At Philadelphia's Frankford Friends School, an informal survey conducted by Rita Braver to third grade students offered them with foods that they like such as mushrooms and peaches and foods that they really don't like including potatoes and spinach. The goal of the survey is to find out why do we like the foods that we like?
Marcia Pelchat, a doctorate degree holder in Biological Psychology said in interview that these things are already the results of everything as an interaction of genes and the environment. Pelchat also works as a food preference expert at Monell Chemical Senses Center, a Philadelphia non-profit institution which aims to study both taste and smell.
As various studies have been conducted, it was found that about 75% of Americans taste the same bitterness as Braver did during their experiment, and this is all because of our genes. Through the nose, the human genes helps to govern another way in which we respond to food.
As per CBS News, Pelchat claims that we have hundreds of different smell receptor genes.
As a matter of fact, as Pelchat demonstrated the process with the schoolchildren, it turns out that it's actually our sense of smell that helps us to identify the different flavors of food.
In an experiment, everyone had licorice, banana jellybeans, and a nose clip. The procedure required children to close their eyes and pick a jelly bean. One of the participants tried to determine a jelly bean with her nose closed and guessed if it was banana.
More than anything, those who study food preference believes that our favorite foods are determined by our memories and what we've been exposed to.
For Marcia Pelchat, people who may have overcome their genetic predispositions and the those who have never been exposed to a food are commonly perceived as exotic and adventure eaters.
Pelchat adds that for most of us, our willingness to try on new things, especially on food, does increase with age. For instance, for kids to be a little hesitant to try on new things is just normal, while for adults, they tend to realize that eating these kind of foods will not cost them their lives.
At the end of the day, we still choose and decide what to eat. Just like in everything that we do in life, it's always mind over matter.
