Babka - the taste of my childhood or merely a DNA Matter?

Yesterday my young daughter brought us some chocolate Babkas to taste. As the ones close to me know, I’m more of an ice cream fan than cakes fan, but when my kids are asking, it’s my command. So I took a bite, and then another one, and then I suddenly realized; it’s exactly the same taste of the one my grandma, may she rest in peace, used to make.

It's quite amazing how taste can get us back to old memories, it can remind us of ones we love. It almost feels like a time tunnel, a magical way of sensual presence of things that you thought you lost...

I don't know how and why, but this chocolate Babka made me think of my grandma Hana, whom I miss, cooking and baking in my mother's kitchen. I wish I had her recipes hidden somewhere, but it was all in her head and her very trained hands. I don't think it was written anywhere...

During the past year, there were many talks about COVID-19 and its symptoms and one of the very known ones was the loss of taste. At first, when we all heard about it, most of us didn't take it so seriously. It didn't seem like such a terrible thing to lose. But over time, more and more people that went through it, explained how hard it was to live without it, even for a short period of time. Going back to my recent Babka experience, I realized that it's not only the taste itself, which is lost, but much more than this. The loss of the related memory is much worse than the loss of one flavor or another...

Years ago, one of my colleagues approached us with a very funny question, asking us to state what kind of dish we were, if we were all different kinds of food;-) By now, you can probably guess without knowing me that I immediately said: "I'll be ice cream for sure :-)". "Ice Cream?" She asked, and then added, "I'm not the kind of person who will be a dessert. I'll be a main course, maybe a good stake” ??. But for me it was so clear; Ice Cream comes in variety of flavors; it can be chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, or peanut butter, it can be sour or sweet, It's a joyful dish! To me, Ice Cream have always had a taste of happiness. It used to cheer me up in times of challenges and keep me energized in great times.

But recently, when I broke my leg and got tons of ice cream from my dear friends, something strange happened, and I lost this good taste of it for a few months. I've been trying again and again to get this same old feeling which I used to love of opening a box of ice cream and waiting for this joy of taste, but it was gone for some reason...

Reading through some research, I learned that the taste sense is essential to our survival, I also learned that some of our taste preferences are genetic. There may be code written into your DNA that accounts for your preference for sweet foods or your aversion to certain flavors. For example: a single gene, TAS2R38, that codes for a taste receptor on the tongue may predict a child's preference for sweet foods.

So sugar craving may actually have a biological basis :-). Our urge for more chocolate may have little to do with a lack of self-control.

The most concerning research I read though referred to the claim that people lose their perception of taste as they age and that by age 20, an average of about half of our taste receptors are gone.

I truly hope this isn't true but one way or another, I now appreciate even more every bite and memory which comes with it! 

May it be a good new week, full of great flavors!