Why I crave the sourest bite

In a local Tokyo konbini, the snack aisle buzzes with excitement as adults and children alike marvel at an array of sour candies lining the store shelves. To my right, a middle-aged office worker picks up a packet of fettuccine-shaped gummies, adding them to his cart, which holds a single onigiri and bottled coffee. To my left, a young girl grabs packets of ume and peach-flavored gummies before rushing over to her mother, who happily inspects her daughter’s bounty. I soon follow suit and, with sticky fingers, reach for all the candies that have caught my eye: super lemon sour suckers, pink lemonade gushers, muscat gummies and soda-flavored hard candies. My measly basket is filled with nothing but candy, earning a few snide looks from my cashier. But I don’t mind. I’m a grown adult on vacation, meaning I can spend my money however I please (and don’t have to follow my mother’s strict rules against sugar).

I was finally living out my sour candy dreams.

I’ve always been a fiend for sour things, whether that’s candy, fresh fruit, snacks or frozen desserts. But it wasn’t until recently that I started to wonder why I was addicted to what has been described as a “bizarre” flavor profile. A 2024 study by Penn State researchers found that approximately one in eight adults enjoy intensely sour flavors, dispelling claims that extreme tartness is only favored by children. They concluded that sourness isn’t “an effect of prior exposure.” Rather, there’s “something innately different” about individuals who responded favorably to an increase in sour. That special “something” still remains a mystery today.

My affinity for sour began when I was a baby — well, at least, according to my mother. Growing up, she’d tell me stories about the first time I tried a lemon. My face would scrunch up and I’d shudder from the intense flavors, but I never cried. Instead, I’d laugh, cooing for more lemon to revel in those strong sensations over and over again. If my parents withheld the lemon slice for too long, I’d become restless until they’d let me indulge in the citrus fruit.

Memories of that incident are non-existent. And I’m not sure how much of that story I even believe, considering that it makes me sound like some sort of super baby, an anomaly of newborns. But perhaps it isn’t too far-fetched. After all, my love for sour continues to prevail — and intensify — into adulthood. I enjoy eating Warheads, sometimes popping multiple in my mouth. I enjoy eating pineapple until my tongue feels raw. I prefer unripe mangoes over ripe. And I’m a sucker for a sour beverage, alcoholic or not.

“When researchers consider the classic five categories of taste — sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami — there’s little disagreement over which of them is the least understood,” wrote Katherine J. Wu for The Atlantic. “Creatures crave sweet for sugar and calories. A yen for umami, or savoriness, keeps many animals nourished with protein. Salt’s essential for bodies to stay in fluid balance, and for nerve cells to signal. And a sensitivity to bitterness can come in handy with the whole not-poisoning-yourself thing.”

Sourness, she continued, is “a bizarro cue, a signal reliable neither for toxicity nor for nutrition.” So, why then do so some folks willingly crave foods that make their mouths pucker and tongues tingle?

According to Rob Dunn, a biologist and professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University, our taste for sour foods is both biological and evolutionary.

“We’ve lost the ability to produce vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, and liking acidic foods might be a way for us and other primate species to be reminded to ingest it,” Dunn told Science, the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“Another argument is that ancient primates ate way more fermented foods than we recognize. One way to tell if rotting fruits are safe is if they’re acidic, because the thing that makes them acidic is lactic acid bacteria and acetic acid bacteria. The acid in these bacteria kills bad new bacteria, so those fruits are almost always safe to eat.”

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Dunn explained that early evidence has repeatedly shown that there are different populations of so-called “sour tasters.” Indeed, Penn State researchers found three “distinct patterns” of response to sour flavors: a strong negative group, who showed a strong dislike for increased sourness; an intermediate group, who showed “a more muted drop” with more sourness; and a strong positive group, who showed a strong like for increased sourness. Simply put, perception of sour is a spectrum.

John Hayes, director of the Sensory Evaluation Center at Penn State and an author on the study, noted that individuals in the strong positive group perceive concentrations of sourness the same way as those in the strong negative group. It’s not that the former is less sensitive to more sour foods.

“You could imagine a case where they’re just less responsive to sourness in general,” Hayes said. “But that’s not what we find. We find the people that like really sour flavor actually experience it just as sour as other people. They simply enjoy it more.”

Aside from the science, some people like sour — specifically, sour candies — purely because it’s nostalgic. “A lot of people have fond, nostalgic memories of being a kid and eating way too much sour candy and they just want that feeling back,” Michael Fisher, Founder & CEO at Rotten, a sour candy company, told The Takeout. Throughout my tweens and early teens, I’d enjoy an abundance of sour sweets during Halloween. I’d spend hours rummaging through my trick-or-treat bucket, exchanging chocolates for sour candies with my friends. By the end of the night, I had already enjoyed a handful of candies, coming off a sugar and sour high, unbeknownst to my mother.

To me, sour is more than just a taste. It’s a return to innocence — a gustatory reminder of those carefree childhood moments when I indulged in the sourest of sour treats to my heart’s content. Sour is an embodiment of glee, of pleasure and of great joy.

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