Why do you like the taste of some food but not other food?
Flavor has a lot to do with smell and texture as much as taste [1]. There are complex reasons why we like the food we like [1, 2]. We learn to like certain flavors through flavor-nutrient learning, where we learn to form positive associations between the flavor of a given food and what that food does to our bodies [2]. For example, if you regularly snacked on cherry-flavored fruit roll-ups as a kid, you may have learned over time to associate cherry with the burst of energy that comes from the sugar hit [2]. There is also taste-flavor learning, where we associate a given flavor with one we already like [2]. Finally, social learning, or the idea that we simply like what our friends and parents like, shapes our flavor preferences [3]. But there are some foods that we may like and others we may dislike for reasons that science can't explain [4, 5].
Many things can impact our preference for food, from the physical structure of our tongue and the nasal passages to our memory and emotions [1, 2]. For instance, children develop food preferences through exposure and association, meaning that if they encounter chili peppers early and often, they will likely like them as adults [1]. Likewise, if a child remembers eating a particular food when feeling sick, happy, irritated, or distressed, they may associate that flavor with a specific feeling for the rest of their life [1]. There are also genetic factors that impact food preference; for example, people with a lot of papillae on their tongue (the bumps that house our taste buds) may find flavors overwhelming, whereas people with low papillae density prefer their food spicy [2]. Moreover, our taste buds can detect different molecules, meaning that individual taste preferences can also be genetic [2]. Overall, taste is much more than a recreational sense; from the taste buds on our tongues to the inner sanctum of the brain, we are still hardwired to prefer the foods that helped our species survive [3].