Why Do People LOVE Some Foods, But Hate Others?

 

If you saw a six-year-old boy digging into a tub of ice cream and gobbling as much of it as he could, you probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid. We all know that kids love the stuff, so there would be nothing unusual about such an observation. 

 

Now imagine you’re walking along and you notice a group of young boys happily munching on raw broccoli. You’d do a double-take. That’s not the sort of thing that you see everyday! We take the fact that some foods taste better than others for granted. But when you step back and think about it, it’s not always entirely obvious why there should be much difference. 

 

Take broccoli, for instance. The plant is supposedly good for us, so why don’t our taste buds compel us to eat as much of the stuff as we possibly can?  It seems strange, doesn’t it? 

 

Now think about ice cream. We know we shouldn’t eat it every meal, but we probably would if we could throw caution to the wind.  Again, that seems funny, doesn’t it? 

 

Calorie Sensing

Researchers have been puzzling over this conundrum for a long time. And, to be honest, nobody really knows the answer. However, there are some theories out there to explain why free pizza delivery is so much more appealing than free broccoli delivery. 

 

The idea comes back to calorie sensing. When you eat a stick of broccoli, you’re getting about 20 calories per 100 grams. That’s not a lot. Plus, it costs your body a lot of energy to extract what little energy is in the stalks themselves, so it is barely worth eating the stuff – at least from an energy perspective. 

 

Now compare that to ice cream, which contains around 350 calories per 100 grams, and you can see the difference. It is nearly eighteen times more calorific. 

 

The body likes calories because it is always worried that the next meal won’t arrive. So when you put something calorific in front of people, they feel compelled to eat as much of the stuff as possible. 

 

There’s another problem with the broccoli, though. It also contains compounds specifically designed to put creatures – like people – off eating it. When you chop raw broccoli, you notice a strange sulfurous smell. The plant uses this as a survival strategy to discourage eating. 

 

Now compare that to the smell of BBQ meat or baking cakes, and there’s a big difference. They smell too good to be true because they don’t contain any compounds designed to put us off.

 

Genetic Factors

There are also genetic factors involved here that we should address too. 

 

Take coriander, for instance. Most people describe the flavor as fragrant and fresh. But to some people, it tastes like old soap. It has nothing to do with their taste buds, per se. But instead, it relates to their genetics. If you have a certain sequence, the popular Asian herb ends up tasting foul. 

 

So that’s a brief account of why people love some foods and hate others. Please note that the real world is much more complicated.