Or do they argue? And why do some people like classics and oatmeal and others like rap and hamburgers? Are tastes innate? Or do they depend on upbringing? Or maybe it is hereditary at all?
How to find out? If one and the same person could be brought up from childhood on Russian national cuisine and classical music, and then return to childhood and try to bring up again on
hamburgers and rap...
By the way, it's possible! How, thanks to
twins. In life, it sometimes happens that twins are separated at an early age and grow up in different families. With their help, scientists have tried to understand the basis of differences in tastes: what is innate and what is the result of lifestyle and upbringing.
For example, two such twins grown apart are offered a number of test tubes with water in which quinine is mixed in different concentrations. The quinine gives the bitterness, and the subject must put the tubes in order: "insensible bitterness", "pleasant bitterness" and "unpleasant". Then the same is repeated with citric acid and salt. It turns out that twins raised in different environments have similar basic taste preferences!
"Eureka?" Is taste innate? But that's not the most surprising part....
This amazing story began on August 19, 1939 in the small American town of Piqua, Ohio. In one family twin boys were born. Even in infancy they were orphaned and separated: they were adopted by different families living in different towns. These families did not communicate with each other; they did not even know each other. One boy was given the surname Springer by his adoptive parents, the other Lewis. Coincidentally, however, both separated brothers were given the name James.
Nearly forty years have passed. James Lewis learned the secret of his birth and began to search for his twin brother. It was not difficult, and soon the brothers met. It turned out that the same name was not the only coincidence in their lives.
Both worked as deputy sheriffs. Both liked to craft with wood. Both didn't like baseball (which doesn't happen often with American men). Both had dogs named Toy. (Not strange at all, it's a common enough nickname.) Both survived a heart attack, and at about the same time. (And that's not uncommon with twins.) Now, pay attention...
Both had sons. Lewis named his firstborn son James Alan, while Springer named him Alan James.
A similar story happened to twin sisters Bridget Harrison and Dorothy Lowe. They were born in 1943, were separated and first met in 1979. And it also turns out that Bridget named her son Andrew Richard and Dorothy named her son Richard Andrew! What's it like.
There were other coincidences in the sisters' lives. For example, both of them kept diaries for a long time, and although they described different events, the dates of entries and long periods of omission in keeping diaries (when for some reason one does not want to write anything down) coincided!
These examples seem to show that tastes (affections, preferences) are influenced by genetics. But!... Any scientific experiment is not considered correct without a control (i.e., verification) experiment. And what would be a control experiment here?
Twins who don't share all the same genes, but half on average. And not separated, but raised in the same family. Would they have the same tastes? Imagine, no. Twins with a different set of genes would pass the taste test differently!
So the assumption is confirmed, our preferences are in our genes? But scientists consider any conclusions not final, but intermediate, even very convincing. Yes, some of the coincidences in the lives of the twins we've described are impressive. But pay attention: in their lives coincide "some things", not "everything"! A lot of things don't match!
"There's clearly more to dig here," the biologists decided. And they started digging.
First, they experimented on rats from so-called "pure lines" (where all rats are almost exact copies of each other), and then - on humans. And it turned out that even in exact genetic copies (the same twins) stomach and liver cells secrete different sets of enzymes!
Enzymes are protein compounds responsible for digesting and assimilating food.
The sets of genes remain the same, but the reading of information is different. And it depends on... "upbringing"!
For example, it has been found that taste preferences in rats are inherited. It's called epigenetics. In the meantime, we will try to find out to what extent our tastes can be nurtured, again from the point of view of biology.
Our entire nervous system (and hearing, sight, smell, and touch are functions of the nervous system) evolved so that we could survive in the wild. To be able to distinguish between edible and inedible food, to detect danger by hearing, to remember our own and distinguish strangers from our own, and so on.
Our most important senses are taste and smell ...
Yes, the average modern person receives 85 percent of information about the surrounding world through vision, but nature considers taste and smell to be the most important sensory organs! From them to the emotional centers of the brain - just two switches of neurons. In other words, taste and smell are the "first aid" of the brain. They are the first to signal: "Eatable! You can eat it!" Or vice versa: "Wow, what a disgusting thing! Dangerous!"
Taste and smell are followed in order of importance by hearing (third place) and vision (fourth place). There are more intermediate neural switches from them to the emotional centers of the brain.
What does that mean? First, it means that this "help" is not as "fast" as the sense of smell and taste. Sight "tells" the brain, "Well, it looks edible, but before you eat it, you should smell it! There's no telling what it looks like..." And hearing says, "I hear some rustling! It could be a predator, or it could be the wind rustling the leaves. Just in case, run, but remember the sound, because every time you run away from the rustling leaves - no nerves are not enough ... "
Did you notice what the rumor "said"? It said the word "memorize"! And what is memorization? And this is the very "education": when we have to memorize that this sound is very dangerous, and this sound is not very dangerous....
Our first educator is nature itself, and then we begin to educate each other: "Remember, Kolya, this is bad! And this is good."
The more neural switching involved "on the way" from the organs of smell, taste, hearing and vision to the brain, the greater the opportunity to "attach" new knowledge and get a different emotional response to a smell, tune or taste.
Even in life, we see how the very conservative olfactory analyzer adapts and a person enjoys eating, for example, a cheese that smells disgusting. What to speak of the more flexible auditory analyzer, which allows some of us to enjoy not the sonorous nocturnes of Chopin, but such a horror as....
Anyway, it doesn't matter what it's like. There's no arguing about taste.