The Secret to Developing a Taste for Food You Don’t Like Is Repetition
If there is food or drink that doesn’t suit your taste buds, but you really want to like it, don’t give up. As humans, we know what taste we like, but we are also very capable of changing.
You may wonder why even try to love something that you have already decided you hate, and rightly so. Maybe there is a spicy dish for someone that their loved one or family loves, and they would like not to forget about it too. Perhaps all of your friends are drinking branded beer, and you want to join the conversation. Or maybe you can’t stand the taste of black coffee, but you know that all the cream and sugar you add should be gone. Whatever your reason, you can change if you want.
Paul Rosin, a cultural psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, has studied the human relationship to food for many years. In an interview with NPR, Rosin explains that people usually hate something first and then come back to it. Children usually don’t eat chili the first time, but over time, almost anyone can taste spicy food. Rozin calls the process “benign masochism”:
… we eat a lot of foods that little children don’t like – beer, etc. But we also love the rides, we like to be afraid, we like to cry in the movies. This is an example of something that is very common in humans … that is, we learn to love what our body rejects. And it’s harmless because we don’t get hurt.
It’s like falling in love with smoking — when you first smoke it’s awful. But you [can] continue, because there is social pressure. And that pressure gives you enough experience … and somehow it usually flips with that experience. For some, it turns over rather quickly.
When it comes to trying new things, it’s good to have an open mind, and a good rule of thumb is to try something twice before you write it off. However, if you want to learn to love something, you need to eat or drink and repeat. You have no doubt heard someone say that something “tastes”. This is how you acquire it.