Food that lacks taste probably lacks nutrition

Since usually, when I make this kind of statement, I get a bunch of idiots who think I'm promoting a diet of eggplant parmesan and roasted sirloin tip, I will make sure to use two related, leafy, green vegetables as a basis for comparison. Are you happy now, cheesedicks?

Now, in the human population, I am in the extreme minority that is capable of sustaining a brisk walk or a steady jog for a good ten miles. That was on a pack-a-day of Marlboro regular, by the way; I've switched to E-cigs, so now it's more of a lope if I put my mind to it. The reason that I can do this is that I, unlike the majority of the human population, eat real food. I like all kinds of tastes, and more is better. I like strong, bitter chocolates. Between parsnip and carrot, I prefer parsnip. I like kippers and anchovies; they don't just taste good, but they are anti-inflammatory (most people don't know this). I like hot sauces that go down like hot coals (immune function), and it isn't real coffee unless it can stand up on its own and has a sinus-tickling froth at the top (you are never going to believe this, but it's good for your teeth. Laugh it up). I like any kind of taste that has a bang to it. I even use oatmeal as a milk substitute in smoothies (you're going to love this): it's got more texture and flavor, and it's a little cheaper when you add everything up. Food is supposed to have taste.

The reason that America is fat, people, is that people in the United States of America still believe that the only way that you can be healthy or wholesome is to punish yourself. It's one of the side-effects of Christianity: they live under the mentality that all the good things in life are somehow bad for you. Not true. If you want to be healthy, people, seek out something stimulating and exciting. Learn how to be a food snob, and develop your palate to all kinds of tastes. Develop and learn to love every part of your palate. You will get so much more enjoyment out of life.

I cannot comprehend why people turn away from bitter tastes. I love bitter tastes, and that's why I prefer romaine lettuce over the styrofoam shit that they serve at the McDonald's. It's got a much more interesting, complex flavor, and it really is a superior vegetable. I don't want to eat a pale, bland vegetable: that's not food. It's filler material! It's CRAP! Throw it away! Real food should pack a punch! Here is site showing a nutritional smackdown between these two vegetables:

http://makinghealthyfoodchoices.blogspot.com/2009/03/iceberg-lettuce-vs-romaine-lettuce.html

If you follow the link, you will find that the romaine lettuce is lower in sugar, higher in potassium and calcium, much higher in folate, about ten times higher in beta-carotene, and WAY higher in vitamins A, K and C. Now, it's no coincidence that, between the two, the nutritionally superior vegetable is also significantly higher in this thing we call "TASTE." If you have a well developed palate, you will notice that there is much more pleasure to be found in eating romaine lettuce.

The thing is, one thing that makes a big difference in whether you will be able to take enjoyment in this vegetable is the order in which you eat your food. There is a specific reason that, when we go out to eat at a restaurant, we like to have a side salad with it:

http://www.newbeauty.com/dailybeauty/entry.aspx?ID=1102

The purpose is hygienic. Leafy, green vegetables not only help your teeth by scrubbing them down, but...

http://blog.worldvillage.com/health/an_alkaline_diet_to_reduce_acid_reflux_symptoms.html

...the alkalizing effect that a vegetable like romaine lettuce has on your body can help prevent acid reflux. You are not going to get that effect with some shitty filler material like iceberg lettuce. If you want to have better health, stop punishing yourself: the right food at the right time should taste good. Why in the Hell do you want to deal with acid reflux, indigestion, and a really shitty taste in your mouth the following morning if you don't have to?

Here is an interesting point, though: the reason we like to have raw vegetables after a steak dinner is that this helps to keep our palate and our digestive tract sanitary, preventing us from suffering from a nasty, sour taste in our mouths later on in the evening. This is part of how we cope with having meat in our diet. Even true carnivores have their own adaptations for maintaining oral/digestive hygiene: cats have stronger mucosal secretions for insuring that anything they eat is adequately broken down, and those nasty hairballs they cough up are actually very important for cleansing their upper digestive tract. The vegans will never admit it, but meat actually is good for you; the reason that it's killing us, though, is that we keep punishing ourselves. Don't punish yourself: it's bad for you.

But what about dessert? What about it? Well, believe it or not, your dessert can play a role in maintaining oral/digestive hygiene. But wait, doesn't that go completely against conventional wisdom? Shouldn't we good, little American fatties, and punish ourselves by skipping out on dessert? Hell, no. Conventional wisdom can lick my balls. Remember, good health tastes good now. You can stop punishing yourself. For starters...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/892591.stm

...have some god-damned chocolate. Have some REAL chocolate, not just sugar with chocolate IN it. We're developing our palate now, and we're learning to enjoy all sorts of good tastes. This includes the true taste of chocolate, and there is really a lot of orgasmic pleasure to be found in it. You didn't know that sweets could be good for your teeth, did you? Don't skip out on dessert, people. Punishing yourself just doesn't work. Chocolate is a wonderful, healthy food, and there are all kinds of wonderful things that you can throw into it. That includes...

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=o...qi=&aq=&oq=&aqi=&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=5_nS6qv-qCw

...cranberries, babe. By themselves, cranberries are actually too tart to be pleasurable to eat. Like sensible, intelligent people, we don't like to punish ourselves, so we don't eat enough of this perfectly good fruit. The thing that we forget about cranberries and the reason we don't eat enough of them is that they get all lonely, all on their own. Why do you have to punish yourself and the cranberry? If you don't like the way dark chocolate tastes all by itself (I don't), the best way to sweeten it is to add a few cranberries to it. It tastes good. It doesn't just taste orgasmic, though, but the combination of the two actually makes your teeth healthier. Good health doesn't taste bad. Bad health tastes bad.

And, going back to the oatmeal, why do people have to punish themselves by taking this perfectly good grain and using it in entirely the wrong way? When you use oatmeal as a milk substitute or additive in smoothies, for example, you are making much better use of it than if you just served it in a bowl. We're using milk too much as fucking, god-damned filler material. Jesus Christ, put something substantial in there, and stop punishing yourself by using a product that, if you overuse it, will only leave a nasty, sour taste in your mouth. Milk is a wonderful, useful ingredient, so let's stop punishing ourselves by using it in really shitty, stupid, wasteful ways. Believe it or not, I have a very good reason for my preoccupation with oatmeal.

http://www.nutramed.com/eatingdisorders/addictivefoods.htm

Americans are eating too much wheat. The way that wheat gluten is metabolized in the human body results in certain opioid peptides that result in heightening our addiction to really shitty, bad-tasting food. Oat gluten, on the other hand, does not do this as badly as wheat gluten does. Instead of punishing ourselves by striking grains out of our diet, then, let's get our daily allotment of carbohydrates in the form of something that tastes good. There are so many wonderful things that we can do using grains like oat, millet, or barley. We are just too underappreciative of our food to try them. Besides, oats are very high in soluble dietary fiber, so it helps remove cholesterol instead of adding to what is already there.

Food is not the enemy, people. When are we going to learn this, and stop punishing ourselves? Let's develop and cultivate our tastes. Let's be food snobs, and let's be kind to ourselves. That's the real answer, people. I had a fellow trying to ridicule me the other day for saying this, but food that doesn't have any flavor is probably bad for your health. Let's be intelligent, and let's put food back into the position of being the good guy. Treating ourselves like crap is not getting us anywhere.

 

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Didn't do too bad for the first few hundred thousand years of existence, did we? So perhaps you're jumping to conclusions without any adequate evidence to back up your prediction.

Besides, why are you promoting a diet of eggplant parmesan and roasted sirloin tip or such things? Do you own a sirloin farm and raise eggplant livestock?

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Baron Max

 

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For the first few hundred thousand years of our existence, our lifespans averaged what is now considered to be middle-age during a good century.

 

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Fat, the dreaded fat, is the only substance that stimulates every taste region of the tongue at once.

Fat is life. Of course that's why the taste works that way. Take any taste region, sweet, salty, etc. Add fat, people like it better. Form fat in salty potato chips, to Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

Fat is what makes human's taste sensation come alive.

 

Good post. I think you make a valid point. I always see overweight people at the store buying "light" versions of everything. It's theorized that their taste buds are left unsatisfied and they compensate by eating more and more of their light "food", which is really just artificial crap. Lack of nutrition also causes people to overeat because their bodies are begging for whatever vitamin/mineral they lack. You can normally judge a fruit or vegetable's nutritional value by how colorful it (naturally) is. Spinach and romaine lettuce are a rich green. Iceberg lettuce almost looks white.

 

Ha! And if you're not very, very careful, buying and consuming those products because of the recent surge in salmonella contamination - mostly from contaminated irrigation water. And you can't wash salmonella off of those products!

I don't know ....which is better? ...being fat from eating fatty food, or being dead from eating nutritious, good-for-you, salmonella-contaminated lettuce?

Baron Max

 

I never liked the taste of veggies so I pour either honey or maple syrup over them to make them , to me, taste better to eat. I use a very little honey, just enough to get that terrible taste out.

 

Bitter tastes are associated with poisons in nature.

 

Some people are drawn to the more bitter-tasting vegetables, and bitter tastes are also associated with the kinds of vegetables that are higher in nutritional value. Many people who aren't keen on salads often enjoy collards and spinach, which are actually significantly more bitter in taste. Some people love radishes; in fact, a very good way to eat radish is to cut it up into slices and eat it like a chip with some sour cream and some spices. It actually tastes extremely good. It's like junk food for people who have been awakened to the fact that their balls have dropped.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannin

 

Even better:

In addition, it is of interest to those who study evolution since PTC-tasting is associated with the ability to taste numerous natural bitter compounds, a large number of which are known to be toxic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste#Bitterness

 

Oat-millet porridge, flavored with a stock made from leftover ham bones (smoked ham, which can last for a very long time and has mind-blowingly versatile uses) and seasoned with parsley (a very bitter but culinarily versatile leaf). Cranberry quinoa bread with a little bit of homemade cashew butter (made using quinoa oil) spread on it, lavender honey drizzled very very lightly over the top (good lavender honey should be treated with near-religious respect). A few thin slices of apple, a tiny dab of honey on each with a mere sprinkling of cinnamon. A steaming, hot tea flavored with leftover orange peel, a touch of ginger root, and a single leaf of windowsill-grown catnip.

Did I do good?

 

food that lacks taste also lacks nutrition?? So spice is what is nutritious and not the food. Are you saying I should salt and pepper my water?

 

You don't? Uh-oh, I'd see a physician right away. You're probably dangerously under nourished.

 

Drink oatmilk, cheesedicks.

 

Alright. Then why am I drawn to black and unsweetened coffee, nicotine, extremely dark chocolate (83% minimum), bitter-tasting beers occasionally, orange peel (especially in teas, but I don't bother peeling oranges when I DO eat them), therapeutic tonic water for making my gin/tonics, etc.? Why am I one of those people who actually like the taste of arginine supplements to the point that perhaps it's a good thing that there is no such thing as arginine poisoning? Am I just a freak?

By the way, are you aware that there are three essential amino acids (meaning that your body can't make them) that ALSO have a bitter taste? Trivia, perhaps, but it's interesting trivia. Bitter tastes may indicate poisons, but they can also indicate foods that are exremely high in hard-to-find nutrients. I think that it actually is possible to cultivate a taste for certain foods that have bitter qualities of taste, including spinach.

But thank you. You brought up some interesting points. By the way, I have an intolerance for tannins. Tea tannins actually cause me to projectile vomit in a display that would be the center of attention on the Fourth of July. I can't drink dry wines, either, except in small quantities.

 

See what I mean, guys? Every time I bring up this point, I get a bunch of idiots who think I'm referring to spices and "seasonings." This goes to show you how limited and narrow most people's understanding of taste really is.

It is important to develop all six of the basic parts of our palate: sweet, bitter, salty, sour, and savory. The human palate can tell when a food is actually lacking in any nutritional value. It can even detect the presence of starches, even though pure starches don't properly stimulate the taste-sensing parts of our palate. They still play a role in our enjoyment of food, and some starches actually have a subtly sweet flavor (most people don't know this).

We need to stop living in the dark, people. We need to learn how to be food snobs. This is what puts us a step ahead of the other guy. This is what separates the men from the boys.

 

Ah, but fats have these delightful, little relatives called "oils." There are certain triglycerides that can actually be quite good for you. Take oleic acid for example: oleic acid can actually help reduce body fat, and it can improve heart health. It can actually lower your cholesterol levels.

Repeat after me, people: Oil is good! Oil is good! Oil is good!

The real enemy, people, is the idea that food is the enemy. Food is your friend. Instead of treating food like it's your enemy, learn how to love food in every possible way, and learn how to be a food snob.

 

I'm gonna have to check with Asguard on this. Are they fats, oils, or lipids?

 

To put it very roughly, oils are fats, and fats are lipids. Oils are really nothing but a kind of fat that is liquid at room temperature. That's all it is. A fat is nothing but a glycerol molecule that has ester bonds to three molecules that have a familial resemblance to the unleaded gasoline that you put into your tank.

An ester bond is this: glycerine is normally nothing but three little carbons, all in a row, and they all have OH groups attached to them. There are a few little hydrogens here and there, but hydrogens are nothing but bitch place-holders here, more easily replaced than a retail worker. The OH groups make them a type of alcohol; therefore, another name for glycerine is "glycyl alcohol." Now we're going to bring along three other alcohols whence the OH groups appear at the ends of long gasoline-like molecules (we call them straight-chain alkanes or alkenes). To make an ester bond, we are going to attach the last carbon atoms on our three gasoline-like alcohols to the oxygen atoms that make up the OH groups for glycerine. Because hydrogens are nothing but bitch place-holders here, the hydrogen atoms on each OH group will simply fly away, making a molecule that looks kind of like this:

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Now, in the molecule above, you see one saturated fatty acid, one monounsaturated fatty acid, and one polyunsaturated fatty acid. To be monounsaturated means that, somewhere on the chain, two adjacent carbon atoms are holding one less hydrogen, each, than they are capable of holding. Instead of holding hydrogens, these two carbons have stronger bonds with each other. Fats that have multiple unsaturations in their fatty acid chains are more likely than saturated fats to be oils. This is because unsaturations throw a KINK into the chain, and this makes it less likely that the fat will congeal into a proper solid.

Now, some saturated fat is good for the human body, but knowing this is only really valuable for human beings who have relatively limited or highly seasonal access to meat. Humans living in mountain valleys, for example, only really had significant amounts of meat when large herds of game came down from out of the highlands during the depths of Winter, and this was often the only thing there was for humans to eat during an Ice Age Winter. Humans should really only have modest amounts of saturated fat in their diet, but there is a perfectly naturalistic reason that some of us pursue it rabidly where it is, indeed, available.

Unsaturated fats, on the other hand, should really be the main kinds of fats that we consume. In fact, there are actually some kinds of unsaturated fatty acids, such as oleic acid, that can help make us skinny and improve our heart function. Linoleic acid also has beneficial properties. Both are found in high concentrations in olive oil. However, there are less expensive that also contain these beneficial fatty acids.

You didn't know that fat could make you skinny, did you?