Love the food you hate ⏲️ 6 Minute English

0:07 Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English.

0:11 I'm Neil.

0:12 And I'm Becca.

0:13 Neil, are there any foods that you used to really hate in the past

0:17 but now don't mind?

0:19 Yes, actually there's a Japanese food called umeboshi

0:23 which, when I first tried it, I really didn't like.

0:26 But after a while, I got used to it

0:28 and actually now, I really love it. How about you?

0:31 A similar story to me with olives.

0:33 I used to really hate olives,

0:35 but as I've grown older, I've also grown to love them.

0:39 Well, in this episode, we'll be learning from food experts about why there are

0:44 some foods we just hate and whether it's possible to learn to love them.

0:48 Yes, and as usual, you can find a transcript for this episode

0:52 along with all the vocabulary and a worksheet on our website,

0:56 bbclearningenglish.com.

0:58 Okay, the question for you, Becca.

1:00 What word means to have a fear of new things, such as trying new foods.

1:06 Is it a) aerophobia,

1:08 b) claustrophobia, or c) neophobia?

1:12 Well, Neil, I'll go for c) neophobia because neo sounds like 'new'.

1:18 That's clever thinking but let's see. Now though, back to food.

1:22 Some experts have said that we can teach ourselves to like new things.

1:25 Ruth Alexander asks Doctor Dana Small of McGill University,

1:30 where our dislike of certain foods comes from

1:32 in this BBC World Service programme,

1:35 The Food Chain.

1:36 Are food dislikes learned or genetic, hard-wired in some way?

1:42 Ah, both! So, there are many reasons why you can dislike a food.

1:47 For example, you could, via genetics, smell coriander

1:51 or taste coriander differently.

1:53 Uh so, that's genetic.

1:54 But there's also a really strong learning component.

1:58 Dana explains that how we taste or smell something can be different

2:02 depending on our genetics. However,

2:05 how we taste or smell something can also be learnt.

2:08 Ruth asked if a dislike for certain food is hard-wired,

2:12 and Dana confirmed that this is sometimes the case.

2:15 The adjective hard-wired describes automatically thinking

2:19 or behaving in a particular way, for instance, because it's genetic.

2:24 And Dana says that you could taste food differently to others via genetics.

2:29 The preposition via means by the way of or by the use of.

2:32 For example, I get to work via a train.

2:36 So there are lots of different reasons why we dislike some foods,

2:39 but can we change that?

2:41 Let's listen to dietitian Claire Thornton Wood

2:44 explaining on the BBC World Service programme, The Food Chain.

2:48 One of the the really good techniques that we might use

2:51 is something called masking,

2:53 where you dip a food that you don't like into something that you do like.

2:59 For those parents who really say they like everything,

3:03 we actually get chocolate covered insects and we offer those

3:09 and actually people do eat them and try them.

3:11 And I think it's the concept that it's an insect

3:14 but usually they find

3:16 that once they eat it, there isn't anything inherently unpleasant

3:20 about it. It's a little bit like eating just a bit of crunchy chocolate.

3:24 Claire uses masking.

3:26 Masking is the act of stopping something from being seen. In Claire's clinic,

3:31 she masks the disliked foods with something that is liked.

3:34 Yes, and what parents usually find out is

3:37 that the food they dislike isn't inherently bad.

3:41 The adverb inherently describes something that exists

3:44 in a way which is natural or essential.

3:46 So, insects aren't inherently unpleasant to eat,

3:49 some of us think they are

3:51 because the concept of eating them could be strange to us culturally.

3:55 We talked about how people sometimes fear trying new food.

3:59 Claire talks about where these fears might come from.

4:02 For instance, just say that you had eaten prawns in the past

4:05 and you had become unwell from eating them,

4:09 you know, you had what you call a dodgy prawn.

4:12 There's a good chance that you might actually associate that

4:15 with eating the prawn and think,

4:17 oh, I don't want to eat the prawn again because it's going to make me unwell.

4:20 So, that's the sort of fear based avoidance.

4:24 Claire said that you're likely to have a fear of a food

4:27 if you've had a bad experience with it.

4:29 She uses the example of eating a dodgy prawn, which would make you unwell.

4:34 If something is dodgy, it's generally bad or has a bad reputation.

4:39 But when we talk about food, it could mean

4:41 that it's undercooked, old or has been left out,

4:44 therefore making you sick.

4:46 In fact, we may avoid dodgy things.

4:49 To avoid is to keep away from something.

4:51 So, avoidance is the act of keeping away.

4:55 Now, Neil, That reminds me of the question you asked earlier.

4:58 Ah, yes. I asked you what word means to have a fear of new things,

5:03 and you answered, c) neophobia. And, Becca,

5:07 I'm pleased to say your answer was correct!

5:10 So, my thinking was right!

5:11 That's great.

5:12 Now let's have a recap of the language we've learnt in this episode,

5:16 starting with 'hard-wired', which describes automatically thinking

5:21 or behaving in a particular way, because of genetics, for example.

5:26 'Via' is a preposition that means by way of or by use of.

5:30 We had 'masking', that's hiding or stopping something from being seen.

5:34 The adverb 'inherently' describes something that exists

5:37 in a way which is natural or essential.

5:40 We also had 'avoidance', that is the act of keeping away from something.

5:45 And finally,

5:46 when we talk about food, 'dodgy' means something that can make you unwell.

5:51 Once again, our six minutes are up, but head over to our website,

5:55 bbclearningenglish.com for a quiz and worksheet for this episode.

5:59 See you there soon. But for now, it's goodbye.

6:01 Goodbye.