|
|
|
|
Are Food Preferences Genetic?
at Sun, 11 Apr 2004 18:29:28 GMT in
>, (Edwin
Pawlowski) wrote :
>
>"Julia Altshuler" > wrote in message
>>
>> There's considerable epidemiologic evidence that once a group
>> immigrates to the United States, they start eating the highly
>> processed foods so common here and getting the diseases associated
>> with that diet despite the availability of native foods. So the
>> general answer to your question is no, food preferences are not
>> genetic.
Isn't there a risk of confusing ethnicity/country of origin from genestock?
Very, very few populations of any given country come from a narrow,
monolithic gene pool, and so for similar reasons I'd expect to find
differences in food preferences among people of the same ethnicity. Unless
the genetic pool were unusually narrow, e.g. among some Jewish communities,
it would be very difficult to prove genetic food preferences.
OTOH, there probably are food preferences that are genetic - things people
with the same gene sequences would tend to like or dislike. I suspect there
are far more of these out there than we know. I know people react to
specific components in food, like, for instance, in green peppers where
some people are totally repulsed, where others can't get enough. I think if
you can identify an otherwise inexplicable preference or dislike that seems
to occur in various other uncorrelated individuals, that suggests a
possible genetic connection.
>
>Far from scientific evaluation, my observations confirm this. We have
>immigrants from a few countries at work. Some stick to their native
>foods, but most of their children prefer the same pizza and burgers we
>eat most of the time. The older people seem to stick more traditional
>than the younger. Ed
How much of this is responding to social pressure rather than individual
taste? IME a majority of people are more concerned with social
acceptability than with the exact gratification of their specific desires,
and in food, for instance, will often swallow down things they might not be
particularly fond of in order to fit in. Undeniably pizza and burgers in
the USA are social foods - the occasions on which they tend to be eaten are
ones where the social interaction is usually far more important than what's
being eaten (which is, in addition, a big reason why so many abysmally poor
burger joints and pizza parlors stay in business). Older people are less
easily swayed by social considerations because by a certain age people
establish their social identity by and large and without a conscious effort
to change it usually don't change all that much.
--
Alex Rast
(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)
|