Taste and Nutrition - Part 3

Peer-reviewed | Manuscript received: June 20, 2013 | Revision accepted: July 05, 2013

3. Development of Taste Preferences and Aversions

Whereas the previous contributions1 dealt with the physiological basis of gustation and the influence of environmental factors and genetic disposition on taste perception, in the present article we will discuss the principles that cause taste preferences and aversions and thus impact strongly on our health.

Innate taste preferences and aversions

In mammals, oral taste buds develop already before birth [1]. This is important because the sense of taste is required for guiding food ingestion directly after birth. Indeed, newborn babies respond to orally administered taste solutions with facial expressions referred to as gustofacial reflexes. If presented a sweet stimulus, they show relaxed smiling and enhanced suckling. If, on the opposite, they experience sourness or bitterness, babies pull characteristic faces, do not suck but demonstrate repulsive behaviors. Thus, the tasteevoked facial expressions unequivocally indicate which tastes babies like or dislike [2, 3].

Summary

All our senses help to evaluate the quality of potential food. By sight, we identify spoiled food. The sense of smell distinguishes the aroma of palatable from the malodor of inedible food. The trigeminal system reports about texture, temperature and irritants. Touch and audition determine the ripeness of fruits when we press or knock on them. The sense of taste, however, is particularly critical because it controls innate reflexive appetitive and repulsive behaviors. The brain constructs the flavor of food from the various percepts which, in the context of postprandial experiences, lead to learned preference or conditioned aversion for that food. The flavor of food and the postprandial experiences are stored in the implicit taste recognition memory which enables fast and reliable recognition of food during future encounters. Repeated ingestion reinforces preferences or aversions forming stable dietary patterns that make it difficult for subjects to switch diets.

Keywords: taste, sensory science, taste preferences, food aversions

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