, they were exposed to unfamiliar foods. Our bodies
can react to new foods negatively, with allergies or illnesses. But we can
force ourselves, or cultural conditioning can influence us enough, to
overcome our dislike of some foods—even ones that cause pain, like
chile peppers. So we come full circle, back to taste is taught.
Another problem is that the food in times past did not taste the same
as our food, and we will never be able to reproduce it. For example, most
of the vineyards of Europe were destroyed by an insect parasite, phylloxera, in the second half of the nineteenth century. The rootstock is
different now, and so is the taste