Why Don’t We All Like The Same Food?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2018
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Humans have the potential to eat pretty much anything – but the reality is we don’t. Wherever we live in the world, we eat just a small fraction of the foodstuffs available and show strong preferences for certain foods over others. Those preferences can change dramatically from person to person, or as the saying goes – one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Then at the extreme end of the spectrum you get so-called ‘fussy eaters’ who reject so many foods that they are confined to beige diets of crisps, crackers and cereal.
So why do we show such different preferences for food? And why are some people fussier than others? That’s what CrowdScience listeners Orante Andrijauskaite in Germany and Anna Nicolaou in Belgium would like to know, and what Datshiane Navanayagam is off to find out.
She discovers how both biology and culture shape whether a food is disgusting or delicious and learns why we should stop giving children a hard time about finishing their dinner. She also learns how global cuisines evolved and what that can teach us about helping fussy eaters to overcome their food fears.
Presenter: Datshiane Navanayagam Producer: Anna Lacey
(Photo: Fried Bugs in Bangkok night market. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and maybe it's when I had a hand in. |
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| 0:24.3 | So if you like what you hear, why not check out the huge range of podcast we've got on BBC |
| 0:29.1 | Sounds? |
| 0:30.1 | Listen, chips? Is there |
| 0:34.0 | is a chips? |
| 0:35.0 | I had to say I don't know which one is yours but this looks really nice. |
| 0:39.0 | Just putting my lemon wedge all over my cod. I'm going vinegar. Yes actually we're going |
| 0:46.4 | plenty of salt. I'm Dachie Navanayagam and you're listening to crowd science from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:56.6 | We take your science questions and we go on the hunt for answers, which is why producer Anna |
| 1:01.5 | and I are at the great British seaside with a famously British dish. |
| 1:06.2 | You're tucking in there dashi, what's the verdict? |
| 1:09.0 | Delicious, I think this is the best fish and chips I've ever had. |
| 1:11.5 | Can you describe the taste? |
| 1:13.3 | Yeah, it's, you know, it's flaky white fish |
| 1:16.2 | that's moist and tender, deep fried in very crunchy batter. I mean there's something so satisfying when you just bite into it |
| 1:26.8 | all those different textures. I don't know I mean for me it's the it's the smell |
... |
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