Hate salad or veggies? Just keep eating them. Here’s how our tastebuds adapt to what we eat
Do you hate salad? It’s OK if you do, there are plenty of foods in the world, and lots of different ways to prepare them. But given almost all of us don’t eat enough vegetables, even though most of us (81%) know eating more vegetables is a simple way to improve our health, you might want to try. If this idea makes you miserable, fear not, with time and a little effort you can make friends with salad.
Why don’t I like salads?
It’s an unfortunate quirk of evolution that vegetables are so good for us but they aren’t all immediately tasty to all of us. We have evolved to enjoy the sweet or umami (savoury) taste of higher energy foods, because starvation is a more immediate risk than long-term health. Vegetables aren’t particularly high energy but they are jam-packed with dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals, and health-promoting compounds called bioactives. Those bioactives are part of the reason vegetables taste bitter. Plant bioactives, also called phytonutrients, are made by plants to protect themselves against environmental stress and predators. The very things that make plant foods bitter, are the things that make them good for us. Unfortunately, bitter taste evolved to protect us from poisons, and possibly from over-eating one single plant food. So in a way, plant foods can taste like poison.
Published: December 28, 2023 9.38pm CET
Author Emma Beckett
Senior Lecturer (Food Science and Human Nutrition), School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle
Disclosure statement Emma Beckett has received funding for research or consulting from Mars Foods, Nutrition Research Australia, NHMRC, ARC, AMP Foundation, Kellogg, and the University of Newcastle. She also works for FOODiQ Global. She is a member of committees/working groups related to nutrition or the Australian Academy of Science, the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Nutrition Society of Australia.
