Daniel Gilbert’s book How Pleasure Works was fantastic. Here are my food and fish related notes inspired by excerpts from his book.
Taste is genetic…
“Rational considerations might determine cultural choice; they don’t shape individual tastes…
There is only a small relationship between the preferences of parents and those of their young children. There is evidence for a stronger relationship between siblings, as well as between married couples, which is puzzling, since you’re generally not genetically related to your spouse.”
What determines whether we enjoy the smell of a Chipper or the taste of a sardine? To what extent is it our tastebuds versus how we were raised and our culture? It’s a combination of both.
Gilbert argues that this is how we can have dichotomy’s within our mind. We can firmly believe both: “killing cows is morally wrong” and “steak is delicious”. This is an example of cultural conditioning opposing genetics.
Taste is cultural…
“Disgust is learned. “
Babies don’t experience disgust – they’ll put anything in their mouths. In contrast, you and I might have trouble eating feces-shaped chocolate, regardless that we know it’s chocolate.
Taste signifies status…
“Conspicuous consumption” = a way to advertise your status or your positive traits as a person.
Conspicuous consumption is a way to signal to other humans who we are and where we sit in the pecking order. This brings to mind the “Starbucks cup and Lululemon leggings” combo, or the “Northface jacket and Paleo Cricket Bar” combo.
What we eat tells people who we are just as much as what we wear.
First, how you taste something is based on physical properties of what is tasted – it is in the nose and in the mouth. Then, as a second step, your belief about what it is that you are tasting transforms and modifies and elaborates the memory of the taste… Orange juice tastes better if it is bright orange.”
Same with salmon.
There is a distinction between how something tastes and how much you like it. Two things can taste the same, but you might like one of them more due to what you believe about it.
Blind taste tests never find that people can taste the difference between wild-caught versus farmed salmon. And yet, over and over, people insist that wild-caught tastes better.
The reasons people list for their preferences are all beliefs: natural color, better nutritional benefits & more omega-3 fatty acids, more sustainable.
On Marketing: “A smarter approach is to exploit people’s biases, to create new products and market them as natural. Bottled water is the most successful example of this… Bottled water is a sign of status.”
Belief may affect experience itself. Expectations affect the experience.
Is this only relevant when marketing to people of privilege? Perhaps not. Offering fish to guests is a cultural sign of respect and wellbeing in China – marketing it as such would be effective.
Understanding cultural values around fish – not just taste preferences, but what the fish MEANS and SIGNIFIES – is critical for marketing. Particularly when nailing marketing messages across international boundaries.
This pleasure from food is uniquely human…
“Our rich belief system about what we eat and why we eat is is uniquely human.”
A dog doesn’t care if something is natural or artificial. “Human choices can be dissociated from pleasure; not so for other creatures. If my dog goes on a diet, that’s my choice, not hers.”
Let’s avoid speciesism here. Humans are a species of animal. Yet – are we the only animal who experiences pleasure from our beliefs? Perhaps we’re unable to answer this because we’re unable to communicate with other species about their beliefs, rather than because other species don’t have beliefs.
“Pleasure from pain is uniquely human.”
This explains my love affair with Tabasco and Jalapeños.
Fish By The Pounds 