The Neural Bases of Disgust for Cheese: An fMRI Study

Cheese is adored by most people and deeply disliked by a few, which makes it a handy way to study food disgust. The team first surveyed people and found more of them were put off by cheese than by other foods.

Then they scanned brains while volunteers sniffed cheese and looked at pictures of it. In the cheese-averse, parts of the brain’s reward system switched down instead of up. Their brains were saying “non, merci” at a neural level.