6 Minute English / What decides our taste?

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Phil.

And I'm Beth. Now, let's talk about food.

OK. What food do you love? What food do you hate? If you ask around, you'll soon see there's no right or wrong answer it's all a question of taste.

But our taste, it turns out, isn't simply a matter of opinion. Rather, scientists have discovered that taste is influenced by our genes and DNA. So, in this programme we'll be asking, what is taste? Why can't we agree on it? And is it worth listening to experts whose job is to tell us what to eat and drink? And, as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

Great, but first I have a question for you, Beth. A good way of finding out about British tastes is with the nation's best-loved snack, crisps. So, what is the most popular flavour of crisps in the UK? Is it:

a) salt and vinegar?b) cheese and onion? or,c) prawn cocktail?

I'm going to guess cheese and onion.

OK, Beth, I'll reveal the answer later in the programme. Science's understanding of how taste works started only 25 years ago with the discovery of taste receptors, cells located in the taste buds on your tongue.

But people's taste is unique to them. What tastes sweet to me, might taste sour or salty to someone else, and this is because of differences in the receptors we're born with. In other words, taste is partly genetic. Here's Danielle Reed, researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia explaining more to BBC World Service programme, 'The Food Chain':