Sometimes food aversions have an inciting childhood incident, such as misery or vomiting, but often there’s no traumatic history. The scent is one possible explanation: In certain preparations, eggs give off a sulfurous tang, which evokes “a bodily odor” or a “smell of digestion,” says Rachel Herz, 61, a neuroscientist at Brown University and the author of “Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship With Food” (2018). But a fresh raw egg should have no smell at all. The fundamental problem, experts propose, is the way it feels in the mouth. “It’s some combination of being an animal product and having a mucoid texture,” says Rozin. It doesn’t help that there’s irregularity between the yolk and the white — not only does each part taste and look different but they cook differently too. “The emotion of disgust is really to keep us alive,” Herz says. “One of the cues to contamination is irregular texture.”
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