Taste
you gotta try this
A Tasty Subject
When I think of the word taste, the first thing that rushes to my mind is
There’s no accounting for taste…
Today, I am going to try and account for it despite some likely protestations. Taste comes in a lot of “flavors”. It arises with the food we eat of course. It applies to the clothes people wear when they leave the house. It applies to what we read, and ultimately because of the yearning on social media, Yelp, Amazon, and GoodReads, is often reduced to “how many stars”. How do we arrive at this topic?
My theory on this has been a blast to ponder. I probably have a theory on most things due to the inability to be a restful mind most of my life until recently.
Before we get rolling, I did a post last year around the Holidays. There is a Venn Diagram near the front that captures the Holidays in a single image. You know the expression a picture is worth a thousand words? Take a look as we transition away from Thanksgiving and head toward Christmas and Hanukkah.
The McRib
Recently McDonald’s announced the farewell tour of the seasonal sandwich, the McRib. I don’t recall advertising ever claiming it was back by popular demand. As a company that protects its recipes as closely held intellectual property, I am glad a how-to video finally made it to the wild. Since this is the final year this “sandwich” will be available, get ‘em while you can.
I sincerely wonder why people eat a McRib sandwich. The sound of those frozen slabs hitting the griddle sounds like Scrabble tiles. The pseudo-rib shape embossed into the pressed slab is absurd.
Many years ago when I was working for a startup our client base for our automation products was broad. I worked with one client named Food Machinery Corporation (FMC). They made the equipment that food companies bought to make their stuff at scale. I remember at the time they were building a Chicken Nugget breading contraption. The machine itself when torn down to ship to the manufacturer filled six tractor-trailers. Essentially a 3-story conveyor that started with “chicken” and ended with breaded half-cooked chunks. As I recall it was not for McDonald’s but instead for Tyson so people could get their fix of chicken chunks at home instead of visiting a fine restaurant.
I remember two particular products sometimes with disbelief. One was called the “char-marker”. It was an automated machine that oriented a piece of meat with a sophisticated vision system and then marked it with grill marks. This was done undoubtedly to make the chicken cubed on top of your salad at Applebee’s appear as if it had been grilled when if fact it was packed into a plastic wrapper for ease of preparation.
The other product was in development and near as I can tell never made it to market. It was a pressed turkey product to which a texture made from emulsifiers and corn starch could be shaped into something resembling a turkey leg. I remember a “food scientist” at the time I was there coming into the back office area in a lab coat. She had a modest tray of these things to try. I politely refused but asked if I could instead see the machinery involved in making it. She gave me a quick tour of a multistory tower with gas lines providing the cooking fuel. It was not unlike a smaller-scale feeder for crushed coal being fed into a boiler at a power plant. This all took place many years ago before I started applying this to how and what I ate.
I am sure that one day I will see a pressed turkey leg with a synthetic texture matching poultry skin amidst a nice smoky char. The pebbled synthetic finish was a nice touch. So far this has not made it to market but it is only a matter of time I imagine. The items I witnessed were made by a subsidiary of FMC named Stein. The internet was my friend and I happily realized there is still a market for this equipment. I wager if you click this link, you might lose yourself for a bit into the netherworld of “food manufacturing”. The DSI Waterjet portioning system is a piece of equipment to behold able to slice through ultra-frozen meat portions and create nearly any shape you might desire and certainly create a shapely cutlet. The Harvester line captures leftover scraps near the bone left by the portioners and allows repurposing for making burgers, sausage, and the like. I wonder how they use the bone as it would be a shame to waste it. The Portioners are good for up to 320 filets per minute so no time is wasted!
The Chicken or the Egg?
Advocates of the paleo diet and the sort assure us that eating like a caveman is honoring our roots. Perhaps it is. Do we love energy-dense food because it is good for us OR do we crave energy-dense food because we’ve been eating it frequently? It seems there are certainly people who have changed their approach. Are they denying their humanity or does our body internals steer the ship?
In the course of preparing this post, I had my phone read this article to me on the treadmill. Isn’t technology amazing? By the way, it was about 13F outside so it was not a great day to walk outdoors.
Tangent Warning
As I’m finishing this I am getting reports of a pending snowstorm in my hometown of Buffalo. Forecasts of up to six feet of snow loom. The community has resorted to relocating the pending Buffalo Bills game and playing it in Detroit instead. Since much of my family is to the East, I share weather conditions knowing what is headed their way in the coming days. I would venture a guess that my two-day long-term forecasts can rival a local meteorologist at times :)
Such a volume of snow seems overwhelming. As a youngster it seemed there was a distinct shortage of plows and equipment in the community. I remember snowstorms shuddering the city for weeks at a time. While it is not an apples-to-apples comparison, the Scandinavian imperative in Minnesota seems to overprepare for the worst. I did a quick survey and concluded Chicago (Cook County) has a bit more than 250 plows and snow trucks. My hometown of Buffalo has closer to 50 (Erie County). I imagine the municipalities maintain supplemental equipment. The Twin Cities checks in with about 800 vehicles. I’m not sure what the right number is but my children rarely got a snow day growing up in the Twin Cities. Things rarely close here and regardless of the temperatures the kids buck up and dress properly at the bus stop. Years ago I realized that even our bridges are outfitted with deicing tanks and misting apparatus to keep bridge decks from freezing. Scandinavians are planners! Every idea has pros and cons though. I remember a Florida vacation in the 1970s, before airline deregulation. Since the Buffalo airport was closed indefinitely due to a storm we ended up with a complimentary hotel and food allowance and at least four extra days to accrue a severe sunburn. The possibility our local airport would be closed for days seems inconceivable.
End of tangent…
So back to the chicken or the egg. There seem to be lots of self-help books that make it seem you can retrain your brain in three easy steps. Based on failure rates, relapse in addiction, and the rising obesity rate, there is probably more at work than is covered in the self-help section at Barnes & Noble. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany have ventured into some interesting studies to figure out what’s happening when we eat energy-dense stuff. Why is it so hard to eat just one Lay’s potato chip? A question for the ages. Here are some statistics to munch on:
About 25% of all potato consumption in the United States is french fries!
About 25% of all vegetable consumption in the United States is potatoes!
The average American eats about 28 pounds of french fries per year! This means we eat about 110 pounds of potatoes per year. Wow!
This settles out to about 110 medium fry orders at McDonald’s per year!
We also enjoy potato chips to the tune of 6-7 pounds per year. That’s about 100 vending machine bags a year! There seems to be a physical craving in play.
The study is fascinating and involves our friend the mouse. So it turns out mice (and us) have a neat sort of neuron in our hypothalamus called nociceptin neurons. They spring into action when we eat energy-dense foods (mostly high fat or high sugar). Once they are activated, they signal and drive us to eat more even beyond being full. That sure explains why we always want just one more chicken wing or one more slice of pizza (or the supersized fries)! This probably was a good survival instinct back in the day but is worth channeling and managing in our modern world when we remote control almost everything.
Mass Market Taste
At some point, taste in many things was overcome by marketing. It seems a transformation occurred in my life so perhaps I am to blame :) What do I mean by taste via marketing? If you look at any sort of vintage photograph (or frankly any photograph from before the late 1970s or early 1980s, there is an interesting change that flourished. Before this most recent commercial full-court press it would have been absurd to see a person walking around on the street with a shirt that said Caterpillar. Somehow, it became a fashion statement to wear your preferred heavy equipment brand as your statement of identity. Nike and Adidas as I was growing up began the persuasive push. Somehow they convinced us to PAY THEM to advertise THEIR NAME. Americans, the ultimate “free people” became walking billboards for all sorts of things. I am not attacking the whole concept but I believe it had to be marketing manipulation because it doesn’t seem sensible to walk around with some company name on your shirt if you don’t work for them.
Perhaps this all began when silk screening became mainstream and any conceivable shirt design became possible. Of course, professional and college sports quickly filled the desire to display our identity and loves in large block letters on our clothing. I am not immune and probably have my fair share of clothing with names on it. This is a fascinating trend for a guy like me who likes to understand how things work. Another aspect of this madness (my judgment) is the continuing trend to hang little labels on the EXTERIOR of clothing that isn’t a billboard so we are sure to know the manufacturer. While this probably started with iconic brands like Levi Strauss during the California Gold Rush, it has continued unabated. Years ago I read a great book about the Gold Rush and the San Francisco Earthquake and how they shaped the development of California. One of my favorite takeaways from the book was that the most likely way to make money during the gold rush was to sell shovels, tools, and Levi’s jeans, pants durable enough for the new prospectors. Not very many people found much gold.
I found this website with a casual search that probably exemplifies where this trend ends. It is a thing to get batches of labels with your stylized name on them. This only seems handy if you are sharing a closet with ten people and you wish to keep things straight. In the spirit of giving people the benefit of the doubt, tagging clothing in rest homes or at camp MIGHT make sense.
How did I go down this rabbit hole in terms of fashion and taste? I saw this satirical shirt for purchase many years ago and still consider it the very best support your sports team shirt. I freely admit that I enjoy participating, watching, and even following sports. That does not preclude me from retaining the sensibility to question all of it. It is always managed best with satire. Here is a short read guaranteed to make you laugh and perhaps question your sports loyalties.
Music Taste
One of the wonderful offshoots of writing this Newsletter has been my return to music discovery. I LOVE picking the songs that suit the mood of my writing. I also think the way writing burrows a path into my mind. It brings me back to music from my past and is also pretty nifty. The invention of playlists with the constant music innovation of the last fifty years has been awesome. While sometimes an album is just what we want, the freedom to follow our minds to the next song and explore our taste is yet another reason this is the best time ever to be alive. I enjoy managing all of my Substack music in a dynamic list that I share on my Substack homepage. Here’s a rabbit hole of music for those that don’t know where my homepage is.
One of my favorite Newsletters set the standard for Substack publishing by posting an ORIGINAL SONG when the anniversary of her Newsletter arrived. At some level, this was dropping the mic for the rest of us toiling to post a little music. Like all good marketing campaigns, she made you navigate to the bottom to get to the music. Well done.
Taste Pot Pourri
I’m going to wrap up with taste confusion. Individuality is king and there is nothing quite like the extremes of most anything. Here are a couple of things I like to think about.
I like all kinds of food but I am genuinely confused by the extremes of taste. A lot of you know what I’m talking about. Yeah, that tastes pretty good but it’s not hot enough, try one of these peppers, but please sign this release first, clearing me of responsibility if there is an incident while you taste it.
Many years ago, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman made a “pals” movie. It was a lot of fun. One of the scenes focused on “the ultimate cup of coffee”. If I pass from this earth and never get to sample the coffee, I am okay with it. If anyone out there has tried Kopi Luwak, let us all know in the comments. It is worth a hearty laugh to explore and understand what Kopi Luwak coffee is. While the movie wasn’t destined to win awards, the movie had its fun moments.
Personal Style & Taste
In the spirit of wearing the “ultimate” dress, made just for you, it is tough to top Bella Hadid at a recent Paris fashion show. We are hurtling toward ultra-personalization of style and taste it seems.
I will finish with an expression that always makes me laugh when I read it. The movie contains a lot of nudity but it is all “done in a tasteful way”.
The Poll & Music
Taste and style intersect and are personal. I remember this song for some unknown reason when it comes to style. There is no accounting for taste :)
What’s Next
Next time, to kick off December I will return with “Buckle Up“. It is a follow-up story with the exciting future of gene editing. It has already begun. What the recent past has taught/cautioned me is at the time of great change there will always be amongst us the fearful, nostalgic and mystical who will aim to put the genie back in the bottle. I lost a good friend a few months back who lived his life riding one wave after another. Michael, at one point, was the Presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party. What I will always associate with Michael, even though he did not coin the phrase was fear is just ignorance. Michael believed this with all his heart. When I observe groups fighting for “the good old days” I chalk it up to fear and its inevitable dance partner ignorance.
In my hometown of Buffalo, NY there are many who never gave up on the end of the Industrial Age. The Information Age, I surmise, has now peaked and times of great change are upon us. The Biological and Genetic Age (someone is bound to come up with a more aesthetically pleasing name) will ride on the Information Age and bring humankind face to face with the creation, formation, and perfection of life. For such a drastic step change, it is best to buckle up.
My dissertation advisor wrote a book about the intersection of gustatory and literary taste in the early 19th century -- it's called "Taste":) This post was a fascinating contemporary take on that topic. Like, what is the relationship between the McRib sandwich and wearing a branded shirt? International capitalism? Influencer culture? Are our tastes becoming synchronized across the globe?
Your writing on the food industry is always fascinating -- if disturbing. I've gone way too far down that rabbit hole to think about food the way I did in 2010.
Oh man I loved all the weird facts in this great issue. Esp. the conveyor belt machine that fills six semis and the 350 filet per minute portioner! It’s amazing the things people can figure out when they want to make money!
Also only 50 plows in Erie County? What?
Your post had me recollecting one of my favorite sayings: “God has no taste.” We all pride ourselves on our refined sensibilities but God, at least a proper God, just loves everyone. Sometimes I am torn between wanting to love everything and wanting to judge the hell out of everything, which is also super fun!