Microbiome changes can do this.

No science. But I have this with wine. If it's not good wine, I'd usually rather just skip it. Wine snob they say. However, I'm there for the quality, and if it's not there, neither am I.

I can only speak for myself but I've eaten at Michelin star restaurants all over the world and enjoy fine dining whenever I have the time and I love it, but sometimes I just want taco bell.

Alcohol, on the other hand; good Scotch and wine has ruined the cheap stuff for me. I can't drink cheap, or even mediocre, whisky or wine anymore. If it's not very high quality I'd rather just have something like a gin or vodka cocktail.

anecdotally, Ive gotten this with store bought basic sliced bread. I used to love it and snack on just bread as a kid, but Ive been making my bread with a bread machine for a few years, and now the store bread just tastes and feels like weak, dry, slightly sweetened insulation foam.

I've been homeless, nothing will gross me out if it is still edible.

Related: spicy foods. I used to be basically intolerant of it but now hate eating non-spicy versions of foods I've grown accustomed to. Spicy peppers and hot chili powder have become a crutch for my otherwise mediocre cooking skills.

Not that I've run across on my own, and not with a quick search just now, no.

But all that means is that nobody has published anything on the matter with relevant keywords.

There are articles out there about how taste works, what can change perception in one's sense of taste, and related subjects.

Now, I'm not interested enough to do a deep dive, so take this as you will

But what you'd be looking at is more psychological than physiological. It's perception rather than objective, and it would most likely be related to the various systems of satiety and reward via dopamine and other neurotransmitters.

What we perceive as "good" is mostly subjective, experiential. There's the basics of acid, salt, sugars, fat, and protein all being something we perceive as food in the first place, and that means we receive signals from our senses telling us that those things are "good to eat", meaning safe enough and fulfilling basic needs.

But, we don't all weight the various tastes the same, and we definitely don't all like the same sources and preparations of them. Protein is protein, but you don't see many gym rats chugging a cricket smoothie. There are such products, and people do use them, but it isn't common.

That's where the subjective comes in. Plenty of people enjoy cricket. It's nutty, savory in an umami sense, and can provide nice texture. But it's also possible to utterly reject it as food, even to the point of vomiting, based only on the perception of insects being "bad" in some way. In other words, you'll run across blind tastings where people enjoy crickets when prepared well, but outright vomit after discovering what it was.

Taste creep is the same thing. As you discover new ways of having the same basic ingredients, your brain takes that information and compares it to previous foods. The ones that trigger the most "good" chemicals get remembered as being "better".

But going from enjoying one version of something to another, more recently tasted, version is not entirely chemical in the same way. You see, our conscious minds and subconscious also influence things. There's tests done where someone (damn near anyone) tasting two identical glasses of wine will perceive the one they're told is more expensive, or older, or other perceived signals of "quality" as the better wine, despite coming from the same container.

So you can't really point to taste creep as being purely chemical. There's a social and psychological component to it, imo. I know for a fact that the way food is described influences perception of it. You do some cooking competitions, and just the way you name your cake can make a difference. I've had many a person try my collards and beans just by prettying up how they're told what it is, despite them saying they don't like either. They then ask what that was and tend to be surprised.

And I'm not talking about fucking with people for fun, it's that I have an open table policy about dinner. Well, used to. Anybody I liked well enough to let into my house could come for dinner, no problem. But I got some people calling ahead like some kind of asshat asking what I read making, so I started describing my simple, but easy to fix in large amounts, dishes fancy just for the hell of it. They'd here I was making braised field brassica with stewed legumes with a light corn fritter, and assume I was making some kind of French dish. But hungry is as hungry does, so they ate what I had lol.

All of which is a long way of saying that taste creep is part chemistry, our brain and body finding a specific preparation as better nutrition and calories; and part us psyching ourselves out

I've definitely tried a hand at some fine dining but honestly it only made me appreciate the simple stir fries, and soups my Chinese parents made me.

I now enjoy a mix of both.

no proof, but it can be attributed to a kind of addiction and dopamine association.

it is not that you start hating the average food, but your mind misses that dopamine hit the good food carries. think of it like a withdrawal like effect where your body is now conditioned and has a "higher bar" for things.

I think it depends on the individual, I've eaten at fancy places in the past, but that has had no bearing on my enjoyment of the usual slop I make myself

I have this in a big way. My spouse is a master chef and I refuse to eat at restaurants which serve foods from her home country because they can't compete.

Annecdotal, but I definitely enjoy the simplest foods specifically for their simplicity. Things like a fresh loaf of bread with no sauces, a plain bowl of rice straight out of the rice cooker (I'm Asian), or plain roasted sunflower seeds.

Maybe within the same seating. Like a flight of wine or beer is commonly ordered from lightest- to fullest-bodied in flavor.