ABSTRACT
For humans, eating is often a group rather than a solitary activity, and it is inevitable when eating with others that individual differences in food preferences become obvious. These food preferences form early in life (Mennella et al., 2001) and persist into adulthood (Nicklaus et al., 2004). People like to eat familiar foods that are safe and avoid foods associated, even indirectly, with illness. However, pleasant experiences and time also help to form food preferences. For instance, the ability to tolerate and even like bitterness increases as children grow to adulthood, and the liking for sweet and sour decreases (Desor and Beauchamp, 1987; Liem and Mennella, 2003). Over a lifetime, new foods are tried, rejected, or incorporated into the diet. Against this backdrop of development and environment, there are inborn differences in food likes and dislikes which may be due to genetic constitution. There is a genetic basis to bitter detection in humans (Bufe et al., 2005) and given that fat intake is moderately to highly heritable, it is likely that genotype contributes to food selection and, by extension, to fat preference.
