Yao Cheng

Dr. Kerri LaCharite

NUTR 515 P01
Sep. 5th, 2017
Reading Response: Deconstructing Taste

Barely can people deny that tasting is usually the most exciting part in food intake. What is

the taste of this food? How dose its texture taste like? Will its taste be acceptable? All these

kinds of question will be wondering in our mind before we eat the food. Undoubtedly, eating is

one of the most complicated human behaviors which is highly associated with physiological,

psychological, social, cultural, family and genetic factors of human beings (Grimm & Steinle,

2011). As a result, simply analyzing and deconstructing taste through one or two perspectives

can never help us learn this behavior better.

Among all these factors affecting our taste, physiological and genetic factors are mostly

researched by scientists, because they build the fundamentals of our tasting abilities. How many

taste buds do you have on your tongue? Which type of taster are you? These are all determined

by the physiological and genetic factors. However, the fact is that most of time, people usually

have various taste preference even if they are the same type of taster. The reason for this

situation is that there are more factors which can influence peoples taste acceptance from

outside environment. In early age, childrens taste preference is affected by their family

members, especially by their mother (Harris, 2008). Take me as an example. As a supertaster, I

was very picky about the food when I was around 5. As a result, I had malnutrition and poor

immunity at that time. My mother helped me change this situation by creating new type of

cuisines with the food I usually disliked, and my father would force me trying one type of these

food each day. Moreover, they also taught me to feel other senses of taste the food brings to me,

not only the one I disliked. It is very common that children will share the taste preference with
their family members, even though they are different type of tasters. That is because they spend

most of their time sharing their eating environment, and parents usually will interfere in what the

children eat.

Another interesting thing about taste is that we can make use of the interaction in different

types of taste. For example, salty taste can suppress bitter taste when they come together. Thus,

people usually make vegetable dishes with salt or salty sauce, because most of vegetables are

tasting bitter mildly or strongly. Sometimes the different combinations of taste might bring us

something more acceptable or even miracle.

In my opinion, the health condition and psychological factor are significantly powerful

factors which can influence our taste sense. The medicine, especially the one for chemotherapy,

can bring people severe side effect of decreasing taste sense. As a medical student in

undergraduate degree, I had witnessed that this problem really annoys the patients when they

have their meals. Furthermore, different psychological condition of people will strongly affect

their taste preference. Take mood, for instance, people usually prefer to take chocolate or ice

cream when they are happy, and interestingly, these kinds of sweet food will also enhance the

feeling of happiness during this time.

It is interesting to deconstruct taste through various perspectives. I hope I can have deeper

and novel understand on this topic through the following study.

Works Cited

Grimm, E. R., & Steinle, N. I. (2011, Jan). Genetics of Eating Behavior: Established and Emerging

Concepts. Nutrition Reviews, 69(1), 52-60.

Harris, G. (2008, May). Development of taste and food preferences in children. Current Opinion in

Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care, 11(3), 315-319.