"I always eat my broccoli"

I'm big into broccoli. Thankfully it is a really healthy food because I tend to crave food that is not quite as good for me. I've never really understood why some people have such an aversion to it, but I imagine it has a lot to do with how you are raised. Then I found this article that shows there may be more to it than that.


Hate broccoli? Spinach? Blame your genes
Extra taste buds create an aversion, for some, to bitter vegetables and other foods.
WHAT WE EAT
February 19, 2007|Susan Bowerman, Special to The Times

If you can't stand black coffee, chances are good that you also turn up your nose at bitter-tasting grapefruit juice, broccoli, spinach, green tea or soy products. You may be a genetic "super-taster" -- with more specialized taste buds on the tip of your tongue than the average person.
For you, tasting foods can be the equivalent of feeling objects with 50 fingers instead of five -- due to tiny genetic differences you share with fellow super-tasters.
The super-taster story goes back decades. In the early 1930s, a DuPont chemist named Arthur L. Fox was synthesizing a chemical called phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC, in his lab. While he was pouring the PTC into a bottle, a bit of it flew into the air -- and, apparently, right into the mouth of Fox's lab partner. The partner commented on how bitter the substance was -- yet Fox, who also got splashed, couldn't taste a thing. Fox later found that response to bitter taste runs in families.
These days, a related, but equally bitter, compound called 6-n-propylthiouracil (known as PROP for short) is used in research to determine sensitivity to bitter taste. About 25% of people (so-called super-tasters) find PROP unbearably bitter. Another 25% (nontasters) can't taste PROP at all. The remaining 50% just find PROP moderately repugnant.
Researchers have identified a taste gene, called TAS2R38, that's responsible for these differences in response to PROP as well as our perception of certain other foods. It all depends on what variant of the gene a person has. Scientists have also found that people with the super-taster version of the gene have a greater number of specialized structures, called fungiform papillae, on the tip of the tongue.
Women are more likely to be super-tasters than men. And, interestingly, many chefs are super-tasters. Most parents probably assume that their children are super-tasters, given that so many children have an aversion to vegetables. But although the desire for sweets or rejection of vegetables is certainly influenced by a child's genetic makeup, studies in children with various types of TAS2R38 gene have shown that cultural and economic forces also influence their taste preferences.
Whatever version of TAS2R38 someone has, it's true to say that many people, young and old, don't like vegetables. In evolutionary terms, that makes some sense. Plants produce natural bitter pesticides to protect themselves from being eaten, and sometimes these substances are toxic. No wonder humans have evolved to instinctively avoid very bitter foods. Luckily, the amounts of these natural toxins found in fruits and vegetables aren't harmful to us. (We're considerably larger than the average garden pest, after all.)
Scientists hypothesize that the genetic differences in response to bitterness may have evolved according to the natural environment in which ancient humans found themselves. Perhaps in one environment -- one rich with bitter and potentially toxic plants -- possessing the super-taster gene might have been a plus, assuring survival. In relatively safer surroundings with fewer toxic plants, possessing the nontaster gene would be more beneficial, because nontasters would readily consume a wider range of foods, thus reaping the health benefits of a varied plant-based diet.
Scientists hypothesize that the genetic differences in response to bitterness may have evolved according to the natural environment in which ancient humans found themselves. Perhaps in one environment -- one rich with bitter and potentially toxic plants -- possessing the super-taster gene might have been a plus, assuring survival. In relatively safer surroundings with fewer toxic plants, possessing the nontaster gene would be more beneficial, because nontasters would readily consume a wider range of foods, thus reaping the health benefits of a varied plant-based diet.
You might think that in our modern world, super-tasters would be at a disadvantage because they may avoid cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, tea, soy and many other foods that contain healthful but distasteful plant nutrients. But there may be a plus side to the super-taster trait. Some super-tasters find sweet foods too sweet, and very fatty foods unpalatable. As a result, they'll eat less of those things and their risk of obesity and heart disease might be lower. And super-tasters generally find scotch and beer undrinkable, so perhaps they are less likely to become alcoholics.

The Chicken or The Egg

I believe the egg must have come first. I can't quite see a chicken just appearing out of thin air so I think that the egg was a product of DNA mutation from two non chickens and as I just discovered, the zygote cell is the only place where DNA mutations could produce a new animal, and the zygote cell is housed in the egg so that kind of seals the deal for me.

Can Diversification save species?

Nothing in the world stays the same because everything is affected by cause and condition, so diversification seems to me to be a natural part of evolution. It doesn't always guarantee a species survival, but all current species as we know them are a product of diversification, having transformed according to the challenges they were faced with in the past.

How did Humans and Chimps diverge as a species?

Well apparently not even the top scientists who spend their career researching this exact question can come up with a definitive answer, so I don’t feel too bad in saying I’m really not sure..I do think it is an interesting idea that chimps and humans could have diverged through interbreeding and thus creating different lineages from this hybrid. I can see how this would be a plausible conclusion since at that stage I imagine the differences weren't so distinguishable that it would make them incompatible mates for the time. I would think that the different physical and mental development and the needs of this crossbreed would set them enough apart from their predecessors to support the divergence of these species, over time becoming more and more distinct.

Can we raise our Dopamine levels ourselves?

There are many ways for us to raise our levels of dopamine ourselves. Stress is a factor that affects our dopamine levels and therefore qi gong would be an excellent way to help as it emphasizes moving stagnant energy through movement, breath and intention. Other kinds of exercise from yoga to sports are also effective because they get the endorphins pumping. As mentioned in class, not only sex, but physical touch such as hugging, kissing and massage have all been proven to increase dopamine levels. Food intake is another influential aspect. Sugar, saturated fats, cholesterol, and refined foods all interfere with proper brain function and can cause low dopamine. Eating food high in antioxidants is beneficial as free radicals lower dopamine levels in the body, and antioxidants eliminate free radicals. Also caffeine can work against us because it boosts the neurotransmitters in the brain and increases serotonin temporarily, but after the high, dopamine levels sink lower.

Is there a drug around for just about everything?

So it seems. Although whether they are actually effective is another story. Pharmaceutical companies seem to be heavily pimping out all these flashy new drugs that claim to fix any problem you may have. They heavily persuade the doctors who many of us blindly trust, to prescribe their medicine. Their commercials make life appear as it though is all happy and wholesome with good looking healthy people frolicking in parks and on beaches, making you feel like if you take this drug you could be one of them. Isn't there something a bit creepy how at the end of these commercials they read this long list of possible side effects in a really fast voice? As though if they say it fast enough we won't really pay attention to the fact that the medication could actually do you more harm than good. Many of the side effects apparently aren't even detected before they go on the market. Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States die every year from adverse drug reactions. I don't think all medication is evil but I do think that many of the problems that people are suffering from need to be looked at from a more holistic perspective. I understand wanting a fast and easy solution to take the pain away but the same disease can manifest so differently in each individual and therefore it doesn't make sense that can be one cure for all. So while they continue to create drugs for conditions we didn't even know existed, there still haven't really found a cure for conditions that are very prevalent in the U.S. such as cancer and other chronic diseases.