Things taste different to me than they did when I was a kid. Once in a while, that’s even a good thing. My mother used to get grapefruit - usually when she was dieting - and I’d try it. Nasty stuff. She’d get some more a year or so later and I’d try it again - still nasty. But a while back, I watched a co-worker peel and chunk a ruby red variety of the fruit in the lunchroom and it looked so appealing that I had to give it one last try. It was awesome! I’m guessing that the intervening years of genetic selection, experimentation and development have something to do with the marked improvement in flavor.
But flavor isn’t always the goal.
I have grown my own tomatoes and let me tell you - there is nothing like the taste of a tomato, just off the vine, lightly salted and still sun-warm. They tasted that good to me as a kid too and my mother never grew tomatoes; she got them at the supermarket like everybody else did. They were medium sized (not like some of the giants you see today), bright in color and full of flavor. As I live in an apartment now, I can’t grow anything. If I want tomatoes, I have to buy them. They are still beautiful to the eye - especially the “vine-ripe” sorts, where a bit of stem and a leaf or two are carefully left on the fruit to cultivate that “home grown” impression. But they have very little flavor. The goal in tomato production has been to create an appealing looking item with a long shelf life - this has been somewhat successful - at the price of leaving the resulting fruit with only a vestige of its former taste.
It’s the same story with corn on the cob. What’s currently available is a very pale shadow of what was available years ago. It looks nice and last a lot longer in the produce bin but you might as well butter a paper towel tube for all the flavor it has.
I sometimes wonder what all is going on. I wonder if its my tastebuds or just the fact that I’m getting older. While I concede those factors may have something to so with it, it isn’t the whole story.
Take ice cream. Regular supermarket ice cream used to be pretty good. Now it’s just cold. If you want flavor, you have to go to a premium style and spend a lot more money for it. Marketing has no qualms about playing with your tastebuds if it means improving the bottom line.
Coffee has gone this way as well. You used to be able to go down the coffee aisle in the A&P and practically be assaulted (in a good way) with the heady scent of freshly ground Eight O’clock, Bokar or Red Circle coffee. Though Red Circle is no longer available (and the A&P markets are likewise long gone) Eight O’clock and Bokar still survive. Tasted them lately? Feh… For coffee that tastes like coffee you have to go elsewhere and pay a lot more.
Take milk. Anyone around my age probably grew up on whole milk but we’re raising kids who’ve never tasted it. Even McDonkey’s serves 2% milk now. It’s not a huge reduction in fat content; whole milk has only 3.25% butterfat and one cup contains 146 calories. One cup of 2% milk has 122 calories - not a lot of difference. You might argue that’s an improvement even if it’s a small one. Maybe. Have you tried 2% milk in your coffee? Ever had chocolate milk made with 2% (and try to find a pre-mixed chocolate milk that isn’t)? It has no flavor. Of course it’s only the partly the fault of the milk - chocolate has changed too over the last 40 years.
I guess what I’m ranting about is what I think of as the Great Tastebud Dumbing Down. It’s a slow process, but it clearly works. We will trade flavor for longevity, lower fat content and prettier presentations. Have you looked at the sugar and/or sodium contents on low-fat products? They’re often right through the roof because removing fat removes taste and that has to be compensated for somehow.
What crystallized this for me is that I made spaghetti sauce yesterday for the first time in years. I’m not sure why I wanted to except that I had the ingredients on hand and just felt like it. I used to do it all the time, but it became more and more convenient to just buy a jar. It wasn’t home made, but it was okay. What I’d forgotten is that it’s not an arduous process and how much better the end result was because I can control the sugar and sodium content and because my mushroom sauce has over a pound of fresh mushrooms in it rather than about a dozen slices. Small slices. Sadly, home made isn’t cost efficient. Maybe, if you grew your own ingredients - but I don’t know anyone who grows mushrooms :)
Last night we had our first watermelon of the season - that quintessential summer fruit. It’s color was lovely and its consistency was great - crisp without being hard or mealy. In the years since I was young, watermelon growers have developed a variety that’s touted as being seedless. It isn’t really; the seeds are smaller, softer and pale in color rather than large, hard and black - but they’re still there. This variety has gone over so well with consumers that the old-fashioned seeded variety doesn’t seem to exist any more. Remember that flood of flavor you used to get when you bit into a big, red, juicy chunk of watermelon - practically lit up your brain with summery goodness? Well, that doesn’t exist any more either.
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Sad but true. These same thoughts had been wandering around in my subconscience and you put words to them. Thanks! Now what do we do?
If this is how you feel about tomatoes, milk, watermelon and corn, don’t even BOTHER to do the homegrown vs. supermarket taste-test on cauliflower! Until a few years ago, I thought it was normal for a head of cauliflower to weigh two tons, I thought it was normal that it wouldn’t dent if you threw it against a wall (not that I ever tried this, mind), and I thought it was normal for it to taste watery and bland—until I grew my own. REAL cauliflower is in fact light as a feather, shot through with rich, fresh flavor, and as sweet as candy—and would never survive five minutes in produce box. Who knew?! (Ever since that one year, however, the bugs have gotten to the cauliflower before I have so I’ve never had homegrown cauliflower since, but the memories still linger…)
Fun posting, Robbyn! Thanks for the entertainment!
Marie - I have no idea :) Except that I think I’m going to start trying to make more things, as opposed to buying them pre-made. Obviously I can’t do that with everything, but there are some places where it’s possible.
Ryan - As it happens, I have had home grown cauliflower and it was, as you noted, wonderful, sweet, tasty and light. The stuff in the market you could lay a foundation with! Fresh herbs were another major revelation!
Fresh herbs - exactly! I’ve given away baggies full of my fresh rosemary and people invariably ask how I got it to taste so strong (and then complain that I didn’t warn them!) Even dried you have to be careful - one sprig is worth a whole jar of store-bought.
“Food for thought” today, Robbyn!
You’re right - watermelon has no flavour anymore. I buy blenheim orange or honeydew instead. Ice cream is weird nowadays because they add stuff to keep it soft straight from the freezer. In my opinion, they’re destroyed the flavour and the texture. Coconuts are dreadful nowadays too.
Oh God, Bron, I was late to the rosemary fan club and when I did, finally, get to taste it, it was the fresh stuff. I about died of pleasure on the spot. Then it was fresh basil! Talk about flavor!! Myria would love to have a little rosemary tree but our climate isn’t conducive to growing it and my understanding is that it won’t so well indoors :(
Pam - I’m not familiar with Blenheim oranges, but honeydew is wonderful! I remember liking coconut when I was a kid (especially getting to drink that lovely liquid that poured out when the nut was cracked), but I haven’t liked it for a long time now.
Overall I agree with you, and for sure about the herbs… and also, that it’s sadly more expensive to make things oneself than to buy them premade! My husband and I usually cook from scratch, but when we don’t have time and buy frozen or prepared sauces etc. it always dismays us to see how much cheaper it often is!
My only quibble is with the milk… I remember drinking whole milk, which is still available (here in Toronto, at least) everywhere, but now I find it unbearably creamy and icky—I much prefer 2%, though 1% or skim is too far the other way, and seems watery. I am horrified, though, by what’s in (especially whipping) cream these days—carageenan gum, cornstarch, xanthan gum… a whole list of ridiculous things to make it whip better! Just give me cream, for goodness sake! And don’t get me started on the yogurt… at least I can still find pure, unsweetened yogurt without anything but milk and bacterial culture in it, but I’m worried that will soon be gone too!
Sorry for the rant—you touched a nerve!
Aven :) - By all means rant away! I bought cream to whip a while ago and, like you, couldn’t believe there was so much in it that wasn’t cream! Obviously, this isn’t something I do very often. I was privileged to have real yogurt last year in Iceland. It was heavenly!
