This Tastes Weird...

At the Golden Bear Cafe today, better known to Berkeleyans as GBC, I was in line at the sandwich bar making my order when I noticed something incredibly peculiar. The man in front of me had asked for a sandwich with ham, banana peppers, and guacamole. That's it. No lettuce, no tomatoes, no onions, no mustard, no ketchup, no nothing (yes, I realize it's a double-negative, but please bear with me.) This combination blew my mind; who the hell gets ham with banana peppers and guacamole?

Then I thought about what I was getting. I asked for a smörgåsbord of vegetables, namely lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, olives, and jalapeños, along with hummus and spicy mustard. To many, this may seem like a bit too much greenery, but I like it like that, just as the guy in front of me liked his sandwich the way he ordered it. I smirked at the time when I contrasted what I ordered and what he ordered. How are our tastes so different? Why is it that this man in front of me ordered something that I found so disgusting (apart from the fact that I'm vegetarian) yet he found appetizing?

I wonder what is the origin of individual taste. From where do our tastes come and to what extent is it genetic and/or social? I like olives. A lot of people I know absolutely hate olives. How does this make sense? We share 99% of our genes, yet our sense of taste is so different. Everyone out here in California likes the warm weather. I love the snow and find it absolutely excruciating that it can be sunny and 75 on Christmas day. I like hardcore hip-hop with intricate beats, while my best friends listen to party anthems with infectious hooks.

I don't understand how this difference in taste came about. It might be that our parents believe certain things and feel certain ways about particular things, and so we tend to believe them as well. It might be that we're genetically predisposed to liking and hating particular things. I tend to think that it is a little of both (yes, I took the easy way out), and in general our tastes reflect our personalities. More often than not, this music website called Pandora (www.pandora.com), which makes an educated judgment on one's musical tastes based on an artist or song they enter, has been correct about my tastes. They've recommended songs that I may like, and yeah, I've liked a lot of them. How did they know? This part of me makes me think that it's genetic, since Pandora doesn't know the lifestyle I have or environment in which I live. Then there's that part of me that thinks taste is based on our surroundings and the people with whom we associate. I know for sure that at some point I started to like a song solely because it was played ad nauseum by my roommate. I know that I've started to like a song because I knew someone, perhaps one I admired, who liked it too.

What I don't understand is how all our brains think so differently, yet are so structurally similar. It just makes you wonder how mad a scientist mother nature is - or mother nurture, if that's how you roll.