Amazing Tongue Tricks

Originally published on the Slow Food USA Blog

I never thought I would find myself drinking white vinegar on a Saturday night, but this past weekend, I was doing exactly that.

In my constant quest to expand my palate, last Saturday some friends and I ate miracle fruit - and saw just how much taste perception can change in a single evening. Miracle fruit - a name that is endearing and whimsical, but touch of hyperbole - is a small, red berry that is native to West Africa. While in and of itself it is rather tasteless, it contains a glycoprotein that binds with taste-buds - making sour things taste sweet, and shifting a person's entire range of flavor a bit. I originally read about miracle fruit in the New York Times a year ago, but finally made the plunge last weekend. I bought my berries online on Monday and they were delivered by FedEx to the Slow Food USA national office freeze dried on Friday.

Saturday evening, a friend and I assembled a wide selection of foods that we thought might taste interesting - from olives and apples to beer and limes. We invited a small crew over to my apartment, and tossed the berries in our mouths. To get the full effect, the berry must lull about in your mouth for five minutes before you can start eating other foods with your new sense of taste.

As the berries did their magic, participants wondered aloud about the experiment I had pulled them into. "Are you sure this is safe?" one friend asked. "Are you sure this is legal?" chimed in another.

Once the berry's power set in, we began munching. Suddenly lemons tasted like they were candied. The red onions that typically make my eyes tear-up with their spicy glory, suddenly tasted watery and dull. Chipotle-Tabasco sauce was like chocolate syrup. Raw beets seemed extra earthy, and so well rounded. White vinegar tasted like sugared syrup and with an overwhelming memory of Easter egg dying.

Some foods didn't change at all - carrots still tasted like carrots - but for the most part it was a pretty wild experience. By the time we sat down for dim sum an hour later, the effects of this miraculous berry had worn off - but the idea still sticks with me. Taste is only one of many ways I interact with the food I eat and it is so easily tricked - even by nature.

In the 1970s, food companies distilled the essential chemical from miracle fruit and proposed it as a natural - if trippy - sweetener. The US government ruled it out, but so many similar additives have slipped through the cracks since. Chemicals naturally found in corn have been extracted and bent to become calorie-free sweeteners. Naturally occurring MSG gives mushrooms their savory, musky flavor - but the synthetic version of this universal flavor enhancer is strongly reviled. The line between honest eating and confounding consumption becomes ever twisted. Because miraculin was denied as an additive and the fruit itself is highly perishable, miracle fruit will likely never make it big. It will remain as a strange and rare way to change your perception of taste, and nothing more.

The experience will go down with other 'madeleine memories' - the first time I ate a fresh tomato from my grandfather's garden; those fantastic spring rolls that made my stomach flutter in Thailand; a sip of warm milk from a cow I had just hand-milked; - but this taste will have a little asterisk by it. Sunday morning I tried another spoonful of white vinegar - sans miracle fruit - and it was incredibly, but reassuringly, bitter again.

Stalking my Stomach

Originally posted on the Slow Food USA blog.

Eating is something I take very seriously - and so is the concept of memory. Yet in spite my love of eating, I often have a hard time remembering what I ingest - even just a day or two later.

I moved in with an old friend at the start of September and we have been having dinner together most nights - but with time I began forgetting what I had cooked. Knowing my love of data collection, he suggested I start writing our menus down. In college I studied history, and the intersection of memory and record is really fascinating to me. In this case, how does the concept of enjoying a meal change when I can't recall it without the help of notes?

I began tracking our dinners, but soon enough that expanded to jotting down all my meals, snacks, and desserts. At that point I realized, why keep this to myself when I could share it with the world through twitter?

This step changed the process for me. What began as a way to remember personal experiences, became a willfully public statement about my food decisions. Knowing that someone - anyone - could see what I eat has begun a curious change in my behavior.I have always eaten well, but now the pressure is even greater. Social pressure, though silent (and potentially non-existent!), made me want to strive to eat well.

Once I had begun down this path, why stop there? Looking at my consumption is interesting, but then I realized I could bring the analysis further by bringing in how much all of this cost. I keep pretty good track of my finances, so I began pulling numbers.

New York can be a tricky place to eat on a budget - but in the ten months since I landed here, I have found my way around the markets. I now eat what I want while spending only 12.04% of my income on buying local, good, clean, fair, food. I am slightly above the average American spending of 9.8% of disposable income on food, but doing pretty well.

Looking backwards at the month of September, my food spending was split like so:

• 13.0% for my CSA deliveries (Each week I receive around 30 pounds of vegetables and fruits from a Long Island farm.)


• 44.7% for the farmer's market (I usually buy two birds a month, a touch of sausage, some cheeses, dried beans, supplementary veggies, some flour for bread baking, and dairy.)


• 21.9% for brick-and-mortar grocers (Mostly at a local cheese store, and a dry goods seller for nuts and dried fruits, chocolate, peanut butter, some flour, and spices.)


• 6.1% for ice cream (Yeah. My ice cream habit is bad enough that I keep an entire spending category for it.)


• 4.8% for drinks (I enjoy the occasional glass of wine or cocktail when out on the town.)


• 9.5% for restaurant meals (An infrequent a slice of pizza and a meal in a sit-down local twice a month or so.)

I will be interested in continuing to learn about my own eating habits through this experiment - and I would be happy to have you follow along. You can follow my consumption on twitter here or searching for my handle, NLeamy. I indicate food that is homemade with the tag (h), prepared food are labeled with a (p) , and restaurant meals by (r). In about a month I hope to write another update with what I've learned and how my eating is changing.