How Do We Taste Food?
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This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm. Melody Beaudet and I produce this show at Vermont Public Radio. It's a show where you, the listener, gets to ask the questions. And it's our job to find thoughtful people to help you figure out the answers. We know you come from all over the world, so you have lots of different kinds of experiences and lots of different kinds of questions. But why?

One thing that's universally true is that you all eat. But you don't all like the same things, do you? And that got one of our listeners pretty curious. So today we're going to listen back to an episode all about food. My name is Alex. I like to cook food and I like to eat it. I'm 11 years old in Columbus, Ohio.

And I was wondering, why do we like to eat certain foods? For example, why do some people like to eat spicy food and some people not like to eat their vegetables and that stuff? We love this question, Alex. A few months ago, we actually had a live event here in Vermont, and we asked other kids about what kinds of food they love and hate.

Mac and cheese. It's really cheesy. Cake. Because I have it every time on my birthday. Seaweed.

Salted. Dry. Because, well, I like trying new foods. Crantons and hot dogs. Um, I like a lot of foods, but, um, I like dumplings. They have a good taste and, um, I like their texture. A macaroni at school. Look at it, it's so cheesy.

My favorite food is burgers. They're yummy and I like the juice inside them. My favorite food is peach because they're sweet. Probably fish sticks or chicken nuggets. I like lots of foods, but one of my favorite foods is hot dogs because hot dogs are delicious and the bun and the ketchup...

give them a very good taste of flavor. I like him a good hot dog.

So why do some kids like hot dogs and others don't? We got in touch with this guy to find out. Yeah, I'm Chris Kimble, and I'm the guy who likes to make sure recipes work when you get into the kitchen at home. Chris Kimble is a chef, writer, and TV personality. He had a magazine called Cooks Illustrated, and he had a TV show called America's Test Kitchen where they tried out different recipes to make sure they were as good as possible.

Now he runs a company in Boston called Milk Street. It's a magazine, cooking school, and TV and radio production company. Let's re-familiarize ourselves with Alex's question. Why do we like to eat certain foods? For example, why do some people like to eat spicy food and some people not like to eat their vegetables and that stuff? Studies have suggested that

While, you know, you are still inside your mother, what your mother eats does have an effect on what you're going to like when you get a little older. You know, a mother who loves carrots, for example, sometimes kids grow up to like carrots. So they like bitter things instead of sweet things. That'll affect your taste. I do think children in general like very high energy foods.

which means obviously sugary foods, sweet foods. And over time, I think as you get older, your taste buds, your palates, the way you react to foods changes, and people tend to have slightly duller tastes and therefore want bigger flavors. They tend to like spicier foods. By the way, most of what you think of as taste has nothing to do with the palate or the tongue.

That's just sweet, sour, bitter, something called umami, which means meaty, maybe a couple others. But almost everything you perceive as being a specific taste is through the nose or back up through the throat from the mouth up into the nasal cavity. And the sensors there are going to pick up, you know, the thousand different kinds of sweet. So your palate will determine sweet.

different levels of sweet, but it's really, it's the air, it's the odors that identify strawberry, for example, from peppermint. So you're smelling it rather than just tasting it with your tongue and your taste buds. Yeah, flavor is mostly about smell and very little about taste. The sensors on your tongue can determine different levels of the basic things, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and meaty or umami.

But when you get it within any of those categories to all the infinite variety, that's really the smell.

So for somebody who really doesn't like to eat any vegetables and their parents are telling them every week, you have to eat your vegetables, you have to eat your broccoli, this tastes good. And the kid is saying, I don't like broccoli. How do you develop a taste for things that at first you don't necessarily like? Well, why should you? I mean, if you don't like broccoli, don't eat broccoli. I think it's very strange in this country that we seem to

like to force kids to eat things they don't want to eat. Certainly, kids should have good diets.

But if kids don't like broccoli, why try to make them eat broccoli? Go find something they do like that is healthy. If they want to eat an apple, have them eat an apple. But I don't believe in forcing foods on people. That makes no sense to me. Our audience is going to think you're the best guest that's ever been on the podcast now. You've just given all of our kids an excuse to say, Mom, Chris Kimball says I don't have to eat my broccoli. Hey, when I was growing up, my mother made me eat okra. So what can I tell you? And I still hate okra. You

You have not developed a liking of okra? Well, if it's crispy and pickled, yes, but otherwise, no. Slimy and goopy doesn't work for you. No. What about spicy food? Some cultures have a lot of spicy food, so you're just going to be exposed to spicy food, and most people sort of adapt to whatever the regional and cultural flavors are in their lives. But spicy food is one area where you can sort of gain and lose spice tolerance. Well, there are...

Some people are more sensitive to spice like I am than others. That's true. You can put a blue dye on the tongue to measure the number of papii or taste buds on your tongue. The more you have, the more sensitive you'll probably be. That's true. And a lot of research now suggests that taste preferences, some of them are genetic. For example...

I can detect bitterness very quickly in food. And that's because I have some genetic markers which allow me to do that. But some large part of the population –

30% or more don't have those markers. So some of it is just physiological, not just a matter of experience. And some of it is experience? I mean, is there a sense that when you try things over and over again, you might change your... If you grow up in a culture that's used to eating spicy foods, you'll be used to eating spicy food, sure. I think there's no question about that. You may not experience the spicy foods exactly the same way as your neighbor, but that'll be part of your diet. Yeah.

For me, when I was a kid, my mom and my stepdad used to have what they thought was their delicacy in the 80s was liver wrapped in bacon. And I thought that was about the most disgusting thing you could possibly eat. And now liver wrapped in bacon actually sounds pretty darn tasty. And that liver texture that was so disgusting to me as a 10-year-old seems pretty appealing now. And that flavor is really wonderful. Yeah.

Do you know what changed? Is it just that I'm an adult and I've made my brain decide that that's a good flavor? Well, it's a good point. Most of flavor is really about what the brain does with the input, the sensory input. So part of it is getting the input.

But the big part in the frontal lobe is where you have emotions and memories and other things is where the brain processes this information. And so your reaction to it and your ability to perceive it is based on experience.

So you may have lots of positive memories or experiences or emotions relating to that food now where 20 years ago you didn't. And that's all part and parcel of how the brain perceives flavor. So what goes on in the brain and how the brain takes those inputs and puts them together, people don't really understand yet. So it's really brain function-based.

controls the perception of flavor more than anything else. So maybe if you just told yourself every day that you really like broccoli, you could eventually convince your tongue that your brain says you like it. There is, yeah, it's called mind over matter. I'm not sure that works. But you can certainly try it. While we had Chris, we had another question we wanted to put to him. Hello, my name is Isidore and I live in Plainfield, Vermont.

My question is, why does pineapple hurt your mouth when you eat too much of it? It is very acidic. I'm sure there's a particular chemical in the pineapple that does that, but it's very high acid, and that's probably why. That was chef, author, and TV and radio personality Chris Kimball. Coming up, we'll learn about how our taste buds actually taste things, and we'll talk about a delicious experiment you can try at home. ♪

This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm, and today we're talking about food. Why some of us love things like caviar, liver, sauerkraut. I really like peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. I know, weird. And some of you probably think everything I just mentioned is gross. But hey, don't yuck my yum. Here's a question from seven-year-old Timothy from Fairfax, Vermont. Why we taste things and how we taste things.

And this. My name is Kate. I am nine years old, and I am from Norwood, New Jersey. My question is, why do different types of food taste different? To get some explanations, we got in touch with Dr. Leslie Stein. She works at the Monell Center in Philadelphia. That's a place where scientists research taste and smell. Dr. Stein tackled these two questions and Alex's question from the beginning of the episode.

Hi, Timothy, Kate, and Alex. Those are great questions, and I'm going to answer them all together. Let me start by telling you that our senses of taste and smell are known as the chemical senses because they detect chemicals in our food and in the air around us.

Did you know that everything, including you and me, is made of chemicals? That's right. That also goes for the things you eat and drink. If you drank a glass of water today, you were drinking hydrogen dioxide, or H2O. That's just another name for water. Table sugar is also known by its chemical name sucrose. And sodium chloride is the chemical name for the salt in your salt shaker.

Our sense of taste checks out the chemicals that make up anything that we put in our mouth. Usually that's a food or a drink. Taste lets us know if we should swallow the food or drink into our body or spit them out because they might be dangerous. I like to call taste the final checkpoint. We are programmed to like some tastes because they tell our sense of taste about helpful chemicals.

For example, we like sweet things because they contain sugar that gives us energy and helps us grow. We also like things that taste salty because that tells us that the food contains sodium, a chemical that we need to be able to stay alive. Other tastes, like bitter and sour, warn us that what's in our mouth might be dangerous, telling us that it might be safer not to swallow and to spit it out instead. But there's something important that I want you to understand.

Taste gives us clues about what's in our mouth, but lots of other things also help decide whether a food or a drink is good for us. Just because something tastes good doesn't mean that we should eat it all the time. It's not healthy to eat lots of candy or salty chips or drink a lot of soda pop. Also, some bitter foods like broccoli actually are very good for our bodies. Now, Kate, let me answer your question. There are three main reasons why different foods taste different.

The first is, as I explained to Timothy and the others, food is made of chemicals. And each food is made up of a different mix of chemicals that activate your taste system in different ways. So if a food has more sugar, it will activate more of your sweet taste. The second reason is that because chemicals in our food also activate our smell receptors. When you chew your food, some of the chemicals go up from your mouth into your nose through a back passageway.

Remember how I said that smell also is a chemical sense? So in addition to taste, other chemicals in your food activate your sense of smell. And because each food is made of different chemicals, each has a different smell that combines with the taste to make the food seem different. So a lot of the way we taste food and recognize its flavor is actually by smelling it. Dr. Stein has an experiment she suggests you try out.

You're going to need two candies or jelly beans of very different flavors. Now hold your nose real tight and put one in your mouth without looking at it.

Your taste will tell you when you chew that it's sweet, but you won't be able to tell if it's watermelon or cherry or licorice or banana until you let go of your nose and can detect the smell. Another way to test this theory isn't as fun. Just wait until you get a really bad cold and your nose is all stuffed up. Have you ever noticed that food just doesn't taste as good when your nose is all plugged up?

That's because you're not smelling the food, so you're missing out on so much of the way we actually experience flavor. Finally, different foods taste different to different people because we're all born just a little bit different.

Just like you might have brown eyes and I have blue eyes, some of us can detect some tastes and smells better than others. It's part of what makes us each special. So Alex, what I just told Kate is part of why some people like different foods. It's because they actually taste different to each of us. If I taste a lot of bitterness in my vegetables, then I probably am not going to like those veggies. But if you can't taste that bitterness, then you'll have no problem chowing them down.

But there's more to the story. We can actually learn to like certain foods by eating them more often. This is probably a big part of the reason that people in different countries like different foods. It's because they eat them every day and are used to them. So if there's a food you don't like, try eating a little bit every time it's served. Be patient. It may take 10 or 15 times before you notice a difference, but you might learn to like it better.

We've been talking about humans, but animals eat food too, of course. And Ben wants to know the difference. He's six and he lives in Kent, Connecticut. Do animals have the same taste buds as people have? Hi, Ben. It turns out that animals and people do taste things differently. For example, did you know that cats cannot taste sweet things? That's because the part of their tongue that detects sweet molecules is broken.

but they can taste bitter things. Other animals that can't taste sweet include sea lions, spotted hyenas, and harbor seals. We also know that dolphins, which swallow their food whole, so really don't need a sense of taste, are unable to detect sweet, bitter, and umami. So just like people, animals are all different too.

Thank you so much for all of your food and taste questions. Earlier, we heard some of your favorite foods. Here's what you told us about the foods you really do not like. Eggplant casserole, because I don't like eggplants that much. Probably sweet potatoes. I really don't like sweet potatoes.

Vegetables, because they don't taste good. My least favorite food is peas. I don't really, really like mac and cheese. I don't really like oysters, because they're kind of tasteless. Mashed potatoes. I just don't like the texture. When I don't like foods, I just chew it a lot, and then I try not to eat it, but I keep chewing.

At the beginning of the show, Alex told us he really likes to cook. Cooking is part of everyday life for a lot of people, and it's something that all of us should learn how to do. Some people, though, take it even further and make a career in the food world.

To find out what it's like to be a chef, I met up with a guy who, at the time we talked, owned a restaurant in downtown Boston. I am Matt Jennings, the chef owner of Townsmen in Boston, and I am here with my family in a woodland retreat. Coleman, who is three, and Sawyer, who is six, and my wife, Kate. And they're actually eating lunch right now. What are they eating?

We just made them one of their favorites, grilled cheese. These guys have a high caloric intake right now because they burn it all off so quickly. So this is grilled cheese with bacon. So if you were advising Alex, who likes to cook food and likes to eat it, on how he could work on his repertoire at home of cooking, what are some things that you think he should try cooking?

Well, the first thing I would tell Alex is that, and this is just coming from me and my kind of...

personal beliefs about cooking and food is that he should try to find the best ingredients that he can find and whether that stuff that his mom and dad can help him acquire or that he can go out in the woods or to an orchard someplace and pick or if he doesn't live near an orchard maybe he goes fishing and he can find a great fishing hole but it's all about fresh and it's all about finding the best quality and kind of the rest of the food is dictated from there

So fresh ingredients are important in knowing where your food comes from. And then what might Alex experiment with? I would say more than maybe experimenting, kind of working to continue to focus on taste and flavor. I think that's so important. And determining what his likes and dislikes are and being able to use those as a place to jump off from to be able to taste new things.

What were the first things that you learned how to make when you were young? So I grew up in New England. I'm from Boston. And in the summer times, we would spend a lot of time at the coast. So my earliest memories of cooking were around seafood.

My father was a big fisherman, and so we would go fishing quite a bit, and we would catch bluefish and striped bass. And I remember cooking bluefish with mayonnaise and lime and a little sprinkling of gin on the grill, which I don't advise for Alex, but maybe his parents did.

and then also straight bass, and we would make delicious straight bass sandwiches for lunch and all sorts of things. And clamming, I would go clamming as well. We'd go clamming all the time and that sort of thing. So those are really kind of my fondest memories of food growing up. When did you know that you wanted to be a chef? I think that I knew I wanted to be a chef before I went to college. I graduated from high school.

And I had been cooking throughout the summers for a summer job during high school and had always loved it. And then decided to go to normal, quote unquote, liberal arts college for a year in western Massachusetts. And that just didn't work out as my thing. So I took a little bit of time off and went back to cooking and kind of realized that that was that was probably really going to be it for me and ended up enrolling in culinary school the next year.

Keep cooking, Alex, and keep tasting, and don't stop experimenting. It's how chefs become great is to...

immerse yourself in as many experiences as you possibly can. And I would say that probably goes for life too. That was Matt Jennings. He used to be the chef owner of Townsman, a restaurant in Boston, and now he has a company called Full Heart Hospitality. That's it for this episode. Thank you so much for all of your food questions and for sharing your likes and dislikes with us.

As always, you can send questions about anything, food or history, ethics, friendship. Have an adult record your question on a smartphone and send it to questions at butwhykids.org. Don't forget to tell us your first name, how old you are, and where you live.

But Why is produced by Melody Beaudet and me, Jane Lindholm, for Vermont Public Radio. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds, and we also had music in this episode from Poddington Bear. We'll be back in two weeks with an all-new episode. Until then, stay curious.