LessWrong Experience of Flavours

Interesting idea. Could be made into a poll to measure breath and variability of preference via a poll.

I will just plain take your points and make each into a poll and add some of my own. Everybody is invited to vote the their preference on a 1 to 5 scale (as many as you like, no need to consider all, the liste got quite long):

[pollid:864]

[pollid:865]

[pollid:866]

[pollid:867]

[pollid:868]

I'm addicted to sugar [pollid:869]

[pollid:870]

[pollid:871]

[pollid:872]

[pollid:873]

[pollid:874]

[pollid:875]

[pollid:876]

[pollid:877]

[pollid:878]

[pollid:879]

[pollid:880]

[pollid:881]

[pollid:882]

[pollid:883]

[pollid:884]

[pollid:885]

[pollid:886]

[pollid:887]

[pollid:888]

[pollid:889]

[pollid:890]

[pollid:891]

[pollid:892]

[pollid:893]

[pollid:894]

[pollid:895]

[pollid:896]

[pollid:897]

[pollid:898]

[pollid:899]

[pollid:900]

[pollid:901]

[pollid:902]

Sure, here's my preferences:

spicy foods I enjoy moderate spice. Really really spicy is a bit much for me, and I do tend to drink a lot of water when eating spicy foods, but I like them.

sweet things Definitely have a bit of a sweet tooth: I enjoy these and would generally prefer to have a dessert over a starter in a 2-course meal, for example. I like chocolate but I'm not sure that's a particularly great example for this category, as I also enjoy it in its less sweet forms: very dark chocolate, unsweetened drinking chocolate. It is also definitely possible for things to be too sweet for me to want them in large quantities.

alcohol Don't like, don't consume to any significant extent.

drinks I drink a lot of water and no-added-sugar orange squash (I think this is quite a British thing: it's similar to a cordial but somehow different. Comes in concentrated form and you add water to make the drink up). Juice (usually orange) sometimes; milk occasionally. I like lemonade but tend to reserve it for pubs or eating out, neither of which I do all that frequently. Don't like ice in my lemonade!

hot drinks Until a few months ago, I drank a fair bit of tea but decided the caffeine was bothering me, so now I drink tea (with milk but no sugar) a couple of times a week and most days have either rooibos or some herbal tea like peppermint or chamomile. Hot chocolate or chocolate Ovaltine quite often. Coffee extremely occasionally (like once or twice a year maybe).

bitter foods Mostly like. I really enjoy olives and vegetables that some people describe as bitter like broccoli or sprouts.

excluded vegetables Can't think of any really... I used to be not that fond of parsnips but seem to have got over that. Fruit and vegetable preferences for me are a lot more about texture than taste, so sometimes a vegetable that I really like when I cook it can be a bit off-putting to me when cooked in a form I'm not keen on. I'll probably still eat it though. Oh, water chestnuts, I don't like those. (Are they a vegetable?)

animal based products Haven't eaten meat for years so can't comment on preferences. I like and consume quite a lot of dairy and eggs in various forms, including goats' and sheep's cheese which no one else in my family can stand on account of the baffling complaint that "it smells like a goat/sheep".

tofu or other replacement-animal-products I probably eat less of these than many vegetarians, although I have no objection to any of them that I've tried. I just prefer vegetables and legumes and so on, I guess. Tofu is the most often used in my cooking (maybe once a week or slightly less).

sour I quite like citrus flavours, but in relatively small doses I suppose. Sour fruits are fine modulo texture. I like grapefruit, for example. It takes me quite a long time to consume this type of thing if it's in concentrated form, as I find it to be a very strong taste (a small glass of orange or grapefruit juice can last me ages, for instance).

vinegar No objection, don't use it that much.

starchy foods I like bread a lot, fresh from the bakery (or our own oven) being the best kind pretty much regardless of what sort of bread it is. Also eat pasta, rice and potato very regularly. Not much preference between these really, although I find I eat less if I'm eating potato: it seems more intense and filling.

salty foods I think I have quite a low tolerance for salt. I don't add it to many things when cooking and often find processed (or even just not-made-by-me) soups etc to be overwhelmingly salty. I seldom add it at the table, steamed cabbage being an exception that I feel benefits from a bit of salt.

I have Asperger's, and my experience of food is mostly mediated by the mouthfeel often being repulsive to me, and the tastes often far too strong to tolerate. Probably the majority of food people around me eat is disgusting to me, but I don't think I can describe it in terms of taste preferences like the ones you're asking for. If most of the difference between "delicious food I greedily consume" and "food that puts me off the rest of my breakfast" is in whether the fat is crispy enough, I'm not sure if I can usefully talk about how much I like the taste of meat.

I quite like all foods/drinks that I have tried, barring a few things like tripe. I find myself baffled by picky eaters.

Possibly interesting factoid: my father and I share barely any food tastes. I love vanilla as intensely as he hates it. He likes his alcohol dry while I like mine sweet. At the same time he tolerates crappy sweet snacks and poor quality chocolate that I would find cloying after the first bite. I'm okay with import fresh produce while he can't stand anything out of season or greenhouse-grown or non-organic. Both my parents seem to like fish quite well, and eat everything with lots of slices of bread, whereas I can't stand either. I once bought some green tea only to discover I utterly hate the taste, while my father was pretty glad to have the green tea all for himself.

I wonder what might be going on...

What kind of vinegar you like? I am okay with normal fruit or wine vinegar on salads. I am trying to get into balsamic vinegar as a lot of people say this is the best thing on a salad, but it keeps smelling like unwashed feet to me.

I don't fully understand how in the Western culture the term "spicy" has multiple meanings. It can mean the capsaicin burn of "hot" food, or it can mean simply something literally spicy, like curry. In the West, the textbook typical spicy food is an Indian curry, korma, vindaloo etc. which can be both, you can usually order them hot or not hot in a restaurant.

For example, srirocha (note: I only know the goose version, not the rooster one, the rooster one is hard to find in Europe) is "hot" like fsck, but it is not spicy, it has hardly any taste IMHO.

I suppose this must be something historical. The first spices imported were probably of the "hot" kind like black or white pepper.

Hypothesis: "hot" food is an aphrodisiac, perhaps back in the Middle Ages they were mainly used by aging noblemen to get a hard-on easier. I don't see this effect on me (for me eggs work best for that purpose), but I have heard this hypothesis made by others.

Another interesting aspect of the English language is the distinction between spices and "herbs". As far as I can tell, the difference is simply imported vs. native, not today, but like 500 years ago. Marjory (a herb) was grown locally in England, coriander (a spice) had to be imported. Nevertheless it is possible to use herbs to make food taste pretty spicy. Not in the "hot" sense.

Will the existence of supertasters skew the results? I've ordered a supertaster test chemical strip before, and found I was a supertaster, but my brother was not.

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

I find I am not tolerant of extreme flavours in either direction. Super-sweet, or super sour, bitter flavors can make me gag. I can't drink coffee or most teas. I also don't enjoy chocolate. I eat mostly 'vanilla' or bland foods, but find they taste quite good.