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Comment by hospitalJail | Hacker News Reader

Japan's obsession with tradition gives me real Europe vibes.

The people selling it praise it, the people nearby have pride.

I eat it and after all the hype, am disappointed. If I try really really hard, I can trick my brain into thinking its worthwhile. (I did just spend a bunch of money, traveled across the world, I should be able to enjoy this more than something I grow in my garden.. right?)

I'd love blind taste tests with children(or adults if you deem them better).

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I hate to push the idea of experience, but you can try that next time.

That is, don't try and take in the taste individually. Look around and experience everything with you and try to imprint some of that into tasting it. Close your eyes and set the idea that it was all a part of it.

Then, later, if you can get back to this specific taste, it can help remind you in very physical ways of being there and having that experience.

You seem to be describing a way to lie to yourself about the taste.

The brain isn't a perfect machine - you can't just isolate the chemical reaction that your tastebuds have and say that anything else is lying to yourself about taste.

Breathing through your nose is lying to yourself about the taste too but if you hold your nose while you eat then you won't taste anything.

I mean, sorta? This would be like claiming that folks that enjoy a long bike ride are finding a way to lie about difficult physical tasks. (Or marathon runners, or any other difficult thing.)

That is, I'm pointing out that you can use unique tastes to imprint experiences. And if you do that, it is not surprising that you can grow to like the taste, as it is no longer an isolated thing, but a physical reminder of other things.

If you work really hard at it, perhaps you can convince yourself of anything. But, notice I used the word work there. Those marathon runners are putting in an active effort to motivate themselves.

No one wants to have to put effort into convincing themselves they're enjoying good wine with their experience.

Maybe. Some people really want to imprint moments in time. Incorporating a distinct taste is a great way to help in that. Really, the more senses you can fire all together and notice, the more I would think you could imprint a moment.

Taste itself is a deception. Studies have shown that if you dye a steak blue, it will taste subjectively worse to the eater than if it were a normal color, even though the taste should be chemically identical. With taste tests of identical foods, where one is mentioned to be a higher price than the other, the person eating it will prefer the "taste" of the more expensive one.

That "taste" as popularly defined is already a multi-sensory experience probably isn't controversial to you. Most would agree that plugging your nose alters your tasting experience of a food. I fail to see why other sensory organs like ears and eyes are not fair game to include in the experience. Weak beer tastes better on a hot patio. Sipping brandy tastes better next to a crackling fire.

I think of it more as paying closer attention to certain facets of the experience, and less to others. It's not a lie- those elements are present, to greater or lesser degrees. Nothing is being spun from whole cloth.

There's no such thing as objective taste. There's only subjective perception of taste.

I'd like to extrapolate this further.

Don't make yourself independent from the experience. If you're already enjoying yourself, you will enjoy the taste (of whatever is in debate) even more. You will associate the taste with the story of its creation as well as your personal experience. Aim for the memorable experience with family/friends over consuming "the best" (sometimes it can be the same thing!) and you will enjoy it far more often. It took a long time to convince my ever-optimization-focused brain to choose this path.

And a corollary to this argument is to never look down on someone for enjoying something you don't like - they simply found a way to experience joy where you didn't.

A lovely extrapolation! All of it.

I wish I could not only upvote, but add a massive underline to that last sentence.

Children have horribly underdeveloped palates. Generally novices in anything, food or otherwise, have trouble appreciating the nuances that make something beautiful.

Could also just say different - children also have an unlimited tolerance for things that are sweet. Some adults I think never get past it much & have what I call super smellers too. But yea it’s like they can also lack the tastebuds that’d help them appreciate bitter things later in life, like most adults do. Could just be natural that our tastebuds from when were kids change or die off sorta, which allows for the fuller palate.

Tbh though I can’t stand bitter & earwax level IPAs. Just gives me headaches.

Relevant link I had handy from writing my own reply

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/ja...

Is it an irony that the very same nuance detection is often used in so many biases and other degenerate judgements?

I have loved that my kids find basically everything beautiful. Beetles in the backyard? Amazing! Snakes? Cute! Coyotes? Leave the chickens alone, you adorable canine!

Are they underdeveloped? I mean, yeah. I don't disagree with the assertion. I sometimes question the directions that we develop ourselves into, though.

I don't think calling this a degenerate judgement is fair. I too have a child and I too admire the gusto with which she experience the world. But when your child is amazed by a beetle in the backyard, your sense of amazement stems not from the beetle, but from the fact that your child can be amazed by a beetle. You're amazed specifically because your child sees the world in a way that you don't. And so I fully believe that a child believes basic staples taste better than the finest cuisine, but that doesn't make their taste a good proxy for adults.

Apologies, that isn't the degenerate judgement I was referring to. In that, I meant most other banal prejudices and such. The diversion to children was just exploring easy topics that show many fears/judgements are learned.

Specifically, the beetle and such are ones that I know I somewhat imprinted on them. If I see beetles, I will shuffle them around so that they are safe from whatever work I'm doing. Such that my kids find them cute and like helping them, where they can. We've had other kids over that find them disgusting and can't believe we would touch them.

Does this mean that some things can't taste better than others? I definitely don't think so. But I find a lot of the attempts at making that objective questionable, at best.

If children were in charge, they'd make everything taste like chicken nuggets. Kind of like the Matrix.

Plus, everything would be beige.

i'm pretty sure that not once ever have i heard a kid say their favorite color is beige. from kid's, i'd expect everything to be bright colors.

Given the comment I was replying to, I thought it would be obvious that my comment was in the context of food.

At least IME, some kids will only eat beige food (fries/chips, battered/breaded meat/fish etc).

Popsicles are typically brightly colored. They also tend to like to eat fruits which are rather bright. Sounds like your grasping. Or I am

No that's the favorite color of old women.

They have more healthy taste buds do they not? Perhaps they have the best taste of all.

I don't know, from 6 to 26, my tasting buds would be ruined by sugar and couldn't see difference between beef and lamb or veal vs pork.

Now my daughter, that's another matter..

> couldn't see difference between beef and lamb or veal vs pork

From 6 to 26? What changed at 26 lol? Are you saying that you stopped eating sugar? I’m surprised by the beef vs lamb comparison. Lamb has so much iron in it that it tastes like blood to me.

Maybe “sugar” isn’t why you couldn’t tell the difference. Especially if you’re saying your daughter doesn’t have that issue lol. I’m honestly perplexed by your comment.

I read that too much sugar can dull the taste of sweetness, which makes sense. I can’t see how it can dull the taste of blood though lol (unless you’re a mosquito).

Basically from 10, I was drinking like 0.5L to 1L of soda a day.

I was eating rarely meat, and my parents couldn't cook, I think at one stage, I was eating McDonald burgers 2 to 5 times a week. So while I was practicing a good amount of sports to burn these calories, it couldn't be good.

26 was when I moved out, started preparing food myself, started really reducing my overall alcohol and soda intake and more exposed to good food.

My daughter eats much more often meat, almost no processed food, high quality ingredients and cooking.

Yeah, it seems like sugar wasn’t the issue then. It seems like you’re saying that you just weren’t exposed to different foods.

(Unless, you’re saying that McDonalds has lamb burgers in whatever country you live in and you couldn’t tell the difference between their beef and lamb burgers? Cause I can definitely see this. I just looked up that McDs in India used to have lamb burgers.)

Novices don't appreciate nuance that trained experts focus on ... yes, that makes sense. But children do actually have more papillae (taste buds) than adults. As we age, we may gain skill in describing what we sense but we also lose taste buds which give us the raw sensory input to start with.

Also on the plus side, children also lack bias and cultural filters and blindspots, which are hard to avoid in adulthood. Kids notice things adults do not and kids don't hold back from talking about details which adults have dulled themselves to or have been trained to not speak of for reasons of tradition or politeness. (Sometimes those things need to be said and we're all thinking them!)

"Out of the mouths of babes."

> But children do actually have more papillae (taste buds) than adults. As we age, we may gain skill in describing what we sense but we also lose taste buds which give us the raw sensory input to start with.

Sure, but the point is that "nuanced" fancy food is optimized for the taste bud setup of adults, not children. So while theoretically, i guess, you can craft a food piece for children that would be the kind of mindblowing that adults can't experience anymore, that's not what expensive cuisine is optimizing for.

They're also famously bad at tasting wine

They may be underdeveloped but they are also significantly more sensitive to various flavours than adults

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/ja...

Sounds like you're trying too hard to enjoy it and not just enjoying it.

I traveled in Italy recently and it was fantastic, the food, tradition and the experience was amazing. I wasn't looking for tradition, I just saw tradition, I experienced it and loved it.

IMO it is not tradition, but variety that is amazing. A lot of variety comes from maintaining traditions, because otherwise we'd all just converge on the One True Way of doing things.

If you can produce a passable wine in your garden I would certainly be impressed.

It's almost like things like food and drinks are incredibly subjective, and things that are highly praised by some won't be enjoyable for others.

It's fine to admit to yourself you didn't like something that was hyped.

But "worthwhile" can mean so many things! If you're going to place X to try "the best Y", with that as your only goal, you're almost always going to be disappointed. Did you try something _new_? Was it _interesting_ in some ways? Was the _experience_ around it nice? Did you learn something about your preferences for Y in the process?

Ignore whatever expectations people put into you, and go at something with a clear and unprejudiced (in either direction) mind. Take things on their own terms, that way you'll see far easier that a lot of well-known stuff is nothing special and that a great deal of common, overlooked stuff is actually a damn sight better than people give it credit. It's a net win.

the taste-journey people undertake before arriving at specific and sought after examples is not something you can skip, you may be disappointed but probably you are just not looking for what you found.

sometimes it's not just about the flavor but the tradition itself. You're participating in an act and culture that has stretched throughout time and creates a shared experience to those in the past and hopefully future

I think US culture, which I suppose you're from, is on a very lonely path food-wise - people from all over the world enjoy trying and making other culture's dishes, not everything is for everyone, but this American-style "I can't get into anything, ever, which I am not used to" is so unique.

>> I eat it and after all the hype, am disappointed.

"Fine" wine has almost nothing to do with taste. It is about culture. It is about history and travel. It is about wealth. It is about demonstrating one's ability and acceptance within a particular society. It is about pretending. The fact that an elite wine only available to a rarified few actually tastes horrible is very much beside the point.

I love it when HN galaxy brains talk about stuff they clearly know nothing about.

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