83
" Verbal facility with smells and flavors doesn’t come naturally. As babies, we learn to talk by naming what we see. “Baby points to a lamp, mother says, ‘Yes, a lamp,’” says Johan Lundström, a biological psychologist with the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “Baby smells an odor, mother says nothing.” All our lives, we communicate through visuals. No one, with a possible exception made for Sue Langstaff, would say, “Go left at the smell of simmering hotdogs. "
― Mary Roach , Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
85
" A quick word about chemicals and flavors. All flavors in nature are chemicals. That’s what food is. Organic, vine-ripened, processed and unprocessed, vegetable and animal, all of it chemicals. The characteristic aroma of fresh pineapple? Ethyl 3-(methylthio)propanoate, with a supporting cast of lactones, hydrocarbons, and aldehydes. The delicate essence of just-sliced cucumber? 2E,6Z-Nonadienal. The telltale perfume of the ripe Bartlett pear? Alkyl (2E,4Z)-2,4-decadienoates. "
― Mary Roach , Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
93
" Another strategy was to target kids. “The human infant enters the world without information about what is edible and what is not,” wrote psychologist Paul Rozin, who studied disgust for many years at the University of Pennsylvania. Until kids are around two, you can get them to try pretty much anything, and Rozin did. In one memorable study, he tallied the percentage of children aged sixteen to twenty-nine months who ate or tasted the following items presented to them on a plate: fish eggs (60 percent), dish soap (79 percent), cookies topped with ketchup (94 percent), a dead (sterilized) grasshopper (30 percent), and artfully coiled peanut butter scented with Limburger cheese and presented as “dog-doo” (55 percent). The lowest-ranked item, at 15 percent acceptance, was a human hair.* By the time children are ten years old, generally speaking, they’ve learned to eat like the people around them. "
― Mary Roach , Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
94
" We will be evaluating some nasty oils. You will have to put them in your mouth.* For the good of science. For the good of olive oil. We are here to help the producers, to tell them, What attributes does the oil have, does it have defects, what can they do differently next year—treat the olives better, pick them at a different time, et cetera.” There will be no pay. No one will reimburse for the seven-dollar parking-garage fee. The existing panelists are known to have some prickle, to borrow an official olive-oil sensory descriptor. “You may be thinking, wow, I really don’t want to be on this thing.” The faint of heart are invited to pack up and go. No one moves. “All right then.” Langstaff surveys the room. “Shields up.” She is referring to removable panels used to partition the room’s long tables into private tasting booths. This way, you aren’t influenced by the facial expressions (or test answers) of the people seated next to you. "
― Mary Roach , Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal