Anyone who read my descriptions to my junk food taste quiz would quickly realize that I am not very eloquent nor have a very discerning palate. As far as my tongue goes, all I can say is, “salty, sweet, sour, bitter. . .” But maybe that is just par for the course. Expect anything more from the tongue — might just be expecting too much. If a particular food does not have much aroma – which I think is most junk food – then all we can say is what our tongue tells us.
To me a taste world revolving around the tongue is just a black-and-white world. The nerve endings of our taste and aroma receptors are in very close proximity to the emotional nerve centers in our brain. I should have some brain tissue available to discover a Technicolor taste world out there. Ok, I’m dating myself – the analogy should probably be a non-HD world and an HD taste world – but I don’t have HDTV, so I can’t use this analogy.
Let’s get a little philosophical — I’ve mentioned before that developing our sense of taste may just come with practice. I also think it comes with a state of mind. More often than not we eat for sustenance – this is out of necessity. But every now and then, we should be able to eat for enjoyment. This doesn’t have to require spending outlandish amounts of money at a gourmet restaurant. With a little bit of effort I think we can get our hands on good food. Then it just takes the luxury of finding the time to slow ourselves down from the day to day rat race and enjoy being a human being who finds simple pleasure in food and drink.
Tags: Coffee Tasting
