The Biggest Myth About Acquired Tastes For Foods

The way most of us think about the concept of an acquired taste for particular foods is completely flawed. The concept itself is grossly misrepresented and misunderstood by almost everyone who talks about it! This is not to say that how tastes are acquired is completely understood in all its aspects and that we know all the right answers. But, there is one major myth about acquired tastes that most people carry.

What is the main myth about acquired tastes? It is that the concept of acquired taste applies only to certain foods, namely bitter foods or strong-tasting foods. The idea that we are born liking certain foods and have to learn to like others is a myth.

You Have Acquired Tastes For Everything You Normally Eat

Once we graduate from mother’s milk, everything we eat is something we have learned to eat. And, even mother’s milk is up for grabs as different flavors exist in the milk depending on diet. Everything that you eat on a normal basis you have “learned” to eat and therefore learned to like. It’s just that learning to like some foods is easier than others. And, often, it is harder to appreciate certain foods as children because our sense of taste is stronger.

First, if you don’t believe that you have learned to like, or “acquired a taste” for all the foods you normally eat, just look at some of the first foods that are common in other cultures. These may be foods that you would never eat!

In China, seaweed is one of the first solid foods a baby may be given. In some parts of India, a dish called Kichadi is a common first food. This lentil and rice dish is spiced with coriander, mint, cinnamon, asafoetida, and turmeric. American parents would never consider giving their baby such strong flavors and most of us have never even tasted asefetida. Octopus is often part of a baby’s first solid food offering in Japan.

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You probably think it is normal to eat cereal with milk, or bacon and eggs for breakfast. A Japanese person may think eating strongly flavored fermented beans called natto is a normal breakfast food. But, as great as bacon is, and cereal too, you weren’t born liking it. And that person from Japan wasn’t born liking natto.

It is possible that you could acquire a taste for durian, the stinkiest fruit on the planet that tastes like banana pudding on steroids when you eat it. But, something that smells so foul, like something dead and rotten or worse, no human would just gobble up without a thought! No, at some point, humans learned to eat it and taught other humans to do the same, despite the fact that the smell triggers our inborn disgust mechanism telling us to stay away, as this smell means danger!

Humans Must Learn To Eat and Learn WHAT To Eat

We humans are born helpless. Unlike other animals, we are not born knowing how to eat or what to eat. We are taught to eat and taught what to eat. If left to our own devices, we would have to figure out what was edible through careful trial and error! So, yes, we learn to eat each food in our lives.

This is not to say that humans don’t have a built-in liking for tastes. We are attracted to salty tastes and sweet tastes preferentially, for instance. But having a preference for a taste, on its basic level is not the same thing as having a preference for a food, which is a more complex interaction of tastes, texture, smells, and appearance. The way we learn to like each of these is different and therefore, the way we learn to like each food, with its unique array of sensory qualities, is different.

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Acquired Tastes are Essential for Our Health

And, if we only ate the foods that most closely aligned with our innate likes, we would fail to get the necessary variety in our diet and thus fail to thrive, and ultimately, survive. Yes, “learning” to like foods ensures we get all the nutrients needed to live. Therefore, acquired tastes are essential for out continued good health. A diet of chicken nuggets and hot dogs is not viable for long-term health and survival. We must learn to eat foods that go beyond our innate attraction to salty or sweet. We must also learn to like certain bitter or sour flavors.

How We Learn To Like Bitter Tastes

Most people wonder, however, how we acquire a taste for bitter foods. Humans instinctually avoid bitter flavors. We are hard-wired to do so as a bitter taste signals poison or potential poison. Imagine a child who is at the stage where objects make their way into his mouth on a regular basis. He might eat foods that could make him sick. Without an inborn avoidance mechanism, and even a disgust mechanism, such a child would be at a serious disadvantage. While not all children display the same type of avoidance, most children will spit out extremely bitter foods and feel disgusted by the same foul smells we adults do. Indeed, taste aversion is the first kind of disgust most children learn, and that classic word “Yucky” tends to emerge around the age of 2 or 3.

Yet, we can overcome this aversion and learn to enjoy certain bitter flavors, while still disliking others. How does this happen? How do such acquired tastes work?

Usually, the answer you’ll get to this question is a non-answer, that we learn to like bitter foods through repeated exposure. This applies to all foods. Again, some foods just require less exposure than others. Repeated exposure is required, but it is not an explanation.

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Acquired Tastes are Not Gained Purposely

For example, one explanation is that repeated exposure works by gradually introducing the novel food in small amounts. This runs counter to the common experience of learning to like a food, in that most of us are completely unaware of how we did so! If we went to this much trouble to learn to like a food, slowly trying more and more of it, we would certainly be aware of it.

While this may work, what most of us think of as learning to like a food does not include forcing ourselves to like it through a prolonged concerted effort. While this may happen with certain foods in some cultures, developing a liking for most foods, including bitter ones, happens without us noticing.

Pairing of Bitter Foods with Preferred Foods

This is not to say that we don’t do something similar, only that we don’t do it consciously. Most preferences for bitter flavors are first acquired by pairing the bitter food with some other food, usually something sweet. For example, we start drinking coffee by adding sugar to it, then gradually reduce the sugar. We start eating dark bitter chocolate by eating more accessible and sweeter varieties, only to later choose more bitter varieties with a higher percentage of cacao.

In the case of coffee, it would be unusual for someone to learn to like coffee by a system of carefully reduced sugar. Instead, a more natural process is at work that has to do with how our taste buds adapt and how our brains work. The same is true of bitter dark chocolate.

First, to be sure, many coffee drinkers never learn to like black coffee. Some, like me, continue to drink coffee with sugar and milk. This seems somehow “wrong” to black coffee drinkers, but it is neither wrong nor right, it just is. Some of those same black coffee drinkers may not enjoy the intensely bitter dark chocolates that I enjoy. Contrary to popular belief, this may have nothing to do with how much either of us like bitter tastes. It could be wholly dependent on our associations and food experiences.

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The Importance of Evaluative Conditioning in Developing Food Preferences

Acquired tastes are also shaped by eating foods together. The simple pairing of foods can help us develop a liking for a new food regardless and independent of repeated exposure to the new food alone. Not only does the pairing of a novel food with an already liked food produce this effect, but paring the novel food with other positive associations, such as having it among friends, or in a very nice restaurant. This is called evaluative conditioning and food advertisers are well aware of it. It is why food is advertised in certain settings or contexts that may seem positive. We even see this at work in drug advertisements.

My Acquired Taste For Scotch

My personal experience of acquiring a taste for smoky Scotch whiskeys may be informative. The first whiskeys I drank were American Bourbon and Irish whiskey. This is probably typical. The reason I didn’t drink Scotch is because I perceived it as being nothing but smoke. I like smoky flavors. But the first Scotch I had ever tried was a God-awful Dewar’s Scotch that tasted, and I’m not kidding, like an ashtray. It reminded me of the stale cigarettes I tried as a kid. I tasted nothing else. Just an overwhelming harsh and acrid smoke flavor. So, if that is what Scotch tasted like, especially smoky Scotches, I wanted nothing to do with it.

But, eventually, I tried a few “friendly” Scotches that were widely available at a time when there wasn’t as great a variety on the American market. The first Scotch blend I tried wasn’t smoky at all. It was much like the Irish whiskey I was used to, with perhaps a bit more brininess. So I tried another, and it too, was similar, except it had a hint of smoke. I had enjoyed the last Scotch. And, now, I was enjoying a similar drink that also had a bit of smoke. A positive association was born then and there, without me even realizing it or thinking about it.

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After this, not only was I open to smoky Scotches, but I sought out ones with more smokiness. Not too much, mind you; I still remembered that Dewar’s monstrosity. And I found some that I enjoyed very much. My preference for a smoky Scotch became more and more cemented. Soon, I was enjoying very smoky Scotches that had a balance of flavor.

I had “learned” to like a drink that had a smoky flavor as one of its attributes, and even learned to enjoy drinks with more of that flavor. But I did not develop a preference for drinks that tasted only of smoke!

The same is true of bitter flavors. You do not develop a taste for a bitter flavor disassociated with other flavors. If you take a swig of a cocktail bitters, over and over, it will probably not start tasting wonderful to you. ¹,²,³