Category: Unexpected Associations

Siqi Wang

Food I tried:
• Cheese
• Blueberry
• Milk chocolate
• Cracker
• Apple cider

Prior Associations:
• Creamy, milk, adhesive, smoked, snacks
• Sweet, juicy, strawberry, jam, healthy
• Sweet, sweeter than dark chocolate, fat, high-calories
• A bit salty, crispy, with cheese, snacks
• Apple, juice, bubbling, sour, sweet

New Associations:
• A bit sweet afterwards, less smoked, melty
• Sweeter! In a bit strange way though
• Still sweet, couldn’t really tell the difference, sugar, not healthy
• Neutral, nothing special
• Hardly can bear! Soooo strange, still very sour in a sweet way

I’ve heard about a similar product before. The one that I know was disguised as “chocolates” and helping people with their diet. I’ve known that one, but I’ve never tried by myself. People used to talk about it like magical chocolate that will keep them slim. Then they altered their attitude by saying they felt disgusting after a period of time taking it. When I was given the MBerry, I was curious about tasting of it. I imagined it would be stimulating. Then we were told not to chew it. It took way longer than I expected to have it completely melted. I felt a little sweet on my tongue. Then, I tried the food on my plate and surprisingly, I didn’t encounter that difference during this process. I would say, only the apple cider made me sick. The rest of them were “safe” to me. I also tried to talk to other people about their experience. It seemed that people whoever tried lemon did find it amazing. Overall, it’s an interesting exploration and experience to me, and it’s so much fun watching people taste those foods too.

Daniel Brenners

I have actually taken miracle berries a couple of times before this workshop, but it was still a great experience under the context of analyzing perception as a whole. Keeping this in mind, it was fun to see how perception was changing how I felt towards certain foods. For instance, I absolutely loathe grapefruit. But after using miracle berries, it was like manna from the gods. It almost made me think I could sympathize with people that really love grapefruit. Perhaps this is how they always taste it.

If food tasted like this once a year, I think it’d be great (granted I knew when they would taste that way). It’s refreshing to remember that perception can easily be altered and the way we see (or taste) the world is just a product of our current biology. If food tasted like this all the time, I’d probably develop stomach ulcers. It’s a dangerous world when drinking vinegar and eating lemons is a viable snack option. It would be much less surprising, and perhaps downright annoying given the lack of novelty.

Wenqin Chen

This miracle berry tasting experience taught me the importance of functioning taste buds to survival. The momentary sensory confusion was fun for the tongue, but the rest of my body did not like it. The revulsion we feel towards sour and spicy foods is our body’s warning against danger. With this warning system dimmed by the miracle berry, I consumed more vinegar and jalapeno than my body could handle. Sore throat and other symptoms later ensured. My association with sour and spicy foods temporarily altered from danger to safety during the experiment, but my body’s reaction afterwards brought me back to reality.

Given my experience, I surely hope that dangerous foods do not taste safe for more than rare occasions. Sensory confusion can be dangerous in certain cases.

Andrew Huang

I was actually very excited for the workshop, and was happy to see the wide array of foods at the back of the classroom. The feeling quickly turned into a bit of worry and even fear when I smelled the vinegar as one of the first things I was going to try. The smell was what did it, creating a sense of suspicion and then confusion as to whether I actually remembered what vinegar by itself tasted like. With the taste of the original not being known, since I already dissolved the berry, I took a sip of the vinegar and was greeted with even stronger confusion where I was a little disgusted but also intrigued by the taste generated. It was something unique but also had links to known associations like spiciness. Given the weirdness of what just happened, I was aware that trying a lemon would be weird but in a good way. So I took a big bite and was happily greeted with a burst of bright and fresh sweetness. I enjoyed contrasting these two experiences because other senses came into play such as smell and texture and they all primed the expectations a certain way. I think my attitude would be wary if this was a regular attendance, since I think associations with food and smell are so strong, and that memories of bad food can outlast many experiences.

Jason Wen

Through tastings with the miracle berry, the Unexpected Associations exercise helped me see how expectations can influence and supersede logical thinking and how quick cognitive associations can be accepted and trusted.

Having read the article about the miracle berry beforehand, I was very excited to try it for myself. What was the basis of that excitement? I anticipated that I would enjoy the experience and that the experience would be new; the two expectations probably heightened each other. Not too surprising. But that anticipation and expectation manifested its power when I was tasting the vinegar. Disclaimer: the miracle berry did not change the taste of vinegar for me. However, there were hints from the professor that the taste would be mind-blowingly different. I went to take a big gulp and started tearing up as the still very much sour vinegar burned down my throat. The strange thing was the expectation of change. After a few minutes, I went back to taste the vinegar hoping that the miracle berry would kick in. Against my logical thinking, I continued to believe that the miracle berry would work. It would be interesting to explore how that conviction was constructed with such strength.

The lemon tasting brought to light another quality of cognition. Thankfully, the miracle did work on the lemon, transforming the normally bitter citrus fruit into a still a slightly sour but very much sweeter lemon drop. Associations of sourness, puckered lips, and a quickly-swallowed cup of water and lemon were replaced by associations of sweetness, lemonade, popsicles, and camp. It was amazing how quick I was accustomed to the new quality; I began planning pairings that would go well with this new taste. The sweet lemon became the reality and was a platform that I could trust and jump off for new ideas. With two or three tastes, I trusted this change. An understanding of the bitter lemon that was accumulated over 26 years was suspended after 5 seconds. Would I adapt to any new reality this quickly? What if gravity was suspended, would I be convinced to jump off a cliff and soar over the valleys below?

Yet, despite the positive associations with this sweet lemon, I don’t think that I would have continued to enjoy the new reality if all lemons tasted this way for a year. The effect disappeared before I got tired of the taste but there was a loyalty to the original taste. There is a preference for natural, even if that meant a less conventionally pleasing taste.

The experience was an interesting experience and brought to light new observations and behaviors, challenging myself to find out why my mind worked this way.

Yang Tan

My workshop experience was, in a nutshell, a rollercoaster. At first the surprise was not there. I remember thinking maybe the berry didn’t work for me as well as others, or maybe my taste buds are wired a certain way, I’m physiologically deficient somehow. I thought this because many of the foods just tasted to me like the essence of that food, the purified and more voluptuous, crazily aggrandized version. Like my previous impressions were of a music box playing a tune, and now I’m experiencing the symphony version. But it’s still the same tune. In this way my association didn’t really change astronomically.

Then I tasted the vinegar, and I realized that yes, the berries are definitely having a crazy effect, because my impressions were now very different. The earlier lack-of-surprise was concerning some sweet foods (berries, chocolate). But when it came to the acidic or formerly unpleasant tasting foods, the berries have done a 180 degree shift. I was fully savoring the vinegar, it tasted like a rich and complex wine(!), and I would have willingly drank a whole glass of it.

I also experienced a dramatic reversal on the cherry jam. I bought this fancy organic cherry jam spread, and it’s always disappointed me — it’s too closed, too flat taste-wise, not sweet enough. But the berry just exploded the flavor and made it rich and alluring, as well as much, much sweeter of course. My associations went from negative (cough medicine) to highly positive (pop rocks!) The jam became delightful.

Regarding frequency: surprise is quickly tempered and becomes boredom, even annoyance. I think if this happened once a year, it would renew my appreciation for the taste of the foods, and make me more appreciative, more contemplative. I would savor my meals more. However, if this happened all the time, I would become annoyed and crave the “normal” taste of foods. My perception of both surprise and anticipation would decrease dramatically with increased frequency.

Examples of association changes, by food item:

White vinegar
Old association:
– “fish and chips”
– acid
– corrosive/destructive
– cleaning agent
– potato chip flavor

New association:
– wine
– burning (at end)
– sophistication
– smooth
– full-bodied/complex

Jalapeño:
Old:
– spicy
– Mexican food
– cooking
– chefs
– exotic

New:
– bitter
– ashy
– numbing
– nuclear
– overwhelming

Cherry Jam:
Old:
– cordials
– cough medicine
– blackberry
– school
– pie

New:
– super sweet
– acid
– poprocks
– (extreme!) tart
– (extreme!) candy

Andrew Lambert

I was excited to try the miracle berry… I was primed for surprises. Perhaps being primed reduced my likelihood of being surprised. I didn’t find that many foods of the foods I tasted were very different.

The foods I tasted included lemon, dark chocolate, and banana.

The most noticeable change for me was with the lemons. The taste went from being repulsively sour to excessively sugary. I was reminded of eating yellow Gobstopper candies that have way to much sugar in them and make you feel like you’re going to have a sugar crash. I wanted to get away from that feeling right away because lacking energy wastes my day.

The dark chocolate tasted the same. My associations were bitter, melting, cacao, sophisticated, and lingering. I don’t like the lingering after taste; it reminds me of having cotton mouth. (cringe)

The sea salt and vinegar chips were weird. They tasted accented, sharp, rough, and reminded me of Hawaiian BBQ chips. It brought back memories of drinking white wine while eating Hawaiian BBQ chips in Dolores Park. The flavor was addictive; I wanted more!

If my perception of taste changed, I’m sure I would eventually figure out new roles for different foods in my life. For example, maybe lemons would be for dessert now. The surprise and anticipation value would wear off eventually. Thinking in a similar vein, I wonder how long it would take someone to move to a place with entirely different cuisine to adapt to only eating that food. Would someone ever be fully able to completely rewire their associations to a new culture and cuisine?

Justin Berner

Overall, the experience left me just a little disillusioned because, besides a few certain foods, I really didn’t taste the drastic alterations in taste perception that I have read about prior to doing this: for instance, I could still not easily palate the vinegar and it did not taste nearly as sweet as those testimonies led me to believe it would. However, this could have very well also been a symptom of expectations and a self-fulfilling prophecy of denial: I honestly did not believe there would be such drastic changes, so perhaps my perceptions followed my expectations. Which is not to say I did not taste any changes. In fact, I was delighted by the taste of all of the citrus, which tasted much sweeter (almost like candy), especially the customarily bitter ones such as grapefruit. I normally associate grapefruit with an undesirable, bitter taste (I have to remind myself of this when I buy one every year or so thinking it might not be as bitter as I remembered), but, with the berries, that association was drastically altered, with the post-berry grapefruit now tasting as sweet as other citrus.

With this in mind, I would quite enjoy having one day once in a blue moon during which lemons and limes tasted like lemonade and limeade, respectively, and grapefruits did not have their bitter aftertaste. Regardless, it would obviously become commonplace when repeated multiple times and one could expect the entire novelty to die down after too much repetition. In fact, one could imagine this sweeter register of the palate becoming one’s default taste if done too often; this, of course, may not be a problem, but it would then it may very well lead to the pining for those other taste sensations, such as the taste of a bitter grapefruit, that would thus become much more exotic. Feelings such as “surprise” almost by definition must resist becoming commonplace, or they have lost a necessary component of their essence. It was a pleasant surprise to bite into a slice of lemon and have it taste as sweet as a gulp of lemonade (with none of the added sugar!), but when that taste is repeated it becomes rather mundane. In any case, these feelings are so enjoyable and human nature is so taken by them, that it seems only natural for them to become commonplace due to overexposure.

Carlo Liquido

Lemon
Before: Biting, Sour, Cringe, Mixed
After: Malty, Smooth, I’m confused, Still a bit biting

Chips
Before: Salty, Crunchy, Dry, Need more than one, Sticky
After: Bland, still crunchy, still wanted more, still stuck

Grapefruit
Before: Hatred, Bitter (why do people ingest this stuff), Purpley sick, Veiny
After: Surpringly manageable, discovery, Warm

I’ve done this food activity once before. It was just as surprising as the time prior. The two most acidic fruits (lemons and grapefruits) were the most surprising. Lemons are sour to the point of being non-digestable alone… to the point where it’s almost universal. The anticipation before trying the lemon a second time was nerveracking. I cringed before it touched my mouth. I was pleasantly surprised with the malty taste, by the fact that I enjoyed the experience. My associations with grapefruit are a strong distaste to say the least. Its color reminds me of sickly veins. So my perception of choosing to put that thing into my mouth was a bit offputting. My reaction was similar to that of lemons—pleasantly surprised. I went from total hatred to acceptance.