Firstly, the topic I chose to talk about is taste aversion. The concept of taste aversion is that humans are more apt to have an aversion to food if they become sick afterward even if they have no relation at all. Moreover, the effect can even happen in a single trail. If one feels sick hours after eating, the association is still made. Furthermore, this concept is a common trait that humans have in their lives. If someone eats something and then becomes ill afterward, they will form an association between the food and illness. This results in a protective attitude that your body generates and causes you to reject the food. Not only is the concept likely in humans, but animals develop it as well. Consequently, farmers use it to control predators. For example, if a wolf is hunting a sheep and you put a substance on the sheep to make the wolf nauseous, when the wolf tries to eat the sheep, it will associate the sheep with the feeling of being nauseous. The outcome of this is to protect farm animals and sway the wolves away from hunting them. The temptation to eat something one loves can diminish immensely when this conditioning happens.
Secondly, I have experienced taste aversion before and I still can’t get over it even when I know it’s psychological. When I was a kid, my mom made me shrimp scampi. I used to love the dish so much; however, when she made it this time, I ended up getting extremely nauseous a couple hours afterward. I had to lay in bed for the rest of my night but couldn’t fall asleep due to the height of stomach pain I was in. Ever since that day, I can not eat, smell, or think about anything that has to do with shrimp. On the contrary, I know that this nausea could have been a result of many things and not just the shrimp that my mom made me that night. However, I still can not seem to get myself to eat it again. This experience is a clear representation of taste aversion and how it has affected my life directly. I put a negative spin on the shrimp she had cooked for me and made this assumption that the nausea was associated with the shrimp.