A topic we discussed during this unit that stuck out to me was taste aversion, as it reminded me of a story a family member had shared with me. Taste aversion occurs when we associate the taste of certain foods with symptoms of an illness. In class we discussed an example of farms that used taste aversion to scare off wolves, from eating chickens. The taste aversion resulted in wolves fearing the chickens, because they associated them with the nauseous feeling and bad taste. This reminded me of a story that my aunt had shared with me a few years ago. During her third pregnancy she experienced nausea almost daily, and she began to associate this nausea with banana pudding. We had a Christmas dinner one year in which my sister made a banana pudding dessert with vanilla wafer cookies and my aunt did not want to eat any. We were all confused at it used to be what she called her “pregnancy craving”.
My aunt shared that although she used to love the dessert, one day she ate it and began feeling extremely nauseous and this resulted in her vomiting. She claimed that since that experience she feels extremely nauseous even just at the thought of the dessert. Although we all joked around after hearing this story, after learning about taste aversion in class it all made sense to me. She had begun associating banana pudding with the feeling of nausea, hence why she can no longer eat it because she fears she will become ill.
This experience reminds me of an experience I had as a child, and the reason that I can no longer eat rocky-road ice cream. Growing up my sister was obsessed with rocky-road ice cream and one day she had a bowl and walked away for a little bit. As a small child I decided to eat her bowl of ice cream as fast as I could before she got back. As you can probably imagine it made me feel extremely nauseous and still to this day I never choose rocky road for this reason.
Hi Karly! I had the same experience with taste aversion as your aunt did! One time, I drank hot chocolate which I used to love when I was younger! It’s crazy how our brains can create such strong connections between an experience and a specific taste! However, I drank it one time and about 20 minutes later felt nauseous. Then I threw up about 45 minutes after that. Now, anytime I am offered to have hot chocolate I make a grossed-out face and deny it because I associate hot chocolate with nausea now. You did a great job explaining the concept of taste aversion and gave awesome examples!
Hi Karly,
I really enjoyed learning about taste aversion as I never knew it was a mechanism animals had, but it makes so much sense. I find it interesting that in your stories even though the nausea wasn’t directly caused by the food associated with it, our mind still creates a taste aversion to that food. Your aunt didn’t become nauseous because the banana pudding had gone bad, she was nauseous because she was pregnant. Just like how the rocky-road ice cream you had didn’t go bad, it was because you ate it too fast. It’s weird how in both cases, the mind still makes that association that the food should be avoided. Personally, whenever I have jellyfish salad, I always throw up afterwards, but I do not have a taste aversion to it. So every time it’s served, I forget that I shouldn’t be eating it.