Slashdot Mirror
Tampering with Taste Buds for Better Coffee?
An anonymous reader writes "A Globe and Mail article states that scientists are busy working on making everything taste great: " In a small office just west of the New Jersey Turnpike, researchers are taking the human taste bud into a brave new world.
Here, it is not cream or milk that the employees of Linguagen Corp. add to their morning java, but a dash of a biological compound that fools their brain into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte"
Now I can convince my friends who don't like it that coffee really is good.
When your argument fails, resort to Evil. Ha!
There goes my experience with making good coffee... Now instead of being careful and buying good coffee, grinding it themselves, brewing it properly, everyone will buy folgers and percolate it and sprinkle some pixie dust stuff into it and it will taste good. Assholes...
/usr/games/fortune
Hopefully they'll be able to use these compounds in medicines and other neccesary, but distasteful products...
Or they'll release it in paste form and it'll become a sex toy. Ah, America!
Every fast food restuarant ( cough McDonalds) will add this to their coffee and secret sauce to their big macs. God knows whats in their patties.
Isn't this true they add fat and chemicals to their fries so they taste better ?
http://saveie6.com/
We don't need some mad scientist in jersey to cook up funky chemicals that make bitter into sweet, mother nature already did it a long time ago with the miracle berry.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
is made from people!
We'll call it soylet green!
| - | - |
According to the article, the alterations in perception are very temporary. So while you're drinking that black, bitter coffee it probably tastes great, but in about five minutes you'll get that aftertaste and want to brush your teeth.
then I could...
;)
Sorry, thats just wrong.
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
...a biological compound that fools their brain into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte
Can I really be the only human left on earth who belives coffee should be black and bitter? If you want a drink that tastes like warm milk, I'd suggest a nice cup of warm milk, or perhaps some hot chocolate. Coffee is meant to be alarmingly black and strong.
Sailing over the event horizon
Some of us already LIKE black coffee...don't go messing it up for us you insensitive clod! I like my coffee like I like my women...bitter.
Don't be messin with my Lifer Juice... this sounds like Dangerous Technology!
Torque Not the Sacred Caffeine!
Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
Making crap coffee taste like the good stuff is impressive, but not terribly useful. Now, if they can make bean sprouts and tofu and brown rice taste like steak and chocolate and ice cream... *then* they'll have something.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
In the past three years, Kraft Foods Inc., the Coca Cola Company, Nestle and the Campbell Soup Co., which also owns such brands as Pepperidge Farm and Swanson, have signed major research deals with Senomyx Inc., one of the biggest biotech players in the rush to decode the genetics of taste.
The La Jolla, Ca.-based firm holds a range of patents on the genes that enable the detection of bitterness and an understanding of how human sweet and savoury receptors function.
You know, I use these genes everyday. Am I in violation of the patent owned by Senomyx Inc?
Hrm, if they can make my coffee taste like a smooth latte, could they make it taste like an octo-espresso?
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
Taste some New Orleans coffee with chicory in it, that's how coffee's supposed to be. Not some pansy-assified Seattle hot chocolate.
Violet! You're turning violet, violet!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
So far, the company has found the only drawback of adding too much AMP to their coffees, either in the mug or the grinds, is that it generates the taste of raw fish in your mouth, said scientist Stephen Gravina, Linguagen's associate director.
Uh, yeah. I think I'll take my chances with the bitter coffee.
How is this different from Starbucks?
The ______ Agenda
In the past three years, Kraft Foods Inc., the Coca Cola Company, Nestle and the Campbell Soup Co., which also owns such brands as Pepperidge Farm and Swanson, have signed major research deals with Senomyx Inc., one of the biggest biotech players in the rush to decode the genetics of taste.
Great, now I can drink my smooth latte flavor coca-cola and eat my smooth latte flavor tomato soup while eating some latte flavor cheese and sausage. Later tonite I will eat a latte flavored Swanson dinner!
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
Often listed on labels as "natural flavors", MSG is found in seaweeds, and it makes things taste much better. Unfortunately, too much MSG can backfire - it makes things taste great, but for many hours afterward, I get extreme heartburn :(
As many prepared foods use "natural flavors", it makes shopping more than a bit of a chore, in that I need to read *all* that tiny print of "ingredients", on everything I buy. Grrrr. And all this stems from a childhood spent eating cheap food flavored with Accent, which is mostly MSG.
Lemon curry?
Taste is very important in determining what is safe to consume. When milk turns sour, it has gone bad and generally is no longer safe to drink. The first bad-tasting drop results in the milk being spit out, and disaster prevented.
Imagine if that milk has been redesigned to taste fresh long after it has already gone bad...
A large part of the experience of having a cup of really good coffee, is the smell, the deducing aroma that fills you with an eager anticipation of the magnificent black gold that is about to wash down your throat (oh my god, someone gimme a coffee right NOW! :). Even coffee haters like the smell of good coffee. Serving icky bitter coffee that fools the brain into thinking it tastes good, won't change the sentiment of "something's wrong here".
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
From the article:
Mr. Jacobson said he recognized the obvious need to alter the flavour of drugs, "particularly life-saving drugs, where taste is an impediment to taking them." But he also raised concerns that these new compounds could allow food manufacturers to use "cheaper, crappy ingredients."
"I once asked a pasta sauce maker how come you sometimes see corn syrup on the list of ingredients in a tomato sauce and he told me it was to mask the taste of cheaper tomatoes," said Mr. Jacobson. "We could see more things like that."
I just went for a checkup with my doctor. One of the things we discussed was nutrition. He spoke of the nutritional value of foods being degraded, what with over farming, mass production of food, corporate farming, and the like. I know this is vulgar, but this is another way to make shit taste like ambrosia. Ever think there is a reason why things taste bad?
I probably sound alarmist or anti-technology. I'm not. At the same time, I'm not one to blindly say technology or so called progress is a good thing. This seems to me to be another way to increase profit and reduce costs. Good for business, not so good for consumers. But we're sheep. What do consumers know?
I guess I'm bitter. Maybe I can use some.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Okay, so we're talking about AMP which although as the article says is a 'natural' chemical, is also one of the very basic molecules used by every cell in our bodies as part of the mechanism for determining their metabolic needs and monitoring what's going on within them. This gives me a case of the screaming heebie jeebies.
I somehow can't help thinking of Monosodium Glutamate here... Flavour enhancers don't have what you might call a *glowing* record of healthiness...
What this compound is doing is bitter-blocking, and I don't know about you, but there are bitter flavours I actually find rather enjoyable - strong black coffee being one of these... But an awful lot of foods contain bitterness to a greater or lesser degree, and it makes up one of the five tastes we're actually able to percieve - the effect of using this stuff widely would have to be tantamount to knocking out the blue channel in our eyes! It's going to do all kinds of really bizzare things to how things taste, not all of them good...
Besides which, the article mentions that the side effect is to induce a flavour of raw fish... I dunno, I'll take my coffee with a kick please, not with a side order of sushi...
Shooting heroin turns any unpleasant experience into a pleasant one not just tasting crappy coffee into tasting smooth coffee.
And much of what has been passed off in the past as a substitute for 'meat' has been pretty unpalatable. Even food that was not passed off that way sometimes isn't very great, tofu for instance.
But one good use for this taste altering method might be to make a veggie burger actually taste decent. Add that to getting the texture right, and some of these products might actually take off.
Tofu? Well, maybe never...It doesn't even look good!
- Gasoline that makes your dashboard always report that you have a full tank - even if you're about to run out of gas
- A helmet that convinces defendants to confess - even if they're innocent
- A panacea that stops children from ever crying - even if they've just been hit by a car
- An instrument that tells pilots they're flying at a safe altitude - even if they're about to hit the ground
Really, what's the point in celebrating creating something whose only purpose is to make our well-evolved biological sensors and filters fail.Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
So far, the company has found the only drawback of adding too much AMP to their coffees, either in the mug or the grinds, is that it generates the taste of raw fish in your mouth, said scientist Stephen Gravina, Linguagen's associate director.
Sorry bud- looks like you're outa luck!
Read jack phelps dot net
It'll be amazing if we can kids to eat green stuff. The long term effects of this may be profound. I would go so far as to say society as a whole would improve.
Finally, I can have cocain flavoured ramen!
I never got laid back in gradeschool, but now that my plates full, these ladies ain't actin' so hatefull..
Soylent Green is people!
As cool as this is, might it eliminate "true quality" from food. If this concept were expanded, soylent green could become reality.
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
Is it just me or has this not been around long enough for there to be any meaningful safety studies? I for one don't want to eat something until its been tested.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
after working in many coffee shops I've found one simple thing to be true. If you need sugar and creme/milk to make the coffee taste better, then your probably drinking crappy coffee.
-Cnik
I would say the good NaCl is the most common taste bud tweaker.
Probably both use the same sodium ion and the same channel in their perception changing powers.
Drink lots and lots of coffee until you start liking black coffee and hating the taste of sugar in your coffee.
Cool technology... but still no proverbial cure for cancer.
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
Hey fellas don't drink that coffee! There's a fish. In the percolator!
- Glin
Which exit?
I personally don't want anyone messing with my coffee's flavour. I like it black.
If others don't like the taste, why are they drinking it?? It can't be for the caffine content, since then they could drink tea or Coke, or hell, even take caffine pills.
People don't just crave tastes, whether they know it or not they want fats and carbohydrates and the various chemicals in their foods.
I don't believe that all the artificial sweetners and diet drinks have solved people wanting sugar. They may well help someone who is consciously applying will power, but it isn't just a matter of "I had something sweet so I'm satisfied".
When someone wants a bacon sandwich they'll doubtless associate that with the taste of the sandwich because that's one of the most obvious conscious effects of eating the sandwich. But if you produce a fat free substitute that taste identical I thikn they'll still feel empty, or missing something, and they'll still remedy that by going and getting some food that IS fatty, whether they rationalise that by taste or anything else.
"Mr. Jacobson said he recognized the obvious need to alter the flavour of drugs, "particularly life-saving drugs, where taste is an impediment to taking them.""
who cares about the taste if its gonna save your life?
chinese restaurants have been doing this for ages.
I've always wondered if it would be possible to make some sort of mint or pill, etc, that would highten senses in the taste buds to make kissing better... ...not that I have a girlfreind or anything.
As far as the coffee and women jokes go ... I get my women the same way I get my coffee, bitter and cold, but not by choice have you.
Anyways it seems that everyone thinks this is a bad idea, and I'm going to go on a little soapbox here on why I think it's a great idea.
Food that is "good for you" tastes like shit, no one really wants to have a salad with no dressing or a bowl full of water for a meal. We enjoy fatty and sweet foods because they taste good. Now sit back and think, this type of technology being added to a dressing for a salad ... if you can make my sensors think that I'm not eating a bowl full of plant leaves that taste god awful, I'll buy the whole lot of it.
This has many many applications for dealing with losing weight. I've been throwing the idea around as of late of becoming not-fat, but I really do hate the taste of things that are good for me, if I could get past the taste thing and actually enjoy eating things that are good for me, IE free of sugar, salt, fat, etc, then maybe I wouldn't dred the idea of giving up a 24 oz. steak with a side of french fries and a triple chocolate cake slice for desert, all washed down with a nice guiness. If you want a taste of heaven ... you'll have that for a meal ...
Obviously this isn't going to be a good thing, but eating right makes what you've already screwed up start to work better, maybe a little indegestion is a small price to pay.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
No more bitter beer face!
*ducks*
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
I'm rather surprised not to have found any comments yet from people opposed to this on the simple grounds that fucking with peoples' biology, in however minor a way, is wrong. This is a drug, not a "flavouring".
It's almost cute the way Bartoshuk brings up breast milk in the interview. It's in breastmilk? It must be good for us all then, mustn't it? I suspect he had an earpiece in and was being fed quotes by the marketing department.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
...then it's been over-extracted. Learn how to brew coffee.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Really, how can you truly enjoy coffee with all that crap in it? I agree, it's heresy. It's like someone who loves wine coolers bitching about how real wine doesn't taste good. Bastards.
What's worse are those god-aweful flavored coffees! The ones where they actually flavor the beans with some aweful chemicals. One time, this stupid house-keeper where I work thought she was being nice, so she cooked up a batch of this insane blueberry flavored coffee! The whole place reeked of that crap. The flavor agent bonded into the coffee basket, so the coffee tasted of blueberry for about a week. It was a dark time.
I came up with a catchy phrase, suitable for bumper-stickers, sigs, whatever:
Decaf is for the lazy and the damned.
No, sir, you are not alone.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
You don't sniff the milk before you drink it? And what about the date on the side?
Anyway, quit drinking out of the carton, you savage!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Imagine the boon to dieters if these guys come up with something that could be sprinkled on a slice of low-cal breador a rice cake to make it taste just like a steak or a slice of pizza.
Hell, breakthroughs could revolutionize the chewing gum industry, too-- imagine flavors like "Filet Mignon" or "Boston Cream Pie" or "Bacon Cheeseburger"
~Philly
... the tornado in a can and we don't need to think about where to put all that chicken slaughter waste anymore.
This is likely to be the same company described in the excellent book Fast Food Nation. In the chapter called "Why the fries taste good" the author describes the "flavor industry" in New Jersey which provides the chemicals to make things taste "smoky" or "flame-broiled".
I'm sure there are a lot of additives that they have left over from General Foods International Coffees that they are dying to use so that your latte has even more latte flavor.
but NOT in Soviet Russia? Oh no... unknown error... printer on fire...
The bitterness of coffee is what makes it attractive: many cultures have similarly bitter things to drink and chew, and the pleasure comes from the long-lasting sweet taste you get a few minutes afterwards.
If you're ever chewed kola nuts, you will know what I mean. Intensely bitter when you bite off a piece, but over minutes, you get a sweet reaction that is much smoother than a "real" sweet substance.
It seems to be part of the addictive process: think of bitter chocolate and those tiny espressos.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
I recall a scene from a (bad) movie called Brazil where diners in a restaraunt were served blocks of blue stuff with a picture of what it was suppose to be.
If the above could be made a reality, we could eat the exact same thing, day after day, and pick what we wated to taste, while eating foods that were perfectly designed for proper digestion, glucose controll (for diabetics) or any number of things. Imagine no more worry about gaining weight because of what you ate? 3 meals a day of Dutch Cholcolate Cake? No problem!
The only concern I have about this, is the following:
Frankly, I'd prefer to have children's medication NOT taste good enough for them to desire it. It's tempting enough for a child got get into sweets without throwing medications into the mix.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
'Bachelor Chow' - Just think, a high fibre, low fat, high nutrient generic bulk food that can taste different at every meal! I'm saved!
fixed your subject line for you. HTH.
--sdem
I have to be careful here not to switch into full rant mode. I'm a big time coffee lover and I hate the idea of messing with cheap coffee. The commercial canned coffees, especially the flavored ones use cheap Vietnamese robusta beans that have been processed to hell and back. Meanwhile coffee farmers in Latin America, Indonesia and East Africa are barely living at subsistence levels because they can't get a fair price for their beans. The last thing we need is another way to make inferior coffee taste good or not as bad.
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
This brings to mind the Terry Pratchett book Good Omens, where Famine, one of the four riders of the Apocalypse (although there used to be five, I thought Kaos was awesome ;) creates fast food that tastes great, but is essentially dust. This could be very dangerous. People could feel they are eating something really good, when in fact, they are starving their bodies. Some people may think this a good thing, but what would happen if people didn't stop? IMO people should learn to just control themselves, and give up those temptations (ice cream, crap food etc.) and just learn. What kind of world will it be, where we don't know how to control our every impulse? I think it would be very sad. We would become like animals. I agree with many other posters. We should be concentrating on things that really matter, like cures for AIDS and ways to curb global pollution.
This reminds me of the Jetsons, where all their meals were in pill form, and they used chemicals to give the pills food-like taste. I remember one episode in which George humorously chided his robotic maid, "You burned the toast, Rosie."
the smell, the deducing aroma that fills you with an eager anticipation of the magnificent black gold that is about to wash down your throat (oh my god, someone gimme a coffee right NOW! :)
now I HAVE TO GO MAKE SOME COFFEE
is that this works wel enough that we can start a new Reality show titled:
DotCom CEOS made to Eat Shit and They Like IT!
Who would not pay for seeeing Steve Case eat a psoon full of shit with a msiel on his face?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
a reduced fat oil
Is that anything like "low moisture water"?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Oh wait...
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Whilst I agree with the general feeling of distaste (pun intended!) regarding the use of this in making cheaper, lower quality foods better, there are a few areas where this could be very useful.
Consider, for example, children's medicines. Assuming this proves to be 100% safe (who knows nowadays), it would now be possible to make medicines which taste pleasant, isntead of using vast amounts of sugar to ineffectively mask the bitter flavour of the active ingredients.
Better both in flavour and in stopping our children's teeth rotting! (And, in case you didn't guess... I was always one of those kids who complained about the horrible taste of kids medicines!)
I could also see it being useful in taking basically tasteless or unpleasant soy or rice-based staple foods and making them more pleasant. This would allow the creation of pleasant tasting food which is both cheap and highly nutritional. I could see this being very useful in bringing better nutrition to poorer people.
Suppose it comes down to hoping that people will use this for good instead of lining their wallets... Unlikely, I guess!
The best thing that could happen would be to mask tingling in the tongue. Tongues can tell bitterness, sweetness, etc. apart, and the texture of the food, but that's all.
(OT, but BTW: I remember reading some time back that those popular "taste" regions on a tongue aren't really accurate since your whole tongue can taste the difference between bitterness, sweetness, etc.)
SMELL is the key to taste.
slash. posts suggest that spoiled milk could 'taste' delicious, but your tongue is useless at taste unless it is genetically super-calibrated. The way you can 'TASTE' something is with the SMELL before and while the food is in your mouth. If you close your nose and drink spoiled milk with the texture and flow of normal milk, you won't know you did until you get stomach poisoning.
Yes, although bitterness is associated with toxicity (stuff-you-shouldn'-put-in-your-mouth) and it does apply to most everything,, smell is what really tells you if something is bad or not. You won't be able to tell the taste mandarine and an orange, and maybe even an apple and orange (except for texture obviously) if your nose and eyes are closed.
You might have learned this on Bill Nye the Science Guy or by reading a book, or the internet. Or some of us participated in all three.
Follow this lab:
Here's a link to a 4th grade lab assignment on this.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Couldn't they just figure out a way to make the bitterness in coffee stronger?
Coffe should be extremely strong, black and come in large containers.
-sig- It's not stupid, it's advanced -sig-
Won't this be a tad bit dangerous? As the article points out, bitterness helps us avoid noxious foods. Once this additive gets put everywhere, won't there be people getting sick because they happily ingested a whole gallon of spoiled milk or gulped down moldy pizza?
medicines
italian food
my job
I still won't drink coffee, though.
Another item on the Starbucks menu. Go ahead and clone cats and make mutant vegtables, but leave my coffee alone! I think Hobbes said it best when he said "Scientific progress goes Boink?"
Good for you.
We need a movement to get more of today's children drinking coffee. Black coffee.
If I'm interpretting this correctly, you're saying that drinking black coffee makes you successful, a genius, and good with the ladies. Well I've had cats my whole life and am good at math. What do you conclude? I think that instead of drinking coffee (or "carbonated sugar water") kids should exercise and sleep about 7 hours a night. From my experience it works a lot better.
I can already see a small bottle of this being sold in a package along with a 12-pack of viagra.
You should read the amazing "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. One of the chapters talks about the "taste" industry ('flavorists') and all these companies setup along the NJ turnpike. They make a liquid chemical agent that smells exactly like a flame-broiled burger. The reason: the food is so shitty that the taste disappears when it is processed. It has to be added 'back'...
Same idea coming to a Starbucks near you? Great world we live in!
there's no place like ~
better coffee is more coffee! no im not jumpy why you say im jumpy ive only had 2 barells i mean cups of coffee, coffee is good it keeps me awake to work coffee coffee coffee coffee cof....
This sig was cut off by the sla
McDonalds used to have the best fries around. When my wife decided to learn how to make fries, these fries were the benchmark. When her skill eventually plateaued, our conclusion was -- wow, they are almost like McDonalds fries.
Now all their stuff is like styrofoam bits cut into food shapes, with textures painted in, then warmed up and dipped into rancid tallow. Don't even let my kids go there any more.
"Coffee needs a cup, not a menu." - Dennis Leary, No Cure For Cancer Amen brother. . .
Prior art! Prior art!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Alcohol and closing time.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
"It's cheap."
"Cheap."
"Soy-based."
"Soy-based!"
After instantaneous adoption from fast-food restaurants and chain coffee shops, the substance will later be found to be allergenic/carcinogenic. Moral corporations will discontinue use, and the rest will face class-action lawsuits to remove the substance from their food.
You read it here first.
Could you be any more arrogant?
Don't blame him, he probably had some of this blueberry coffee ;)
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
I'm a big coffee fan - I don't drink tons of it, and what I do drink is usually in the form of a single-shot latte. I don't consider myself a coffee expert, but I do know enough to believe that there's nothing that will parallel the experience of a successful shot of espresso mixed with just the right amount of milk, steamed to just the right temperature and froth. It's something that takes quite a bit of experience to perfect the technique- if these guys think they can replace all that with a chemical, I wish them luck. Maybe it will work for the Starbucks crowd, just like the RIAA works for the average music consumer, but as most of us know, that doesn't mean it's a good thing.
Taste buds keep us from eating poison! Why would you want to change your taste so that poison would taste good? Sounds like a bad idea to me. Rancid meat tastes bad to us because it is bad for us, but at least now we can make it taste great!
Heh, the way I interpretted it was that even if someone is in Mensa, it doesn't make them smart.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
Please check out Peet's (www.peets.com). It's where the folks who founded Starbucks learned to roast coffee. I live down the street from their first store in Berkeley, and while I loathe snobbery my wife and I have become complete coffee snobs and have been for years. A bit expensive, they start at around $9 a pound and go up to $40 a quarter pound (I hope I got that right - I've never bought this expensive stuff) for Kona beans. Their Mocha Sanani (at about $18 a pound) is heavenly - smooth, strong, great - I indulge in a pound of this around the holidays. Part of the great taste comes from the freshness of the roast: while unroasted beans become better with age, roasted beans should be drunk right away, within a week if possible or the taste tends to begin to sour. They ship coffee. Buy beans, grind them just before brewing. French press is most recommended, melitta filter is OK too. But it's all according to taste so do what you enjoy most. Aside from being a dedicated addict, I have no business affiliation with Peets.
or work out how to make toast fall so it isn't jam side down.
This is a very important issue and some work has been put into solving the problem. However, it's also inherently very difficult, akin to predicting the outcome of a coin toss. So far the best that can be accomplished is a statistical improvement. I find fuzzy logic is good for this.
I disagree about the import of the application of AMP to taste modification, mainly because the taste of one's morning coffee or tea has an intricate interaction with the taste of one's toast. Of course, I hope unscrupulous sorts don't try to use this chemical to try and mask the taste of burned toast, passing it off as good!
Could I interest anyone in some toast?
... EEEEEEeeeeekkkkk!!!! Don't be messing with my taste buds!!!! It's taken millions of years of evolution to make butter and ice cream and salt and pig meat and ..... to be perceived as Tasty. Don't take that away from us!
.nosig
What most people aren't aware is that by the time you buy your beans, they're already stale. Whether you get them from the local supermarket or from a Starbucks, they've been prior-roasted, shipped, and in most cases, have sat around for far too long. Roasted beans last about a week before they start losing their flavour.
If you've never tried freshly roasted coffee, make it a point of going to a specialty roaster in your city and getting the freshest coffee they have - if you can get some that was roasted the previous day, pay whatever they ask for it.
Use a French press, there's really nothing better for black coffee (except for an espresso machine) and make sure not to let it sit for two long - 4 minutes with boiling water should do the trick.
You'll never go back. (and if you do some research on roasting it yourself [which is incredibly simple], you'll be amazed at how cheap green beans are)
the company has found the only drawback of adding too much AMP to their coffees, either in the mug or the grinds, is that it generates the taste of raw fish in your mouth
This is supposed to be an improvement over bitterness?
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
How could I have forgotten redmeat?
/syle
Hate to call this Orwellian, but it seems so to me.
Winston and Julia had a hard time finding genuine food (except from the proles). I remember them drinking "Victory Coffee". The same applied to cigarettes and chocolate.
This isn't so absurd. While it's not so hard to find a GOOD cup of coffee (yet), most people don't care. They'll drink Tim Hortons (Canadian. Think Dunkin' Donuts) coffee and complain that "Gourmet Coffee" is overpriced. I had the hardest time convincing my mother that bigass cans of Maxwell House don't TASTE the same as fresh-ground Kenya AA (or AAA or Green Mountain blends, etc) -- UNTIL she tried it; now she grinds her own, and doesn't store it in the freezer.
The same is true of chocolate. Think about GOOD chocolate (high-quality). Now, think about any drug-store Easter chocolate. The latter is more like brown WAX with very little taste (and when it "melts" it turns into some sort of foamy paste).
And speaking of foam, the same comparison can be made to generic vs. "natural" ice cream. I regularly pay 2-3 times the price of "cheap" ice cream, for the good stuff. You know, the kind actually MADE from cream, and not milk plus a dozen gums to make it gellied enough to hold shape, then whipped full of air.
GOOD beer (premium, expensive, micro-brewed, FRESH) vs. Budweiser, or Coors, or Molson, or Labatt is another example.
Sorry, now I'm ranting. My point was: LEAVE MY COFFEE ALONE. I like the stuff the way it is. And if you MUST meddle with my favourite bean beverage, I can only hope that it doesn't further affect the price of high-quality coffee.
I sound elitist.. and, I guess, in this case, I am.
S
Take two pounds of crap.
Add one pinch of the "Magic Spice".
Stir well.
Voila! You made yourself delicious chocolate cake.
Guten appetit!
... particularly for those with problems losing weight. If you haven't noticed, foods with sugars (carbohydrates) and fats taste better than those that don't, pretty much as a result of eons of natural selection*. Tricking the taste buds into thinking that indigestible/low-calorie food is more appetizing than it is would be a good thing for this application imho.
Imagine if you could trick your tongue/tastebuds into thinking celery tastes like chocolate.. Particularly helpful if you could introduce textured cellulose food products with vitamin enrichment that could be used in snack foods.
Now if someone can only make treadmill grinding (and repetitive exercise in general) LESS BORING..
*whenever a political vegetarian bugs me (at a party for example), my reply: "If we weren't supposed to eat animals, they wouldn't be so delicious!".. It works as both a smartass remark and a statement on the evolution of human nutrition biology...
so now there will be no reason for good tasting food. rather we'll be stuck with shitty pre-packaged food like KD, McDonalds, etc and it will taste good. This food will be/is full of so much chemicals cancer will be hitting people before puberty. The french (France not french Canadians) eat 30% more fat and have 40% less heart disease (G&M article) because they don't eat crappy food. Europe has a much higher food quality than NA does.
Guy: Mrmff. Mrffmfsf. (lifts head) I know, but I thought I'd give it a try because I love you and stuff.
Girl: You're the best, I'm going to treat you to a steak dinner tonight. (moans, titls head back, closes eyes)
Guy: (Sprinkles more powder).
They fool their customer into thinking that their milky double latte is coffee.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Could you be any more arrogant?
If I could sign in as him and answer as arrogantly as possible I would...
Instead I'll have to explain to you that the posting was humorous. If you took it literally then you are <Arrogance> an idiot. </Arrogance>
Actually, if you do a little research on MSG on the net, you'll find a fairly hot debate going on as to the side-effects/dangers of MSG.
. ht m?site=http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/2455/ba k%2Dmsg.html
The official FDA stance on it is pretty well summed up here:
http://chinesefood.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite
Basically, they seem to say it's safe for the general public, but do acknowledge that there seem to be some individuals who are sensitive to it, and get such side-effects as headaches from it.
Personally, it doesn't really concern me. If you discover you're senstive to MSG and it upsets your stomach, gives you a headache, or whatnot - then obviously avoid it. I've never had any problem eating foods that contained it though - and to me, it's no worse than the hundreds of other modifications made to commercial foods. (Coloring and dyes to enhance the look of a food, for example.)
In general, MSG is safe for anyone but a small percentage of people, yet most people in the US avoid it like the plague, though most good Chinese and Japanese food includes it.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
The post was modded +3 insightful; apparently I'm not the only one who didn't pick up on the satire.
> The reason: the food is so shitty that the taste disappears when it is processed. It has to be added 'back'...
From what I gathered it had a lot more to do with enhancing and creating a "McDonalds" taste more than anything else. That's why fast food doesn't taste like the exact same IBP ground beef you buy at the grocery store.
What I don't like is the neo-luddite response to this. When was the last time you had an "authentic" culinary experience? How "real" is antibiotic-filled meat processed eight-ways til Sunday? More importantly, how many people can afford good food?
I don't see this as anything but a more advanced form of putting salt on your salad.
I frickin' LIKE black, plain, bitter-tasting coffee! Of course, I also do it for the caffeine, but I like the way coffee tastes. For me in the morning, the first taste of coffee is like the first taste of an ice-cold beer after working in the yard all day!
Always been pretty simple to me, if ya don't like the way shit tastes, don't drink it. I always get a laugh at the losers at Barnes and Noble drinking they're super-duper triple expresso with everything but the kitchen sink in it.
IMHO, plain old black coffee, strong as heck, frickin' rulez!
Spread the RC luvin'
The big conglomorates have so abused food, that sometimes when I serve food to people, they look puzzled (like home made mayo).
I agree 100% about coffee and chocolate. Three products where I spend good money (and probably totally spend the same, as a bar of Green and Blacks organic choc lasts me a long time, as I only need a little to get a good rush).
I mostly buy premium ice cream, but have made my own. There's a great book called Ices by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir (I think the same book is called Frozen Desserts: The Definitive Guide to Making Ice Creams, Ices, Sorbets, Gelati, and Other Frozen Delights in the US). You need very few ingredients, and it's wonderful. Machines cost about £40 in the UK, don't know US prices.
As for beer, in the UK it's funny. Beer like Budweiser (the US stuff, not to be confused with an excellent Czech beer) is marketed and sold as a premium beer. You can buy locally produced ale for a much lower price, which tastes wonderful.
BTW I'm trying to develop a portal to do with excellent food on the web, a bit like slashdot but for food and drink. It will mostly be UK based, when I get some time.
...like their coffee the way they like their humans: ground up and vacuum-sealed into a little brick-shaped bag.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Ugh! My bones feel weak and brittle. I don't understand. I'm drinking plenty of... Malk?
which is HERE by the way.
Liberty.
Coffee flavour.
If I wanted something else, I would have asked for it.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
What utter crock.
Do a web search for UMAMI at Google. You'll find more results than you know what to do with.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
The other people who get credit for significantly improving Americans' coffee are the marketers of Mr. Coffee, which got us to use drip-filter coffee instead of percolators or instant.
Briefly getting sort of back to the original topic, remember Kava instant coffee, which didn't get rid of bitterness, but got rid of acidity, for people who didn't want the acids in their stomach and maybe didn't like the taste? It was instant coffee with some alkali like potassium hydroxide added, and was absolutely the worst stuff I'd had that claimed to be coffee.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The post was modded +3 insightful; apparently I'm not the only one who didn't pick up on the satire.
I'm sure it was modded [insightful] instead of [funny]
because the moderator thought [insightful] was a funnier mod...
I'm sorry.
<Pity>there there, we can't get every joke. I'm sure you'll get the next one.</Pity>
The one experience heroin fails to enhance: not taking heroin.
-kgj
It's just not for putting in coffee, or tea (it's what we Brits like to drink sometimes).
Good coffee should remind one of top quality dark chocolate, bitter and soothing.
Good tea needs no adulteration - the only excuse for milk is if you use Yorkshire Tea, aka floorsweepings.
Full fat Milk is for drinking on it's own - it's refreshing and good for you.
Even pasteurisation fucks up the taste of milk - so don't even mention semi-skimmed!
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
These things have already been invented, more or less ...
Gasoline that makes your dashboard always report that you have a full tank - even if you're about to run out of gas
Get this effect by drinking and driving.
A helmet that convinces defendants to confess - even if they're innocent
Easily accomplished: use torture.
A panacea that stops children from ever crying - even if they've just been hit by a car
Give them laudanum.
An instrument that tells pilots they're flying at a safe altitude - even if they're about to hit the ground
"Die Hard 2"
-kgj
yeah how 'bout demanding all scientists do somethnig useful, like NOT spend $millions on making sure any 100 year old fart can get a hard on now thanks to viagra, or that some fatass can eat all the potato chips he wants as long as he doesn't mind anal leakage thanks to olestra ?
I wonder what this "pixie dust" would do for Kopi Luwak, purportedly the most expensive coffee you can buy?
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love."
Bah! Making black coffee taste like it has milk in it is nothing. When they make TCP/IP flavoured coffee, then I'll be impressed.
Remember that bowl of snot they eat in the matrix? Yeah, it might look like snot, but it tastes just like a 16 oz. sirloin steak.
I am one of those individuals that is sensitive to MSG, and from experience, let me tell you that trying to avoid MSG can be a nightmare.
The reason for this is that companies are becoming aware of the trend of people to avoid MSG, and so they stop using MSG in their foods. However, because of the financial benefits of using flavour enhancers, they use other chemicals that don't sound quite so ominous, but are still very high in L-glutamic acid, which is what MSG sufferers are sensitive to. To give you an example, I have to avoid all of the following:
Monosodium glutamate
Hydrolyzed *anything* protein
Autolyzed yeast extract
Modified *anything* starch
Modified milk ingredients
Artificial flavour
Natural flavour
Sodium caseinate
Microbial enzymes
Citric acid derived from corn
and probably around 20 other things, all of which are very high in free L-glutamic acid or that cause L-glutamic acid to be released from meats, proteins, etc...
So, in conclusion, an MSG sensitivity isn't like a red dye sensitivity. An MSG sensitivity can make life quite debilitating, especially with regards to eating at restaurants. Even an MSG-free Chinese restaurant, for instance, might use an oyster sauce or soya sauce with hydrolyzed proteins in it, and there's no way you can possibly ask all the necessary questions needed to make sure that the food will be safe for you.
I failed to state my thought clearly. What I meant to say was that withdrawal sucks.
-kgj
My girlfriend reckons after i've eaten fresh pineapple it tastes heaps better. I'll take her word for it...
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
I've never understood milk in coffee either. You make it colder, and you detract from the taste. Coffee should just be coffee.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
According to former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, nicotine withdrawal is worse than heroin withdrawal.
Andrew Weill asserts that heroin withdrawal is vastly overrated -- need be no worse than a head cold. Weill says the real problem with heroin use is not the heroin per se, but associated risk factors like poor nutrition, dirty needles, etc.
-kgj
In Wisconsin and other places, milk long past its prime beomces buttermilk, cheese, and yogurt.
Know what "natural flavours" often are? They're flavours developed on a petri dish. Someone in the know told me - I'd assumed before that it they hulled strawberries and all that.
If I put a spice on something, it's to make it taste better. Is that insincere or deceptive or something? What's the issue?
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
It takes more time to cook from scratch than to buy prepared food, but it doesn't cost more. In fact, it is *much* cheaper to buy ingredients and do the cooking yourself than to buy prepared food.
Its still much cheaper if you buy your ingredients from alternative stores, which often sell things that aren't mass-produced and often have higher prices.
What's more, if you do that, you will have an authentic culinary experience on a very regular basis.
(Ingredients are commodities. Processed foods, unless they're sold as generic. This is related to the fact that farmers have been hurting financially for the last couple decades.)
And I don't like having other people manipulate my perceptions, especially when I'm not warned or have no choice. My perceptions are mine, and I depend on them. There's nothing luddite about that.
I just don't understand. If you don't like the taste of coffee black or with any combination of existing condiments (sugar, milk, cream, honey, whiskey, etc.), shouldn't you just find something else to drink? Just because it is one of the world's most popular drinks, doesn't mean it has to be your favorite. If you think coffee is too bitter for you, try a different brand, or flavor of coffee, or maybe you are more of a tea afficianato.
Personally, I like my coffee unsweetened, black, strong, and bitter as hell.
Up here in Canada perishable food products are required to have a 'best before' date on the packaging. It's generally a good indication of when something is about to go south, unless you leave the milk on the counter overnight or something equally silly.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Is the Biological Compound there adding Milk?
Official GOD FAQ.
I have to avoid all of the following:
[...]
Artificial flavour
Natural flavour
[...]
ok, I got nothin', but that was just plain funny.
How is this a troll? Marijuana really does make food taste better. There's nothing like hot buttered biscuits when you're stoned. Mmmm.
Just eat generically-modified food.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
obviously they've never heard of pineapple juice :)
This can help us eat foul tasting stuff, which is nice but after all this you have to ask:
"What are we eating?!"
Because our tastebuds son't seem to be that reliable anymore.
---partially offtopic hereafter---
I say this because after getting ill once and having doctors orders to eat good food (I bled otherwise) I noticed that the food I wanted was no where to be seen (in England anyway).
Working in my local supermarket I've noticed that over 2/3 of the food in there is what I consider to be sweet stuff. Once you've developed a taste for real foods (which takes at least a couple of months) you can't go back.
Furthermore while I can find stuff that tastes healthy at first I can then notice how it's been artifically enhanced.
pps Anyone else find E-numbers in jelly sweets can give you a headache and cough?
A blog I run for the wealth
This article had my rapt attention until I got up to this:
"So far, the company has found the only drawback of adding too much AMP to their coffees, either in the mug or the grinds, is that it generates the taste of raw fish in your mouth, said scientist Stephen Gravina, Linguagen's associate director."
Ok, so the coffee's not bitter, but instead it tastes like raw fish. This is an improvement?
And yes, I realize it says that's only if you don't use the AMP properly. But coffee's only bitter if you don't make it properly too. If I had to choose between the two tastes of a bad brew - bitterness or the taste of raw fish - I don't even need to think about which one is worse.
Colouring and dyes can be a good deal worse.. frex, Red Dye #2, IIRC proved carcinogenic.
As to MSG -- funny thing, if I eat it with cheese, it gives me a headache. With any other food, no side effects at all. I noticed this because of my habit of decorating most non-sweet foods with "Lemon Pepper" (which used to contain MSG), specifically Mac and Cheese.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Anybody who has ever been to Japan or Korea and has eaten their ramen noodles knows what I mean. The stuff they pass off in American grocery stores for $.20 a bag just ain't the same.
No MSG has a website that illustrates in more detail the side of humanity who is against MSG use. Mainly, the fact that it's in EVERYTHING. It goes by many different names, such as sodium benzoate, hydrolyed soy protein, hydrolyzed protein, rhizome, "natural flavoring", etc. Nobody ever comes clean with what's really in their food. Most prepackaged food has MSG or other gluatmates in it..
A lot more people are beginning to believe the truth, that they reguarly ingest poison on an everyday basis... It is now known that there are glutamate receptors in every major organ in the body--not just in the tongue.. and it tickles those organs in the much the same way as it tickles the nerves in your tongue.
It's known to cause numerous health issues, including tachycardia, ultra high blood pressure, nervousness, and obesity plus a host of "mental illnesses". It's linked to depression, ADHD, male erectile dysfunction, seasonal affective disorder, and many more.
If you're the kind of person who likes a 1/2 cup of ketchup with your large fries, or ranch by the cupful, watch out. It has TONS of msg in it. Ramen eaters, beware. NORMAL AMOUNTS OF MSG ARE NOT HARMFUL, but today's concentrations of MSG are bordering on inhuman. I think the FDA should revisit their testing with today's scientific methods before we just dismiss this as clucking in the hen house.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Why do all just assume this is ok? Why make something (coffee for instance) that our bodies automatically reject as disgusting and vile and make it taste good?
[WARNING: conspiracy rant coming up]
People really need to read into the source of money regarding caffine. I don't know of any coffee grown in the USA for one. Also coffee has been _proven_ to cause everything from instant heart-attacks in completely young and healthy people to all kinds of circulatory and immmune based diseases.
This knowledge has been stuffed and perverted by bizzare "scientific" testing funded by an almost hidden caffine industry.
Facts:
1) Caffine is addictive
2) No law requires the amount of caffine in a product (coke, pepsi, medicine, kids foods, etc...) to be labeled. (this is insane. For you law biters out there, look into this one, it makes perverse media laws for the RIAA look like childs play...)
3) Many medications have extreme reactions to caffine (many causing death) but very, very few doctors ask their patients if they even ingest caffine let alone warn them of the risks.
4) Caffine takes a long time to leave your system, therefore has a cumulative effect of build up, and can cause liver damage due to the overload. (which like a domino effect can crush the rest of your health)
5) The cumulative effects are obvious in chronic coffee drinkers, after awhile they can drink coffee before going to bed and sleep (or not, like usual...) without any noticable effects on their bodies (because their bodies are full of caffine already.
6) The caffine industry does not care about it's customers. (just like big tobbacco doesn't, nor the RIAA)
7) Caffine is targeted towards young children. (No Johnny you can't have coffee for breakfast that is a big person drink, but here, have a Coke on the way to school...)
8) Caffine constricts your blood vessels in your brain. So your brain get's less oxygen and when you stop drinking coffee for a time, the blood vessels increase back to normal size and you get a headache from this effect... that is why another cup of coffee fixes these headaches.
9) Excedrine contains caffine. (read #8 to see why it takes away some kinds of headaches)
10)Caffine is a natural bug killer/repellant that some plants make. (funny how the first few times you drink coffee, it takes like bug killer...)
11) Caffine is a nerve irritant, it makes a stress turn into distress, and it extreme taxes our mental ability to deal with difficult situtations.
I can honestly say of all the foods out there, coffee is probably the worst thing you can put into your body. It wrecks every part of your body slowly from you nerves to your brain, liver, joints, intestines, bowels, stomach, you name it. Either directly or indirectly every cup of coffee or soda pop that you drink you are rotting your body away...
The worst thing you can do is deceive your first line of defense against this stuff, your taste. The next thing you know McDonalds will put this stuff in their burgers and then they will serve billions of people with it...wait...doh!
I really think there should be a legal inquiry as to why caffine is not measured and labeled on products (by law). Caffine lobbying has prevented this some how and if the truth was to get out about how bad caffine is for you, there will be lawsuits not unlike those against the tobbacco industry, most likely worse...
For anyone concerned about their children's health or their own, I would be very cautious about foods that may contain caffine and are not labeled properly (mainly drinks) as you have no idea of what you are giving them or yourself unless it's labeled...
Maybe they could sprinkle some of thiss stuff on my cable modem bill.
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
Next thing you know the music industry will want to make an enchantment that fools your brain into thinking that the TeenbandCorporated is actually good.
They have a term for it already: Lobotomy.
What about look, smell, mouthfeel?
If it looks like dogshit, smells like dogshit, has the texture of dogshit on the plate then I'm not going to put it in my mouth no matter how good you say it tastes.
Things tend to taste good because they are good for you - nature's way of encouraging you to look after yourself. By refining foods, shoving in MSG, salt, sugar and God knows what else you short circuit a system which has evolved to keep you healthy. Cue obesity, arteriosclerosis, diabetes, malnutrition, colonic cancer.
If you shovel junk into your body it will make you ill.
Still want sprinkles on that?
Cat poo Coffee
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Not so much a crock as you might think. There is actually some pretty solid research backing this up. . .
There is a excellent series on the Discovery channel here in Europe at the moment called Kitchen Chemistry
Heston Blumenthal a renowned English Chef explains the science of taste and how cooking affects what we perceve as taste.
Someone else is working on the next additive that convinces you shit smells like a rose and McDonald's hamburgers are better than dog food.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You have your cofee and I have mine. It's food and all the rules were made to be broken. With an extra ingredient you can turn the rule on its head and come out with something great.
Percolation, before paper filters and what not, was for the lazy. You sat the thing on the stove and forgot about it. So what do you do? You work with it. Try a little Cafe Du Monde (CDM) percolated till you can stand a spoon up in it. Ah, chickory what great stuff you are. Add a little sugar and cream and you have something that is different from your usual cup but finishes a meal wonderfully. The same can be made by drip and other means but it's not the same.
CDM is a treat I don't make often because I'm too lazy to clean up. I usually have some fesh ground coffee made with a press, not boiled, just like you say. There are far fewer parts to clean but it requires different coffee to come out right.
I'm sure you will agree that most "flavoings" in the beans and the proposed junk to block your bitter taste are abominations.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I see this as just another scheme for a manufacturer to pawn off an inferior product on the public with a veneer of palatability, usually this is done with marketing instead of chemicals. Instead of producing a better product they'd rather work on masking the flavor by tossing in additives. Obviously spending some money on keeping the quality high isn't a priority.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
...at what your stomach can take. I spent time on a ship in the Persian Gulf and there were guys who could drink milk that had been at 70+ degrees F for days. I couldn't bear to touch the stuff, myself.
"All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell