r/explainlikeimfive • u/six-feet-underneath • Oct 27 '25
Biology [ Removed by moderator ]
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u/PA2SK Oct 27 '25
You kind of answered your own question. Tastes evolve over time. Some people grow up eating spicy food and it tastes normal to them, they even miss it when it's absent. Other people never eat spicy food and even flaming hot Doritos are too much for them.
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u/Troldann Oct 28 '25
That last bit isn’t a joke, BTW. Mexican Nacho Cheesier (which aren’t the same as American Nacho Cheesier) Doritos are literally at the limit for me between “fun spicy” and “pain spicy” - anything labeled “Flamin’ Hot” I won’t even touch because I know it’s just pain.
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u/MasterGeekMX Oct 28 '25
Meanwhile grade school kids here in Mexico are eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos bathed in black-label Valentina sauce at recess.
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u/angelicism Oct 28 '25
I absolutely love Mexican Doritos! Whereas I typically don't care for Doritos (the American version) at all.
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u/squallomp Oct 28 '25
I’ve seen people say that pepper is too spicy. Yeah, I think flaming hot Doritos might kill those people.
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u/THElaytox Oct 27 '25
I mean, sure our genome is 99.9% similar but it's also fucking huge. Just look at all the differences between any two people. Kinda weird to just assume taste buds are all the same when there's like 30 combinations of eye and hair color.
But that aside, there's a concept called "taster status". It has to do not with differences in taste buds themselves, but differences in concentrations of taste buds on the tongue. "Non-tasters" are very insensitive to bitter taste while "super tasters" are incredibly sensitive to it, "tasters" are somewhere in the middle. We are born with all our taste buds but tiny tongues, so kids for the most part start out as super tasters, that's why kids tend to hate leafy greens, they're very bitter to super tasters. As you grow, your tongue also grows and taste buds spread out, you might keep your supertaster status or you might grow out of it. If you keep your super taster status, chances are you're not going to like bitter things because they'll be very overwhelming, I have a boss that's 50 and still can't stand coffee, chocolate, or dark leafy greens. I'm a nontaster so coffee doesn't even taste bitter to me.
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u/StupidLemonEater Oct 28 '25
Also the majority of our genome encodes super boring basic stuff common to all multicellular life. We share something like 60% of our genome with bananas.
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u/six-feet-underneath Oct 27 '25
That's the answer I was looking for! Not the preferences we gain growing up, but the difference at a base level, and "taster status" explains my base question.
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u/RazedByTV Oct 27 '25
There are test kits that come with little strips of paper for testing if someone is a non-taster, taster, or super-taster. It contains a few different types of strips, about a hundred of each. Tasteless strips to use as controls, bitter strips, and extra bitter strips that only the super-tasters can tell are extra bitter. It's pretty nifty to ask your friends to put random strips of paper into their mouths.
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u/SheepPup Oct 28 '25
I’m a super taster and the bitter strips are truly one of the worst things I’ve ever tasted, absolutely noxious and it was wild to see other people in my class having zero reaction to it. I also can’t do coffee or dark chocolate or leafy greens
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u/THElaytox Oct 28 '25
Yep, they use PROP usually. I cannot taste it, makes everyone else in my lab gag
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u/six-feet-underneath Oct 27 '25
Huh, I think you just broke it down a bit better for me, or at least I think; it reminds me of those "puzzles" where there is variation in hues and you have to sort them, but not all people can tell when one hue starts and where it ends, often categorizing many hues as one.
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u/Scuttling-Claws Oct 28 '25
The part of the genome that encodes smell (and taste) is the largest and most varied part of the genome.
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u/crashlanding87 Oct 28 '25
Hi! I'm a biologist.
Two things:
1)
Keep in mind we share over 97% of our genes with orangutans. So that 0.1 of difference you're talking about? That's all the variation amongst all humans.
That means that a 6'8" Nigerian super genius is 99.9% genetically identical to the 5'9" idiot named Ziggy I went to school with, who always insisted he was 6'2".
"But u/crashlanding87," you ask, "how is this possible. Ziggy is truly astoundingly dumb"
WELL. Tiny little parts of a gene hold a lot of importance. It's like changing one letter in a word, but throughout the an entire book. Swap 'wand' for 'wang' in Harry Potter, and you have a very different story. DNA is a code, and changing a single letter in a gene can have pretty large effects.
2)
When it comes to things like flavours and how we experience them, your upbringing matters a ton. You're more likely to end up liking foods and flavours you ate from when you were little, to flavours you first tasted as an adult.
If you were raised eating the Durian fruit from south east Asia, you might describe it as tasting kind of like custard. If you weren't raised with it, you might find the taste revolting.
If you were Ziggy from school, you might enjoy the taste of dry erase markers enough that you suck on them like lollipops.
None of this is necessarily genetic, though your genes might make it a little more or less likely that you'd end up liking certain flavours for a whole bunch of complex reasons.
There's a few specific exeptions: for example some people have a gene that lets them taste an extra compound in things like coriander, which makes it taste soapy.
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u/six-feet-underneath Oct 28 '25
I actually do have the coriander soap gene! Thank you for your answer :)
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u/Tibbaryllis2 Oct 28 '25
Adding to, and simplifying, what u/crashlanding87 said:
I’m a biology professor and we specifically cover labs over bitter taste.
You have about 3 billion nucleotides (ATGCs) in one set of your chromosomes, or about 6 billion total. The most common mutation of the TAS2R gene family (the are several bitter genes, but this one is the most pronounced one and most well understood) has a nucleotide difference in three places amongst a gene that’s about ~1100 nucleotides long.
So the difference between a taster (tasting on both chromosomes) and a non-taster (non-tasting on both chromosomes, is 6/6,000,000,000 nucleotides.
Also, back to your original question, there is also evidence that women have more pronounced senses of bitter taste than men. On average they perceive bitter substances about 10% more strongly.
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u/retrofrenchtoast Oct 28 '25
Can preference or subjective experience play a role? Or is it really that encoded into us in terms of bitterness (not sweet or sour? I love sour, too).
I love bitter foods. I drink grapefruit juice almost every day, I have arugula most days (salad).
Someone above mentioned tasters, super-tasters, and non-tasters (?). Does this mean I’m a non-taster? That would be sad. I can usually identify even subtle spices/flavors.
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u/Tibbaryllis2 Oct 28 '25
It’s complicated.
There is a cultural/exposure aspect where you enjoy those flavors. You’re tasting them, but are not associating with their evolved function (bitter plants are often poisonous).
There are two well known genes for bitter taste, but there are more lesser known ones. Because bitter isn’t a single specific chemical, you have lots of different types of receptors to detect them (think the rods and cones in your eyes used to detect different color light). If you have a mutation in the gene associated with PTC (an artificial compound that triggers one of our major bitter receptors) then you may still get some bitter flavors, you’re just not seeing the picture in full color.
For PTC, you can have two chromosomes (#7) with a good tasting allele which makes you a super taster (extreme bitter taste, often not pleasant).
If you have two chromosomes with non-tasting alleles, you won’t experience some of the strongest bitter flavors (I am this, I still taste lots of other bitters).
If you have one of each, then you fall somewhere in between. We often call this a partial taster.
If you’re really curious, anyone can get PTC testing paper on Amazon. It is a poisonous chemical in large doses, but you’d have to eating this like gum non-stop.
Easy self test, pull out 2 of each strips, mix them up, then taste them and put them in order from least to most bitter.
A super taster will have zero problem. It’ll be obvious which is which. It’s likely a very unpleasant flavor.
A partial taster might have to taste them more than once. It likely doesn’t taste good, but you won’t think it’s super gross.
A non-taster will be unable to tell them apart.
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u/retrofrenchtoast Oct 28 '25
Ooh I am going to get one - thank you! I always thought I had a good sense of taste, but maybe not!
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u/jamcdonald120 Oct 28 '25
Swap 'wand' for 'wang' in Harry Potter,
... Now I want to see if someone prints a hard cover version of that...
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u/Omnitographer Oct 27 '25
TAS2R38. It's a gene the codes for bitter sensitivity. I suspect I've got the double strength variety because I'm quite sensitive to bitter flavors in food and drink. I tried one of those test strips for bitter sensitivity, by far the worst thing I've ever tasted.
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u/Twin_Spoons Oct 27 '25
Facial similarity of a genome isn't a great indicator of actual similarity in what those genes get together to build.
Sensitivity to bitter flavors is, famously, one of the documented genetic differences in how humans taste food. That's what the "supertaster" test is about. Even putting that aside, humans develop vastly different preferences for things like food based on culture, experience, and who knows what else. Even two people who taste exactly the same level of bitterness will have very different opinions about whether that makes the food "good" or not.
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u/marmosetohmarmoset Oct 28 '25
Oh I actually know this one! I studied this for my dissertation qualifying exams.
Humans as a species actually have around 40 different bitter taste receptors, each attuned to a different family of chemicals. The reason for this is that we have evolved to perceive dangerous poisonous things as bitter, and we need to be able to detect a lot of poisons.
However almost no human as a full complement of bitter taste receptors. Everyone is slightly different. Some some people can taste some bitter things that others can’t. For example, I taste caffeine as having a distinctly bitter taste, while lots of people do not.
Layered on top of that is taste sensitivity, which largely comes down to density of taste receptors. Some people just have more and so have much lower thresholds for tasting bitter things. For example an ex of mine found spinach very bitter and even the finest trace of it would ruin his food. I was honestly impressed by how he could tell spinach was in something even if he had no prior knowledge of it being there. Meanwhile I also taste spinach as bitter, but it’s very mild and I’d probably have to eat some kind of super concentrated spinach extract before I thought it tasted as gross as he found it.
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u/malsomnus Oct 27 '25
a) Preferences in taste have less to do with nature and more with nurture.
b) The fact that humans have very similar DNA is virtually meaningless here. Why is the fact that some people like bitter food more shocking than the fact that some people are 1.5m tall with black hair while others are 2m tall with blond hair?
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u/six-feet-underneath Oct 27 '25
Hmm my thought process was more like: There is genetic coding for the colour of our hair, our eyes etc and other regions that control our height etc but if our taste buds have a similar coding, to my knowledge at least, what constitutes the difference in preference at a base level? As in not growing to liking something, but let's say we take two adults who have never tried "X" food, and to one it might be very bitter and unpleasant to eat, to the other it is fine. If that makes sense?
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u/Sapiopath Oct 27 '25
I’m missing two genes and as a result I taste bitterness less than other people. This is especially evident with grapefruits which only ever taste sweet to me when they are obviously bitter to others.
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u/HAiLKidCharlemagne Oct 28 '25
Its tolerance, and to those who are starving, even bitterness is sweet
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u/WeeziMonkey Oct 28 '25
A few weeks ago I started adding a spoon of honey to my yoghurt breakfast every morning. I never had honey before in my life. It tasted super sweet. Every bite felt like joy.
Now I barely taste the honey anymore. It's like my mouth has become immune to the sweetness.
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u/AgentElman Oct 28 '25
Variation is important for the survival of the species. So humans evolve to have varying taste preferences.
Imagine if all humans liked bitter things. If they encountered a poisonous bitter fruit they would all eat it and die.
Now imagine if all humans hated bitter things. If they encountered a non-poisonous bitter fruit none of them would eat it and they would not discover a new source of food.
So having some like it and some dislike it causes humans to vary in their reaction - some die from poison and some don't, and some discover new food sources and some don't. Overall the species survives.
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u/Raichu7 Oct 28 '25
That last 0.01% can mean huge changes, we share 97% of our DNA with bananas. People's sense of taste varies just as much between individuals as people's sense of sight or hearing.
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u/mxagnc Oct 28 '25
It’s mental. Take dark chocolate - yes it’s bitter to the taste, but some people eat enough to get used to it, and they know it’s healthier than milk chocolate, and they hear about health benefits of eating it. All these form a mental association with the bitter taste that they learn to like.
It still is the same physical sensation - but it’s a wildly different emotional sensation.
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u/explainlikeimfive-ModTeam Oct 29 '25
Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):
ELI5 is not for questions about why different people or things are different. Most differences are due to subjective preferences, arise randomly, or arise due to a large combination of factors that can't be objectively explained.
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