Ever wondered what makes you love certain foods more than others?

There are three main ways we learn to like (or dislike) certain flavors, explains Michael Tordoff, a psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. One is “flavor-nutrient learning,” where we learn to form positive associations between the flavor of a given food and what that food does to our bodies. If you regularly snacked on cherry-flavored fruit roll-ups as a kid, for example, you may have learned over time to associate cherry with the burst of energy that comes from the sugar hit: “You pair the taste in your mouth, that flavor that you’re getting, with the post-ingestive consequences,” he says.

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