
Food Scientists Are Getting Fed Up with Picky Eaters - rhayabusa
https://www.wsj.com/articles/emulsify-this-food-scientists-are-getting-fed-up-with-picky-consumers-1539352923
======
ardit33
From Albania here, (2nd world European country, aka still developing).

Due to its mediterranean weather (1), everything raised locally tastes better.
Local food is full of flavor, and things made artisan-ally and locally are
still good. Even something simple like a 'Tiramisu' tastes better there, most
likely because things are still made to be consumed within a day, and not last
for ages. Other countries are similar (Greece, Southern Italy, Croatia,
Macedonia).

eg. The difference in taste between a home made jam, and one bought in a
supermarket is huge. (mainly for the supermarket one having to have a much
longer shelf life, and having additives added).

Unfortunately modernization has reached the country and things are getting
more 'standardized' and getting that western level of blandness as well.

Ironically: Fresh locally produced and prepared food is a real luxury in
western countries, and a normal commodity in poorer ones.

1) Warm weather is important. eg. Hothouse/greenhouse tomatoes or cucumber are
never as flavorful as field raised and ripped ones. The more north you go, the
blander/crappier the food gets, mostly due to the weather.

~~~
21
> _The more north you go, the blander /crappier the food gets, mostly due to
> the weather._

It's more complicated than that. Cultural reasons are a huge factor in why
Western food is so bland:

> _Serving richly spiced stews was no longer a status symbol for Europe 's
> wealthiest families — even the middle classes could afford to spice up their
> grub. "So the elite recoiled from the increasing popularity of spices," Ray
> says. "They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing
> food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should
> taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing
> flavors."_

> _The rest of Europe soon adopted this new style. "It's a redefinition of
> what elegant is," Freedman says. "It's sort of like — in fashion — for a
> while having more frills, more jewelry was fashionable. But then someone
> said that a basic black dress with some pearls is much better."_

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/26/394339284/ho...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/26/394339284/how-
snobbery-helped-take-the-spice-out-of-european-cooking?t=1539535616321)

~~~
dyarosla
I do believe the parent did mean specifically the base taste is less bland,
independent of cultural factors. For someone who hasn’t experienced the taste
difference one might think ‘really, how much better can a tomato taste?’- but
no the difference really is substantial, esp when comparing, say, a North
American tomato and one from southern Europe.

------
DecayingOrganic
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swy_F)

~~~
jwilk
If you don't want to be tracked by Facebook, there's
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-
wsj/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/) which fakes
the referrer.

------
exabrial
I truly think this is because picky eaters are easy to market to; they pay
attention to flashy advertising rather then hard science. We have an entire
generation of people that think GMOs are somehow harmful and also ignore the
tremendous environmental impact of so called organic foods. The same people
taking birth control are reaching for grass fed hormone free milk and beef.

~~~
rafiki6
I think it's a cognitive reaction to safety. Fear is certainly there due to
the unknown. People will retreat to what they feel is safe and easy to
understand i.e. "natural" food. Little do they know natural food is GMO! The
crops that survived today did so by natural genetic mutations for the crops
that had the best ability to survive. Humans just took advantage of that fact
and sped up the process a bit to our advantage.

~~~
Vinnl
Of course humans also took it upon themselves to define what "best ability to
survive" is.

Not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly a
difference between GMO and regular evolved food.

 __Edit: __Well, thinking about it a bit more, of course selective breeding is
humans picking what "best ability to survive" is as well...

~~~
rafiki6
I don't doubt what we decide should survive isn't necessarily what "nature"
will decide should survive. If we get to a point where we are in too much
conflict with "nature" we will lose most likely. Earth's evolution of life is
much longer and stronger than we as a species are. But why not try? It's our
imperative as a species to continue doing what's best for our survival.

~~~
Vinnl
I think what people are mostly afraid of is e.g. developing breeds that we
cannot control and that drown out other essential species.

------
Al-Khwarizmi
If the food industry were more responsible and didn't do everything it can to
reduce costs at the expense of selling crap, maybe there wouldn't be so many
"picky eaters".

Obviously no common citizen can track a list of 20 ingredients and know which
of them are the worst offenders and which are harmless. But there is a clear
correlation between processed products containing lots of weird-sounding
ingredients and products that taste bland, upset the stomach and/or are
unhealthy. So in absence of detailed knowledge about what each individual
ingredient is, it's a perfectly rational and sensible decision to prefer the
food with fewer, and well-known, ingredients. I have a scientific education,
know what dihydrogen monoxide is, and still do that, because I don't trust the
industry and regulations enough* when it comes to eating an unknown
ingredient. And the industry can cry me a river.

*And this is in Europe, where at least there is some more regulation... in the US, the same applies multiplied by 10.

------
rafiki6
I feel the underlying cause of this is the continuing stupidification of
Western Societies. It ties in well with the fact that most people just aren't
well equipped to navigate complex issues and are easy prey for unscrupulous
marketers. Companies take advantage of that fact just as much as politicians
do. It's easy to tell people to be afraid of complex sounding ingredients just
as much as it's easy to tell voters to be afraid of complex scientific
phenomena like climate change. And then you can push your unscientific agenda
(whether it's climate change denial or it's marketing your food as natural and
your competitors as poison and thus charging your customers double or more for
it).

~~~
heurist
People are about as smart as they have always been. The world is just getting
more complicated around them.

~~~
rafiki6
Not true. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146752-we-seem-to-
be-g...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146752-we-seem-to-be-getting-
stupider-and-population-ageing-may-be-why/)

~~~
heurist
That article isn't convincing to me. IQ testing has known issues and if they
didn't control for age then the assertion might apply to the general populace
right now but not as a general trend that will hold over time, especially
since Millennials and Gen Z together are much larger than Boomers. The
fertility argument is dumb IMO because while intelligence is heritable,
environmental factors and education play at least as large of a role in
ability to perform on an IQ test. Also that trend, if it is anything other
than a blip (because the wealthiest may actually tend to have more children)
just began do there would not be much reason to think gene shift would be a
strong factor in IQ trends.

[https://qz.com/1125805/the-reason-the-richest-women-in-
the-u...](https://qz.com/1125805/the-reason-the-richest-women-in-the-us-are-
the-ones-having-the-most-kids/)

------
_nalply
Could this be a food industry backed opinion piece?

The lobbyist could then say: Look, people misunderstand things like dihydrogen
monoxide. What should we do with the ingredient list? Perhaps we should have
the freedom not to mention scary sounding ingredients?

~~~
rafiki6
I'm all for conspiracy theories, but we have to use some reasoning here. I
don't doubt the food industry does this, but the reality is there's a happy
middle ground. Maybe that middle ground could be using common names for
things. Food science has made food cheaper and more accessible and that's a
good thing. Our food isn't killing us. We are healthier and living longer than
ever in history. I do think people who are marketing more expensive food that
is marked up tremendously due to an unscientific reason are the real
beneficiaries here.

~~~
muro
Look at what Monsanto did with bribes to scientists to say GMO is ok

------
chabes
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think it’s great that processed food
manufacturers are trying to replace synthetic ingredients with actual food. I
don’t see a problem here.

~~~
fortenforge
What exactly is the benefit of replacing Red #40 with red cabbage extract?

~~~
mrj
Well, potentially quite a lot of benefit:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-dyes-linked-to-
allergies-a...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-dyes-linked-to-allergies-
adhd-and-cancer-group-calls-on-us-to-outlaw-their-use/)

~~~
icebraining
The actual report seems rather weak. Some people have an allergic reaction to
it, and some mouses may have tumors growing a bit faster - when over 5%(!) of
their diet is red dye - and only in one of the three studies.

------
SteveGerencser
I freely admit to being a picky eater. And I even understand why I became that
way. It doesn't change the fact that I rarely sample things I have never had
before.

Growing up we were constantly told to eat everything on our plates because
there were kids starving somewhere else. And I was forced to sit at a table
and stare at food I absolutely hated the taste or texture of for hours.
Watched it get cold. Get even worse tasting. And still I sat. As I became an
adult I was able to eat what I wanted and refuse things that I didn't. I
developed a taste for things I like, and constantly work to refine those
flavors. I cook all the time, I use smokers, grills and ovens, we hand raise
our own cows, pigs, birds and fish along with a large garden that I eat very
little out of but my wife loves. I love looking for the ultimate version of
the particular food that I enjoy eating.

But I still have no desire to try anything "new" not out of ignorance, but
because I don't have to.

------
analog31
I wonder if there are different levels of picky eaters. For me, there are some
things I like better than other things, but I will eat or try something if
nothing better is around.

For some people it is an extremely strong aversion -- something that they
can't really control, and that would not be influenced by food science or
rational arguments.

------
ummonk
If I want vitamin B12 I don't need to eat fortified cereals. I can just eat
beef or tuna.

------
philip1209
"If there’s a label on the food, that’s a warning label, because that means
it’s been processed: real food doesn’t need a label."

\- Robert Lustig, M.D., M.S.L.

(source:
[https://peterattiamd.com/roblustig/](https://peterattiamd.com/roblustig/))

------
cwyers
There's quite a few comments in here about how food scientists shouldn't have
put so many things in foods to begin with. Well, look. There's a handful of
reasons anything ends up intentionally added to large-scale industrial foods:

1) To improve taste, 2) To improve texture (or to preserve texture for
products -- emulsifiers and binders added to keep dressings from separating,
for instance), 3) To improve shelf life and preserve the food, 4) To stand in
for something more expensive (artificial vanilla in place of the real thing,
or HFCS in place of sugar that has import tariffs on it), or 5) To improve
health outcomes. (Think of cereals fortified with vitamins, or iodized salts
-- iodine deficiency was a major health threat until the introduction of
iodized salt).

Yes, things that improve taste aren't always good for you -- they're often
refined carbs or fats or both. But it turns out that in order to get a bottle
of ranch dressing that can sit on the shelf for weeks before being purchased,
last for months in your fridge, and still have a creamy integration of oil and
water (things that want to separate!) without having to be stirred or shaken
every use. If you don't want to buy that ranch dressing, that's fine. You can
make your own, or make a vinaigrette. But there's not some vast conspiracy to
add chemicals to food. And people add thickeners and emulsifiers to food when
they cook at home all the time. "Xanthan gum" is not any less healthy for you
than agar-agar or gelatine, and it's used for basically the same thing, it
just has different properties. (Gelatin is removed from commercial broths and
stocks all the time because it makes it unappealing to pour out of the carton
at room temperature, for instance. This is one reason making your own stock
and broth yields better soup.)

And the upshot of all of this is that we've made lots of foods cheaper, more
plentiful and less time-consuming to prepare than at any other point in human
history. That's had real effects on society -- not all of them good, see our
obesity epidemic in the US, but on the whole, you can see what people were
doing, it wasn't a plot to give us TEH CHEMICALS, it was an effort to give a
civilization unparalleled amounts of food security and let people specialize
in life outside of the home. (There's an entire tangent about the intersection
of technical and social progress, and the interaction between convenience
foods and women being freed from being homemakers to entering the workforce
and being independent.)

Is all of it good? No. Would it be good for people to become more educated and
make better decisions about what to eat here? Yes. But that's not what the
article is talking about. There's parallels to medicine here -- on one hand,
the pharma industry is clearly devoted to profits above all else, and they do
all sorts of infuriating things in both the market (slightly altering drugs in
order to make new ones that are just as effective but still under patent,
jacking up the price of insulin, etc.) and in science (there's tons of
scientific studies you can't trust because pharma companies will run a bunch
of studies and file drawer the ones that don't help them). It would be better
if people could make more informed decisions about health, if the market
wasn't distorted to misalign the incentives of consumers and producers, if
there was more transparency and better science. But the opposition to
commercially-funded pharma studies is not principled and it does not improve
your health outcomes. It's stuff like the anti-vax crusade that is letting
diseases largely eradicated come back, and Gweneth Paltrow selling folk
remedies to the gullible and clueless. The same thing is true in nutrition --
people who are decrying chemical additives in food or pitching you on fad
diets are not trying to help you fight against large agribusiness, they are
exploiting your skepticism of large agribusiness in order to enrich themselves
at your expense. MSG is fine. "Nitrate free" cured meats have more nitrates
(but naturally occurring ones, from celery!) than ones not so labelled.
Produce labelled as "organic" often come with more pesticides than regular
produce because of how you have to grow organic produce and still get high
yields, meaning that they can be less safe for many people. A general rule of
thumb is that if you don't trust a company when they're putting xantham gum in
your food, you shouldn't trust what they're replacing it with, either, even if
the name sounds more natural or some food blogger is telling you that xanthan
gum causes sterility or whatever.

~~~
cwyers
I forgot one reason from the list -- to improve color.

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yipbub
Paywall bypass: [https://archive.is/Hb6NE](https://archive.is/Hb6NE)

I used: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/archiveror/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/archiveror/)

~~~
paulcole
I used: [https://buy.wsj.com/wsjussept18/](https://buy.wsj.com/wsjussept18/)

~~~
yipbub
As in intern earning in INR I'll just go ahead and spend literally 1% of my
income per paywalled site out there shall I?

Siloing information to those invested enough in the field to need quality
information in quantity enough to pay for access is not something I want to or
can support.

I don't know a good alternative for WSJ, but I don't know a good alternative
for me either.

------
tomp
> Then they came for monosodium glutamate. Even though food companies say it
> is harmless, they eventually pulled it from many products, because that’s
> what the customer demanded.

So? If there isn't a good reason for it to be _in_ the food, then it probably
shouldn't be. On the other hand, if there _is_ a good reason (e.g. the food
lasts longer), then I see no reason why not let the market decide what they
prefer.

In general, it's not entirely unreasonable to not trust companies. They're
mainly after high profits, so unless there is "market pressure" (such as
customers not/wanting certain ingredients) they will just continue poisoning
us in different ways (lead in gas, nicotine/smoking, trans fats, etc). It also
doesn't help that e.g. orange juice is advertised as "all natural pure
oranges" but tastes like a high school chemistry lab trash bin.

~~~
rafiki6
Yes and no. MSG is what gives food that amazing umami flavor. It's in more
foods than we realize. It's the same as adding any other spice. It's important
to revert to a scientific approach to understanding why something shouldn't be
in food.

~~~
w323898
A guy at work thought msg was a neurotoxin. I'm like, "uh, no, it's an amino
acid,a normal constituent of every protein you eat..." This is a guy with a
master's in a technical field. I honestly don't know how we got here.

~~~
rafiki6
I've learned that being an expert in any field does not shield you from being
very very stupid in many other fields. Critical thinking skills are hard to
learn and maintain. It's a constant battle against our own biases and
misinformation we are ingesting. Especially when you consider the memories
that are strongest are the ones we tie to emotions. That particular fact alone
makes it easy to feed misinformation based on things they might fear.

