Humans are born with the ability to identify five types of tastes sweet, bitter, salty, sour, and umami (Romm, 2016). But each person in this world has unique taste buds, therefore, every human being has a different taste preference based upon the daily foods we eat. We develop these taste buds that could differ based on genetics, culture, and variety of food. However, we are born with a sweet taste, and after 4 months salty taste emerges and after some time other tastes develop too (Weiten & McCann, 2006). For example, my family and I have sweet teeth based on our genes and I love eating sweet taste food, like chocolates, candies, sweet dishes, and many more. Hence, constant exposure to sweet tastes in my childhood developed my sweet taste buds and I started liking sweet flavor foods, as a psychologist named Robert Zajonc mentioned, the more times you are exposed to a particular taste, the it will likely become your favorite (Vanderbilt, 2013). On the other hand, I disliked spicy, salty, sour, bitter, and umami taste foods. Even though I am an adult, I don’t like to eat most of the seafood and red meat like crabs, lobsters, and cow meat. I also absolutely do not like to taste or eat insects ever even though they are a great source of protein, fatty acids, water, minerals, vitamins, and iron (Yanes, 2018).
Firstly, I don’t like to eat red meat, insects, and seafood including shrimp, oysters, crabs, octopus, and lobsters. However, I do like to eat fish in seafood after growing older because I have been exposed to its taste since I was young and my mother cooks it every week. But I have never tasted an oyster, lobster, or octopus in my life. Additionally, I only eaten a crab once in my life which didn’t taste impressive or different, and I eat shrimp occasionally because seafood is not as popular in our culture as it is in many Asian countries (Weiten & McCann, 2006). Secondly, I do not like to eat red meat because it tastes different even though I eat meat almost every day, in my childhood, my mother would cook meat three times a week because red meat is expensive in Pakistan, Karachi. Plus, most of my family did not eat beef during my childhood because it is hard to digest for my father. Therefore, based on Robert Zajonc's effect of “mere exposure”, I still do not like to eat red meat but on the other hand, my youngest brother and my cousins like to eat mutton and beef, who were introduced to it more than me and my sister (Vanderbilt, 2013). Based upon observational learning, social learning that happens through observing other’s behavior, and classical learning, which is a learning process in which an unconditional stimulus is associated with a neutral stimulus, I would pair my father’s suffering of his not being able to digest the beef and after observing is sufferings, I assumed that it was dangerous to eat red meat for me too as mutton and beef meat looks the same (Weiten & McCann, 2006). Furthermore, during my childhood, I did not like to eat red meat and any seafood because it looked ugly due to its appearance and different and strong smell (Gholipour, 2016). Similarly, I feel unpleasant even by seeing other people eat insects because I have never been present with a meal that had cooked insects, as it is not in our South Asian culture. Moreover, after seeing other people in my culture feeling disgusted about eating insects, I quickly assumed that is unpleasant to eat them overall (Weiten & McCann, 2006).
In conclusion, my dislikes of eating red meat, insects, or seafood are influenced greatly by the people around me and my genes. Therefore, it will always be hard to eat or experience new tastes and foods in my life as now I am an adult.
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Unforgettable Experience in Childhood: Essay.
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