From what I understand, people’s likes and dislikes change from when they are younger to when they are older. For example, when I was younger, I hated the taste of mustard. I thought that it was super bitter, but now I find that I put mustard on anything that I can. I can’t explain why because I don’t think I’ve sense an actual change in its taste. Similarly, my friend said that she could not stand the artificial “blue raspberry” flavor when she was growing up. However, now, blue raspberry is her favorite flavor when it comes to sweets.
Why do we have these changes in flavor preferences?
In: Biology
Just like everything, your body is evolving and changing.
Your tongue, as like every other organ of your body gets larger. When it does, more taste receptors are created as your tongue grows.
Everyone’s pallet is unique, and as you physically age, your tastes literally change as you grow.
Some people have a heavy preference for sweet things, others for sour. Just like people who can see better colors or less because of cone/rod concentration, the tastebuds on your tongue change over time and grow and morph your tasting experience.
Things you ate when you were a kid now taste like garbage.
Things you hated when you’re a teenager now taste amazing as an adult.
It’s all just on the tip of your tongue.
From an evolutionary perspective:
Kids are super sensitive to new flavors. They tend to eat what their parents give them (which should be safe), but their brains are wired to be preservation minded. This means bitter foods or foods that “taste weird” (keep in mind kids are often trying things for the first time ever) can be wired as poison to the brains. This means they might taste WAY more bitter, or more “farty” (think cruciferous veggies like broccoli).
This wiring means kids and growing individuals LOVE sweets. Sweets mean that there are simple sugars, which give immediate energy. Having immediate energy means that you can use your long term energy from starches or proteins to grow and develop. In the evolutionary history of humans, we did not have processed sugar (obviously), but fruits were the holy grail.
As adults, we don’t grow anymore. We still like sweets, since our body is always going to act like we are on the precipice of starvation (this is why your body’s first reaction to eating after losing a lot of weight is to store fat). However, adults might not like sweets as much because of tooth sensitivities.
Other flavors can become more preferable because our nose and mouths are way more developed, so we can also pick up more flavor nuances. Culturally, adults will also prefer food they’ve been exposed to as kids, which can be why it’s important to feed kids a variety of new foods at numerous points in their development!
I can’t think of anything I don’t like now that I did as a kid. Maybe slightly less capable of eating straight frosting, but mostly nothing has been excluded.
The amount of things I like now vs what I did as a kid though is probably not an exaggeration to use the term “order of magnitude.”
Children naturally have simpler palates and are actually hard-wired to be more sensitive to certain flavors (especially bitter ones) and find them “yucky.” This is actually an evolutionary defense mechanism: small children are very prone to sticking random things in their mouths out of curiosity, but this also means that they’re at risk of eating things that are poisonous.
Because most toxic compounds (especially in plants) are bitter, young children being hypersensitive to these flavors means they’re less likely to accidentally eat something toxic. As you grow up you lose this hypersensitivity (since as you’re older you should be learning what foods are safe) and can eat a wider variety of foods.
One exception to this however is ARFID: avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder, where people’s palates remain very simple and “childlike.” It’s hypothesized that people with this condition, for some reason, weren’t able to get past this developmental checkpoint, and are essentially stuck with a narrow range of “safe” foods.
Don’t forget there is also acclimation involved. My mom couldn’t eat anything spicer than ketchup so I thought I also did not like spicy foods.
Boyfriend made tacos and they were too spicy for me. So we toned it down and just used some ancho. Then more ancho. Then a little chipotle. Then a lot of chipotle. Then he fed me chili. Now I eat hotter foods that he can eat and I eat them raviounously as if my tastebuds are going to fall off in 10 years. Because you never know. They just might.
I wonder how much of it has to do with hormones. When I started perimenopause my taste in food changed, and then when actual menopause hit, they changed again. For the first time, I really want to drink beer and eat bread, and vegetables seem disgusting to me.
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