5 Weird Things That Influence Taste

   According to yet another satirical article from cracked.com, by Adam Wears, our perception of taste cannot be trusted. There are many factors that influence what something will taste like based on things like environment, genes and mood. First factor of taste depends on what your mother ate while you were in the womb. Second is the packaging itself, psychologically prepping you to either like the food, or not. Third influencer of taste is the background noise or music. The louder the music, the harder it is to actually taste our food. Next factor of taste belongs to our personality and mood. And finally, the color of the food (or packaging) is a predictor of whether our taste buds thank us.
   So, consistent with the article, a light brown-colored, spam-flavored soda labeled “Delicious!”, drank while listening to really loud music, while you’re in a good mood, may not taste so bad…
   The article claims our senses are “manipulated by factors outside of your control”. The first factor is proved in a study; pregnant women who regularly drank carrot juice reported having children who enjoyed carrot-flavored cereal as newborns. Second, article comments on importance of food labels, “first there's the experiment that found that simply labeling a food -- in this case, bologna -- as low-fat will result in people rating it as tasting worse than the equivalent full-fat version. No low-fat food was used in the experiment at all, meaning that both times, the participants were actually eating the full-fat bologna, the stuff they'd presumably eaten at some point in their lives and should have been familiar with”. Our mind tricks us and decides for us, even before we taste the food. Next, presence or lack of music interferes with our taste perception by “losing the ability to accurately gauge how sweet or salty your food is. It has to do with the way your brain is wired -- continual loud noises whip the neurons of your ear up into such a rage that for no reason they stage an all-out assault on the weaker neurons of your taste buds.”  Science suggests that not only our mood can indicate taste perception, but our personality, “different chemicals in your food react to different chemicals in your brain, thus the foods you like aren't just personal preference, they say something about how your brain works. Depressed people can't taste sweetness as well, people with panic disorders don't taste bitterness as strongly as others”. Last, how we taste depends on the color of food or packaging, “thanks to our odd tendency to unconsciously associate fiery colors with heat, one study found that drinkers perceived drinks served in yellow and red containers as being hotter than those (same) drinks served within blue and green containers.”. The mind is a powerful thing.
   Apparently, our food likes and dislikes may have little to do with taste, but all about our perception and power of suggestion.