I don't remember when spicy food became part of my personality. What I do know is that Flamin' Hot Cheetos fill a significant portion of my suitcase on trips to see my family in Mexico and Ecuador (where such Frito-Lay delicacies have yet to take over store shelves).
And, as any good spice head knows, not all hot sauce is created equal – which is why I carry packets of Tapatio in my purse for those emergencies when you ask for hot sauce and your waiter says, "we have Tabasco."
So when we got a question about food preferences from a listener in Washington D.C., it really caught my attention. When it comes to taste, our listener wants to know – are we born with particular food preferences? Or, are even our taste buds shaped by race and class?
Hi, Code Switch!
My name is Anton Allequin, calling from Washington, D.C.
I grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania – a predominantly white town. My parents immigrated from the Philippines and, being in a predominantly white area, one of the only ways that we could stay connected with our Filipino culture was food.
Growing up, I felt very insecure about my food preferences versus my white friends' food preferences. And I think I started developing an understanding or perception that food preferences were stratified based on race.
When I moved to a city that was more diverse, I started seeing that that wasn't necessarily always the case. And so I wanted to know more about the historical context and the social context behind food preferences.
How do race and class affect food preference and what makes a picky eater versus a non-picky eater?
So I asked British food journalist and author Bee Wilson to help us unpack Anton's question. In her book First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, Bee contributed her own research to the study of taste.
It's pretty widely accepted that taste is strongly influenced by genetics, environment, and experiences. And while taste studies don't often focus on race or economic status, research has found demographic characteristics like ethnicity, household income, even gender to be significantly associated with picky eating.
But Bee's research also presents another, possibly more significant influence on taste – memory.
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