Children have horribly underdeveloped palates. Generally novices in anything, food or otherwise, have trouble appreciating the nuances that make something beautiful.
Is it an irony that the very same nuance detection is often used in so many biases and other degenerate judgements?
I have loved that my kids find basically everything beautiful. Beetles in the backyard? Amazing! Snakes? Cute! Coyotes? Leave the chickens alone, you adorable canine!
Are they underdeveloped? I mean, yeah. I don't disagree with the assertion. I sometimes question the directions that we develop ourselves into, though.
I don't think calling this a degenerate judgement is fair. I too have a child and I too admire the gusto with which she experience the world. But when your child is amazed by a beetle in the backyard, your sense of amazement stems not from the beetle, but from the fact that your child can be amazed by a beetle. You're amazed specifically because your child sees the world in a way that you don't. And so I fully believe that a child believes basic staples taste better than the finest cuisine, but that doesn't make their taste a good proxy for adults.
Apologies, that isn't the degenerate judgement I was referring to. In that, I meant most other banal prejudices and such. The diversion to children was just exploring easy topics that show many fears/judgements are learned.
Specifically, the beetle and such are ones that I know I somewhat imprinted on them. If I see beetles, I will shuffle them around so that they are safe from whatever work I'm doing. Such that my kids find them cute and like helping them, where they can. We've had other kids over that find them disgusting and can't believe we would touch them.
Does this mean that some things can't taste better than others? I definitely don't think so. But I find a lot of the attempts at making that objective questionable, at best.
Could also just say different - children also have an unlimited tolerance for things that are sweet. Some adults I think never get past it much & have what I call super smellers too. But yea it’s like they can also lack the tastebuds that’d help them appreciate bitter things later in life, like most adults do. Could just be natural that our tastebuds from when were kids change or die off sorta, which allows for the fuller palate.
Tbh though I can’t stand bitter & earwax level IPAs. Just gives me headaches.
> couldn't see difference between beef and lamb or veal vs pork
From 6 to 26? What changed at 26 lol? Are you saying that you stopped eating sugar? I’m surprised by the beef vs lamb comparison. Lamb has so much iron in it that it tastes like blood to me.
Maybe “sugar” isn’t why you couldn’t tell the difference. Especially if you’re saying your daughter doesn’t have that issue lol. I’m honestly perplexed by your comment.
I read that too much sugar can dull the taste of sweetness, which makes sense. I can’t see how it can dull the taste of blood though lol (unless you’re a mosquito).
Basically from 10, I was drinking like 0.5L to 1L of soda a day.
I was eating rarely meat, and my parents couldn't cook, I think at one stage, I was eating McDonald burgers 2 to 5 times a week. So while I was practicing a good amount of sports to burn these calories, it couldn't be good.
26 was when I moved out, started preparing food myself, started really reducing my overall alcohol and soda intake and more exposed to good food.
My daughter eats much more often meat, almost no processed food, high quality ingredients and cooking.
Yeah, it seems like sugar wasn’t the issue then. It seems like you’re saying that you just weren’t exposed to different foods.
(Unless, you’re saying that McDonalds has lamb burgers in whatever country you live in and you couldn’t tell the difference between their beef and lamb burgers? Cause I can definitely see this. I just looked up that McDs in India used to have lamb burgers.)
Novices don't appreciate nuance that trained experts focus on ... yes, that makes sense. But children do actually have more papillae (taste buds) than adults. As we age, we may gain skill in describing what we sense but we also lose taste buds which give us the raw sensory input to start with.
Also on the plus side, children also lack bias and cultural filters and blindspots, which are hard to avoid in adulthood. Kids notice things adults do not and kids don't hold back from talking about details which adults have dulled themselves to or have been trained to not speak of for reasons of tradition or politeness. (Sometimes those things need to be said and we're all thinking them!)
> But children do actually have more papillae (taste buds) than adults. As we age, we may gain skill in describing what we sense but we also lose taste buds which give us the raw sensory input to start with.
Sure, but the point is that "nuanced" fancy food is optimized for the taste bud setup of adults, not children. So while theoretically, i guess, you can craft a food piece for children that would be the kind of mindblowing that adults can't experience anymore, that's not what expensive cuisine is optimizing for.
