how do acquired tastes work?

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Things like mouldy cheese are awful initially, but after a while they become sought-after delicacies for many people. How does this work?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Your first experience with an “acquired taste” is generally going to be negative because you lack context for your senses. Cheese tastes like it’s gone off, alcohol is bitter and astringent, raw food defies expectations on proper preparation, ETC. This is not a new behavior for you: As a toddler, you had to be introduced to foods in a similar way to build your palate.

Once you’ve learned what to expect from a food, you are capable of appreciating the experience behind that original off-putting experience. You still experience the same taste (The food hasn’t significantly changed), but your senses are tuned to the enjoyable qualities and have either muted or recontextualized the ones that originally tasted disgusting.

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