Why I hate Upma

 

AN INSIGHT OF HOW A HUMAN BRAIN DECIDES WHAT IT LIKES AND WHAT IT DOESN’T LIKE.

I hate upma, in-fact, I hate all kinds of South Indian breakfast. Whenever I say I don’t really like breakfasts and mention “South Indian” in it, people are flabbergasted and bombard me with questions like, “You are a South Indian, you should eat it.”, “Upma is amazing and you hate it? Are you ok?” I get these a lot and honestly, I don’t want to come out rude but hey, I don’t like it. The taste isn’t pleasing and I am not a fan of the texture.

 

Something about different likes and dislikes about tastes in people is interesting. You taste the same thing but different reactions come across that leave you astonished. A very simple example. I love margarita pizza and my parents don’t like it. They prefer pizzas with toppings otherwise they won’t be in the mood for pizza. Two completely different reactions towards my favourite pizza. I did a bit of research on internet as to why people have different opinions on a particular taste and would like to share with you guys today.

 

Let’s start off with the human brain to understand. (Disclaimer: If you are weak in bio like me, don’t worry! I will keep it as simple as I can and up to my understanding on what I researched.) The part of our brain that deals with the taste is taken care by the gustatory cortex and is divided in two parts namely the frontal operculum and anterior insula. Now the gustatory cortex can’t just process a taste and send it to other parts of brain without actually tasting it. Therefore, its companion, the receptors help the cortex to attain the info on the taste, process it and then send it to the rest of its mates. There are different kinds of receptors. Our dear cortex is good at socialising. All its receptor buddies receive info based on the taste they are assigned and send it to the brain. Gustatory cortex also has good relations with the olfactory system. Everyone taste and smell food and the ability to smell affects the intensity of taste. If it smells lit, you know you’re in for a treat and if it tastes bleh, well you might not really want to eat it. Same thing happened, I got a surprise black current flavoured cake on my birthday last year and I was excited to try it because people said it’s lit and it did smell lit but one bite into that cake and……it’s safe to say that I didn’t look back at it.

 

Now if you like something but either the smell or the taste bothers you, don’t blame our poor gustatory cortex and the olfactory system, there are various reasons why it bothers you. One could be the prenatal exposure to food i.e., the food exposure your mother had during her pregnancy. It doesn’t end here. It also has genetic reasons. There are three different types of tasters based on genetics. They are: super tasters, non-tasters and regular tasters. They have different reactions to sweet, bitter, salty, spicy and many other flavours and tend to avoid the disliked ones or you can also say tastes that are too strong for them to handle.

 

There is also culture attribution to likes and dislikes of different tastes. In India, we grow up eating various types of curries that are full of different types of spices, vegetables and meat. There are certain flavours outside Indian cuisine which we may find weird or interesting because we haven’t tried it or didn’t grow up tasting that kind of flavour or that kind of cuisine.

 

There is one way to increase or accepting new or disliked tastes and that is to eat dishes that have the disliked or new taste as it’s main taste and eat it for 15 days straight and you will slowly start accepting and maybe even like the new taste. This method doesn’t have a proper scientific study to back up but my take on this is that our gustatory cortex, the receptors and the olfactory system gets used to the new taste and its smell and starts accepting it.

 

Another method is presentation. People get attracted to beautiful presentation of food. It encourages people to try the dish even if it is made out of something they dislike. Advertisements show food in such a way that everyone start salivating just with a look of it, they get the urge to try it and know how it tastes with their mouth because their eyes have already tasted the food and approved of it.

 

Taking advantage of presentation and advertisement, food companies can popularise different kinds of fruits, vegetables, instant food and many more on the lot. They can promote the main point that all the diverse vegetables, fruits, cuisines e. t. c. are equally delicious, healthy and that we should try new things to keep exploring new flavours and filling up more and more of our favourite flavour shelves.