Taste Buds

Taste is wonderful and terrible in the most literal of senses. Some foods people love, while others can barely keep them down. Even with sugars, salts, and fats, the greatest and most widespread likes, taste can vary. I myself have a fairly limited pallet enjoying sugar-filled treats, salty fries, and the processed food conglomerate, but barely holding other things like cooked vegetables. There are people I know who are exactly opposite of this, disliking candy and chips in favor of salads and Greek yogurt. Even my father greatly differs from me, with his like of extreme spice, and disgust of most candies. All of this presented questions that I want to answer. How does taste differ between people? Do we taste different flavors due to our unique taste buds? Do we all taste the same flavor but has different responses to it? What is the essence of taste, and what makes us like and dislike foods?

Every person has papillae on their tongues. These papillae are what give the tongue the rough texture it has, and include within them are taste buds. Our brain can sense five different types of tastes: bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and umami or savory. These tastes are universal, but the sensitivity to each is not the same. Some people can be much more sensitive to salt and these people tend to enjoy less salt in their food than others. Less is more is true, with those possessing the most sensitive of taste buds.

Taste is part of human biology, and just like every other cell in our body taste buds and their receptors have evolved. Humans have adapted to their environment over thousands of years. These adaptations have caused different groups to have different tastes. In areas where there were many poisonous plants, humans who disliked the bitter taste of them succeeded compared to those who enjoyed them. This caused groups to slowly evolve a universal dislike for bitterness so as to protect themselves from poisonous plants. In other areas, the opposite occurred, like those affected by malaria. Some bitter plants contain traces of cyanide, which in small doses can help fight off malaria (Elert). This caused groups facing malaria to have a greater enjoyment of bitter foods than those outside the malaria range.

Despite the biological explanation for taste, one of the most influential factors for people's taste is their environment. All the way from the womb, to adulthood people, are influenced by the people around them and their taste. Two different studies linked a connection between a child's taste and their mothers. One of the studies specifically looked at carrot juice, and mothers who consumed more of it while breastfeeding had babies that enjoyed carrot flavored cereals to a greater level than those that did not (Mennella). The other study looked at general vegetable intake, and the mothers that ate more vegetables had babies who in turn accepted vegetables at a younger age (Sullivan). What a mother intakes, directly influences their child's taste through things like breast milk, or even the amniotic fluid.

Taste can be changed as humans grow into adulthood. Brute force can change some of even the most disliked foods as a child, so that they can be enjoyed as an adult. By constantly eating foods like vegetables, the taste will become more bearable and can eventually turn into something that is liked. One reason for this is humanity’s embedded weariness. Each time a new food is eaten, from childhood to adulthood, that food is seen as safer once consumption is complete (Images). This causes our brains to accept the food, and for it to taste better when eaten in the future.

Lastly, taste can be changed due to the natural aging of the human body. Men start to lose their taste buds in their fifties while women start losing them in their forties (Why). This can cause flavors to feel less intense, and stronger tasting food must compensate for this loss. Smell, a large and important factor in how every food taste also changes as humans age. Humans reach a peak in their sense of smell during the age of thirty to sixty, and as a senior can start to lose their sense of smell. This growth and subsequent decline in smell can greatly change how individual things taste throughout one’s life.

Taste is a complicated and lengthy topic matter. There is still a large amount unknown about taste and why it is volatile. From differing levels of taste buds, to environmental factors, researchers have a lot of areas they can go down.

Works Cited

Elert, Emily. “FYI: Why Does Some Food Taste Bad To Some People And Good To Others?” Popular Science, Popular Science, 27 Mar. 2012, www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-03/fyi-why-does-some-food-taste-bad-some-people-and-good-others.

Images, H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty. “The Complicated Reasons Why You Like Some Foods and Hate Others.” The Cut, 13 May 2016, www.thecut.com/2016/05/the-complicated-reasons-why-you-like-some-foods-and-hate-others.html.

Mennella, Julie A., et al. “Prenatal and Postnatal Flavor Learning by Human Infants.” Pediatrics, American Academy of Pediatrics, 1 June 2001, pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/107/6/e88.short.

Sullivan, S A, and L L Birch. “Infant Dietary Experience and Acceptance of Solid Foods.” Advances in Pediatrics., U.S. National Library of Medicine, Feb. 1994, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8121740.

“Why Might My Sense of Taste Change?” WebMD, WebMD, www.webmd.com/oral-health/oral-sense-taste-change.