Taste Preferences Shape Disease Susceptibility via Heritable Nutrient Predispositions: A Behavior–Gene Coevolution Framework

Abstract

Dietary stereotypes driven by health anxiety weaken the assumption that higher taste preference of a food necessarily implies higher intake, potentially mismatching ancestrally imprinted nutrient-handling tendencies with modern diets. We tested whether inherited nutrient predispositions exist and mediate the associations between taste preferences and disease susceptibility. A total of 137 taste-preferences and more than 850 nutrient biomarkers were included for analysis, with seven common gastroduodenal diseases specified as outcomes. Mediation by nutrient predispositions was quantified using a causal-chain model; genetic collinearity along preference–disease links was assessed using Bayesian tests. Maximum-likelihood estimation was applied as a validation analysis for the primary results. External East Asian cohorts were further used to compare and replicate effects observed in the European cohorts. We identified 36 significant causal chains across four gastroduodenal diseases. Mediation involved 14 nutrient or metabolic predispositions. The maximum-likelihood method provided additional confirmation of the initial effect estimates. Cross-ancestry analyses using external cohorts showed directionally consistent effects in East Asian and European cohorts. In comparisons for five foods, only white bread showed concordant associations for both intake and preference with gastric adenocarcinoma risk. Individuals with different taste preferences show marked differences in susceptibility to the same disease, because taste preferences which are inherited across generations shape inter-individual nutrient predispositions. This implicates behavior–gene coevolution as a key driver of divergent disease susceptibility among individuals consuming the same diet. When using intake as the exposure in diet–disease studies, stratifying by taste preference is advisable to mitigate genetic confounding.