The innate palate: how a newborn responds to each basic taste

Pick a basic taste and vary its concentration to read the modeled newborn hedonic response, scaled from strong rejection (−1) through neutral (0) to strong acceptance (+1). Sweet and umami are accepted and climb with concentration; salt is accepted only in a moderate band; sour and bitter are rejected, bitter the most steeply. Shapes after the developmental taste literature; illustrative, computed locally, not stored.

neutral+1+0.50-0.5-10255075100reject ← hedonic → acceptTaste concentration (%) →
At 50% concentration, the modeled hedonic response to Sweet is 0.74 — the taste is accepted. Acceptance rises with concentration, the built-in signal for energy and protein.

The exposure–preference curve: how liking is learned

Modeled liking for a food after n repeated tastings: pref(n) = A − (A − s)·e−kn, with the asymptote fixed at A = 0.85. Set the starting liking s and the association strength k, then move the marker to read liking at any number of tastings. Early exposures move liking fastest. Illustrative model; computed locally, not stored.

asymptote 0.85accepted 0.600.000.250.500.751.000481216Liking (0–1)Number of repeated tastings (n) →0.61
After 3 tastings the modeled liking is 0.61. Half the total gain arrives by 2.3 tastings, and liking crosses the 0.60 accepted threshold at 2.9 tastings. The curve is steepest at the start: the first few exposures do most of the work.

TAS2R38 genetics: why the same vegetable tastes different

Set the frequency of the sensitive TAS2R38 taster allele; Hardy–Weinberg gives the share of the population with each genotype (bars, left scale as a share of the population height). Set how bitter the vegetable is to see modeled acceptance per genotype (dots). At equal allele frequencies the split is the familiar 25/50/25. Illustrative model; computed locally, not stored.

0255075100share / acceptance %25%25%PAV/PAVsensitive taster50%50%PAV/AVIintermediate25%75%AVI/AVIinsensitive non-tasterpopulation mean 50%
Bars: genotype share of population  •  Dots: modeled acceptance of the bitter vegetable
With the taster allele at 50%, about 25% of people are sensitive tasters, 50% intermediate, and 25% insensitive. At bitterness 1.00, the sensitive group accepts the vegetable only 25% of the time versus 75% for the insensitive group, for a population mean of 50%. The gap between genotypes widens as the vegetable gets more bitter — and vanishes when it is not bitter at all.