Ramblings: taste and tolerance

My partner has this uncle, Carl, who manages to offend me pretty much every time I speak with him. I don’t really think it’s his intention, so I let it go, but it does get tedious after a while.

At root, I always end up taking offense for the same reason – he just seems to lack any awareness that there are different yet acceptable ways of living, different standards for judgment, that people have different experiences, and can count different things as important. It’s not that I am faulting him for being the person he is, which includes being a middle-class, life-long Milwaukee suburbanite with limited exposure to people who are not. It’s that he irks me because he doesn’t recognize that his perspective and experience are not universal.

Exhibit #1
When Jason’s family was leaving Maine after our wedding, Jason and I decided to meet them at the airport with a box of pastries from Standard Baking, this really great Portland Bakery. One of their most delicious treats is morning buns, which are nothing like the morning buns in Madison, instead they’re gooey and cinnamon-y with a pastry that is almost like croissant. Anyway, we brought them the box of pastries and I explained what everything was. No one was willing to try the mini-brioche or the scones. However, the pain au chocolat and morning buns were instantly rechristened “chocolate croissants and cinnabons” by Carl who pronounced them to be almost as good as what is available at Milwaukee’s Mayfair Mall.*

Exhibit #2
On their last night in MAINE, we took them to the restaurant that offers some of the best lobster stew (they were tired of pulling their own lobsters by this point and, consequently, wanted pulled meat). Carl turned to me and said, “The restaurants here have been OK, but isn’t there are Red Lobster?”**

Exhibit #3
New Years Eve at one of Milwaukee’s Japanese restaurants. As I couldn’t order an alcoholic beverage, I asked the server what she had in the way of sparking water. I ended up with a liter of sparking Voss water ($5). Carl laughed into his Sapporo when it arrived on the table, asked how much I was willing to pay for some bubbly water, probably from Lake Michigan instead of Norway, in a fancy glass bottle that probably cost more than the water.

Exhibit #4
Christmas Eve. Somehow we got on the topic of beverages. Jason and I explained that we don’t drink soda and that we’ve begun stocking just a little soda and beer so we’ll have them when people drop by. Carl asked, “What do you drink, then?” “We drink mostly water but we also buy soy milk and skim milk in glass bottles.” “Glass bottles?” “Yeah, it tastes better, the glass is easily sterilized and reused and the milk is from a local dairy that doesn’t use rBGH.” Carl snorted, “But it probably costs more.” “Yes it does.” “It’s really stupid to pay more for milk just because it comes in glass.”

I haven’t seen Carl since the new year (not my new year), so why did he come to mind today? I’ve been circling around a series of thoughts for a few days - having to do with the difference between disliking something and a negative reaction to something new.

I read in a child development book that, when introducing babies to solid food, many parents give up on a new food too early. We tend to assume the child doesn’t like beets, for example, because the child spits them out the first couple of times they try them when, in fact, infants should be introduced to new flavors 12-15 times because it takes about that long for them to become familiar with the taste.

In Blink, Gladwell discusses the fact that market researchers are unable to distinguish the negative reactions people have to things that they just don’t like from the negative reactions that people have to something new. According to Gladwell, this short-coming in what market research can tell us about what people will like in the long term proves a challenge for those who want to develop innovative and creative products. Gladwell goes on to provide examples of folks who disregard marketing analyses of their cutting edge products and go on to have enormous success.

When I was doing field research this winter, I stayed with a cousin who has a very narrow palate. She doesn’t like raw vegetables. She doesn’t like any sauces. She only eats white bread. Basically, she eats meat and potatoes and the only condiments she uses are salt and butter. I wanted to make pasta sauce at her place and she didn’t even have basic spices (oregano, etc). At any rate, it was very nice of this cousin to put up with me. I quickly filled her fridge with fresh fruits and vegetables, yogurt, and tofu. I tried to cook for her a couple of times (my sure-fire audience pleasers like chicken and sour cream enchiladas) but she wouldn’t even TRY anything I made. I wanted to take her out to dinner to thank her for having me but I was not really willing to sacrifice one of my few meals in Portland to Pizzeria Uno or Applebees. In the end, I had an idea. I knew that she was a big fan of chicken fingers (no dipping sauce) and I knew that she ate plain rice so why not take her for Japanese food where the sauce is frequently on the side? I took her to Fuji, a Japanese restaurant in Portland. Her "giant chicken finger" came with a salad with ginger dressing. I heckled her until she tried it and the miso soup. I watched her face as she ate them. Her face never showed revulsion to the food. She pronounced them both, “Not my sort of thing.” That’s when I drew the conclusion that it wasn’t that she had an aversion to the flavors, per se, but that the flavors fell outside of the narrow range of what she considered tasty.

So, is Carl’s failure to appreciate even the possible value of something new or different the same as my cousin’s failure to appreciate a new flavor? All those nights when they made me sit at the table until my spinach was eaten, were my parents improving more than the range of food I am willing to eat ? Were they improving my ability to tolerate and even appreciate difference and novelty?

*It would be a tremendous mistake to assume that I am not a cinnabon fan. Despite the fact that one cinnabon supplies you with all your fat for the day, I love to eat them – particularly at the airport. My objection is to the defacto establishment of cinnabon as the standard for judging other pastries – kind of like calibrating all our judgments of cheese to Kraft American singles, which are great with Gulden’s spicy brown mustard on soft white bread. Why can't we judge new things on their own terms?

**No. Some fool tried to open a Red Lobster out in the “Anywhere USA” by the mall. It didn’t last a year.