How did you feel about participating in this work- shop?
I was very intrigued hearing about the taste alteration work-shop. And since I hadn’t known about the “miracle” berry, there was a fair bit of mystique that had built up going into the workshop. I do think a lot of it had to do with Lisa passing around the mBerry covers around (perhaps as an alibi?) and then warning us to have our lunch before the workshop. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been as concerned as I was after all that build up.
How did your feelings affect your experience?
Because I was so primed for the “miracle berry” experience, my already sensitive taste buds were further sensitized and ready to be messed up. Looking back I have to say it wasn’t so much as “experiencing” as it was “wanting an experience” for me.
How did your associations change when trying the same foods after trying the berry?
While I tried most the stuff that was laid out on the table, I will just talk about the things for which my associations changed the most. The first thing that I started with was chocolate and my association change the most before dissolving the miracle berry in my mouth. Since I’ve always loved chocolates, my associations with chocolate were dense, cocoa, delicious, smooth, happiness, share and craving. But after tasting (pre-berry) the chocolate, I was quite disappointed as I didn’t like that one at all. And the pre-berry association changed to weird, black, bitter, fruity (it had some fruit/berry in it). After having the miracle berry, my associations didn’t change as much as I thought. I guess I was expecting that the berry might make this chocolate taste good, but it tasted pretty much the same.
I then tasted the lemons, primarily because that was the most talked about item during the workshop. Interestingly, I expect my associations to change about lemons after the “berry” effect, and it did. But it also changed drastically before I had the miracle berry. During last semester, we covered a topic in Applied Behavioral Economics last semester, about the difference between experiencing self and the remembering self. Here my associations with lemon before tasting it without the mberry were fresh, yellow, food, slippery seeds, lemonade. This however, was my remembering self, that is perhaps a bit removed from the “experience/taste” self. So when I tasted the lemons before having the mberry, it was like a jolt that brought me back to reality and my associations to it changed to sour, pungent, citrus. And then again, when I tasted the lemons after dissolving the miracle berry, I was pleasantly surprised at the lemonade-like sweetness of it. I liked it so much that I picked up lemon slices as if were oranges.
The third thing that was interesting was the bread, particularly the before and after “mberry” associations. Before having the miracle berry, my associations with bread were brown, soft, sweet, grainy and hungry. But after having the berry it was sweet, fruit (berry like) bread, craving, tasty.
How would your attitude change if all food was to taste like this at least once a year, what about all the time?
After the exercise I felt I wouldn’t so much want to change the tastes of the food as much as my (or people around me) attitude towards food. I feel, if we all were to be half as sensitized or mindful of what we’re eating and tasting, the fast-food industry would go out of business in no time. But of course, without the miracle berry, because that would mess things up.