Steve Wertz wrote:

> Do Germans have a propensity for beer and meat/sausages?
> Would the Japanese blooded people prefer fish and rice?
> Do Thais naturally gravitate towards spicy foods?
> How about Chinese and fresh vegetables and noodles?


There's considerable epidemiologic evidence that once a group immigrates
to the United States, they start eating the highly processed foods so
common here and getting the diseases associated with that diet despite
the availability of native foods. So the general answer to your
question is no, food preferences are not genetic.


There are odd exceptions here and there. Lactose tolerance and
intolerance runs in families and in cultural groups. It wouldn't be
unusual to have a whole ethnic group that hated milk because it makes
them all sick.


I believe it is possible to have a dislike for a particular taste that
runs in a family. I've always hated grapefruit and grapefruit juice.
Orange, lemon and other citrus are fine, but grapefruit has special sort
of bitterness I find distasteful. It's hard to describe since I like
other bitter tastes found in greens, but grapefruit tastes awful to me.
I never thought this was interesting so I never mentioned it in the
family. One day I saw passion fruit juice in the supermarket, had never
seen it before and bought 2 quarts to try it. Blech. It tasted like
grapefruit. I noticed it right away. The next day my brother came
over. We didn't see each other often. He was the first guest I thought
I could give the passion fruit juice to. I offered it. He made a face
and said "blech, it tastes just like grapefruit." I interviewed my
parents about it. Sure enough, Mom loves grapefruit. Dad and his
sister hate it. I never knew before. I'm convinced that Dad, Aunt
Judy, my brother and I are all tasters for a particular bitter component
in grapefruit and passion fruit when most others aren't.


It's more likely that the climate one lives in affects taste. Those who
live in a hot climate would be drawn to hot spicy foods that help us
sweat and encourage us to drink lots of water. When we move somewhere
cooler, we still like the taste of hot foods but don't feel as compelled
to eat them. I know that whenever it's cold, I'm drawn to filling
caloric foods like ice cream. When it warms up, I still like ice cream
but don't crave it the same way.


--Lia

Steve Wertz > wrote in
:

> Have there been any studies that have evaluated whether food
> preferences are hereditary and/or genetic?

There is _one_ genetic component -- differences in the sense of taste.
Example: to me, saccharin has a bitter taste. To my mother, it didn't.
This is hereditary.


> Imagine a group of people all full-blooded Germans,

I've met a Latvian who told me that one branch of his family decided
after WW I that they were German, and moved to Germany -- while his
branch decided they were Latvian. He looked as if he had Oriental
ancestry.

"Full-blooded Germans" include a whole lot of people whose ancestors
spoke Baltic languages (Lithuanian, Latvian, Old Prussian), or Slavic
languages. Plus a good many with Jewish ancestry.

So far as my _known_ genealogy is concerned, all of my ancestors were
Jewish. This doesn't explain why some people in my parents' and
grandparents' generations look Slavic, and some look Finnish. Or why
one looks almost as Oriental as his Korean-born wife.

> Thais, a
> handful of Chinese, and a few Japanese, all brought up in a
> regular middle-class U.S of A and fed nothing but cheeseburgers
> and fries all their lives and having never tasted mom's family
> favorite cooking (or grandma's) - having no childhood comfort
> foods to remember (other than cheeseburgers and fries), They're
> all set free at the age of 20 to eat whatever they choose.
>
> Would each group still tend to prefer foods from their country of
> origin?

Most countries have wide variations in local foods.

And what's common food for any country varies greatly over time.
Sometimes even over a couple of generations.

--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://dsgood.blogspot.com or
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/ Whatever you wish for me, may
you have twice as much.

Steve Wertz wrote:
> Do people do it because they feel some sort of obligation or honor?
> Do they think they should satisfy some sort of stereotype? Peer
> pressure from others of the same nationality?

All I know is I love corned beef, cabbage, Guinness, Killian's, but not
potatoes. So I guess I am not a true Irishman...

It has nothing to do with obligaton or peer pressure. I just love that
food. I always have, despite growing up in a neutral household.

--
John Gaughan
http://www.johngaughan.net/

John Gaughan > wrote in news:107hpvkdadck014
@corp.supernews.com:

> Steve Wertz wrote:
>> Do people do it because they feel some sort of obligation or honor?
>> Do they think they should satisfy some sort of stereotype? Peer
>> pressure from others of the same nationality?
>
> All I know is I love corned beef, cabbage, Guinness, Killian's, but not
> potatoes. So I guess I am not a true Irishman...

Nah -- it means you're a throwback to the times before potatoes were
introduced in the British Isles.

--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://dsgood.blogspot.com or
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.

"Steve Wertz" > wrote in message
...
> Have there been any studies that have evaluated whether food
> preferences are hereditary and/or genetic?
>
> Imagine a group of people all full-blooded Germans, Thais, a
> handful of Chinese, and a few Japanese, all brought up in a
> regular middle-class U.S of A and fed nothing but cheeseburgers
> and fries all their lives and having never tasted mom's family
> favorite cooking (or grandma's) - having no childhood comfort
> foods to remember (other than cheeseburgers and fries), They're
> all set free at the age of 20 to eat whatever they choose.
>
> Would each group still tend to prefer foods from their country of
> origin?
>

<snipped>

I would guess that there is no genetic predisposition. In fact I would bet
on it. I think other factors you mention will explain it, particularly
knowing that you are of German (or Japanese, or whatever) ancestry and
therefore having more interest in that food. Taking myself as an example, I
am half Scottish and half Panamanian and have no particular interest in the
foods of either country. On the other hand, I have my father's and his
father's love for the finest spirits and wines - but somehow I think there
are other explanations for this!


--
Peter Aitken

Remove the crap from my email address before using.



--
Peter Aitken

Remove the crap from my email address before using.

I have wondered about genetics and predisposition (or lack thereof) to spicy
foods.

I have never been able to eat anything with chili pepper or cayenne, etc. I'm
extremely sensitive to it - it causes me pain and I get no pleasure out of it,
so I just avoid it altogether. Logically, it does not factor into my household
recipes. I grew up in a household where no spicy food was eaten - and I asked
my dad why that was. Was it because he and/or his parents couldn't tolerate
spicy food, or simply because he grew up eating no spicy food in his own
household? The answer was, both. So I was left wondering, do we share a genetic
distaste for spicy food, or is it a function of what we ate as kids?

I have a Mexican coworker who told me that kids there eat chili pepper
lollipops. Is it because they are born tolerant to chilis, or because at that
age, it is easier to form food preferences?

-Jen
Half the people you know are below average. -Steven Wright

>There is _one_ genetic component -- differences in the sense of taste.
>Example: to me, saccharin has a bitter taste. To my mother, it didn't.
> This is hereditary.

You're saying that taste perceptions alternate between generations, and that
this tendency to alternate is hereditary? Or what are you saying?

Neil

>You're saying that taste perceptions alternate between generations, and that
>this tendency to alternate is hereditary? Or what are you saying?
>
>Neil

US Southerners all seem to have an affinity for grits, but then they all share
the same last name! <G>


---= BOYCOTT FRENCH--GERMAN (belgium) =---
---= Move UNITED NATIONS To Paris =---
Sheldon
````````````
"Life would be devoid of all meaning were it without tribulation."

(WardNA) wrote in
:

>>There is _one_ genetic component -- differences in the sense of taste.
>>Example: to me, saccharin has a bitter taste. To my mother, it
>>didn't.
>> This is hereditary.
>
> You're saying that taste perceptions alternate between generations,

No.

> and that this tendency to alternate is hereditary?

No.

I'm saying that 1) ability to taste is genetic and 2) I had one
particular gene which my mother didn't.

Such a gene might be more common in men than in women for the same reason
that red-green color blindness is -- though in this particular case that
seems not to be true. Or I might have inherited the gene from my father.

It's possible to learn to _notice_ subtle flavors; that's non-genetic.
But no matter how hard someone who doesn't detect bitterness in saccharin
tries, they're not going to detect it.


--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://dsgood.blogspot.com or
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.

"Julia Altshuler" > wrote in message
>
> There's considerable epidemiologic evidence that once a group immigrates
> to the United States, they start eating the highly processed foods so
> common here and getting the diseases associated with that diet despite
> the availability of native foods. So the general answer to your
> question is no, food preferences are not genetic.

Far from scientific evaluation, my observations confirm this. We have
immigrants from a few countries at work. Some stick to their native foods,
but most of their children prefer the same pizza and burgers we eat most of
the time. The older people seem to stick more traditional than the younger.
Ed

http://pages.cthome.net/edhome

at Sun, 11 Apr 2004 18:29:28 GMT in
>, (Edwin
Pawlowski) wrote :

>
>"Julia Altshuler" > wrote in message
>>
>> There's considerable epidemiologic evidence that once a group
>> immigrates to the United States, they start eating the highly
>> processed foods so common here and getting the diseases associated
>> with that diet despite the availability of native foods. So the
>> general answer to your question is no, food preferences are not
>> genetic.

Isn't there a risk of confusing ethnicity/country of origin from genestock?
Very, very few populations of any given country come from a narrow,
monolithic gene pool, and so for similar reasons I'd expect to find
differences in food preferences among people of the same ethnicity. Unless
the genetic pool were unusually narrow, e.g. among some Jewish communities,
it would be very difficult to prove genetic food preferences.

OTOH, there probably are food preferences that are genetic - things people
with the same gene sequences would tend to like or dislike. I suspect there
are far more of these out there than we know. I know people react to
specific components in food, like, for instance, in green peppers where
some people are totally repulsed, where others can't get enough. I think if
you can identify an otherwise inexplicable preference or dislike that seems
to occur in various other uncorrelated individuals, that suggests a
possible genetic connection.

>
>Far from scientific evaluation, my observations confirm this. We have
>immigrants from a few countries at work. Some stick to their native
>foods, but most of their children prefer the same pizza and burgers we
>eat most of the time. The older people seem to stick more traditional
>than the younger. Ed

How much of this is responding to social pressure rather than individual
taste? IME a majority of people are more concerned with social
acceptability than with the exact gratification of their specific desires,
and in food, for instance, will often swallow down things they might not be
particularly fond of in order to fit in. Undeniably pizza and burgers in
the USA are social foods - the occasions on which they tend to be eaten are
ones where the social interaction is usually far more important than what's
being eaten (which is, in addition, a big reason why so many abysmally poor
burger joints and pizza parlors stay in business). Older people are less
easily swayed by social considerations because by a certain age people
establish their social identity by and large and without a conscious effort
to change it usually don't change all that much.


--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

"Alex Rast" > wrote in message
>
> How much of this is responding to social pressure rather than individual
> taste? IME a majority of people are more concerned with social
> acceptability than with the exact gratification of their specific desires,
> and in food, for instance, will often swallow down things they might not
be
> particularly fond of in order to fit in.

Unscientific, but a group of mixed ethnicicy and a group of foods of mixed
styes is what I have seen. At a luncheon buffet consisting of oriental,
Italian, some loosly defined foods everyone had a choice of anything on the
table. The older orientals tended to eat the rice, spring rools, fish. The
younger ones (a couple from the same family) tended to eat more of the other
foods.


> Undeniably pizza and burgers in
> the USA are social foods - the occasions on which they tend to be eaten
are
> ones where the social interaction is usually far more important than
what's
> being eaten (which is, in addition, a big reason why so many abysmally
poor
> burger joints and pizza parlors stay in business).

How about when they eat pretty much alone? In our plant breaks and lunches
are staggered. The people bring their own. Most bring dishes typical of
their native lands. In one case a husband and wife in their 30's. She will
have chichen or fish and always rice. He is likely to microwave a buger.

> Older people are less
> easily swayed by social considerations because by a certain age people
> establish their social identity by and large and without a conscious
effort
> to change it usually don't change all that much.

Agreed. But you don't see the kids clamoring for some of their foods of
national origin.
Ed

http://pages.cthome.net/edhome

Edwin Pawlowski wrote:
>
> "Alex Rast" > wrote in message
>
> > Older people are less
> > easily swayed by social considerations because by a certain age people
> > establish their social identity by and large and without a conscious
> >effort to change it usually don't change all that much.
>
> Agreed. But you don't see the kids clamoring for some of their foods of
> national origin.
> Ed



True, but for many of us when we get older those foods
of national origin become comfort foods. Don't we often
see requests here for recipes "like my grandma used to make"?

When we are younger, symbols of ethnicity are often embarrassing,
when we are trying hard to "fit in". Luckily, most of us outgrow
that shallowness.

gloria p

In article >,
wrote:

> True, but for many of us when we get older those foods
> of national origin become comfort foods. Don't we often
> see requests here for recipes "like my grandma used to make"?
>
> When we are younger, symbols of ethnicity are often embarrassing,
> when we are trying hard to "fit in". Luckily, most of us outgrow
> that shallowness.

I know that was absolutely true for me. I grew up as an Arab
American in Eugene, Oregon. I looked different, my mom spoke with an
accent, she didn't let me do all of the things my friends did, we ate
different food. All I wanted in the whole world was to be normal and
like everyone else. As I got older, I started to get over most of that.
My friends loved my mom's food, but I wanted to eat cheeseburgers and
pizza.

I've had a little bit of that angst come up again now that we have a
daughter. Rich wanted her to look like me, but I wasn't so sure. I was
the kind of girl that everyone's parents thought was attractive, but the
kids in school didn't agree. As an adult it was different, because I
was exotic, but exotic isn't in when you're an adolescent. Amira looks
a lot like me, and I remembered how hard it was looking so different
from everyone at the ages when appearance meant so much. Her hairline
is like mine, her face shape, coloring, hair, all of it, and I don't
want her to grow up thinking she is ugly because she doesn't look
Norwegian.

Regards,
Ranee

--
Remove do not and spam to e-mail me.

"The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of
heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man." Acts 17:24

Alex Rast wrote:

> Isn't there a risk of confusing ethnicity/country of origin from genestock?


Yes. The original poster phrased the question in terms of food
preferences being genetic and then gave examples having to do with
ethnicity and country of origin. I continued the confusion when I might
have pointed out, as you did, that genetics and ethnicity are usually
two different things except for those instances where they overlap. I
believe that in the gist of what we're saying we agree.


Interesting that you mention green peppers as an example of a food that
people love or hate and might have a genetic component as to why. I was
a picky kid who wouldn't eat vegetables. My odd exception was green
peppers. I loved them, still do. I can remember a time when I was in
my 20s and eating a raw green pepper unsliced as others might eat an
apple leaving the seeds in the center to be thrown out as a core. I
passed a woman who made a face and called out "throw it away." I could
see that eating the pepper like that was unusual but hardly gross the
way eating live bugs in public might be.


--Lia

On 4/13/2004 1:37 PM, Julia Altshuler wrote:
> Alex Rast wrote:
>
>> Isn't there a risk of confusing ethnicity/country of origin from
>> genestock?
>
>
>
> Yes. The original poster phrased the question in terms of food
> preferences being genetic and then gave examples having to do with
> ethnicity and country of origin. I continued the confusion when I might
> have pointed out, as you did, that genetics and ethnicity are usually
> two different things except for those instances where they overlap. I
> believe that in the gist of what we're saying we agree.

I heard an interview on NPR this weekend. This guy just wrote a book
about rats that live on the streets of NY. He stated that the rats
develop a food preference that matches that of the food available in
their neighborhoods. In other words, rats that live in Chinatown prefer
Chinese food to Italian. Somehow, I don't think that has to do with the
genes that each rat is carrying.


--
jmk in NC

Julia Altshuler wrote:
>
> So the general answer to your
> question is no, food preferences are not genetic.
> There are odd exceptions here and there.

Some common ones:

Pimento peppers and the powdered form paprika is hot to some,
bland but colorful to others. My whole family is in the bland
group so woe onto anyone with enough Hungarian bloodline who
eats stew at our place.

Avocados are delicious to my wife but nearly flavorless green
crayons to me. I don't dislike them I just can't detect the
specific chemical in them she likes.

Asparugus are one of my favorite veggies and I can easily
detect the smell when I urinate afterwards. My wife thinks
they are brand and nearly flavorless. It's the avocado
situation genetically reversed.

On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 21:17:11 -0500, Steve Wertz wrote:

> Have there been any studies that have evaluated whether food
> preferences are hereditary and/or genetic? [...]

don't those twin studies, where they reunite twins adopted out separately
show some spooky flavor and scent related choices? iirc, they often show
up for the study with the same brand of toothpaste, aftershave, etc.

fwiw, a brief web-surf yielded:

"Yet despite the stark contrast of their lives, when the twins were
reunited in their fifth decade they had similar speech and thought
patterns, similar gaits, a taste for spicy foods and common peculiarities
such as flushing the toilet before they used it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ins/twins2.htm