"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.