Thursday, June 21, 2012

Taste What You're Missing, Mental Upload part 2

The only really novel thing that I got from the 2nd half of the book was that you can actually somewhat decrease your hunger and interest in food by imagining that you have already eaten a lot of the food (I presume a good imagination is important here).

As this book needs to go back to the library I want to just quickly type up a few experiments to experience more about taste that she went into more detail in the book.

  • Taste jelly beans with your nose totally plugged, and try to detect what kind of jelly bean they are. Apparently we smell more than taste the various flavors, but you should be able to tell if it is sweet or sour. 
  • Test yourself on spices to see if you can detect which is which by scent alone. 
  • To prove that it is hard to tell food without the texture- 4 jars of baby food, that is not a mixture. Her suggestions- apples, pears, peaches, bananas, green beans, peas, etc. Take the labels off, put them on the bottom of the jars, then use food coloring to make them all approximately the same brown. See if you can tell what they are (use saltines between tastes to cleanse palates). 
  • Similar to the previous one, but with juice- apple, lemonade, white grape, cranberry, pear. Make the apple red, lemonade pink, grape juice brown, cranberry purple, pear orange. Do not let the taster know what kinds of juice are available. Have tester guess the type of juice.
  • Try to rank coca cola, orange juice, gatorade, bottled coffee, milk, brewed coffee in terms of PH or increasing sourness. 
  • Compare 2/3 c water with 1/8 tsp salt to 3/4 tsp accent with 2/3 c water. Taste salt water first, eat a cracker and regular water, then taste the umami water. The difference between the two is umami. 
  • Compare soy sauce, vegemite, worcestershire, ketchup, fish sauce, and parm cheese trying to detect that umami flavor in all of them (cleansing palate between tastes).

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