Genetic basis for veganism

Background: ever since I was a child, had an aversion towards meats and less specifically, animal muscle. I've enjoyed from day one eggs, dairy and vegetation and never understood the appeal of meat and animal musculature. Given that I was unatrracted to meats as a child without understanding why, veganism must be genetic.

What age exactly? Was it age of 1 year, 5 or 10? Anyone else in your family have similar taste or distaste?

Not quite sure but I think when I was around 2 or 3 I pushed aside a plate of meat saying "I don't like this" lol. This aversion doesn't seem all that common in my family.

Any ancestors from India or this region?

I don't have any Indian ancestry

How do you feel towards fish?

Same deal. I'll admit, if there's one meat I love that would be duck meat. It's so fatty and tender.

Same here. But what I am wondering is not so much whether or not you like the taste, but how do you feel after eating let's say fish vs. eating beef?

Mike Dammann said:

Same here. But what I am wondering is not so much whether or not you like the taste, but how do you feel after eating let's say fish vs. eating beef?

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Feel in your stomach in form of indigestion or in feel guilty in your mind?

Gaga said:

Not quite sure but I think when I was around 2 or 3 I pushed aside a plate of meat saying "I don't like this" lol.

You were 2 or 3. And your parents went with this? If they hadn't catered to this whim you'd likely be like others in your family and eating meat. All kids that age go through an "I don't like this" attitude. It's up to the parents to actually be parents or just shrug their shoulders & say whatever.

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I agree, parents should be more firm to make sure kids eat variety of food. Otherwise we are raising generation of culinary handicapped, whose favorite are macaroni and cheese or hotdogs. There are health consequences to consider too.

The best way to insure that kids eat everything, is to expose them to variety in a very young age, from age 1 to 3. After this the preservation instinct of "be careful of strange food, food you never ate, weird texture" kicks in.

It is something new for parents to learn, something that didn't exist in the past. This is a problem of First World, the world of plenty. In the past food was scarce and kids were always hungry. They ate anything they could get into their mouths. Every kid ate everything and ate fast, before their siblings did. It was a race to survive.

You're not a vegetarian. You simply did not like the texture, given as you say muscular in particular, and yet you can consume even enjoy duck meat.

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True vegetarian would be a person who can't digest meat, otherwise a person is a "spiritual" vegeterian of many kinds.

Everyone here has a point, and yes children do go through an "I don't like this" stage regardless of whether they are naturally "vegan" or whatnot. I'll admit, any meat product that is easy to chew and tender is fair game to me. I'd choose duck over steak any day simply bc steak is too muscular and rough to chew. Weaker animals with more fat take precedance over stronger ones with more muscle and less fat. I would never handle horse meat! Lol. But still, I wonder if food preference is psychologically determined, genetically determined, or both.

I remember a paper that said that the food a mother consumes during gestation turns into certain food preferences in the child. Then there's the research that shows a certain gene determines whether someone likes the taste of coriander-cilantro or not (I'm programmed not to like it), certain genes define "super-tasters" who find a lot of things bitter, or not, and on and on. Then, environment definitely plays a role. I was one of those children who only ate a few things until I was about six, but they were very "Italian" things, like Italian cured meats, cheeses, bread, and fruit. Everything I ate as an adult, which is almost everything, went on my children's plates from the time they started eating solid food at a very young age, and they have very few food dislikes. Still, my son has a much more adventurous palate than my daughter.

So, yes, it's a combination, I think, of genes and environment, like every other trait.

See the following about cilantro:
http://www.sciencealert.com/there-a-potential-genetic-reason-you-either-love-or-hate-coriander

Even then it only controls about 10% of the reaction, supposedly, so with repeated exposure you can get over it.

davef said:

Everyone here has a point, and yes children do go through an "I don't like this" stage regardless of whether they are naturally "vegan" or whatnot. I'll admit, any meat product that is easy to chew and tender is fair game to me. I'd choose duck over steak any day simply bc steak is too muscular and rough to chew. Weaker animals with more fat take precedance over stronger ones with more muscle and less fat. I would never handle horse meat! ILol.

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Don't try burgers in Sicily. :O

But still, I wonder if food preference is psychologically determined, genetically determined, or both.

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I believe there is genetic predisposition to certain food. Any ethnic group who has lived in certain food arrangement for thousands of years should have developed genetic mutations to help them deal with this food the best, and these food taste the best too. Hunter Gatherers, including Inuits, should have big taste, genetic cravings, for meat and fat. Northern Europeans should have higher inclination for meat and fat than Southern Europeans. East Indians naturally eat more veggies and starches. We all have big appetite for sugar and starches, because this is great source of energy for human body, and was always in short supply for human population. They also taste good (genetic memory). Also farmers love eat starchy food, hunter gatherers are not that crazy about them as farmers are. I doubt, there are vegetarians among prairie Indians and Inuit, even when living in today's world and buy food in stores. I wonder if their appetite for fresh seal liver is genetic or cultural?

The rest how we it and what we eat is cultural.

We also have to keep in mind that there is strong genetic "food safety" mechanism. All of us, in lesser or bigger degree, have this aversion to trying new food, and new things for that matter. Without this safety stop, culinary voyeurism easily killed our ancestors. The careful once, with genetic food safety gene, survived. Now we have to pay the price in our global village full of thousands of different meals.

Some things are so delicious that almost everybody loves them. There is no more "farmer like" group of people in the world than the Han. I'm not sure about Koreans, but I would assume they're similar. North Koreans, given their insane leader, and the fact that most people are virtually starving, have rarely tasted meat, and then it's usually a bit of pork.

Watch their reactions to American barbecue, especially beef. It's amazing. My Italian relatives are the same when I put some huge delicious Porterhouse steaks on the grill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0TYCEXmi90

If a Porterhouse steak is tough it's either inferior quality and/or it's too well done.

My favorite steak house-Peter Luger's. It's worth every penny of the insane cost.

LeBrok said:

I believe there is genetic predisposition to certain food. Any ethnic group who has lived in certain food arrangement for thousands of years should have developed genetic mutations to help them deal with this food the best, and these food taste the best too.

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I agree with this. I used to be a very enthusiastic purveyor of macrobiotics, which teaches eating by growing range and I still believe there is some truth to it. Example: if you can't grow oranges in your backyard, don't eat them.

I personally eat vegan most of the time, unless I'm invited somewhere. I feel I was helped along into this by being lacto-intolerant (most Bulgarians are). I grew up with a Northern European descent mother who had no idea about such things and I felt sick after lunch for my entire childhood. (After all, what child in Midwest didn't drink milk?)

I would be content going lacto ovo.

I love eggs to death, but I could do without dairy.

When thinking about this though, I did forget that our supermarket dairy is so different than on the farm dairy. Even when I lived in Wisconsin (America's Dairyland) and just shopped at the supermarket the dairy was better quality and fresher than what's available to me now in the suburbs of Chicago. That should be taken into consideration.

As an EU country Bulgaria has now imported a lot of holsteins and is pushing cow milk -- as opposed to the lower lactose content sheep and goats milk most people used to use. I think it's horrible. (I am a former chef and a bit food centric but there still are reasons people should be using their traditional foods.)

Angela said:

Some things are so delicious that almost everybody loves them. There is no more "farmer like" group of people in the world than the Han. I'm not sure about Koreans, but I would assume they're similar. North Koreans, given their insane leader, and the fact that most people are virtually starving, have rarely tasted meat, and then it's usually a bit of pork.

Watch their reactions to American barbecue, especially beef. It's amazing. My Italian relatives are the same when I put some huge delicious Porterhouse steaks on the grill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0TYCEXmi90

If a Porterhouse steak is tough it's either inferior quality and/or it's too well done.

My favorite steak house-Peter Luger's. It's worth every penny of the insane cost.

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The Peter Luger steak eating experience. They seem to be of East Asian descent, the most "farmer" people on earth, but they sure look like Carnivores to me!

Why oh why didn't they get the home fries and the creamed spinach? They're so good. The Caesar salad is good, but you can get good Caesar salad at a lot of places. The bread is outstanding as well. I personally can't handle just eating all that bacon plain.

I celebrated passing my professional licensing exam at that Brooklyn original restaurant. Now, they have one out in the suburbs, and both my son and I celebrate our birthdays there. It never gets old.

This is very interesting, davef

Is it only the chewing part of eating meat that turns you off, or is part of it also the digestion is disagreeable to your stomach?