Bill Kilpatrick used to hate cilantro. To him, the herb smells like bug spray and tastes so strong it can’t be masked in a smoothie like kale or spinach can. “It doesn’t play well with others,” says Kilpatrick, a 50-year-old high school teacher in Lakeland, Florida.
But when he started performing stand-up comedy two years ago, Kilpatrick learned to love cilantro. Not just for its nutritional value, which helps him wake up early to teach teens and stay out late to entertain adults, but also for the green’s polarizing nature that makes it the perfect fodder for jokes.
“All I have to do is mention cilantro, and it divides the room,” Kilpatrick says. People either love it or hate it — so much, in fact, that there’s even a website called IHateCilantro.com. Cilantro “looks so nice, it looks so cute,” Kilpatrick says, but looks can be deceiving. “It’s like evil parsley,” he says.
What makes some foods like cilantro so appealing to some and so repulsive to others? In some ways, food aversions are the faults of the foods themselves, says Rebecca Scritchfield, a registered dietitian in the District of Columbia and a U.S. News Eat+Run blogger. “The most-hated [foods] have extreme flavor — it could be bitter, or sour or even sweet,” she says.
But personal factors also influence whether you love or hate a food or drink. “Like any human behavior, [food preferences are] hugely multifaceted,” says John Hayes, associate professor of food science at The Pennsylvania State University, where he directs the Sensory Evaluation Center. Genetics, personality, prior experience and culture all play a role. “We all live in different taste worlds,” Hayes says.
Nature and Nurture
If you can’t stomach cilantro or other bitter foods such as cabbage, Brussels sprouts or arugula, you can blame your DNA. “Something as simple as … a really small change in your bitter receptor gene can actually influence how much you like to eat vegetables and how much you do eat vegetables,” Hayes says. In other research, he and colleagues found that the bitterness of a sweetener found in Coke Zero also varies with genetics.
Personality also seems to affect whether people like spicy food, according to Hayes’ research. In a 2013 study of about 100 adults, published in the journal Food Quality and Preference, Hayes and a colleague found that spicy food lovers were more likely to score high on “sensation seeking” traits — responding, for instance, that they would have liked to be one of the first explorers of an unknown land — and “sensitivity to reward” traits, meaning they plan actions that result in rewards such as social status, money or sexual partners. Their penchant for spice wasn’t explained by a tolerance for spicy foods or simply enjoying food more in general. During the course of research, Hayes’ team asked people if they like driving fast on a twisty road. “That was actually really highly correlated with whether or not you like spicy food,” he says.
But it’s not just individual characteristics that determine which foods you love — and love to hate. Environment and experience matters. too. Perhaps the easiest way to develop a hostility toward a particular food is to eat it — and then throw up, Hayes says. That’s what happened to Scritchfield when she ate oysters and mussels, foods she now avoids. For Hayes, Cheerios are nauseating, although he was too young when he developed the reflex to remember why.
In scientific speak, the phenomenon is called a “conditioned taste aversion,” or learning to detest a food because it’s associated with a bad outcome like getting sick. Others might call it “Southern Comfort syndrome,” since about half the time the aversion is alcohol-related, Hayes says.
And then there are cultural factors. When Kilpatrick asked his students — most of whom are from Spanish-speaking cultures — about their feelings on cilantro, they reported loving it “with a passion.” To them, making sauces without the herb is like making spaghetti sauce without garlic or oregano, Kilpatrick says.
It’s typical for taste preferences to be influenced by culture, though it’s not clear which is the chicken and which is the egg, Hayes says. “Is it that cultures that use a ton of cilantro have a low proportion of people who find it soapy? Or, the other possibility is it’s just part of the cuisine so they just learn to deal with it,” he says. “We don’t know.”
Too Picky for Your Own Good?
There’s a difference between disliking a few foods or being a picky eater and avoiding so many foods or food-related situations that you become malnourished, socially isolated or otherwise unable to go about your daily routines. In the more extreme cases, these behaviors can signal an eating disorder like orthorexia — an unofficial term for an obsession with health eating — or avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, a newly recognized condition in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
“Just like all the other [psychiatric] diagnoses, when that behavior becomes truly impairing would we consider whether another diagnosis is warranted,” says Dr. Eve K. Freidl, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. In the case of ARFID, which can occur at any age, “impairing” typically means stunted growth and development, as well as “an inability to participate in developmentally appropriate activities,” such as a group lunch or a birthday party, Freidl says.
Treating the condition depends on its cause. For example, if a child is avoiding a food like leafy greens because of the texture, preparing it in a different way can help boost its appeal. (Hayes’ daughter, for one, once proclaimed Brussels sprouts so delicious she couldn’t stop eating them. “Which I thought was hilarious,” says Hayes, a former Brussels sprouts hater.) If an adult avoids certain foods because he or she is afraid of choking or throwing up, a psychiatrist might treat it more like an anxiety disorder or phobia by slowly introducing the food in safe situations.
Whether the fear is a food or something else like riding the subway, “we try to expose them to the thing that they’re afraid of to [help] them learn that whatever bad stuff happens is something they can tolerate,” Freidl says. “The more you do it, the less bad it feels.”
How to Like Foods You Hate
If you’re tempted to just say no to all leafy greens and blame it on your genes, listen to Hayses’ mantra: “Biology is not destiny, and food choice is still a choice.” Coffee is a case in point. In his research, Hayes found that while people vary dramatically in how bitter they feel coffee tastes, that doesn’t predict how much they like or drink it.
“Just as we have post-ingestive learning with getting sick, we can also have post-ingestive learning with positive consequences,” Hayes says. In coffee’s case, that may be a caffeine jolt; in beer’s case, it may be a happy buzz.
Hayes recommends flavoring foods you don’t like with different spices or additives — salt, for one, helps block bitterness, he says — or simply eating different vegetables that are more appealing. “If you really don’t like cruciferous vegetables, there’s no reason that you can’t go and eat … other colorful vegetables” such as squash, peppers or spinach, he says.
Scritchfield recommends cooking vegetables differently. “Many people are traumatized from overcooked broccoli in school,” she says. Instead, try roasting it for a new and improved flavor. “You may need to try new foods 10 different ways before really deciding if you like it or not,” she says.
Kilpatrick’s favorite way to down raw veggies is by pairing them with a dip like honey mustard. Just like icing helps sell the cake, the dip can make or break the carrots, he says. Over the past couple years, making small changes like swapping an afternoon soda for an apple has not only helped Kilpatrick feel better and gain energy, but it’s also altered what he likes to eat.
“[An apple] is juicy, it tastes good and it actually peps me up way better than a candy bar, way better than a soda,” he says. “I find myself coming back to clean, wholesome foods.” Even cilantro.
More from U.S. News
10 Healthy Meals You Can Make in 10 Minutes
Easiest Diets to Follow: in Pictures
Here’s Why You Hate Cilantro — and Other Foods originally appeared on usnews.com
