By Suzannah Weiss, TeenVogue
Who you're dating can affect a lot of things, from your mood to how you spend your free time. But a new study in Appetite shows that our influence on our partners can go even deeper than that, actually affecting our sense of taste and smell, Time reports.
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The
researchers studied 100 couples who had been dating for between three
months and 45 years. They had them smell a bunch of different foods and
other scented things, like rose, green apple, pear, and coconut. They
also sprayed water on their tongues, each flavored with a different
taste category: sweet, salty, sour, umami, and bitter. Then, people
rated how much they liked each of the smells and tastes.
The
more time two people had spent as a couple, the more similar their
preferences for both taste and smell. This happened to the same extent
regardless of how happy people were in their relationships.
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The
paper theorizes that people's tastes grow more similar over time
because when two people spend a lot of time together, they end up eating
the same things. "As partners share household (including kitchen and
fridge) and a significant proportion of meals, they are much likely to
eat similar types of food," the authors write. And that might be a good
thing. After all, it means fewer fights over where you go to dinner.
