An acquired taste often refers to an appreciation for a food

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...

 or beverage that is unlikely to be enjoyed by a person who has not had substantial exposure to it, usually because of some unfamiliar aspect of the food or beverage, including a strong or strange odor

Odor

An odor or odour is caused by one or more volatilized chemical compounds, generally at a very low concentration, that humans or other animals perceive by the sense of olfaction. Odors are also commonly called scents, which can refer to both pleasant and unpleasant odors...

 (e.g. stinky tofu

Stinky tofu

Stinky tofu or chòu dòufu is a form of fermented tofu that has a strong odor. It is a popular snack in East and Southeast Asia, particularly mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong and in East Asian enclaves elsewhere where it is usually found homemade, at night markets or roadside stands, or as a...

, durian

Durian

The durian is the fruit of several tree species belonging to the genus Durio and the Malvaceae family . Widely known and revered in southeast Asia as the "king of fruits", the durian is distinctive for its large size, unique odour, and formidable thorn-covered husk...

, kimchi

Kimchi

Kimchi , also spelled gimchi, kimchee, or kim chee, is a traditional fermented Korean dish made of vegetables with varied seasonings. There are hundreds of varieties of kimchi made with a main vegetable ingredient such as napa cabbage, radish, green onions or cucumber. It is the most common...

, haggis

Haggis

Haggis is a dish containing sheep's 'pluck' , minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally simmered in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours. Most modern commercial haggis is prepared in a casing rather than an actual stomach.Haggis is a kind...

, hákarl

Hákarl

Hákarl or kæstur hákarl is a food from Iceland. It is a Greenland or basking shark which has been cured with a particular fermentation process and hung to dry for four to five months...

, black salt, asafoetida

Asafoetida

Asafoetida , alternative spelling asafetida, is the dried latex exuded from the living underground rhizome or tap root of several species of Ferula, which is a perennial herb...

, or certain types of cheese

Cheese

Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....

), taste

Taste

Taste is one of the traditional five senses. It refers to the ability to detect the flavor of substances such as food, certain minerals, and poisons, etc....

 (such as root beer

Root beer

Root beer is a carbonated, sweetened beverage, originally made using the root of a sassafras plant as the primary flavor. Root beer, popularized in North America, comes in two forms: alcoholic and soft drink. The historical root beer was analogous to small beer in that the process provided a drink...

, vegemite

Vegemite

Vegemite is a dark brown Australian food paste made from yeast extract. It is a spread for sandwiches, toast, crumpets and cracker biscuits, and filling for pastries...

, bitter tea

Tea

Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...

s, salty liquorice or natto

Natto

is a traditional Japanese food made from soybeans fermented with Bacillus subtilis. It is popular especially as a breakfast food. As a rich source of protein and probiotics, nattō and the soybean paste miso formed a vital source of nutrition in feudal Japan. Nattō can be an acquired taste because...

), or appearance.

Acquired taste may also refer to aesthetic taste

Taste (sociology)

Taste as an aesthetic, sociological, economic and anthropological concept refers to a cultural patterns of choice and preference. While taste is often understood as a biological concept, it can also be reasonably studied as a social or cultural phenomenon. Taste is about drawing distinctions...

s, such as taste in music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 or other forms of art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

.

Acquiring a taste

Intentionally changing one's preferences can be hard to accomplish. It usually requires a deliberate effort, such as acting as if one likes something in order to have the responses and feelings that will produce the desired taste. The risk in this acting is that it can lead to all sorts of excesses such as self-deception

Self-deception

Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument...

 and pretentiousness. The challenge becomes one of distinguishing authentic or legitimate acquired tastes resulting from deeply considered preference changes from inauthentic ones motivated by, for example, status or conformity

Conformity

Conformity is the process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by other people.Conformity may also refer to:*Conformity: A Tale, a novel by Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna...

.

Examples

Some examples of tastes which normally need to be tried several times to 'learn to like' are Sushi

Sushi

is a Japanese food consisting of cooked vinegared rice combined with other ingredients . Neta and forms of sushi presentation vary, but the ingredient which all sushi have in common is shari...

, beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

, coffee

Coffee

Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

, goat cheese, caviar

Caviar

Caviar, sometimes called black caviar, is a luxury delicacy, consisting of processed, salted, non-fertilized sturgeon roe. The roe can be "fresh" or pasteurized, the latter having much less culinary and economic value....

, olives and huitlacoche. There has been quite a lot of debate on how this change in taste experience is accomplished, as many people report that without effort or intent they have learned to appreciate these flavors simply by repeated exposure.

Wine is frequently treated with more respect, such that one can take a wine appreciation course. The attitude here is to learn to taste the differences between grapes and types of wine. Using the knowledge of the contents of the wine, the connoisseur

Connoisseur

A connoisseur is a person who has a great deal of knowledge about the fine arts, cuisines, or an expert judge in matters of taste.Modern connoisseurship must be seen along with museums, art galleries and "the cult of originality"...

starts to appreciate the differences between varieties and thereby the beverage itself.