Sense of taste, also known as gustation, is a vital part of our central nervous system. Being able to taste protects us from eating unsafe or spoiled foods, and helps us balance our  diet with different nutritional requirements (although I’m sure I could bypass our bodies’ natural in- stincts in order to eat only chocolate all day long, but I digress). Taste is greatly affected by smell as well as the texture and temperature of foods; in essence, when you experience a flavor, you are really using a combination of a number of senses. In your mouth, believe it or not, are around 10,000 taste buds, found mostly on the tongue but also on the soft palate, epiglottis, and phar- ynx. Each of these taste buds detects five basic sensations: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and unami (savory). It was once believed that these different sensations were only recognized in certain areas of the mouth (bitter at the back of the tongue, for example) but newer studies have shown this to be false; each bud is capable of sensing all possible tastes.

And here’s a new one: you could be a sensory superhero and not even know it. People who are particularly sensitive to strong flavors are called super-tasters and can have up to twice as many taste buds as the rest of us. Although it’s difficult to quantify, around 25% of people are said to be non-tasters, 25% super-tasters, and 50% are average or medium- tasters. Ironically, super-tasters are the subset most likely to avoid certain foods based on their heightened sensitivity. Items like coffee, brussels sprouts, cabbage, spinach, and grapefruit juice are examples of foods that super-tasters avoid – usually foods with a strong bitter taste.

Interestingly, women tend to have more taste buds than men and are thus more likely to be super-tasters. Perhaps this is the reason why we respond so much more, shall I say, passionately to chocolate and other sweets? Studies have also shown that our taste buds are the most sensitive in the morning, after a good night’s sleep; maybe why our coffee tastes like a gift from heaven first thing in the morning.

How we taste and what we enjoy eating isn’t the sole responsibility of our taste buds, however – it also depends on how our brain reads the signals from our tongues. The ability of a person to smell and taste depends on hundreds of different genes. Scientists discovered that around 50 of these genes are active in some people while not in others, and they believe this is the reason why some of us like certain foods and others find them disgusting. Every person is thought to have different genes switched on and off, leading to the presence of different receptors for different flavors; and viola, we now know why your friend’s favorite meal is spaghetti and yours is sashimi.

This explanation takes care of individual preferences – but what about the fact that entire cultures can tolerate specific types of foods that may be unpalatable to other groups? Take for example, that many Asian cuisines feature very spicy dishes. It seems this type of preference does come from an outside source: throughout history, warmer countries tended to use more spice in their meals to combat bacteria due to food spoiling, prior to the invention of refrigeration. Over the years, spices were used often to make food tastier and healthier (many spices, like garlic, cinnamon and chilies are actually known to kill bacteria) and these were incorporated into the culture’s daily food making processes much more so than in cooler countries, where food spoiling wasn’t as much of an issue. That’s why it should be no surprise that dishes from Thailand, Malaysia, and India tend to be very spicy, while meals made in Sweden and Norway are not. If this isn’t an example of nature and nurture working together, I don’ t know what is.

Now, I’m not a professional taster (unless you consider being a chain-eater of anything not nailed down a professional in these things) or a scientist, but I believe that everything of what and how you taste is in your head; a product of your upbringing, culture, and habits. If a dish is different from what we’re used to, often we react negatively to it before the food even touches our tongue. Roasted crickets must taste gross, right? They’re BUGS! You’re expecting them to taste bad, so they do. But I think we can all agree that eating is one of the true pleasures in the world, and if we worked at erasing our preconceptions and being open minded about trying new things, we might find ourselves exposed to a whole new world of sensory pleasure and exploration. I, for one, will continue to think with my taste buds.
Oh yeah, and olives too; I hate those even more than mustard. Gross.