But, as with the other four senses, your taste is manipulated by a whole bunch of factors outside of your control. Like ...

We never get tired of optical illusions (particularly that mind-melting one with the gray squares ) -- it's good to remind yourself that your senses can't be trusted. But the one sense you'd think you could trust is taste -- nobody is going to convince you that a hamburger is apple pie.

5 What Your Mom Ate While You Were a Fetus

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Obviously, the food you ate as a kid growing up will influence your tastes for life. But it starts earlier than that. In fact, the foods your mother ate while you were in the womb influence what your favorite foods will be.

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The study on this was carried out by researchers from the not-at-all-evil-sounding Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, who had pregnant women drink a bunch of carrot juice while pregnant and then while breastfeeding (with various groups changing up when they drank it). The results? The kids whose mothers were given the carrot juice, regardless of the stage when they were given it, were less grossed out when fed a carrot-flavored cereal one month later.

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And in fact, the kids whose mothers had carrot juice during both stages (during pregnancy and during breastfeeding) reportedly couldn't get enough of the stuff. And this is freaking carrot juice we're talking about here.

It makes sense in a way, considering the food your mom ate flavored both her breast milk and the amniotic fluid that surrounded you in the womb. Still, you'd think the residual carrot flavor would be imperceptible, having filtered through her body in the course of metabolizing it. You might like the taste of pork gravy but you wouldn't want to go lick the sweat off of a guy just because he eats it every day.