Your Birthplace Designs Your Taste Buds!

By Staff

Tuesday, June 23, 2009, 11:59

There are a lot of things in your life shaped by the place where you were born. For instances, your accent, culture, manners and character to an extent are shaped by your birthplace. The recent news is that your birthplace also designs your taste buds too.

Your birthplace decides what you like to eat and drink. People"s culinary preferences could be broken down like regional accents and are highly dependent on an area"s history. Taste is determined by our genetic make-up and influenced by our upbringing and experience with flavours.

Scots specifically seek rich and creamy flavours that impact at the back of the tongue. Indians prefer spicy and aromatic flavors as their favourite dishes. People from Northern Europe refer tastes that trigger saliva juices at the tip.

This is because different parts of the tongue tend to pick up varying flavours. The front of the tongue is sensitive to sweet flavours and the back picks up the taste of bitter foods. The sides of the front of the tongue usually detect sour flavours, while the middle tastes salty foods and a little-known taste called umami, best represented by soy sauce.

Taste preferences are predetermined by a combination of economics, culture and genetics. Just as with spoken dialects, where accent is placed on different syllables and vowel formations, people from different regions have developed enhanced sensitivities to certain taste sensations and seek foods that trigger these. 'Taste dialect'' is a good phrase because just as you get dialects in any other countries, so you get taste dialects that are driven by different factors.

Greg Tucker, a food psychologist, and Andy Taylor, Professor of Flavour Technology at the University of Nottingham and an adviser to Heston Blumenthal, the chef conducted this study.