Why do we like the food we like?

[NailBat]

I follow a lot of channels on Youtube that specialize in explaining why certain movies, songs, stories, video games, etc are so well loved. You could just dismiss that all as "Well its personal opinion", but that's a cop-out. Even accounting for personal taste, there are just some things that look, sound, read, or play better to a majority of people. I find it fascinating to learn about all of the subtle things I might have not consciously noticed, but which all contributed to my enjoyment of that media. And unlike a joke or a magic trick that loses something when explained, I usually come out enjoying the things even more.

It seems this very same thing could be applied to food as well. Just like art, whether you like something is subjective. But that doesn't mean its entirely without meaning.

I almost never hear anyone try to talk about why something tastes good in any sort of detail. The closest is sometimes on cooking competition shows, the judges may comment about how flavors or textures go together. It's not because nobody knows, to be a good chef is to understand what makes food taste good at an intuitive level. But this doesn't mean they can explain it: just like a musician might intuitively know that some melodies or chords sound right with each other even if they can't explain the theory behind it.

Fast-Food and pop-music both have this down to a science, they're both engineered to appeal to the broadest audience possible. But there's so much more to food or music than what they can offer.

What am I trying to get at here? I have no idea. Its just something I think about, and I haven't posted here in a while.

 

[Morning Glory]

An excellent post and food for thought! Why we like the foods we like is complicated and fraught with the complexities of childhood, adolescent and adult experiences, culture, prejudices etc.

I believe we are born with the ability to detect five types of taste: sweet, bitter, salty, sour, and umami. Many great dishes combine 2 or 3 of these tastes and that equals 'flavour'.

Having said this there is no doubt that a lot of folk (particularly in the West) like 'fatty foods'. That isn't so much a taste as a 'mouth feel'. It is said to be 'hard wired' as it offers immediate high calories which used to be a survival requirement for primitive humans. However, there are many ethnic groups where fatty food isn't really at their core - Japan for example. So is that really true?

Its a huge subject!

 

[TastyReuben]

This is something I think about almost every day. I’ll come back and post more when I have more time.

 

[NailBat]

Oh good, at least two people in the world think about this too!

I mean, what is "getting better at cooking" if not "being more aware of what makes food taste good"?

 

[TastyReuben]

I may be thinking about it a different way, based on your last statement.

What I think about a lot is more along these lines: my sister is three years older than I am, raised by both parents, ate the same foods. She loves shrimp, crab, and lobster. I hate it. I retch at the sight/smell of it. We never ate seafood like that growing up, never even saw it before we were both adults. Why does it taste good to her, and not to me? That's more what I'm interested in.

I could eat pasta and tomato-based sauce every day (as well as pizza and meatball subs and Italian sausage sandwiches with that sauce as well). I didn't eat a lot of that growing up. No pizza until I was in my late-teens, and the only spaghetti and tomato sauce I ever ate, the sauce was a powdered mix made by adding water. No one else in my family is as gaga over red sauce as I am. But I am.

Why do so many people love ice cream, and I don't care for it at all, and it was frequently served at home growing up. I don't hate it like seafood, but I don't really eat it except for a few times a year, and if ice cream were to disappear tomorrow, I wouldn't care.

I mention our eating habits when I was a child, because I'm curious how what we were raised with influences our adult choices. There are things we had plenty of that I don't like, there are things we never had that I don't like, and there are things we had that I love, and things that I never encountered into well into adulthood that I love (salami, for example...never even saw it until I was in my 20's).

If our exposure as children shaped our choices, then why does my sister love seafood, and I can't go near it? At some point, it comes down to the individual, and I suspect it has as much to do with each person's brain chemistry as anything else.

 

[caseydog]

What I think about a lot is more along these lines: my sister is three years older than I am, raised by both parents, ate the same foods. She loves shrimp, crab, and lobster. I hate it. I retch at the sight/smell of it. We never ate seafood like that growing up, never even saw it before we were both adults. Why does it taste good to her, and not to me? That's more what I'm interested in.

I didn't like most fish as a kid, but my mom severely overcooked it. After I had it cooked right as an adult, I suddenly loved it. I did like shrimp and lobster as a kid, but it is more forgiving of bad cooking than fish filets. Lobster and shrimp get a little tough, but fish filets turn to mush.

As for your hatred of shellfish, all I can say is...

CD

 

[caseydog]

As a follow up, I think a lot of likes and dislikes come down to who cooked/prepared the food. I've had escargot twice. The first time I loved it, the second time I hated it. I chalk that up to the chef/kitchen staff.

I didn't like steak as a kid, because my mom would buy cheap cuts of meat, and my dad would grill it (bbq) to beyond well done. It was shoe leather. Now, I love steak, because I buy good beef, and cook it right.

CD

 

[NailBat]

If our exposure as children shaped our choices, then why does my sister love seafood, and I can't go near it? At some point, it comes down to the individual, and I suspect it has as much to do with each person's brain chemistry as anything else.

Sure, it's brain chemistry, but so is literally everything else about one's personality and choices.

To return to the analogy about music, its personal preference why you might like a song that sounds like a malfunctioning washing machine to me, and vice versa. That doesn't mean you can't talk about what chords, melodies, rhythms, and sounds work or don't work well together.

I think a lot of the difference between people's preferences comes down to how sensitive they are to some things. If you're more numb to a sensation, it won't bother you if there's a lot of it, in fact you might prefer it. If you're very sensitive to it, then a little might go a long way. It's pretty much universally accepted that people like food that has enough salt, but what "enough salt" is will differ from person to person.

 

[caseydog]

It's pretty much universally accepted that people like food that has enough salt, but what "enough salt" is will differ from person to person.

I can certainly comment on salt. I had to go on a low sodium intake regimen around the beginning of the year (?). Now, when I eat restaurant food or many processed foods, they taste too salty. I've been eating "lightly salted" chips (crisps) with 50% less sodium, and regular chips now taste WAY too salty.

Those foods didn't taste too salty before, so I think it comes down to conditioning, for certain tastes, like salt.

CD

 

[Windigo]

I can certainly comment on salt. I had to go on a low sodium intake regimen around the beginning of the year (?). Now, when I eat restaurant food or many processed foods, they taste too salty. I've been eating "lightly salted" chips (crisps) with 50% less sodium, and regular chips now taste WAY too salty.

Those foods didn't taste too salty before, so I think it comes down to conditioning, for certain tastes, like salt.

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CD

Definitely, I grew up with a low sodium diet. My parents believed salt was unhealthy, so we ate unsalted food for as long as I was a child. My parents were also vegan and adhered to macrobiotic beliefs, so not everything was unsalted because we did eat soy sauce and soy products. Enough salt to stay alive, but certainly not the liberal amounts used by the rest of society. I didn't like the taste of much salty foods for a long time.
Only when I got in to cooking school I started salting food more, though I kept it reasonable. Only now I have an ileostomy and need twice the recommended amount of salt (without a colon salt just gets flushed out of your system) I eat more of it. But still not during my main meals, because that would be bad for my husband. I mainly eat salty food as an extra.

 

[Windigo]

Personally I have strong memories tied to foods, but that's because I didn't have a good upbringing. My parents were abusive and underfed me, so I naturally tended to over focus on food and eat too much when given the chance. It also explains why foods have such a prominent place in my memory.

As as child I loved the food my grandma made, who was the only person that was reliable and loving for me. She always cooked a lot of food for me, knowing I didn't get enough at home. I loved her meatballs, which she always made for me. Whenever I stayed with her she would have made an entire Dutch oven full of them just for me. I would eat them all too when I was there for a week!
So for a long time my favorite meal was sauteed potatoes, meatballs and cauliflower with white sauce. A combo longer term members here will have seen me post before.

From about age 10 onwards I also was given the Indonesian foods of my heritage, and I loved them from the first time I got to taste them. I associate them with holidays, as my mother would make lots of Indonesian dishes anytime there was a party. Normally my parents would underfeed me, but they were good hosts and at a party I could always eat a lot.

I'm an only child so I am not able to say anything about how my preferences are different from my family, at least my mother and I seem to like the same foods.

There aren't many foods I don't like now I am older, but I don't like stews with chewy meat or fatty cuts of meat. That's mainly because my mother didn't cook them well, since I've started cooking stews myself I've noticed I can make them in a way I like. But I won't order stew anywhere, or fatty cuts of meat. Too much chance the texture will repulse me.

I've noticed that after my ileostomy surgery, when my colon was removed; my food preferences changed. When your colon gets removed, that means a huge part of your gut microbiome is changed too. And science has proven that the gut bacteria influence our preferences. Since I had my colon removed for example, I love bell peppers. While I used to hate them and they gave me indigestion.