BBC Learnings · Section 20

Love the food you hate

Neil, are there any foods that you used to really hate in the past but now don't mind?

Level: B1 · 106 sentences

Transcript

  1. Neil, are there any foods that you used
  2. to really hate in the past but now don't mind?
  3. Yes, actually. There's a Japanese food called umeboshi,
  4. which when I first tried it, I really didn't like.
  5. But after a while I got used to it
  6. and actually now I really love it.
  7. How about you?
  8. A similar story to me with olives.
  9. I used to really hate olives,
  10. but as I've grown older, I've also grown to love them.
  11. Well, in this episode, we'll be learning from food
  12. experts about why there are some foods we just hate
  13. and whether it's possible to learn to love them.
  14. OK, a question for you, Becca.
  15. What word means to have a fear of new
  16. things, such as trying new foods?
  17. Is it a aerophobia, b claustrophobia, or c neophobia?
  18. Well, Neil, I'll go for c neophobia, because neo sounds like new.
  19. That's clever thinking, but let's see.
  20. Now though, back to food.
  21. Some experts have said that we
  22. can teach ourselves to like new things.
  23. Ruth Alexander asks Dr Dana Small of McGill University,
  24. where our dislike of certain foods comes
  25. from in this BBC World Service programme, The Food Chain.
  26. Are food dislikes learned or genetic, hardwired in some way?
  27. Both. So there's many reasons why you can dislike a food.
  28. For example, you could via genetics smell coriander or taste coriander differently.
  29. So that's genetic but there's also a really strong learning component.
  30. Dana explains that how we taste
  31. or smell something can be different depending on our genetics.
  32. However, how we taste or smell something can also be learnt.
  33. Ruth asked if a dislike for certain food is hardwired.
  34. And Dana confirmed that this is sometimes the case.
  35. The adjective hardwired describes automatically thinking or behaving
  36. in a particular way, for instance, because it's genetic.
  37. And Dana says that you could taste
  38. food differently to others via genetics.
  39. The preposition via means by the way
  40. of or by the use of. For example,
  41. I get to work via a train.
  42. So there are lots of different reasons why we dislike some foods,
  43. but can we change that? Let's listen to dietitian Clare Thornton-Wood
  44. explaining on the BBC World Service programme The Food Chain.
  45. One of the really good techniques
  46. that we might use is something called masking.
  47. Where you dip a food that you
  48. don't like into something that you do like.
  49. For those parents who really say they
  50. like everything, we actually get chocolate-covered insects,
  51. and we offer those, and actually
  52. people do eat them and try them,
  53. and I think it's the concept that it's an insect,
  54. but usually they find that once they eat it,
  55. there isn't anything inherently unpleasant about it.
  56. It is a little bit like eating
  57. just a bit of crunchy Chocolate. Clare uses masking.
  58. Masking is the act of stopping something from being seen.
  59. In Clare's clinic she masks the disliked
  60. foods with something that is liked.
  61. Yes, and what parents usually find out
  62. is that the food they dislike isn't inherently bad.
  63. The adverb inherently describes something that exists
  64. in a way which is natural or essential.
  65. So insects aren't inherently unpleasant to eat.
  66. Some of us think they are because the concept
  67. of eating them could be strange to us culturally.
  68. We talked about how people sometimes fear trying new food.
  69. Clare talks about where these fears might come from. For instance,
  70. just say that you had eaten prawns in the past
  71. and you had become unwell from eating them,
  72. you know, you'd had what you call a dodgy prawn.
  73. There's a good chance that you might actually associate
  74. that with eating the prawn and think,
  75. oh, I don't want to eat prawn again
  76. because it's going to make me unwell.
  77. So that's a sort of fear-based avoidance.
  78. Claire said that you're likely to have a fear of a food
  79. if you've had a bad experience with it.
  80. She uses the example of eating
  81. a dodgy prawn, which would make you unwell.
  82. If something is dodgy, it's generally bad or has a bad reputation.
  83. But when we talk about food,
  84. it could mean that it's undercooked, old
  85. or has been left out, therefore making you sick.
  86. In fact, we may avoid dodgy things.
  87. To avoid is to keep away from something.
  88. So avoidance is the act of keeping away.
  89. Now, Neil, that reminds me of the question you asked earlier.
  90. Ah yes, I asked you what word means
  91. to have a fear of new things, and you answered c neophobia.
  92. And, Becca, I'm pleased to say your answer was correct.
  93. So my thinking was right! That's great.
  94. Now let's have a recap of the language we've
  95. learnt in this episode, starting with hardwired,
  96. which describes automatically thinking or behaving
  97. in a particular way because of genetics, for example.
  98. Via is a preposition that means by way
  99. of or by use of. We had masking,
  100. that's hiding or stopping something from being seen.
  101. The adverb inherently describes something that exists
  102. in a way which is natural or essential.
  103. We also had avoidance,
  104. that is the act of keeping away from something.
  105. And finally, when we talk about food,
  106. dodgy means something that can make you unwell.