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I will never understand this attitude that everyone must like the same things, or that there must be justification for disliking something. And then of course y

by danaliv 10y ago

I will never understand this attitude that everyone must like the same things, or that there must be justification for disliking something. And then of course you get the inevitable "oh well you just haven't had a real tomato/cilantro/Harry Potter/whatever" people, which adds a lovely dollop of hipster authenticity fetishism to the whole chauvinism shit sandwich. It's a matter of taste, people. Some people don't like the things you like and that's that. Deal with it. sunglasses descend onto face

SerLava 10y ago
I'm with you on the main point you're making generally, but regarding vegetables, those people often have a point also. Many of the vegetables in grocery stores are bred to deflect armor piercing bullets and last a thousand years- with the side effect of tasting like poison. I am one of the people who gags from eating raw tomatoes, but I've found that I have absolutely no problem eating those brown tomatoes - the ones that grow mold after 2 days.
GlueChemist 10y ago
The point of this article and those other studies does not have much to do with personal taste directly. These examples are of interest because they offer clues of where to look for chemical sensors the body has. We do not often get such direct clues about how sensory input maps back to protein sensors and the genes that encode them. So this is less an exploration of taste preference and more of an exploration into how and why some things taste fundamentally different between individuals.
pmarreck 10y ago
Yeah, you might think that and then meet my friend who HATES both chocolate AND coffee (at the age of 45... plenty of time to adapt to coffee, but not liking chocolate is unfathomable to me), and go "WTF, seriously?" ;) Tastes are one of those things that we just can't (no matter how hard we try, or want to) grasp rationally. These entirely subjective experiences are just... not rationally conveyable. This spills over into sexual preferences as well, btw (not to derail the topic, but thinking of sexual preferences as mere "taste variation" is useful IMHO).

by danaliv 10y ago

SerLava 10y ago

I'm with you on the main point you're making generally, but regarding vegetables, those people often have a point also. Many of the vegetables in grocery stores are bred to deflect armor piercing bullets and last a thousand years- with the side effect of tasting like poison. I am one of the people who gags from eating raw tomatoes, but I've found that I have absolutely no problem eating those brown tomatoes - the ones that grow mold after 2 days.

GlueChemist 10y ago

The point of this article and those other studies does not have much to do with personal taste directly. These examples are of interest because they offer clues of where to look for chemical sensors the body has. We do not often get such direct clues about how sensory input maps back to protein sensors and the genes that encode them. So this is less an exploration of taste preference and more of an exploration into how and why some things taste fundamentally different between individuals.

pmarreck 10y ago

Yeah, you might think that and then meet my friend who HATES both chocolate AND coffee (at the age of 45... plenty of time to adapt to coffee, but not liking chocolate is unfathomable to me), and go "WTF, seriously?" ;) Tastes are one of those things that we just can't (no matter how hard we try, or want to) grasp rationally. These entirely subjective experiences are just... not rationally conveyable. This spills over into sexual preferences as well, btw (not to derail the topic, but thinking of sexual preferences as mere "taste variation" is useful IMHO).