Nattō (fermented soybean) is a traditional Japanese breakfast item. I had tasted it once and would never want to smell it again, let alone ingesting it. I wonder if similar findings can (or have been) be made in Japanese population.
Thanks for your comment. There is an interesting GWAS paper on food behavior based on the Japanese population published in 2020 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0805-1). One of the phenotypes studied in the paper was in fact natto consumption which revealed one strong association: rs671, a missense variant in ALDH2 prevalent in East Asians but rare elsewhere in the world, which causes flushing on alcohol intake. This locus is highly pleiotropic and associated, in addition to natto, also with green tea, milk, yogurt, tofu, and fish consumption. It's not clear how the ALDH2 locus influences food preferences.
Nattō (fermented soybean) is a traditional Japanese breakfast item. I had tasted it once and would never want to smell it again, let alone ingesting it. I wonder if similar findings can (or have been) be made in Japanese population.
Thanks for your comment. There is an interesting GWAS paper on food behavior based on the Japanese population published in 2020 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0805-1). One of the phenotypes studied in the paper was in fact natto consumption which revealed one strong association: rs671, a missense variant in ALDH2 prevalent in East Asians but rare elsewhere in the world, which causes flushing on alcohol intake. This locus is highly pleiotropic and associated, in addition to natto, also with green tea, milk, yogurt, tofu, and fish consumption. It's not clear how the ALDH2 locus influences food preferences.