Hate cilantro? It may be the fault of your genes. [View all]

[sufrommich]

I'm a cilantro hater,it literally smells and tastes like hand soap to me and makes me gag,turns out it may be genetic along with distaste for other foods:


According to the New York Times, the aversion to cilantro, and its reminder flavors (people complain the herb tastes like soap or reminds them of bedbug odor) make sense, since chemically they are similar to both bugs and soaps: "Flavor chemists have found that cilantro aroma is created by a half-dozen or so substances, and most of these are modified fragments of fat molecules called aldehydes. The same or similar aldehydes are also found in soaps and lotions and the bug family of insects."

Further research has shown it's not the flavor, but the scent of cilantro that is offensive to some people, and it seems to be because those who have an aversion actually smell less well than others—they aren't smelling the "good" part of cilantro that those of us who like it do. (I would guess that something similar is behind my aversion to celery; it's the smell that is so awful to me—when it's cooked up in a soup I don't mind the flavor at all.)

It looks like the cilantrophobia is a genetic thing, as Charles J. Wysocki of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia has preliminarily determined by testing twins for cilantro dislike (it's likely that identical twins will both either find cilantro wonderful or horrendous, suggesting—but not proving—a real gene-based link.)

But what about other foods? Turns out we are all tasting the world a little differently, depending on our genes, according to a 2013 study in Current Biology called Olfaction: It Makes a World of Scents. Can you smell apples? Many people can't. Tomatoes are another fruit that different people perceive differently (how many times have you seen your dinner companions pushing tomatoes in a salad to the side?). Another 2013 study looked at specific mechanisms behind why people perceived foods differently.


Read more: http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/why-hating-cilantro-and-other-flavors-may-be-genetic#ixzz33aX8oiZh