Something You Should Know
How Your Sense of Taste Really Works & Why Sports Fans Care So Much
08 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: How can driving with a cold be more dangerous than driving drunk?
Today on Something You Should Know, how driving when you have a cold can be more dangerous than driving drunk. Then, a look at all the things that influence how food tastes.
How does packaging, how does marketing, how does color or storytelling literally change how something tastes? As researchers, we know that people can rate exact same products higher if the marketing feels more premium.
Also, who's more likely to wake up grumpier, a man or a woman? And the psychology of sports fans. Why do people identify so strongly with teams and athletes?
We know from research fans are twice as likely to change their marriage partner as they are their sporting team allegiance. But what's beautiful about sport is that that love tends not to diminish, unlike our romantic partners with whom we get bored.
All this today on Something You Should Know.
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Chapter 2: Why do some people love foods that others can’t stand?
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Chapter 3: How do factors like packaging and marketing influence our taste perception?
Listen to All About TRH podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. New episodes weekly. So if you had a cold or the flu, but you had to go somewhere, would you still drive there?
I bet you would. Most people would. But maybe you shouldn't. And that's what we're going to start with today on this episode of Something You Should Know. There's a warning from a study that suggests that driving with a cold or the flu can be even more dangerous than driving drunk.
Researchers compared the reaction time of cold sufferers against the reaction time of people with alcohol blood levels above the legal limit. The results found that those with a cold had lower alertness levels than those who were over the legal limit. The drivers who had a cold had a tendency to follow too closely and took longer to stop the car on command.
It seems that when your body is fighting an infection, memory and movement can be impaired, regardless of the severity of the illness. And if you add a sneeze on top of it, you're really increasing the risk, because a sneeze can take your eyes off the road for as much as three full seconds. And that is something you should know. Isn't it interesting how some people love certain foods?
And other people just hate them. And even with the foods we like, some we really like, while others are just, eh, they're okay, they're fine. And if you recall, there are probably foods you didn't like when you were younger that now you do. So how did that happen? Why does our sense of taste change over time?
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Chapter 4: What drives the intense emotions of sports fandom?
And how do things like packaging, color, presentation, and expectation affect how a food tastes? Well, here to explain all this is Beth Kimmerle.
Chapter 5: Why do fans identify so strongly with their teams?
She's a sensory science expert, meaning she tastes food for a living. She's founder of Attribute Analytics, which is a platform that helps companies that make packaged food use taste data to drive product success. She's also written four books about chocolate and sweets. Hi, Beth. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
Hi, Mike. Thank you for having me.
So you taste food for a living. I mean, I know your job entails much more than that, but that is part of it, that you taste food for a living, which sounds pretty appealing to me. But explain what it is you do exactly.
Oh, great, great question. In the food and beverage industry, there are folks like me who are practitioners of sensory evaluation, otherwise known as taste experts.
Chapter 6: What psychological needs does sports fandom fulfill?
There's... folks that specialize. So, there's coffee tasters or chocolate tasters or tea tasters, but we're at the expert level. So, folks like us have our tongues often insured because of the value they bring to our work. In my case, I not only have my tongue, but my olfactory bulb insured, much like famous people have body parts insured. I don't know, Keith Richards' hands, I'm imagining are
insured or Ronaldo's legs. We assess food products on behalf of the food industry and supply data around taste and texture and aftertaste, aroma, all really, really important things that the food industry, food and beverage industry wants to know.
And so I would always would have assumed that because taste is so individual that it isn't a science so much as it's because you may say something tastes great and I may say that's the worst thing I ever ate.
Yes. So, for most of us, our taste buds detect five basic tastes, but there's these other elements, these other things that you're referring to that are at play. So, aroma, memory, even expectation can alter how we perceive taste. And sometimes it takes over and does much of the work.
So if I were to say to a room full of untrained tasters, hey, describe this chocolate, and they're all tasting the same chocolate, just like you're saying, you know, some may describe a feeling of nostalgia. and some may focus on how it feels in their mouth and what we call the melt rate, while others might describe taste like, they might detect taste like bitter or sour.
And that's because taste isn't just a chemical reaction in our body, it is a perception shaped by our life experience. And so what we do with sensory analysis It is a science and it involves using trained human tasters and a methodology. So, we transform aroma, taste, texture, and aftertaste into a language that we can use to generate structured and usable what we call empirical data.
So, when people talk about, hey, how are you able to do that? If you think about it, we're not interested in
subjective words we are what sommeliers are to wine we are to food because we have this lexicon and I've tasted so many food products that we can really understand or detect the what we call the flavor wheel of food so can you turn it on and off because you must have the same things that I have about memories about food and certain foods you like or don't like do you turn it on and off
That's an incredible question because so taste memories are emotional, right? They're powerful, and we're oftentimes chasing these experiences, right? We're not thinking about them as a flavor. You grab an item off the grocery store shelf because it reminds you of that experience that you had, mostly those good ones.
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Chapter 7: Who wakes up grumpier in the morning, men or women?
Aromas are really the indicator. Aroma is the indicator of taste and the ability to taste. If your nasal cavity is blocked, you know, if you're sick, much of food flavor disappears. And so that's the proof that taste buds aren't, you know, they're just a starting point. And aroma plays into taste heavily. And it's really aroma plus taste that give us flavor.
Yeah.
And when people like or dislike food, as you said, you know, we could have memories from childhood or there could be other subjective factors. But objectively, do people like or dislike food? It's just that I just happen to like it and you just don't. And that's the beginning and end of it.
So some of these differences have to do with how many taste buds we have on our tongue or papillae as they're called. And even like our saliva chemistry can amplify or alter flavor perception, you know, genetics, all these things come into play. If one person likes something and another person doesn't like, again, it could be memory influencing.
It could be things like age or medication or illness. There's so many things that go into taste. But really, we have found that repeated exposure, social context, and positive influences or experiences can really... help retrain our palate. So if you know somebody who doesn't like something, you could work with them.
And we see this often in like, let's call it bitter foods or even think about the trend in super sour candy with kids. 25 years ago or 35 years ago, kids might have spit out super sour candy because it was too sour, but they got trained with these experiences and now they've learned to enjoy those foods.
Is that it? And here's what I mean. Like if you give a kid a sip of beer or whiskey, which you shouldn't do, it's probably illegal.
No, probably not. It's probably a bad idea, Mike.
But if you did, they're going to go, that's the worst thing, tastes like cough syrup. It's just going to be horrible. They're not going to like it. Ten years from now, they could be... Drinking it and liking it. So is it just because they were exposed to it enough times or could their tastes have actually changed and now they actually like it when then they didn't?
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Chapter 8: What surprising insights does research reveal about morning grumpiness?
And so we can change. And some of that has to do with the way our taste buds change over time. If you think about what a baby needs and wants in flavor, it's sweet, and they're really looking for the sweetness of mother's milk. And that's how our peace buds work. So, this question is about where we are in our life, and then how much have we been exposed to this
product, whether it's beer or otherwise? What's the social context in which we've enjoyed the product? And have we really enjoyed the product? Has it been a positive experience or is everybody around us shared this same drink and frowned?
I want to ask you how and how possible and likely is it to change someone's taste so they like a food that maybe they don't like now or, you know, give up a food that they do like that maybe they shouldn't. I'm talking with Beth Kimmerly. She is a sensory science expert.
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So Beth, if you wanted to work with a child or get someone to change their taste away from a food or towards a food, how do you do it?
That's a great question. Because if you, as the parent, can create what they call this positive experience, repeated exposure, create a social context. So let's just back up from that. What does that mean to... You introduce foods repeatedly, right? So repeated exposure means you're showing up with the broccoli and the mac and cheese at the same time.
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