Steve Wertz wrote:

> Do Germans have a propensity for beer and meat/sausages?
> Would the Japanese blooded people prefer fish and rice?
> Do Thais naturally gravitate towards spicy foods?
> How about Chinese and fresh vegetables and noodles?


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.


There are odd exceptions here and there. Lactose tolerance and
intolerance runs in families and in cultural groups. It wouldn't be
unusual to have a whole ethnic group that hated milk because it makes
them all sick.


I believe it is possible to have a dislike for a particular taste that
runs in a family. I've always hated grapefruit and grapefruit juice.
Orange, lemon and other citrus are fine, but grapefruit has special sort
of bitterness I find distasteful. It's hard to describe since I like
other bitter tastes found in greens, but grapefruit tastes awful to me.
I never thought this was interesting so I never mentioned it in the
family. One day I saw passion fruit juice in the supermarket, had never
seen it before and bought 2 quarts to try it. Blech. It tasted like
grapefruit. I noticed it right away. The next day my brother came
over. We didn't see each other often. He was the first guest I thought
I could give the passion fruit juice to. I offered it. He made a face
and said "blech, it tastes just like grapefruit." I interviewed my
parents about it. Sure enough, Mom loves grapefruit. Dad and his
sister hate it. I never knew before. I'm convinced that Dad, Aunt
Judy, my brother and I are all tasters for a particular bitter component
in grapefruit and passion fruit when most others aren't.


It's more likely that the climate one lives in affects taste. Those who
live in a hot climate would be drawn to hot spicy foods that help us
sweat and encourage us to drink lots of water. When we move somewhere
cooler, we still like the taste of hot foods but don't feel as compelled
to eat them. I know that whenever it's cold, I'm drawn to filling
caloric foods like ice cream. When it warms up, I still like ice cream
but don't crave it the same way.


--Lia