People from around the world with different tastes?

Question:

I'm not quite sure how to word this, but the more people I meet from different places I notice how our tastes in food can vary so much from place to place. For example while I love hibachi and Americanized Japanese food I find the tradition food to be um strange. Not unusual just a weird flavor. I can't describe what I don't like about it i just don't like it. Also I have an Italian friend who hates dark chocolate so thought it might be because it's bitter but she likes these strong licorice that I find too bitter to eat. It makes me wonder how people develop so many different tastes and how our backgrounds affect it. So what are your tastes and why do you like the things you do?

Answer:

It starts with the foods you grow up with and the home and then your friends and some of theirs, and over the years they accumulate. As I have British heritage many of the British foods adapted to suit our foods are my basis and from that it has grown, as when I was young "other foods" were just foreign foods for others.
The only rice we had was Rice pudding and the closest we came to spaghetti recipes were what came out of the can of spaghetti.