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We do. Thanks to studies monitoring identical twins, and surveys of gene data from personal genomic companies, we know that there are genes that affect our sense of taste, our sense of smell, and even the reward centres in the brain. For instance, our likelihood of thinking that coriander tastes\u00a0soapy<\/a>\u00a0is thanks to the variant of the odour receptor gene OR6AS that you inherit.<\/p>\n Genes can influence whether you can taste the bitter compound phenylthiocarbamide or not (about 30 per cent of Europeans have the variation of the taste receptor gene TAS2R38 that makes them \u2018taste blind\u2019 to this cabbage flavour). Even the extent to which your brain\u2019s reward centres respond to bacon could come down to DNA (blame your variant of CNTN5 if you\u2019re addicted to this\u00a0meaty treat).<\/p>\n But our food preferences don\u2019t just come from our genes. We know that babies in\u00a0the uterus\u00a0will \u2018breathe\u2019 amniotic fluid \u2013 and that newborns prefer the taste and smell\u00a0of\u00a0compounds that their mothers ate a lot of in pregnancy.<\/p>\n And even though we\u2019re all genetically predisposed to be suspicious of bitter compounds \u2013 they\u2019re usually toxic to humans \u2013 most of us learn to tolerate, or even love, bitter things like coffee, chocolate or alcohol once we\u2019ve discovered their fringe benefits. So your genes may have a lot of influence but they\u2019re far from the whole story.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n Asked by: Kamila Magmedova, aged 14<\/strong><\/p>\n To submit your questions email us at questions@sciencefocus.com (don\u2019t forget to include your name and location)<\/em><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Emma Byrne Published: Thursday, 25 November 2021 at 12:00 am We do. Thanks to studies monitoring identical twins, and surveys of gene data from personal genomic companies, we know that there are genes that affect our sense of taste, our sense of smell, and even the reward centres in the brain. For instance, our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":364,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/11\/do-humans-have-a-genetically-inherited-preference-for-taste.jpg",1200,536,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/11\/do-humans-have-a-genetically-inherited-preference-for-taste-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/11\/do-humans-have-a-genetically-inherited-preference-for-taste-300x134.jpg",300,134,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/11\/do-humans-have-a-genetically-inherited-preference-for-taste-768x343.jpg",768,343,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/11\/do-humans-have-a-genetically-inherited-preference-for-taste-1024x457.jpg",800,357,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/11\/do-humans-have-a-genetically-inherited-preference-for-taste.jpg",1200,536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/11\/do-humans-have-a-genetically-inherited-preference-for-taste.jpg",1200,536,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Emma Byrne Published: Thursday, 25 November 2021 at 12:00 am We do. Thanks to studies monitoring identical twins, and surveys of gene data from personal genomic companies, we know that there are genes that affect our sense of taste, our sense of smell, and even the reward centres in the brain. For instance, our…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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