Although cheese is considered edible by most people, it can also be perceived as particularly disgusting to some individuals. As such, the perception of cheese constitutes a good model to study the cerebral processes of food disgust and aversion.
In this study, the researchers show that a higher percentage of people are disgusted by cheese than by other types of food.
To assess whether disgust for cheese is widespread among individuals, the researchers performed a survey of the French population. It revealed that among the individuals showing disgust for a given food, those disliking cheese represented a higher proportion than those disliking the other food categories. This finding is rather surprising because France is the country with the greatest variety of cheeses and one of the countries with the highest levels of cheese consumption. It suggests that similar results might be observed in other countries with similarly high levels of cheese consumption, such as western European countries and the United States.