Can others influence your sense of taste? Of course, they can. From your baby days through your childhood, you ate what was available, and that meant, until you “knew better,” the choice always lay in the familiar. “Ethnic foods” are an example. People grow up with them, so how those foods taste is related to nostalgia. Yes, there were those foods that you initially rejected, but, hey, that was what was on the table, and you were hungry. You did resist occasionally: Liver and onions, haggis, maybe “pigs in a blanket,” and other foods for which one has to “acquire a taste.” Probably, you didn’t appreciate the taste of beer on that first sip, tequila, also; definitely the burning taste of hard liquor (and cigarettes) bothered your taste buds.
So, why did you eventually acquiesce on tasting some of those foods? What might have influenced your sense of taste? Peers? Older people for whom you had an affinity? Lovers?
I remember never wanting a green-pepper omelet for breakfast. Told my mother I’d pass in favor of cereal or an egg without the green pepper. Eventually, she stopped offering, and I forgot about the omelet. I lived in a close neighborhood with a number of similarly aged children, one who resided down the street in a house with two kitchens. There was a main-floor kitchen and a basement kitchen, the latter used during the hot summer months in a time before most people had air conditioning. My friend’s mother wanted her son and me to sit for some breakfast late one morning, and you can guess the menu: A green-pepper omelet. I devoured it. Later, I told my mother, “Oh! You should have eaten the breakfast Mary made Nicky and me. She put peppers in the egg. It was great.”
My mother said, “I’ve been trying to get you to eat that for a few years now. What made you change your mind?”
I had no answer other than it smelled good and tasted even better. Today, I’ll add peppers to an omelet. Go figure. Well, you don’t have to go figure. Someone did the figuring for you and me in a study entitled “Relationship between the Influence of Others’ Opinions on Taste during Co-Eating and the Empathy of Individuals.”*
In one of the most poorly written examples of research I've ever read, the authors conclude, “The most important finding of our study was that taste changes according to the comments of other people who are eating together….” Before I address the finding and its significance, I just have to share the following sentence with you. Keep in mind that it comes from a peer-reviewed article. Citing the work of another, the authors write, “Clendenen reported that the amount of energy consumed increased when people dined with friends rather than eating together with other people, paying attention to the person they eat together.” [Italics mine]
Did these guys run their experiment on CANNIBALS?
Okay, had to share that. Back to the point. Of course, I realized after my mother’s comment that the setting in Mary’s friendly basement kitchen that was cool on a hot day and filled with the smells of toast, butter, and the fried omelet, had influenced my willingness to taste and my readiness to accept the new experience. And eating with her son, a friend of mine, had also influenced me. That’s the way our brains work with regard to things we ingest.
So, we go out to eat at a new restaurant with friends, don’t we? The chef is acclaimed, the foods imaginative: Things you would never think of eating. Combinations of them that are off-putting until you gamble and acquire that “taste sophistication” the peers and the chef’s acclaim convince you to have. Of course, we’re influenced by those around us, and of course, we can adapt our sense of what’s good to eat--or do.
That we can be influenced by others is nothing new to any of us. “To our knowledge, taste changed according to the comments of other people who were eating together,” say the authors in their abstract (197). So, what’s useful about either this blog or the study?
We’re all told to be self-aware, that self-awareness is a means to avoid problems before they occur. That’s why we say, “Drive carefully” to loved ones. But how do we become self-aware? Meditation? Therapy? How about looking at the most fundamental of our human endeavors: What we eat and how reject or relish foods?
Self-awareness begins when we pay attention to the “little things” in our lives, the ordinary behaviors and thoughts, not with the big stuff, not with philosophy, for example. Want to know yourself? Ask why you eat what you eat?
Inaba, H. , Sakauchi, G. , Tsuchida, S. , Asada, M. , Sato, N. , Suzuki, K. and Shibuya, K. (2018) Relationship between the Influence of Others’ Opinions on Taste during Co-Eating and the Empathy of Individuals. Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 8, 197-206. doi: 10.4236/jbbs.2018.84013.
So, why did you eventually acquiesce on tasting some of those foods? What might have influenced your sense of taste? Peers? Older people for whom you had an affinity? Lovers?
I remember never wanting a green-pepper omelet for breakfast. Told my mother I’d pass in favor of cereal or an egg without the green pepper. Eventually, she stopped offering, and I forgot about the omelet. I lived in a close neighborhood with a number of similarly aged children, one who resided down the street in a house with two kitchens. There was a main-floor kitchen and a basement kitchen, the latter used during the hot summer months in a time before most people had air conditioning. My friend’s mother wanted her son and me to sit for some breakfast late one morning, and you can guess the menu: A green-pepper omelet. I devoured it. Later, I told my mother, “Oh! You should have eaten the breakfast Mary made Nicky and me. She put peppers in the egg. It was great.”
My mother said, “I’ve been trying to get you to eat that for a few years now. What made you change your mind?”
I had no answer other than it smelled good and tasted even better. Today, I’ll add peppers to an omelet. Go figure. Well, you don’t have to go figure. Someone did the figuring for you and me in a study entitled “Relationship between the Influence of Others’ Opinions on Taste during Co-Eating and the Empathy of Individuals.”*
In one of the most poorly written examples of research I've ever read, the authors conclude, “The most important finding of our study was that taste changes according to the comments of other people who are eating together….” Before I address the finding and its significance, I just have to share the following sentence with you. Keep in mind that it comes from a peer-reviewed article. Citing the work of another, the authors write, “Clendenen reported that the amount of energy consumed increased when people dined with friends rather than eating together with other people, paying attention to the person they eat together.” [Italics mine]
Did these guys run their experiment on CANNIBALS?
Okay, had to share that. Back to the point. Of course, I realized after my mother’s comment that the setting in Mary’s friendly basement kitchen that was cool on a hot day and filled with the smells of toast, butter, and the fried omelet, had influenced my willingness to taste and my readiness to accept the new experience. And eating with her son, a friend of mine, had also influenced me. That’s the way our brains work with regard to things we ingest.
So, we go out to eat at a new restaurant with friends, don’t we? The chef is acclaimed, the foods imaginative: Things you would never think of eating. Combinations of them that are off-putting until you gamble and acquire that “taste sophistication” the peers and the chef’s acclaim convince you to have. Of course, we’re influenced by those around us, and of course, we can adapt our sense of what’s good to eat--or do.
That we can be influenced by others is nothing new to any of us. “To our knowledge, taste changed according to the comments of other people who were eating together,” say the authors in their abstract (197). So, what’s useful about either this blog or the study?
We’re all told to be self-aware, that self-awareness is a means to avoid problems before they occur. That’s why we say, “Drive carefully” to loved ones. But how do we become self-aware? Meditation? Therapy? How about looking at the most fundamental of our human endeavors: What we eat and how reject or relish foods?
Self-awareness begins when we pay attention to the “little things” in our lives, the ordinary behaviors and thoughts, not with the big stuff, not with philosophy, for example. Want to know yourself? Ask why you eat what you eat?
Inaba, H. , Sakauchi, G. , Tsuchida, S. , Asada, M. , Sato, N. , Suzuki, K. and Shibuya, K. (2018) Relationship between the Influence of Others’ Opinions on Taste during Co-Eating and the Empathy of Individuals. Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 8, 197-206. doi: 10.4236/jbbs.2018.84013.
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