An acquired taste often refers to an appreciation for a food or beverage that is unlikely to be enjoyed by a person who has not had substantial exposure to it, usually because of some unfamiliar aspect of the food or beverage, including a strong or strange odor (e.g. stinky tofu, durian, kimchi, haggis, h karl, black salt, stinking toe, asafoetida, or certain types of cheese), taste (such as root beer, vegemite, bitter teas, salty liquorice or natto), or appearance.

Acquired taste may also refer to aesthetic tastes, such as taste in music or other forms of art.

Acquiring a taste

General acquisition of tastes

The process of acquiring a taste can involve developmental maturation, genetics (of both taste sensitivity and personality), family example, and biochemical reward properties of foods. Infants are born preferring sweet foods and rejecting sour and bitter tastes, and they develop a a preference for salt at approximately 4 months. Neophobia (fear of novelty), tends to vary with age in predictable, but not linear, ways. Babies just beginning to eat solid foods generally accept a wide variety of foods, toddlers and young children are relatively neophobic towards food, and older children, adults, and the elderly are often adventurous eaters with wide-ranging tastes. ^[1] Interestingly, the general personality trait of novelty-seeking does not necessarily correlate highly with willingness to try new foods. Level of food adventurousness may explain much of the variability of food preferences observed in "supertasters". Supertasters are highly sensitive to bitter, spicy, and pungent flavours, and some avoid them and like to eat only mild, plain foods, but many supertasters who have high food adventurousness enjoy these intense flavors and seek them out. ^[2]. Some chemicals or combinations of chemicals in foods provide both flavor and beneficial or enjoyable effects on the body and mind and may be reinforcing, leading to an acquired taste. A study that investigated the effect of adding caffeine and theobromine (active compounds in chocolate) vs. a placebo to identically-flavored drinks that participants tasted several times, yielded the development of a strong preference for the drink with the compounds.^[3].

Intentional acquisition of tastes

Intentionally changing one's preferences can be hard to accomplish. It usually requires a deliberate effort, such as acting as if one likes something to have the responses and feelings that will produce the desired taste. The risk in this acting is that it can lead to all sorts of excesses such as self-deception and pretentiousness.^[4] The challenge becomes one of distinguishing authentic or legitimate acquired tastes resulting from deeply considered preference changes from inauthentic ones motivated by, for example, status or conformity.^[5]

Examples

Some examples of tastes which normally need to be tried several times to 'learn to like' are Sushi, beer, coffee, goat cheese, caviar, olives and huitlacoche. There has been quite a lot of debate on how this change in taste experience is accomplished, as many people report that without effort or intent they have learned to appreciate these flavors simply by repeated exposure.

Wine is frequently treated with more respect, such that one can take a wine appreciation course. The attitude here is to learn to taste the differences between grapes and types of wine. Using the knowledge of the contents of the wine, the connoisseur starts to appreciate the differences between varieties and thereby the beverage itself.

See also

• Aftertaste
• Habituation
• Food choice

References

Birch, L.L. (1999). Development of food preferences. Annual Review of Nutrition, 19, 41-62.

Otis, L.P. (1984). Factors influencing willingness to try new foods. Psychological Reports, 54, 739-745.

Ullrich N.V., Touger-Decker R., O Sullivan Maillot J., Tepper B.J. (2004) PROP taster status and self-perceived food adventurousness influence food preferences. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 104, 543-549.

Smit, H.J. & Blackburn, R.J. (2005). Reinforcing effects of caffeine and theobromine as found in chocolate. Psychopharmacology, 181(1), 101-106.

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