Acquired taste

Last updated June 06, 2024

An acquired taste is an appreciation for something unlikely to be enjoyed by a person who has not had substantial exposure to it. It is the opposite of innate taste, which is the appreciation for things that are enjoyable by most people without prior exposure to them.

Characteristics

In case of food and drink, the difficulty of enjoying the product may be due to a strong or unpleasant odor, taste, mouthfeel (such as sashimi and sushi featuring uncooked seafood), appearance, or association (such as eating insects or organ meat).

Acquisition

General

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 preference for salt at approximately 4 months. However, vegetables tend to be a favourite as they start to learn to feed themselves. 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]

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

Intentionally changing one's preferences can be hard to accomplish. It usually requires a deliberate effort, acting as if one likes something in order to have the responses and feelings that will produce the desired taste. The challenge becomes one of distinguishing authentic or legitimate acquired tastes as a result of deeply considered preference changes from inauthentic ones motivated by status or conformity.^[4]^[5]

Examples

The following items can be described as "acquired tastes", often due to combination of both unfamiliarity and intensity of taste. In principle, though, anything for which one can have a taste, can also become an acquired taste. An acquired taste is distinguished by how one comes to have the taste, not what the thing in question is.

Absinthe, a strong herbal spirit, often with pronounced anise and bitter (wormwood) flavors^[6]^[7]
Achar, South Asian pickles
Aloe vera, a type of plant whose inner pulp is sometimes used in drinks, very common in China and Japan
Anchovies, small fish cured in brine, known for their intensely strong salty flavor, often used as a pizza topping
Andouillette, a French tripe sausage
Artichoke, a flower-like vegetable commonly pickled in olive oil
Asafoetida, the resin of carrots
Balut, a boiled, fertilized duck egg
Bäsk, a Swedish bitter wormwood spirit typically drunk as snaps
Beondegi, steamed or boiled silkworm pupa, popular in Korean cuisine
Beef tongue, the buccal proboscis of bovidaes
Beer, especially strong ales and stouts
Bitter melon, an extremely bitter fruit similar to cucumber
Bitters, an alcohol flavoured with bitter plant extracts, used as an additive in cocktails or as a medicinal substance to promote appetite or digestion.
Blood sausage, sausage made by cooking animal blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled
Brussels sprout, a vegetable
Bosintang, a Korean meal with dog meat
Boza, a fermented corn drink of Turkish origin, also popular on the Balkans
Bully beef, salted processed beef
Calamari, cooked squid commonyl breaded and deep-fried
Campari, a bitter Italian aperitif
Capers, pickled and salted buds or fruits of the caper shrub.
Casu martzu, a Sardinian cheese containing live insect larvae
Cauliflower, a vegetable
Caviar, a prized delicacy consisting of salted roe (fish eggs) from sturgeon
Century egg, a specially preserved Chinese egg
Chamoy, heavily salted Mexican plum or apricot paste with chili powder
Strongly-flavored cheeses, such as blue cheese, Gamalost, goat cheese, or Limburger
Chili pepper, the common source of "hot" spices.
Chitterlings (commonly referred to as "chitlins"), boiled or stewed pig intestines
Coriander (also known as cilantro); some people perceive an unpleasant "soapy" taste and/or a rank smell. This is believed to be a result of an enzyme that changes its taste (a genetic trait).
Clamato, a drink made primarily of reconstituted tomato juice concentrate and reconstituted dried clam broth, with a dash of high-fructose corn syrup, and USDA Red 40 to maintain a 'natural' tomato colour
Coffee, a bitter beverage prepared from roasted coffee seeds
Cow cod soup, a Jamaican soup made with bull penis (or "cod")
Cup cheese, an Amish runny cheese, sharp or mild
Dark chocolate, processed chocolate that has little or no added sugar or milk, and therefore has a bitter taste.
Dijon mustard, a condiment
Durian, a pungent southeast Asian fruit
Eel, seafood, an Anguilliform
Eulachon grease, extracted from eulachon fish
Feet, of cow, calf, pig, duck, chicken, camel, goat, etc.
Fernet, a particularly strong, grape based, herbal digestif
Fish sauce, a condiment derived from fish that have been allowed to ferment
Garnatálg, a Faroese delicacy made of sheep lard
Gravlax, raw-marinated salmon
Garlic, a vegetable commonly used for flavoring and added nutrition
Gull eggs, eaten boiled and popular in Scandinavia and some parts of Scotland and Ireland
Haggis, a traditional Scottish dish mainly consisting of minced sheep offal, boiled in a sheep's stomach.
Hajmola, a digestive candy made in India.
Hákarl, putrefied Iceland shark
Head cheese, a dish made of meat from an animal's skull covered with gelatin (usually set in a mold)
Huitlacoche, fungus-infected maize, popular in Mexico
Insects, including grubs, ants, grasshoppers, locusts, etc.
Islay whisky, Scotch whisky made on Islay, known for its distinctive peaty character
Jägermeister, a strong German herbal digestif
Jiló, bitter fruit (cooked as a vegetable) popular in Brazil
Kala namak, black salt
Kimchi, traditional Korean dish of fermented chili peppers and vegetables, usually made from Chinese cabbage
Kola nut, an extremely bitter nut used in West Africa
Kutti pi, an Anglo-Indian dish consisting of goat fetus
Liver and/or liverwurst
Lapsang souchong, smoked Chinese black tea
Lunch meat, processed meat typically pork and chicken, e.g. SPAM
Lobster tomalley, the soft, green substance found in the body cavity of lobsters, that fulfills the functions of both the liver and the pancreas.
Lutefisk, Nordic lye-soaked whitefish
Malt loaf, favored in Scotland
Marmite, Vegemite or Cenovis, spreads made from yeast extract
Mate, the infusion of yerba mate
Matcha, finely ground powder of specially grown and processed green tea leaves
Moxie, a bitter carbonated beverage containing gentian root extract
Mugicha, or barley tea, which is a popular Japanese beverage
Edible mushrooms, mushrooms that can potentially be safely eaten.
Mämmi, traditional Finnish Easter time dessert made from rye flour and malt
Nattō, Japanese fermented soybeans
Octopus, seafood, a cephalopod
Olives, fermented or cured fruit of the olive tree, come in different varieties and have a salty, bitter, oily taste.
Organ meats, whether tripe, brains, eyeballs, giblets, liver, sweetbreads, etc.
Pickled eggs, the ovae of commonly avians
Pickled pigs' feet, the locomotive appendages of suidaes
Pickled herring
Piure, a tunicate with a strong iodine taste eaten in Chile.
Pork rind, the cooked skin of a pig
Pu-erh, a compressed, aged tea dominated by strong, earthy overtones
Rakfisk, a Norwegian fermented fish dish often served with lefse and flatbrød.
Retsina, resinated wine, popular in Greece
Rivella, a Swiss carbonated soft drink made from whey.
Root beer, an herbal-flavored soft drink
Rocky Mountain oysters, testicles of bull or boar
Salty liquorice, Finnish/Dutch ammonium salt liquorice candy
Sea cucumber
Sea urchin
Scotch whisky, a woody-tasting alcoholic liquid.
Scrapple, a slab of leftover pork parts.
Smalahove, the head of a lamb
Stink bean, beans bearing a rather peculiar smell, quite popular in southeast Asia
Stinky tofu, a form of fermented tofu, which, as the name suggests, has a strong odor.
Sun-dried tomatoes
Surströmming, Swedish fermented Baltic herring
Sushi, a Japanese food sometimes made with raw fish and sashimi
Switchel, an Anglo-Caribbean summer drink based on vinegar and molasses, also called Haymaker's Punch
Tempeh, a fermented food made from soybeans popular in Southeast Asia
Tonic water, carbonated water flavored with quinine, giving the beverage its bitter taste.
Tobacco, plant leaves commonly combusted and inhaled/exhaled
Unicum, a Hungarian herbal bitter
Wasabi, and similarly horseradish, due to their pungent odors and strong taste
Wine and fortified wine, the fermented juice of grapes

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References

↑ Birch, L. L. (1999). "Development of food preferences". Annual Review of Nutrition. 19 (1): 41–62. doi:10.1146/annurev.nutr.19.1.41. PMID 10448516.
↑ Ullrich, N. V.; Touger-Decker, R.; O’Sullivan-Maillet, J.; Tepper, B. J. (2004). "PROP taster status and self-perceived food adventurousness influence food preferences". Journal of the American Dietetic Association. 104 (4): 543–549. doi:10.1016/j.jada.2004.01.011. PMID 15054337.
↑ Smit, H. J.; Blackburn, R. J. (2005). "Reinforcing effects of caffeine and theobromine as found in chocolate". Psychopharmacology. 181 (1): 101–106. doi:10.1007/s00213-005-2209-3. PMID 15772863. S2CID 28790932.
↑ Bovens, L. (1992). "Sour Grapes and Character Planning". The Journal of Philosophy. 89 (2): 57–78. doi:10.2307/2027152. JSTOR 2027152.
↑ Bovens, L. (1995). "The Intentional Acquisition of Mental States". Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 55 (4): 821–840. doi:10.2307/2108334. JSTOR 2108334.
↑ Absinthe, What is Absinthe? About its Science, Chemistry and Structure
↑ Absinthe, the Potent Green Fairy

v t e Taste
Basic tastes	Bitterness Saltiness Sourness Sweetness Umami
Anatomy	Epiglottis Pharynx Soft palate Tongue
Gustology	Ageusia Dysgeusia Hypogeusia Hypergeusia
Other	Aftertaste Acquired taste Pungency Scoville scale Supertaster Tongue map
See also	Sight Hearing Smell Touch