Ask Code Switch: Is picky eating about taste or race?

I don’t remember when spicy food became part of my personality. What I do know is that Flamin’ Hot Cheetos fill a significant portion of my suitcase on trips to see my family in Mexico and Ecuador (where such Frito-Lay delicacies have yet to take over store shelves).
And, as any good spice head knows, not all hot sauce is created equal – which is why I carry packets of Tapatio in my purse for those emergencies when you ask for hot sauce and your waiter says, “we have Tabasco.”
So when we got a question about food preferences from a listener in Washington D.C., it really caught my attention. When it comes to taste, our listener wants to know – are we born with particular food preferences? Or, are even our taste buds shaped by race and class?
So I asked British food journalist and author Bee Wilson to help us unpack Anton’s question. In her book
, Bee contributed her own research to the study of taste.
It’s pretty widely accepted that taste is strongly influenced by genetics, environment, and experiences. And while taste studies don’t often focus on race or economic status, research has found demographic characteristics like ethnicity, household income, even gender to be
associated with picky eating.
But Bee’s research also presents another, possibly more significant influence on taste –
.
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Do you have a question for Lori and the Code Switch team? Send us your questions on Instagram @nprcodeswitch. Or, email us at
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