I don't know why I didn't think about this last week, but it just occured to me when buying pineapple yesterday. My cousin Bee (her childhood nickname; possibly Bea? but I like Bee better) told me that her two favorite foods are asparagus and pineapple. I'm sure she likes to eat many other things, but I observed first-hand her love of asparagus, as she ate so much it was ridiculous. I wish I could have eaten that much, but then instead of staying at the same weight last week I would have gained weight. Nonetheless, as I said, I didn't think much of this until yesterday.
Two of my most favorite foods are pineapple and asparagus. I'm not kidding. There is almost always some sort of pineapple in my fridge, be it cored, sliced or chunked. I eat pineapple almost every day. I eat asparagus less often, but if it is part of a dish at a restaurant, it almost always tips the balance in favor of that dish. When I do buy asparagus (relatively more often than normal this spring), I eat it for every meal (save breakfast) until my stash of it is gone. I steam it and eat it with salt and pepper, and that's it. I don't need any other embellishment to convince me to eat it. One weekend I ate it for dinner one night, lunch the next day, dinner that night (at a restaurant, no less) and at lunch the day after that. I love it. And cream of asparagus soup! Oh, need I go on?
But anyway, why those two foods? And why do Bee and I both love them? Is it some inherited taste, or just coincidence? Or do we love those foods because we grew up closely together and ate together enough to produce that result? I'm just curious.
Did you ever wonder what shaped your taste for something? I love vegetables--all of my siblings do, really. We will eat spinach like it's going out of style. My mom has said that other moms that she is friends with often marvel at how many vegetables we eat. And this isn't a new development. I liked these vegetables even as a kid. So why? S won't touch a vegetable with a ten foot pole. Why does he hate them and we love them? And he hasn't ever developed a taste for them--the only things he currently eats are sweet corn and tomatoes...every once in a great while. And he likes, even in greater terms, way less than I ever have. I think at seven I was a more adventurous eater than S is now. How strange is that? And why is that? I can't imagine I was exposed to that much more than him, in terms of what we ate. I only ate Thai, Japanese and Indian as an adult and loved them. I hadn't eaten Greek or Mediterranean until I was an adult. I love all of these foods now. And S, who ate some of them for the first time at the same time as me, doesn't like any of them, really. Why?
I'm just curious to know why our tastebuds differ so much. And can you get tastebud transplants for people? How much would that cost? I know a prime candidate.
Comments