Cilantro passion

Cilantro is a polarizing herb. So much so, that if I don’t know the tastes of the people I’m cooking for, I don’t garnish with it until I ask. 

Everyone has slightly different sensory world, but with cilantro it’s different: Most people enjoy it, but those that don’t hate it with fervor.

My Dad dislikes cilantro with passion, and there are not many vegetables and fruit that he doesn’t like. He says it tastes like ants. When I ask him how he knows what ants taste like, he admits he doesn’t. It is strange, because my Dad is a very rational man.

He is not alone. 

As of today, http://www.IHateCilantro.com/ has 1,790 members around the world. There is a long list of what it tastes like to the members, but the majority of haters say that cilantro tastes like soap. There are many in the “burnt something” and “rotten something”, doll hair and stink bug category, but you have to delight at the descriptions. Members describe cilantro taste as a moldy swimsuit that’s been left to fester in a high school locker, battery juice, the inside of a freshly cut-open rubber ball, blood, musty basement, and it goes on and on. These people are passionate. The website sells clothes, cups, pet shirts and lots of other stuff with the “I hate cilantro” logo, and has a vibrant community.

Cilantro lovers are much more numerous. They are not as outspoken, and they don’t need to be. Cilantro is easy to grow, widely available in markets, and is said to be the world’s most consumed herb. Cilantro is commonly used in Latin American, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Indian, Asian, and African cuisine.

So what is it, I wonder, that translates to disgust in the cilantro haters?

It was mentioned in several websites that hating cilantro in genetic.

I did a thorough search of Medline (a huge database of articles published in more than 5,000 biomedical journals from around the world) and OMIM (a continuously updated catalog of human genes and genetic disorders), and found no mention of it.

I saw a 2003 newsletter from The Monell Center, an independent scientific institute dedicated to interdisciplinary basic research on the senses of taste, smell, and chemosensory irritation in Philadelphia (http://www.monell.org/Newsletters/Monell_Fall03.pdf). Charles J. Wysocki and his team tested reactions to cilantro in identical and fraternal twins in the annual Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg,  Ohio. Identical twins share the same genes, as opposed to fraternal twins, that are no more similar genetically than any other pair of siblings. With Cilantro they saw that in identical twins the correlation in reaction to the herb’s smell was very strong, and it was not so for fraternal twins. 

This suggests a genetic component, does not yet prove it, and still does not explain much. Is it that the cilantro haters can smell something the cilantro lovers cannot, or the other way round?

Cilantro haters seem to be reacting in a way in which their nose is telling them “this in not food”. We all have such reactions to certain smells and tastes, some physiological, but most of them learned. There is widespread aversion of bitter taste, and that seems like an adaptive preference developed to help our hunter gatherer ancestors, as many poisonous plants are bitter. The preference of sweet is the opposite; the universal preference for sweet was useful, because sweetness in the natural world was synonymous with sweet ripe fruit, which are as rule of thumb good to eat.

In the case of cilantro the message is a false message in those cilantro haters, unless they have a different way in which their body reacts to the herb. Cilantro is very good to eat. All parts of the plant are edible, but the leaves and seeds are the most popular. The seeds are usually called coriander seeds or fruit, and taste very different from the leaves (lemony, warm, anise like). The main component of the cilantro leaf aroma is decenal, which disappears very quickly once the herb is chopped or heated, therefore cilantro is most useful fresh.

While trying to find the genetics of cilantro aversion I happened upon several interesting studies showing antibacterial activity of cilantro essential oil (Agric. Food Chem., 52 (26), 7862 -7866, 2004), cilantro causing a reduction in cholesterol and triglycerides levels in a rat study (Indian Journal of Experimental Biology. 42(9):909-12, 2004) and cilantro having anti-diabetic activity (International Journal of Food Sciences & Nutrition. 56(6):399-414, 2005).

If cilantro hate is genetic, I’m glad the trait wasn’t passed to me.

I love cilantro.

Ayala