Remember that drink I invented yesterday? (oc)

[u/DaveKellett]

COME for the acrid taste, but STAY for the lack of caffeine!

[u/SnooSuggestions9294]

Believe it or not ppl do like the taste of coffee

[u/Apprehensive_Hat_444 → u/SnooSuggestions9294]

Believe it or not, there are different qualities of coffee, and better coffee has a better taste lol

I used to think I hated coffee, beer, wine, steak, etc. Turns out my parents were just cheap. I like all those things, just not the cheapest available versions.

[u/Aeseld → u/Apprehensive_Hat_444]

Wine is probably the most interesting example since cost and taste have only a tenuous connection. You can almost always find something cheap or mid-range that you enjoy.

Frankly all beer tastes bad to me though.

Coffee tastes fine if you cut the bitterness. Prep can help, I use cinnamon and a bit of salt. 

As for steak... Preparation and good cuts. Good prep can make up for a poor cut. 

[u/DefinitelyNotMasterS → u/Aeseld]

you also get used to the bitterness and then it just tastes normal

[u/MrWeirdoFace → u/DefinitelyNotMasterS]

One could say the same about life in general.

[u/Buderus69 → u/MrWeirdoFace]

https://giphy.com/gifs/Sd1KRbPEarxWWVwQi7

[u/Plasmelon → u/DefinitelyNotMasterS]

It’s also about the type of coffee, the elevation it’s grown at, and the roast.

The higher elevation the better the flavor, and the lighter the roast, the less bitter. 

The lower the elevation and darker the roast, the more earthy it tastes.

[u/grendus → u/DefinitelyNotMasterS]

Children are also super sensitive to bitter tastes, while adults lose a lot of their bitter tastebuds. I expect that quite a few people who think they hate coffee first tried it as a child.

In nature, bitter flavors signify that a food is toxic, so this makes sense. When children are young and don't know what is safe to eat yet, they're extremely sensitive to foods that "taste" poisonous (most poisonous things don't want to be eaten, after all) and drawn towards foods that taste safe (sweet foods are most plant's way of saying "eat me... and then poop my seeds out somewhere else"). And coffee is intended to be toxic, caffeine is a powerful insecticide that does the same thing to humans that it does to the bugs it's intended to kill. We're just a few million times their size, so instead of causing our heart to explode... it just kind of makes us a bit more alert.

Once we reach adulthood and both know what is and isn't safe to eat and achieve our full poison resistance (humans are incredibly poison resistant), we're more capable of eating them. And this serves a secondary purpose for humans as a highly social species, because adults also lose some of our sweet taste buds. So when we're children, we gravitate towards sweet foods that are safe, and as adults we gravitate towards bitter foods that are safe for us to eat now while reserving the sweet foods for the children in the tribe.

[u/Apprehensive_Hat_444 → u/DefinitelyNotMasterS]

My pet theory is that as we age, we develop our taste on a spectrum that fits our evolutionary needs.

We start with sugar because as kids, we have basically no reserves and we just burn though energy like a furnace. Then, salt, because we start needing to replenish our electrolytes after intense exercise. Then finally bitterness, because it's not naturally enjoyable, but it's often associated with complexity, and to some extent, a social experience (alcohol, coffee, etc have a strong social component, and we often start them because of social pressure).

It's 0.00% scientific, so maybe the """evolutionary""" part is ridiculous, but it's still something that seems to be rather universal. Could be explained by other stuff, this is just something I thought of one day lol