I was definitely excited to participate in the workshop, trying to anticipate how my taste buds would react to the berry. Though I wouldn’t say that I was blown away by the experience, there were subtle changes to the taste of particular foods that did change how I perceived them. There were generally three buckets in which I could categorize the experiences I had tasting different things.
The first category applies to the very sour foods – vinegar, grapefruit, lemon and even the salt & vinegar potato chip – I found the taste to be quite palatable after eating the berry. The sourness or bitterness disappeared, which was very strange to me. The lemon tasted the best, it was like I was eating an orange.
The second category of experiences was the opposite of the first – foods that I thought would taste better tasted quite dull and uninteresting. Banana, dark chocolate, blueberry and jalapeno fell under this category. For each of those foods, I had very positive associations for each of them, all varying differently from one another. But after eating the berry, the all somewhat fell under the same camp. I associated the taste with soil, dull vegetables and earthiness. Whatever flavor that made it stand out before somehow disappeared.
The last category is for the foods that didn’t taste differently at all. I experienced this with the almonds, and with the cup of coffee I brought to class. I was expecting to be surprised but the only surprise was that they tasted exactly the same.
All in all, it was truly a unique experience but I don’t think that I would want my food to taste like this either once a year or all the time. If that were to happen, my world would be turned upside down because eating is a very personal experience and, as seen in the exercise, I have many emotional associations that I attach to certain foods. It would be as if I was a baby all over again, trying to associate new experiences to familiar foods.