Our food preferences are intensely personal, but scientists have tried to figure out why some people are so picky about the things they eat. Jane Kauer is anthropologist¹ who has studied this topic at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Monell Chemical Sciences Center. She's also a board member of the youth nutrition company Rebel Ventures. She sits down with Here & Now co-host Jeremy Hobson to talk about the science and culture of picky eating. A transcript² of their conversation follows, edited for brevity and clarity.

我们对食物的偏好因人而异，但科学家们想极力找出一些人非常挑食的原因。简·考尔是专门研究此课题的人类学家，工作于宾夕法尼亚大学和蒙内尔化学科学中心，也是青年营养公司Rebel Ventures的董事会成员。以下是《此时此地》主持人杰里米·霍布森对她专访的简要记录。

For the things that people just don't like, why don't they like them?

对于人们不喜欢的东西，究其原因是怎样的呢？

One of the things [our research] was striving to do was get at that, so we were asking broader questions: Is it texture³? Is it flavor? Is it other qualities of food? We asked about color. We also asked other things about food than strictly⁴ one of the sensory⁵ properties. For example, foods that touched other foods on the plate. That's for some people really a striking problem. Or foods that someone else has handled, and I don't mean handle in a yucky way like coughed on them — just something someone else has handled at all. There's a general sense for some people that that's just not cool at all. Foods that have things in them ... like a raisin⁶ in a muffin.

我们研究的目的之一就是企图理解这件事，所以我们问了更多的问题：是食物的色？味？还是其他方面所导致？我们询问了颜色，还有其他不是严格意义上的感官特征。比如，一种食物碰到了盘子上的另一种食物，这对一些人来说是不能接受的。或者是别人动了它（我并不是说一些比较恶心的事，比如有人对着食物咳嗽之类），仅仅是有人动了它，这对某些人来说，也会非常不爽。这样的食物，就像松饼里加了葡萄干一样。

The people we found who were on the more picky end of the spectrum⁷, some of these things I mentioned tend to push them much further away from wanting to eat that kind of food.

上述这些习惯让极其挑食的人往往就不再想吃这种食物了。