Gastronomation and Gastronometrics

A new series - Factors that make us taste food differently from each other

2009-04-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

I am beginning a new series on a variety of factors that make us all taste things differently. Among them:

Smoking
Obesity
Gender
Upbringing
Genetic background
Ability to see
Ability to smell
Alcohol consumption

and so much more! Stay tunes!

I can order for myself, thanks.

2009-02-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

I’m often amazed by how presumptuous people can be. I was at a table with about 12 people and someone (trying to be the “leader”) says, “I’ll order some calamari for the table”. Fine by me, but I’m ordering a salad, since I’m not interested in calamari. You wouldn’t believe the heckling I received! “What – you gotta get your own thing??”

That’s right. Since you never bothered to ask, you are going to just waste food and expect me to pay for part of it. Come on! Have you been on this planet for such a short time that you haven’t noticed that different people might want to eat something different?!

for my UK readers...

2008-08-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

My friends at BBC3 in the UK have asked me to post this for those interested:

BBC 3’s ‘Freaky Eaters’ in the UK are looking for people to take part in a new series of programmes

Do you have an unusual eating problem which controls your life?
Do you find many foods difficult to eat?
Do your friends and family think your eating habits are weird?
Are you at the end of your tether and desperate to sort out your diet?
Freaky Eaters is a series about people who live with unusual eating habits. Each week our resident nutritionist and psychologist offer advice and support to help individuals tackle their eating problems.

If you or someone you know would like to take part please call: 020 7907 0899 or

email: freaky.eaters@betty.co.uk **UK RESIDENTS ONLY PLEASE**

I think the word I'm looking for is "sadness"

2008-07-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

There’s an odd feeling I’ve noted inside me, particularly with salads. It’s the feeling when my favorite part of the salad runs out (often the candied walnuts). Frankly, I get a little sad.

But why should I? I mean, why didn’t they put more candied walnuts in? Or better yet, why didn’t anyone ever ask me if I wanted more of one thing and less of another? I wasn’t so hot on the raisins, to be honest. I left them on the side. Too bad, though – what a waste. Both a waste of raisins and a waste of a chance to give a customer exactly what he wanted....

Why are we eating?

2008-07-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

I had dinner with a group of people recently and noticed something odd. Everyone at the table, I learned after listening to them for awhile, was eating for a different reason and had a different goal. One person was genuinely hungry, having not eaten all day, one was eating because he was invited along and felt obligated. One had the goal of ordering something that the others had not. One was trying to lose weight. One seemed to be most interested in ordering something that had a “large portion”. One was ordering around her allergies. Which leads me to think that maybe restaurants ask the wrong question.

Instead of asking “What will you be having tonight?” perhaps they should be asking “Why will you be eating tonight?” If the restaurant knew your goal for the evening, they could help you order better.

“Hi – I’m not really hungry, but I don’t want people to feel awkward that I’m not eating.”
“Hello – I’m on a first date and don’t want to look like a pig.”
“The doctor says I need to lose some weight. What have you got?”
“I want something sweet.”

Come on waiters…. You’re asking the wrong question!

Listen to your grandmother...

2008-05-26T10:03:00.000-07:00

There is a particular memory from my childhood that won't go away, and it's one shared by millions of Americans: Dinner with my grandmother at a restaurant where she would annoy the crap out of the waitress (who invariably had limited English skills) with all of the things that my grandmother couldn't eat and why.

"No salt. I have high blood pressure. And no MSG - it gives me a headache. And take it easy on the chili peppers - they give me gas." And so on.

The point is not that my grandmother was every Chinese restaurant's worst nightmare; The point is that my grandmother knew WITH GREAT PRECISION what she could and could not take. And she knew it in the 1970s. AND ... the restaurant was adept at handling these requests (in fact, they knew their customers and expected those requests.)

I have long believed that mass customization and food belonged together to create the ultimate taste experience, but there is a higher calling down the road. Food allergies have been increasing over the years, along with specific diets as our population ages. And as people get older, their sensitivity to "ordering errors" will go up. It may be that 50 years from now, in countries like Japan that have rapidly aging populations, automation may be the only way to serve food to so many older adults without risking their lives!

Shame on ALL of us!

2008-05-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

I saw an interesting movie a few months back. “For the Bible Tells Me So” documents the struggle between religious parents and their gay children and contains a scene that struck a chord with me. A young man tells about how, when he was a child, the boys would look at Playboy and talk about the strange feelings going on in their bodies; but HE didn’t feel anything. But, he figured, he should probably SAY that he feels something or risk standing out.

This is how I feel about Champagne. It tastes like piss to me. It has ALWAYS tasted like piss to me. But, I would pretend to be excited whenever there was Champagne around, since that’s what everyone else was doing. On occasion, I would confess to a friend that I really didn’t like Champagne, and that pouring any of that $50 bottle in my glass would be a waste. “NO,” they would respond. “You just haven’t had GOOD Champagne. Try THIS!” So I would try it. And it would taste like piss to me. And I was forced to wonder, is it me? Am I a freak? Or does it taste like piss to everyone, but society has forced them to pretend to like it?

I remember living in Japan and promised myself that I would try to eat ANYTHING presented to me. And I did. And some of it disgusted me, but I ate it and smiled and told my generous host how delicious it was and paid for my deception my finding a second helping on my dish when I turned away. I suffered. But I was not alone.

I know countless people who live with “Gourmet Food Shame”. ‘L’ likes iceberg lettuce, not the fancy stuff. ‘A’ doesn’t like mushrooms, no matter how rare and expensive they are. ‘F’ thinks caviar is disgusting. Ditto for foie gras. But all too often, they lie and they smile and they eat and they don’t enjoy. I’m probably the worst of all – I wouldn’t last a day in Cape Cod!

But there is a glimmer of hope in the future. Gastronomation and the prospect of interacting with a system (instead of a judgmental person) and getting things EXACTLY how you want means that our long suffering may one day end. Yes, it is good to try new things. But if you KNOW you don’t like them, cast off your shame, my brothers, and eat what you enjoy!

A Battle of Wills with No Winner in Sight!

2008-05-05T20:02:00.001-07:00

I am conflicted about my coffee. You see, every Saturday for longer than I care to admit, I have gone to a certain coffee shop and ordered a special drink. No, it’s not my “daily” coffee, it’s a special treat (because I think it has about 600 calories and I weighed 10 pounds more when I was drinking it every day). I had a nice life with this ritual, until the unthinkable happened… They ran out of my favorite Torani – Chocolate Mint!

Now, the girls at the coffee shop are very nice, but they have no appreciation for the OCD that fuels my charm. “Oh, we have another mint. It is the same!” Sorry, ladies. Peppermint is not the same as Chocolate Mint. To my mouth, they are night and day.

“We’ll order another bottle” said the matriarch of the café. But that was months ago. “It’s very difficult to find,” she tells me. But I’ve found it at another place. And here is the dilemma….

You see, the ritual, itself, is part of the experience that makes the Saturday so nice for me. It’s the farmer’s market across the street, my bagel and cream cheese, the special outdoor bench AND the coffee drink. With the Torani substitution, I can only get about 85% of the overall experience. Sometimes I will go somewhere that DOES have what I need, but then I give up the farmer’s market and the rest of the ritual. Any way you cut it, I’m screwed.

“Why not bring your own syrup,” says my fiancée. “Because then I’d look like a freakin’ dork with a bottle of syrup,” I say. Not exactly conducive to a relaxing Saturday, either.

Next week, the girls at the coffee shop have PROMISED me (again) that they will have the syrup. I’ll give them another shot, but if they fail me again, they may have lost my business for at least a little while as punishment. And as for my Saturday ritual, I may ultimately have to look inward to restore the calm, and make a new ritual. Sorry, coffee girls – it’s hard to get a new customer, but easy enough to lose an old one!

The Big Gulp: Portions and Perceived Value

2008-04-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

I want you to think about the last dozen times you ate out at a restaurant. Do you remember someone uttering the phrase, “Let’s start with this much. We can always order more.” Now for the big, fat question: When was the last time you actually REMEMBER ordering more? I can’t, for the life of me, remember it happening more than a couple of times in my LIFE! Why? Because once we're not hungry anymore, out of sight is out of mind.

We humans progress through a few stages when we eat:

We keep eating until we’re not hungry anymore
Then we keep eating until the food is gone or we feel physically sick

But once we’ve reached our initial satiation, we get almost NO marginal utility out of an additional bite. In fact, we pay good money to do something that we know is harmful: eating additional calories (I’m assuming that you are NOT one of the 1% of Americans that doesn’t get enough calories).

Why do we buy into this destructive scheme? Because the restaurants and marketers tap into our perception of “more-is-more” value proposition.

So let’s tally up the scorecard again:

Restaurants: Keep more inventory, waste more food and promote unhealthy lifestyles
Consumer: Have less choice, spends more money and shortens their lifespan.

The solution? As always, ASK the CONSUMER and give them more choices!! Believe me, doing that will earn you a lot more loyalty than making them feel like a pig.

Why Older People Shouldn’t Try New Restaurants

2008-04-28T17:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok.. I really don’t care if older people try new restaurants. And, yes – many people enjoy the adventure of trying a new restaurant and use it as a social catalyst within their community. But there IS a statistical defense to the countless “neophobes” (those with a fear of new things) who like going to the same restaurant(s) they’ve been going to for years.

For the sake of this discussion, we’re going to skip some of the more arcane arguments about the decline of sensory abilities over time and focus on one of the most important pieces of any statistical argument: Sample Size.

Sample Size is the element of statistics that refers to how many pieces of information you have when testing a hypothesis. For example: If I have a hypothesis that I am the tallest person in California and support this claim by visiting a pre-school and noting that I am taller than everyone there, it is not a well-defended claim, since 1) the pre-school is hardly a representatively random group of Californians and 2) the group is too small to extrapolate a conclusion for a state of 37 Million people. The more people I sample where my claim stands up, the more credible that claim is. So, if I travel to L.A., Sacramento, San Diego, and a dozen rural communities and randomly evaluate 1000 people in each place and determine that I am STILL the tallest of all the people I evaluated, my claim gains more and more credibility.

Let’s extend this example to restaurant-testing and take 2 people: “Oldie” is a 60-year-old man who has tried over 1000 restaurants in his life and thinks that “FastBurger” is the best restaurant for him. “Youngie” is 20-years-old and has tried 100 restaurants in his life and thinks that “QuickyBurger” is the best restaurant for him. Since Oldie’s sample size is substantially larger (meaning that he has tested his favorite restaurant against far more restaurants than Youngie has), his hypothesis that any new restaurant won’t dethrone FastBurger as his favorite restaurant has a good deal of credibility to it. And when his nagging wife insists that he try something new once in awhile, besides from his psychological need to be right, that new restaurant will probably not satisfy him as much as his favorite. Youngie, on the other hand, hasn’t tried as many restaurants and stands a much better chance of having his favorite dethroned.

So if you’re over 30, the next time you want to try a new expensive restaurant, think twice. The odds are that it probably won’t break into your top-10 restaurants list and there’s a decent chance that you won’t like it at all. Instead, why not head on down to your old favorite and get something you know you will enjoy. Trying a lot of new restaurants doesn’t show you’re adventurous – it shows that you’re mathematically challenged!

The Burrito – Nature’s gift to Gastonomation??

2008-04-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

Ah, yes… the burrito. Marriages have ended debating where to get the best one. Here in California, it is an obsession; Pity the tourist who stops to ask two locals where to get a good one! But one thing is for sure: The Burrito was BORN to be Gastronomated! Why? Because it has most of the characteristics that Gastronomation desires:

Burritos are made up of a LIMITED number of primary ingredients. We’ve all seen the burrito bars – your average “taqueria” doesn’t have more than about 20 distinct bins.
The “assembly” requires little knowledge, precision or nuance. What does this mean? Well, unlike a car or a microchip, all of the ingredients of a burrito essentially get rolled up together without any attempt to keep certain parts away from others or any fear of mixing. A burrito is essentially smushed-together ingredients with a wrapper - unlike, for example, Crème brûlée or a soufflé which requires substantial skill and can easily be ruined.
People have very specific ideas about how they like their burritos. You would never tell a taqueria to make you “whatever the chef recommends”! Will they put spicy salsa in when you can’t tolerate it? Do you like sour cream or avocados, or did your trainer just tell you to stay away from them? There is no such thing as a “typical order”. If you don’t believe me, try this: Go get a burrito for a friend of yours and bring it to them. Odds are that they will examine it, smile, thank you, and put it in the trash as soon as they find that there is something in there that they don’t want anything to do with.
The assembly-line nature of a taqueria is a good model for automation. I have generally observed a lot of room for improvement in such places, but they do seem to have an instinct for industrial engineering.
Speed is key in a burrito place. Almost ALL of the business will happen between 11:30AM-1:30PM and 5:30PM-8PM. If a customer comes between those times and can’t or won’t wait, they will WALK. Burritos are about both craving AND convenience. If you screw up either element, the customer won’t hesitate to choose a different vendor or a different meal, altogether.

Now, I will stop short of saying that a burrito is PERFECT for Gastronomation. It does have a few characteristics that go against it, which I will get into on a further post.

Variety is the spice of life, but I've already got picante salsa on my shirt!

2008-04-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

Man, one of my favorite things to eat in the world is Cold Stone Creamery. I LOVE that stuff! And I’ll even share my favorite order: White Chocolate ice cream with real peanut butter and Nestle Crunch bar in it. I’m one of those people that think that almost everything is better with peanut butter (btw, ever met a non-American that liked peanut butter? I haven’t…)

But they suffer from 2 problems: 1) They are slow as HELL! Every person’s order takes (it feels like) 5 minutes to make. And if there is even a short line, you can be in for a wait. 2) They are only human. Yes, like all humans, they are capable of limited precision. This means that what I order will be a little (or a lot) different every time. Some of the servers take a big dollop of peanut butter, some use a smaller one. Some chop up the Crunch bar into fine pieces, some leave it as bigger pieces. It’s never quite the same…

I know, I know… Variety is the spice of life, right? Well, I got PLENTY of variety in my life, thank you! It’s cold, it’s hot, the market goes up, the market goes down, people are in a good mood, or maybe a bad mood. I’m sick, I’m healthy.

Really, I’ve got all the variety I can handle. I just want something I can bank on!

Evolution and Food Preference – an example (simplified)

2008-04-23T10:44:00.001-07:00

How does evolution affect food preference? Here’s a simple example:

Let’s say that in a particular city in the year 1500 there is 100 people. Everybody likes ice cream and steak, but only 5 percent can really stomach the taste of rat meat and 2 of those actually like it. Then, a great famine occurs. Crops fail and livestock die. And before long, there’s nothing to eat but rats. And for the 95 people that can’t bring themselves to eat rats, well… they die.

The 5 that remain likely have some genetic component that allows them to eat, and even ENJOY the taste of rats. And when those 5 reproduce, there’s a decent chance that a number of the offspring will have a taste for rats, as well. As will their children. And that is ONE way that evolution plays a role in what one group eats.

You have GOT to try this!!!

2008-04-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

I was at a café with my fiancée last week when she went to get her tea. This is a girl that drinks tea every day and KNOWS what she likes. The kid behind the counter says, “You HAVE to try this GREEN tea. It is the BEST EVER! And if you don’t like it, I’ll give you the tea you originally wanted.” So, with nothing to lose, she gives it a try. And guess what??

“I don’t like it,” she says to me.

“Well,” I said, “you can be $3.00 poorer and have some tea that you don’t like or you can go get the tea you like and make this guy pay for wasting your time!”

We’ve all been guilty of the same thing. “OH MY GOD YOU HAVE GOT TO TRY (insert food here).” But the truth is that none of us can count on another person's tasting something in the same way that we do. There are too many factors in play, including expectations, ancestry, what someone ate right before, how long ago you brushed your teeth, and about a thousand other factors. At the end of the day, all we can say is, “I really enjoyed that. If you are feeling adventurous, give it a try!” But there are no guarantees…