Post No.: 0934
Furrywisepuppy says:
Taste has a lot to do with our preconceptions and expectations, like from what something looks like – hence it can sometimes be difficult to identify ingredients when tasting things blindfolded. We’re not actually that reliable at discerning what’s expensive versus cheap, or even what’s our regular brand versus another brand sometimes, in blind taste tests.
The context of the occasion, price, packaging, colour, how something is served, our personal memories or cultural associations and meanings attached to certain foods and drinks, and more, all play a major role in taste – we don’t perceive the world objectively but subjectively (e.g. an ice cream labelled as ‘low sugar’ or ‘low fat’ will likely be deemed as less sweet or less rich than an ice cream labelled as ‘regular sugar’ or ‘regular fat’ even when they’re both actually the same ice cream and the only difference is the fake labelling!)
Aromas, combined with taste, affect flavour. When we have a cold, it’s our congested nose that actually affects how we taste things. Aromas come from the molecules that are detected by our olfactory senses.
How many different possible smells are there? Even a dog like me doesn’t quite know – woof woof. The words we use to describe smells are qualitative rather than quantitative so we might say something smells ‘sweet’, ‘dank’ or ‘burnt’ but there’s probably not something equivalent to a colour wheel or a single linear spectrum from ‘low pitch’ to ‘high pitch’. We smell a bouquet of compounds at a time and judge the whole rather than the individual molecules – hence a molecule present in poo could be present in your favourite perfume! What one can individually smell depends on one’s personal genetics too (e.g. some people cannot smell the distinct aroma in their own urine after they eat asparagus!)
There may be far more tastes than sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami? Just like there could be colours that we cannot detect because they’re outside of our limited visual wavelength spectra? There may be other taste buds like there are other cone cells? So what molecules we think are tasteless could be equivalent to saying that infrared and UV light are invisible. We cannot imagine what those tastes are like because it’s a question of qualia.
Still, we can concoct an expansive array of flavours by combining these tastes in different ratios, along with chilli heat, herbs and aromatics. Yet English cuisine for a long time boringly kept flavours and ingredients largely separate (like the potatoes separate from the carrots, which were separate from the peas) and treated ingredients as if some were strictly only for sweet dishes or only savoury dishes. So minds were blown when the English were first introduced to something that was sweet and sour for example(!) Fortunately, English folk are generally incredibly open to cuisines and food combinations from around the globe nowadays.
There are more flavours in the world to sample than you may know (although we must be conscious of imported foods that are air-freighted and knowing what’s in season). And pasta, bread and rice would taste uninteresting without flavours added to them – so why assume tofu would be different? Judge ingredients in combination with other ingredients. Thus if you ever complain that something you’ve cooked or bought tastes bland – it’s your own fault!
Disgust is an emotion that’s supposed to protect us from ingesting harmful things, but it’s clear that people who, say, properly cook and eat offal, or drink un-boiled cold tap water in a country that has a highly-regulated water industry, aren’t getting ill any more than people who don’t – hence what brings us disgust depends on how we’re brought up, and much of it is purely in the mind.
The psychosomatic reaction of pre-emptive retching can make it seem like something really is making us ill – but you know it’s psychosomatic when you’re feeling unwell even before the food has been swallowed, or even put into your mouth to taste! Some people even claim to hate, not merely fear, things they’ve never ever tried before, which is kind of like hating a nation of people you’ve never even met before!
Our aversions can be learned (e.g. by copying our parents’ reactions to things) and thus can also be unlearned. Food phobias aren’t easy to crack though; and these can arise after just one single exposure that caused an adverse reaction. But we can learn that we’re not technically getting ill from something through gradual repeated exposures to it over time.
The good thing is that, whether due to cultural diversity or product imports, people are increasingly being surrounded by an ever-greater variety of foods and cuisines and are more curious about new ingredients from around the world. Our cultures are malleable.
Yet it’s bizarre when some modern people are so out of touch that they can no longer palette the fact that a chicken burger came from a chicken – as in they’ll happily gobble a chicken burger but not if reminded that it comes from a chicken(!) So this has nothing to do with ethics or animal welfare but ‘ignorance is bliss’. (From a scientific perspective, we’re all made of stars so what’s the difference between plant matter and animal matter? Therefore science cannot objectively answer whether eating meat is right or wrong – that’s an ethical question.)
So it appears that too many children are being raised with a total shielding from nature and honesty when they eat too much processed, re-shaped meat products and cannot make the link between the meat and the animal it comes from. If you eat fish fingers, you should be comfortable with seeing a fish head on your plate. How would these modern people survive in the wild? If eating insects is fundamentally disgusting then why isn’t eating other animals?
We all need to learn where our food comes from and how it’s made (e.g. you might find a pig’s nipple on your bacon, wine can sometimes be clarified by using fish parts during production). In this world, there are only so many different elements, compounds and molecules – some found in our urine are also found in our mouths (e.g. water!) Many chemicals have many different purposes – some may be safe for consumption in small amounts but are used in more concentrated amounts in harmful products, which is ultimately the same case with salt for instance.
Wonky-looking fruits and vegetables are as good to taste, safe and nutritional as their more uniform-looking versions but when harvested, they’re usually rejected (although they’re often used for making processed products or animal feed instead where possible). So it’s not always the fault of external regulations – supermarkets and consumers themselves can end up expecting ‘standardised’ natural produce. Retailers may blame customers for leaving the former on the shelves if they display them, but retailers could sell them at a slightly lower price. Restaurants usually discard burnt or otherwise imperfect items when parts of them can still be edible too (e.g. the unburnt part of a steak). Depending on price elasticities, substitutes and competition – such costs are ultimately passed onto the customer too, and the environment.
Organic produce is nutritionally no better or worse than non-organic produce, and pesticide levels should be miniscule regarding well-regulated non-organic produce; albeit you may have other reasons to choose organic. Frozen foods tend to retain more nutrition than fresh foods because frozen foods are frozen quite rapidly after being harvested and so have their nutrition ‘locked in’ as much as possible before they reach your plate. Therefore frozen can sometimes technically be ‘fresher’ than fresh!
Canned vegetables have undergone pasteurisation, which is an intense heat treatment that’ll degrade some vitamins. But if you were to cook the equivalent fresh vegetables then it’d be about the same, or possibly worse if cooked for a long time. It’s a case-by-case basis which vegetables are best cooked or eaten raw – cooking makes some micronutrients more digestible by the body whereas it degrades others. Some vitamins leach out into the water they’re boiled in so if you consume that liquid, like in a soup, stew or broth, then it won’t be lost. Cooking makes some vegetables taste better, and if you enjoy eating something then you’ll eat it more.
‘Fortified’ products (e.g. some breakfast cereals) are sometimes better than unfettered organic produce because the fortification adds vital micronutrients like calcium or iron for a better-balanced meal.
Some cow’s milk substitutes, like almond or soy milk, have added sugar to compensate for the lack of sweetness naturally found from lactose. But if you don’t want to drink cow’s milk for any reason then soy milk is a close substitute if fortified with calcium.
Note that normal dietary amounts of soy won’t cause hormonal imbalances – East Asian males don’t develop ‘moobs’ (man boobs or gynecomastia) despite their relatively high soy diets. Men who drink too much beer can develop them though!
People tend to stick to default options whenever uncertain of what to choose – thus making the default school lunch option a healthful one will help improve the diets of children. Due to ‘mental accounting’, if funds are furry earmarked for a specific purpose then people will tend to spend it all for that purpose – thus specifying amounts of food stamp allocations that’ll go towards the purchase of healthful foods only may also improve diets. Similarly, because the ‘pain of paying’ is less if we pre-pay for items – if people receive pre-paid vouchers (school meals programmes) specifically and only for healthful foods then people will find it easier to purchase these foods.
When people are in a hungry state (e.g. it has just turned lunchtime), they’ll tend to order high-calorie meals, and because it takes time before the stomach signals to the brain that it’s full, they’ll end up consuming all those calories. Thus a method to counter this problem is for people to pre-order their meals during a non-hungry state. The less people choose based on emotions (at least for their regular day-to-day meals and snacks), the healthier their choices will likely be.
External cues, such as noise levels, lighting, distractions, numbers of seats per table, stockpiling food, as well as the size, colour and shape of foods and food containers, affect how much people eat, not just their hunger levels. Brighter lighting and fewer seats per canteen table, a higher convenience and visibility of healthful foods, the higher the contrast of food on plates, and thinner glasses and smaller plates, can all help to reduce consumption in school canteens.
Junk food manufacturers understand the influence of packaging and presentation hence healthful foods should perhaps be made more easily accessible and be presented in fun, prominent and engaging ways too? Advertisers also know the value of celebrity associations and peer effects.
Humans, like other animals, will associate a cause and an effect based on the proximity of that cause and effect. For example, a dog fetches the ball (cause), receives an immediate treat (effect), and because the treat is desirable, the dog will wish to do it again.
A problem with this is that many unhealthy habits (causes) won’t exhibit their detrimental outcomes (effects) until after quite a delay, which makes it hard for us to intuitively make the link between the two. In fact, many unhealthy habits lead to immediate gratifications hence why people will do them again and again. If only the heart attacks happened immediately after that ninth biscuit! It’s thus down to scientific research and effortful education to link these longer-term effects to their causes. Other people have made these mistakes so you shouldn’t, or now you’ll know what to do.
People can also build associations and beliefs with foods through ‘old wives’ tales’ or cultural traditions, like certain foods being aphrodisiacs or celebratory-related. Most of these are just purely psychological associations so it’s less about the foods themselves but what people think they mean.
Woof.
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