I was actually looking forward to this experience as the build-up to it involved people telling me that vinegar would taste different. Vinegar is too evil to change, I thought. Whether I’m proven wrong or right, I would have been rejoicing for my taste buds or my ego respectively.
Despite my skepticism in miracle berries transforming vinegar, I still overestimated the ‘miracle’ tag to change flavors for all foods which led me to clutching at a flavor different from what my taste buds were already telling me. Only after a few food trials did I learn to not just accept the change but to also accept that some things like peanut butter wouldn’t change. Which meant that my nemesis could still win.
But it didn’t. After the berry, vinegar tasted like a sour apple drink (like the cheap, guilty pleasure ones you get in Indian shops) and I still have no idea where the apple flavor came from. Maybe taste is just as varied as color; if you manipulate the light in which you see them, you can trick your receptors into seeing a different color, like an optical illusion. Even if the facts are clear, you can’t help but be awed at this momentary change in character. I must also note that the change in perception did not consistently overwhelm me for all the foods that I had tried, but it changed vinegar enough for me to have 3 more shots of it.
Despite my pleasant surprise, I would be apprehensive of living in a world where jalapenos had just raw heat and no flavor, bananas had only texture and fresh cherry tomatoes taste like rotten cherry tomatoes. A surprise is good in short bursts but if its sustained over a period of time, I’d feel an overkill and lose interest. If foods did taste differently for a whole year, I feel those 12 months won’t be enough to recalibrate associations that are upto a decade long.
Surprises at an increasing frequency would certainly make me a more curious person than I already am, however it would also make me lose some of my identity that my anticipations and beliefs constitute. I believe there is a frequency sweet spot beyond which you knowingly predict an outcome different from what you know. Sameness in that case becomes the surprise.