{"id":3768,"date":"2007-10-23T06:18:30","date_gmt":"2007-10-23T13:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/10\/23\/study-finds-link-between-genes-and-palette\/"},"modified":"2007-10-23T06:18:30","modified_gmt":"2007-10-23T13:38:18","slug":"study-finds-link-between-genes-and-palette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3768","title":{"rendered":"Study Finds Link Between Genes and Palate"},"content":{"rendered":"

I cringed when I read the title of this BBC article: “Diet Choices ‘Written in genes.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

The claim: twin studies<\/a> suggest that “Identical twins were far more likely to share the same dietary patterns – like a penchant for coffee and garlic.”<\/p>\n

The Kings College researchers looked at a total of more than 3,000 female twins aged between 18 and 79, working out their broad preferences using five different dietary “groups”.<\/p>\n

These included diets heavy in fruit and vegetables, alcohol, fried meat and potatoes, and low-fat products or low in meat, fish and poultry.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Professor Jane Wardle, from University College, said that the findings, and other similar research, pointed to genetics playing a “moderate” part in the development of preferred foods.<\/p>\n

She said that it was possible that genes involved with taste, or the “reward” chemicals released by the body in response to certain foods, might play a role.<\/p>\n

“People have always made the assumption that food choices are all due to environmental factors during life, but it now seems this isn’t the case.<\/p>\n

“It also suggests that what parents do to influence eating habits in childhood are not necessarily as important as we thought – and that a lot of effort may need to be made with young people as they become independent in adolescence to steer them onto the right course.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This feels, to me, like a lot of spouting based on preferences for garlic and coffee. Garlic and coffee are things that hit certain parts of the palette. They suggest that the way things taste on the tongue is perhaps partially genetic — but didn’t we know that? Some segment of the population (to which I unfortunately belong) is unable to determine the finer distinctions between most of the spices we use in food, all of which are instead only interpreted by the brain as pain. That’s genetic. Why wouldn’t “bitterness tastes good” (like coffee) be one of those things?<\/p>\n

Although really, coffee’s a poor example because it has such a heavy social meaning. Personalities can help drive people toward coffee, and we know that twin studies indicate similarities in personality. So, garlic is better. Yes, I will believe that genetics influence how people interpret the flavor of garlic.<\/p>\n

But to make a leap from that to a more sophisticated claim about dietary types? Eh… I haven’t read the study, but it seems problematic to do, and I wonder how many of the factors which a social scientist would see as important to such a study were included.<\/p>\n

And of course, as usual, the claim (which we are to take as something ruling out social influences) is probably only tested in one or two regions (say: England, or England, America, and France), so it doesn’t necessarily say anything definitive about cultural mediation of taste. (If I’m wrong about that, would be happy to hear it.)<\/p>\n

I haven’t read the study itself, and I’m not an expert on these topics, so these are just ruminations. As reported, this study yields some interesting information. However, it seems to me that its findings are likely to be overblown. Anyone catch American television news coverage of it? Was it really annoying?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I cringed when I read the title of this BBC article: “Diet Choices ‘Written in genes.” The claim: twin studies suggest that “Identical twins were far more likely to share the same dietary patterns – like a penchant for coffee … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-fat-and-more-fat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}