Accounting for Taste
Yes, I did try the peanut butter and tomato sandwich like I said I would.
But I confess: halfway through, I pulled out the tomato and ate it by itself. We've just been too deprived of "real food" this summer with our failed garden to be tempted by anything but the pure taste of vegetables direct from the earth--even if, this year, they are not our own.
Very little of the American diet consists of things that have flavor in their own right, like an ear of corn does right out of the husk or a melon straight from the vine. A fresh tomato plucked warm from the garden is genuine food, with authentic flavor, unprocessed for texture or appearance. We've grown accustomed in our times, sadly, to chemical foods. Most of the year, Ann and I are as dependent as the next family on what the food alchemists and engineers feed us. So in the summer, when we can get it, I'll take the tomato without the peanut butter.
Ah what we've given away with "processing" of our foods. Consider these few excerpts from "Why McDonalds Fries Taste So Good."
People usually buy a food item the first time because of its packaging or appearance. Taste usually determines whether they buy it again. About 90 percent of the money that Americans now spend on food goes to buy processed food. The canning, freezing, and dehydrating techniques used in processing destroy most of food's flavor -- and so a vast industry has arisen in the United States to make processed food palatable. Without this flavor industry today's fast food would not exist....A number of companies sell sophisticated devices that attempt to measure mouthfeel. The TA.XT2i Texture Analyzer, produced by the Texture Technologies Corporation, of Scarsdale, New York, performs calculations based on data derived from as many as 250 separate probes. It is essentially a mechanical mouth. It gauges the most-important rheological properties of a food -- bounce, creep, breaking point, density, crunchiness, chewiness, gumminess, lumpiness, rubberiness, springiness, slipperiness, smoothness, softness, wetness, juiciness, spreadability, springback, and tackiness.
Next time you sit munching on your favorite chips, crackers or dip, compare its artifice and history to the workings of sunlight and rain in the tomato you eat right from your garden. You'll want the real McCoy--with salt, maybe some pepper, but probably not any peanut butter.
Comments
One of the great things about living in these mountains is that most of the time fresh, locally grown foods are available.
Posted by: Dave | August 28, 2006 8:36 AM
I saw an awful TV commercial last night: A group of young school kids were standing outside with red balloons. One little girl's balloon popped and she wailed. The teacher ran over with a box of Mcfries and stuck one in her mouth. Then all the kids let go of their balloons and cried.
Who shold lobby hardest to get it of the air, those in the mental health field or medical doctors worried about the US rate of obesity, or parents? Everyone.
Posted by: colleen | August 28, 2006 8:39 AM
I've been thinking of your tomato and peanutbutter sandwich all week and wondering whta on earth that might taste like. I will give it a try, but think I agree that a real home-grown tomato should not be contaminated with anything other than a sprinkle of salt. Home-grown tomatoes are my favorite food in the whole wide world!
Posted by: RD | August 28, 2006 8:52 AM
After reading Fast Food Nation, it was difficult to eat at Mickey D's. Now I have the dilemma of promising to take my boys to the ingenius Playland playground that some Mc D's have, where I get the urge to buy something fatty and salty.
I don't know how bad processed peanut butter is, but I do buy the natural kind, where you have to mix the oil and ground peanuts up each time you use it. In fact, I packed a PB&J for lunch today!
Posted by: Jim | August 28, 2006 9:39 AM
I confess, I grab a fast food burger w/ fries about once a week or less. Sure, I roll my eyes in disgust at a culture that encourages me to eat fast food a dozen or more times each week. But, please, don't take my ocassional Thickburger away from me just because fat little Mikey's morbidly fat parents lack the intestinal fortitude to take him (and themselves for that matter) off the sugar, fat and starch diet ;)
I also eat prepared meals about half of the time for lunch. It's more of a time consideration than a taste consideration. However, I break the bank and buy healthy choice meals, and prepared meals from Schwans. They tend to have much shorter ingredient lists.
Speaking of fresh produce, we grew a bumper crop of cateloupes that were to die for. We gave as many as we could away to friends. A horse boarder of ours brought them to a Roanoke school and now we've got folks wanting to pay us next year to grow more :)
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | August 28, 2006 9:13 PM
Like Sean, I enjoy a good hamburger (usually one from Five Guys in Salem or Blacksburg or a good, greasy one from Dudes in C'Burg) and I like a good steak.
Food, like health, is a personal choice, and as a good Libertarian I oppose all efforts to use the hammer of government to stamp out such choice. It is one thing to educate but let's draw the line when it comes to trying to legislate taste. Like morality, taste belongs to the palate of the beholder.
Posted by: Doug Thompson | August 29, 2006 7:56 AM