Food Scientists Are Getting Fed Up with Picky Eaters

Due to its mediterranean weather (1), everything raised locally tastes better. Local food is full of flavor, and things made artisan-ally and locally are still good. Even something simple like a 'Tiramisu' tastes better there, most likely because things are still made to be consumed within a day, and not last for ages. Other countries are similar (Greece, Southern Italy, Croatia, Macedonia).

eg. The difference in taste between a home made jam, and one bought in a supermarket is huge. (mainly for the supermarket one having to have a much longer shelf life, and having additives added).

Unfortunately modernization has reached the country and things are getting more 'standardized' and getting that western level of blandness as well.

Ironically: Fresh locally produced and prepared food is a real luxury in western countries, and a normal commodity in poorer ones.

1) Warm weather is important. eg. Hothouse/greenhouse tomatoes or cucumber are never as flavorful as field raised and ripped ones. The more north you go, the blander/crappier the food gets, mostly due to the weather.

Obviously no common citizen can track a list of 20 ingredients and know which of them are the worst offenders and which are harmless. But there is a clear correlation between processed products containing lots of weird-sounding ingredients and products that taste bland, upset the stomach and/or are unhealthy. So in absence of detailed knowledge about what each individual ingredient is, it's a perfectly rational and sensible decision to prefer the food with fewer, and well-known, ingredients. I have a scientific education, know what dihydrogen monoxide is, and still do that, because I don't trust the industry and regulations enough* when it comes to eating an unknown ingredient. And the industry can cry me a river.

*And this is in Europe, where at least there is some more regulation... in the US, the same applies multiplied by 10.

The lobbyist could then say: Look, people misunderstand things like dihydrogen monoxide. What should we do with the ingredient list? Perhaps we should have the freedom not to mention scary sounding ingredients?

Growing up we were constantly told to eat everything on our plates because there were kids starving somewhere else. And I was forced to sit at a table and stare at food I absolutely hated the taste or texture of for hours. Watched it get cold. Get even worse tasting. And still I sat. As I became an adult I was able to eat what I wanted and refuse things that I didn't. I developed a taste for things I like, and constantly work to refine those flavors. I cook all the time, I use smokers, grills and ovens, we hand raise our own cows, pigs, birds and fish along with a large garden that I eat very little out of but my wife loves. I love looking for the ultimate version of the particular food that I enjoy eating.

But I still have no desire to try anything "new" not out of ignorance, but because I don't have to.

For some people it is an extremely strong aversion -- something that they can't really control, and that would not be influenced by food science or rational arguments.

- Robert Lustig, M.D., M.S.L.

(source: https://peterattiamd.com/roblustig/)

1) To improve taste, 2) To improve texture (or to preserve texture for products -- emulsifiers and binders added to keep dressings from separating, for instance), 3) To improve shelf life and preserve the food, 4) To stand in for something more expensive (artificial vanilla in place of the real thing, or HFCS in place of sugar that has import tariffs on it), or 5) To improve health outcomes. (Think of cereals fortified with vitamins, or iodized salts -- iodine deficiency was a major health threat until the introduction of iodized salt).

Yes, things that improve taste aren't always good for you -- they're often refined carbs or fats or both. But it turns out that in order to get a bottle of ranch dressing that can sit on the shelf for weeks before being purchased, last for months in your fridge, and still have a creamy integration of oil and water (things that want to separate!) without having to be stirred or shaken every use. If you don't want to buy that ranch dressing, that's fine. You can make your own, or make a vinaigrette. But there's not some vast conspiracy to add chemicals to food. And people add thickeners and emulsifiers to food when they cook at home all the time. "Xanthan gum" is not any less healthy for you than agar-agar or gelatine, and it's used for basically the same thing, it just has different properties. (Gelatin is removed from commercial broths and stocks all the time because it makes it unappealing to pour out of the carton at room temperature, for instance. This is one reason making your own stock and broth yields better soup.)

And the upshot of all of this is that we've made lots of foods cheaper, more plentiful and less time-consuming to prepare than at any other point in human history. That's had real effects on society -- not all of them good, see our obesity epidemic in the US, but on the whole, you can see what people were doing, it wasn't a plot to give us TEH CHEMICALS, it was an effort to give a civilization unparalleled amounts of food security and let people specialize in life outside of the home. (There's an entire tangent about the intersection of technical and social progress, and the interaction between convenience foods and women being freed from being homemakers to entering the workforce and being independent.)

Is all of it good? No. Would it be good for people to become more educated and make better decisions about what to eat here? Yes. But that's not what the article is talking about. There's parallels to medicine here -- on one hand, the pharma industry is clearly devoted to profits above all else, and they do all sorts of infuriating things in both the market (slightly altering drugs in order to make new ones that are just as effective but still under patent, jacking up the price of insulin, etc.) and in science (there's tons of scientific studies you can't trust because pharma companies will run a bunch of studies and file drawer the ones that don't help them). It would be better if people could make more informed decisions about health, if the market wasn't distorted to misalign the incentives of consumers and producers, if there was more transparency and better science. But the opposition to commercially-funded pharma studies is not principled and it does not improve your health outcomes. It's stuff like the anti-vax crusade that is letting diseases largely eradicated come back, and Gweneth Paltrow selling folk remedies to the gullible and clueless. The same thing is true in nutrition -- people who are decrying chemical additives in food or pitching you on fad diets are not trying to help you fight against large agribusiness, they are exploiting your skepticism of large agribusiness in order to enrich themselves at your expense. MSG is fine. "Nitrate free" cured meats have more nitrates (but naturally occurring ones, from celery!) than ones not so labelled. Produce labelled as "organic" often come with more pesticides than regular produce because of how you have to grow organic produce and still get high yields, meaning that they can be less safe for many people. A general rule of thumb is that if you don't trust a company when they're putting xantham gum in your food, you shouldn't trust what they're replacing it with, either, even if the name sounds more natural or some food blogger is telling you that xanthan gum causes sterility or whatever.

I used: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/archiveror/

So? If there isn't a good reason for it to be in the food, then it probably shouldn't be. On the other hand, if there is a good reason (e.g. the food lasts longer), then I see no reason why not let the market decide what they prefer.

In general, it's not entirely unreasonable to not trust companies. They're mainly after high profits, so unless there is "market pressure" (such as customers not/wanting certain ingredients) they will just continue poisoning us in different ways (lead in gas, nicotine/smoking, trans fats, etc). It also doesn't help that e.g. orange juice is advertised as "all natural pure oranges" but tastes like a high school chemistry lab trash bin.