Young people are drinking less alcohol. What does taste have to do with it

Brandeis Stories

Young people are drinking less alcohol. What does taste have to do with it?

By Julian Cardillo '14
September 9, 2025

Dump the jungle juice, put a stopper in those flasks and swap the six-pack of suds for a bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling wine.

Gen-Z's approach to imbibing is dramatically different from that of older generations. A 2025 Gallup study indicates significant declines in drinking among young adults, ages 18-34, with only 50% reporting they drink, down from 72% two decades prior.

The reasons behind this shift reportedly include rising health consciousness, the high cost of a night out and changing social dynamics post-COVID. But are young people's tastes changing, too? What even makes up our sense of taste?

Brandeis Stories spoke to psychology professor Don Katz, an expert on taste and the senses, about this new phenomenon:

You've said "Taste is an illusion." What do you mean by that?

There's a lot of controversy about exactly what information comes off of the tongue, but everyone agrees it's not particularly fine-grained. Your taste experience involves many different things. The sensory experience you believe you're having isn't purely about the tongue - it's a reaction created by smell, sound, vision, texture and social context.

For example, there's a study from Germany where people ate potato chips in sound-isolated booths with headphones. The researchers fed a loud crunch through the headphones, and people's judgment of how the chips tasted depended on that crunch. Similarly, coloring fruit candies differently can completely change their taste, even if the ingredients are the same from candy to candy.

What you think you're tasting has very little to do with what's coming off the tongue, and that is pretty much the definition of an illusion.

People often say beverages like beer and hard liquor are an acquired taste. What does science say about 'acquired taste'?

I also see this as an extension of taste being an illusion. The term 'acquired taste' is misleading. Most preferences are acquired throughout our lives. Our preferences almost always shift - adults don't seek out liquified peas or breast milk.

You see this in other animals, too. My lab conducts taste experiments with rats. The whole idea of "innate" behavior is really oversold - what we often assume is hardwired usually comes from experience.

For example, people long believed rat and mouse pups instinctively knew to nurse, but research shows they're actually responding to familiar smells they picked up in the womb, like amniotic fluid. But these rats would also respond to something completely foreign, like peppermint oil, if it was introduced to them while they were in the womb.

Taste is made up of a whole lot of experiences, many of them social. Even dislikes, like a child being turned off by slimy foods, can be socialized away. We're always learning and changing, so preferences are rarely innate; they are constructed from sensory input and context.

What does the social component of taste in rats tell us about humans?

Rats live in a tough world. Evolution hasn't given them the luxury of being picky about what others eat. In my lab, we'll feed a rat a bitter-smelling food like raw cocoa powder. We'll have another rat come by and sniff its breath. The second rat will decide that food must be good, despite its apparent harsh smell - because the first rat ate it and is still alive.

That's all that matters in the rat world: survival.

Humans are more complex, but there are parallels. Social context is central to the development of taste preferences in both rats and humans. The drive for belonging and social standing is strong enough to override concerns about whether the thing itself - say beer or another potent alcoholic beverage - is actually good for you. Most people, when pressed, admit they disliked beer the first time they sampled it.

Do your studies explain why young people today might be drinking less?

Humans have been consuming alcohol for thousands of years. While I don't study youth culture or historical drinking trends, what I can say is that taste can be shaped by social dynamics. Beer might taste bad on its own, but in a social environment, where everyone is having fun and you're part of that, it can start to be appealing.

If that social reinforcement isn't present, the beverage may not have the same appeal. That matches what we're seeing: Young people today may not be drinking as much, in part because those social factors aren't shaping the taste experience the way they used to.

While my work shows that social pressure can change how something like beer tastes to you, it doesn't let me predict why younger generations are drinking less on the whole. To really prove it, you'd have to design experiments that actually manipulate the social environment and measure how that changes taste preferences.