Why is it that we perceive some tastes/smells as good, while others are bad?
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There are some things that are more or less hardwired in us to taste good or bad.
For example, we like sweet things which contain sugar. Sugar is a quick, reliable energy source. Fruits especially are a favorite food because they’re high in calories that are relatively easy to access.
We like savory foods because they contain proteins and fats. Both are also essential nutrients for humans to live.
We may like sour foods for a few reasons. Perhaps our sour taste sense is to remind us to seek out Vitamin C. Or perhaps it serves to allow us to distinguish whether spoiled fruit is rotten (bitter) or simply fermented (acidic). We’re not really sure.
We dislike bitter flavors because many bitter foods contain poisonous things that would make us sick, if consumed in large enough quantities. Interestingly, our bitter sense detects more different compounds than our other flavor senses which tend to detect only a few specific things. We have a ton of different genes that each code for different types of poisons we might encounter.
These sorts of broad categories are all formed by evolutionary pressures, and therefore are common across cultures. We are biologically hardwired to seek out certain flavors and avoid others.
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Then there’s the cultural aspect. You will tend to enjoy foods that you grew up eating, and that all the people around you enjoy eating. This can be minor, like preferring certain types of fruit or it may even be significant enough to override our natural preferences.
For example, many people drink coffee, despite it being quite bitter. In fact, coffee *is* actually poisonous to us in large quantities, as is chocolate, but many people enjoy both.
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One other thing that I think is interesting. Your preferences are actually influenced by your perception of them. What your brain thinks a food is, determines how you experience it.
For example, the smell of parmesan cheese so closely resembles the smell of vomit, that researchers can trigger a response of either disgust or appreciation simply by informing the person which one a sample scent is supposed to be.
This is what allows a lot of artificial flavors to work by the way. Often it’s cheaper to isolate only one or two compounds in a flavor that are most significant, and then our brains will fill in the rest.
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