depending on how you define “most food around” of course.
I define it as food I see and eat in my home as well as food in the restaurants. I like yummy food and I see no reason to eat non-yummy food.
You seem to think that any tasty food is super-stimulus food. That’s not how most people use the term.
Well do you agree that pizza tastes really good?
Depends. There’s a lot of bad pizza out there. You can get very good pizza but you can also get mediocre or bad pizza.
Do you agree that (generally speaking) small children LOVE pizza?
I don’t see why this is relevant. Small children in general also like pasta and even you probably wouldn’t consider it a super-stimulus food.
What is a food or drink which you do consider to be unhealthy?
The dose make the poison. In small amounts or consumed rarely, pretty much no food or drink is unhealthy (of course there are a bunch of obvious exceptions for allergies, gluten- or lactose-intolerance, outright toxins, etc.).
With this caveat, I generally consider to be unhealthy things like the large variety of liquid sugar (e.g. soda or juice) or, say, hydrogenated fats (e.g margarine, many cookies).
I define it as food I see and eat in my home as well as food in the restaurants.
I’m not sure what kind of food you keep in your home, but thinking on the fact that a huge percentage of American adults are overweight or obese, I would probably agree that “most food around” is super-stimulating.
You seem to think that any tasty food is super-stimulus food. That’s not how most people use the term
Well you asked me why I consider pizza to be a problem. If you don’t want to use the word “super-stimulus,” it doesn’t really affect my point. Pizza tastes good enough to most people that it’s difficult to resist the urge to over-eat. That’s my answer.
Depends. There’s a lot of bad pizza out there.
Oh come on. Please use the Principle of Charity if you engage me. When I assert that “pizza tastes really good,” you know what I mean.
I don’t see why this is relevant. Small children in general also like pasta
Well small children are naive enough to come right out and express a strong preference for the foods they love. And they don’t beg their parents for pasta parties.
The dose make the poison. In small amounts or consumed rarely, pretty much no food or drink is unhealth
Well let me put the question a slightly different way: Do you agree that there exist certain foods which taste really good; which a lot of people have a problem with, which in many ways are like an addiction?
Well small children are naive enough to come right out and express a strong preference for the foods they love. And they don’t beg their parents for pasta parties.
From what I remember, I did occasionally beg for pizza around that age, but if I’m modeling my early childhood psychology right that had as much to do with cultural/media influence as native preference. Pizza is the canonical party food in American children’s media, and its prominence in e.g. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles probably didn’t help.
Media counts for a lot! Show of hands, who here found themselves craving Turkish delight after reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe without actually knowing what it was?
Anecdote time! There was a period when I loved pasta but wouldn’t eat pizza because I had not yet grasped that Tomatoes Are Awesome. Also that book made me classify Turkish Delight as a drug, and Drugs Are Bad don’tcha know. And then when I finally got some I realized it also tastes bad.
Turkish Delight isn’t just one thing. I’ve had mediocre bright-colored (and probably artificially flavored) turkish delight, and delicious fresh transparent turkish delight flavored with rose water. If you care about the subject, you should see if you have access to a middle eastern shop where you can get the good stuff.
Tentative theory: the good stuff isn’t packaged, so it has to be fresh. If it wasn’t fresh, it would have dried out.
From what I remember, I did occasionally beg for pizza around that age, but if I’m modeling my early childhood psychology right that had as much to do with media influence as native preference
Do you agree that part of the reason kids beg for pizza is that it tastes really good?
Let me ask you this: If you gave lab rats a choice between pizza and oatmeal, which do you think they would choose?
Do you agree that part of the reason kids beg for pizza is that it tastes really good?
I think pizza, at least in the United States and during the years around my own childhood, occupied a cultural position that’s not fully describable in terms of its nutritional content. Stimulus concerns are sufficient to explain favoring it over something like (plain) oatmeal, but not over something like spaghetti and meatballs or chicken-fried steak.
I’m told curry occupies a similar position in Japan. Other cultures probably have their own equivalents.
I think pizza, at least in the United States and during the years around my own childhood, occupied a cultural position that’s not fully describable in terms of its nutritional content. Stimulus concerns are sufficient to explain favoring it over something like (plain) oatmeal, but not over something like spaghetti and meatballs or chicken-fried steak.
Ok, I guess I read your first post too quickly. You don’t seem to dispute my basic claim that pizza tastes really good. You also don’t seem to dispute my claim that children’s preference for pizza is evidence of this. Because whatever food children beg for—whether it’s pizza, hot dogs, or curry—is probably going to be something that tastes good.
I do agree that children ask for pizza—as opposed to other tasty foods—for cultural reasons. But I don’t think that contradicts any argument I have made.
Do you agree that part of the reason kids beg for pizza is that it tastes really good?
My kids didn’t want pizza (pretty much ever), until they started school, and then they wanted pizza primarily when having friends over. I think its more social/cultural then anything else.
Also, they are pizza snobs- I’m not allowed to order from a local place because its “too salty, and too greasy.” They’d prefer no pizza, or a usual dinner (stir fry or something) to the wrong pizza.
Also, I’m not sure if “super stimulus” food are super stimulus consistently. I hate fast food burgers, and have since I was little (but sit me down in a hole-in-the-wall mexican place and I’ll eat until I wish I was dead).
Well do you agree that despite your experiences, there do seem to be certain foods which are considered tasty and difficult to resist by large numbers of people?
I actually live in a fairly healthy “bubble,” I don’t know many significantly overweight people. I know the stereotypes, I guess, that fat people guzzle sodas and pound mcdonalds.
I guess the one example of someone who eats typical bad-for-you foods is my wife’s sister who basically grew up only eating burgers (an extremely picky eater with very permissive parents. She still pretty much only eats burgers). But she weighs 125 lbs and runs marathons.
But again, these are my selective anecdotes. I don’t claim representative knowledge.
Let me ask you this: If you gave lab rats a choice between pizza and oatmeal, which do you think they would choose?
I don’t know the answer to this, but I’d caution against using lab rats, which, keep in mind, have quite different dietary needs, as an indicator of human dietary preferences.
I don’t know the answer to this, but I’d caution against using lab rats, which, keep in mind, have quite different dietary needs, as an indicator of human dietary preferences.
Well you are capable of estimating some probabilities, no? I agree that caution is in order, but I feel pretty confident, perhaps 90% probability, that lab rats will choose pizza over oatmeal.
Here’s a study which might affect your probability assessments:
Exposure to a palatable diet had long-term effects on feeding patterns. Rats became overweight because they initially ate more frequently and ultimately ate more of foods with higher energy density.
Well you are capable of estimating some probabilities, no? I agree that caution is in order, but I feel pretty confident, perhaps 90% probability, that lab rats will choose pizza over oatmeal.
I’d take the other side of the bet. Anybody willing to test this?
thinking on the fact that a huge percentage of American adults are overweight or obese, I would probably agree that “most food around” is super-stimulating.
I’d guess it’s got to do with affordability and convenience as well as taste. If I had to cook my own food or spend a sizeable fraction of my monthly wage on it, I would be much less likely to eat it unless I’m really hungry, no matter how good it tasted.
I’d guess it’s got to do with affordability and convenience as well as taste
I would agree, but the same thing could be said about pretty much any super-stimulating good or service. If a dose of heroin were available for a nickel at any convenience store, then probably a lot more people would abuse heroin.
thinking on the fact that a huge percentage of American adults are overweight or obese, I would probably agree that “most food around” is super-stimulating.
Sigh. So you really think that the cause of obesity is that food is just too yummy, too attractive?
Before you answer, think about different countries, other than US. Japan, maybe? France?
Pizza tastes good enough to most people that it’s difficult to resist the urge to over-eat. That’s my answer.
Please use the Principle of Charity if you engage me. When I assert that “pizza tastes really good,” you know what I mean.
Please try to avoid the typical mind fallacy. People around me don’t seem to have the urge to overeat pizza. A lot of them just don’t like it, others might eat a slice once in a while but no more. Nobody is obsessed with pizza and I doubt many will agree that “pizza tastes really good” -- they’ll either say “it depends” or shrug and say that pizza is basic cheap food, to be grabbed on the run when hungry.
No one—not a single person around me—shows signs of having to exert significant will power to avoid stuffing her face with pizza.
Do you agree that there exist certain foods which taste really good; which a lot of people have a problem with, which in many ways are like an addiction?
Presumably there is a logical “AND” between you sentence parts. Depends on what do you mean by “taste really good” (see above about pizza) and by “a lot”.
People generally overeat not because the food is too yummy. People generally overeat for hormonal and psychological reasons.
Well, here’s an easy one that I’ve even got some empirical evidence for: refined sugars being added to common foods where you simply don’t expect sugars to be.
I know that when I’m here in Israel, I have an easy time controlling my eating (to the point that skipping meals sometimes becomes my default), but when I’m in the States, I have a very hard time controlling my eating. I’ve noticed that when I even partially cut refined sugars from my diet, I get through the day with a much clearer mind, particularly in the realm of executive/self-disciplining functions. It’s to the point that I’m noticeably more productive at work without refined sugar.
There are lots of differences in diet between Israel and the USA, but the single biggest background factor is that in Israel, sweets are sweets and not-sweets are not sweetened. Whereas in the US, everything but the very rawest raw ingredients (ie: including sliced bread) has some added refined sugars.
With a large background level of “derp drug” in your basic foodstuffs, it’s probably quite easy to suffer blood-sugar problems, get cravings, and lose a degree of focus and self-control. It’s certainly what I experience when I’m there.
I’ve noticed that when I even partially cut refined sugars from my diet, I get through the day with a much clearer mind, particularly in the realm of executive/self-disciplining functions. It’s to the point that I’m noticeably more productive at work without refined sugar.
ISTM that for me in the short run it’s the other way round, but that’s probably got to do with the fact that most of my sources of refined sugars are sources of caffeine and water as well.
So you really think that the cause of obesity is just that food is just too yummy, too attractive?
Absolutely. (And too available.)
Before you answer, think about different countries, other than US. Japan, maybe? France?
I’ve been thinking about this question pretty intensely for a couple years now.
Please try to avoid the typical mind fallacy.
Where did you get the impression that I am going just by my own experiences?
People around me don’t seem to have the urge to overeat pizza
Roughly what percentage of the people around you are overweight or obese? Of those who are overweight or obese, do they seem to have the urge to eat any foods or types of foods to excess?
Presumably there is a logical “AND” between you sentence parts. Depends on what do you mean by “taste really good” (see above about pizza) and by “a lot”
For purposes of this exchange, I will define “taste really good” as being at the high end of “yummy.” Since you used the word “yummy” before, you presumably know what you meant.
I will define “a lot” as more than 5 million Americans.
Ok, now do you agree that there exist certain foods which (1) are considered to be very yummy by a majority of Americans; (2) which a lot of Americans have a problem with (in the sense that they have difficulty controlling their consumption of these foods); and (3) which are like an addiction (in the sense that some people feel compelled to overconsume such foods despite knowing or having received professional advice that they are consuming too much food)
Well then, you have an unusual viewpoint :-) Any evidence to support it?
Where did you get the impression that I am going just by my own experiences?
Because you didn’t offer any data or other evidence. It looked just like a classic stereotype—look at all these fat Americans who can’t stop shoving pizzas into their pieholes!
Roughly what percentage of the people around you are overweight or obese?
10-15%, maybe?
Of those who are overweight or obese, do they seem to have the urge to eat any foods or types of foods to excess?
Nope, not to my knowledge. Of course some might be wolfing down bags of cookies in the middle of the night, but I don’t know about it :-)
Ok, now do you agree that there exist certain foods...
I will still say no because I don’t think food is addictive. But let me try to see where to do you want to get to.
Let’s take full-sugar soda, e.g. Coca-Cola. There certainly has been lots of accusatory fingers pointed at it. The majority of Americans drinks it, so I guess (1) is kinda satisfied. Do people have difficulty controlling their consumption of it? Yep, so (2) fits as well. On the other hand, these people tend to have difficulty controlling a lot of things in their lives, for example credit cards, so I’m not sure there is anything food-specific going on here. Is it like an addiction? Nope, I don’t think so. “Knowing professional advice” is way too low an incentive for people to change their ways.
Studies of food addiction have focused on highly palatable foods. While fast food falls squarely into that category, it has several other attributes that may increase its salience. This review examines whether the nutrients present in fast food, the characteristics of fast food consumers or the presentation and packaging of fast food may encourage substance dependence, as defined by the American Psychiatric Association. The majority of fast food meals are accompanied by a soda, which increases the sugar content 10-fold. Sugar addiction, including tolerance and withdrawal, has been demonstrated in rodents but not humans. Caffeine is a “model” substance of dependence; coffee drinks are driving the recent increase in fast food sales. Limited evidence suggests that the high fat and salt content of fast food may increase addictive potential. Fast food restaurants cluster in poorer neighborhoods and obese adults eat more fast food than those who are normal weight. Obesity is characterized by resistance to insulin, leptin and other hormonal signals that would normally control appetite and limit reward. Neuroimaging studies in obese subjects provide evidence of altered reward and tolerance. Once obese, many individuals meet criteria for psychological dependence. Stress and dieting may sensitize an individual to reward. Finally, fast food advertisements, restaurants and menus all provide environmental cues that may trigger addictive overeating. While the concept of fast food addiction remains to be proven, these findings support the role of fast food as a potentially addictive substance that is most likely to create dependence in vulnerable populations.
Also, while I don’t find pizza to be at all addictive, my experience is that hamburgers are very much so. I’ve had experiences where I successfully avoided eating any meat for two months in a row, then succumbed to the temptation of eating a single hamburger and then ate some several times a week for the next month.
It’s really a definitions argument, about what one can/should apply the word “addiction” to. As such it’s not very interesting, at least until it gets to connotations and consequences (e.g. if it’s an addiction, the government can regulate it or make it illegal).
succumbed to the temptation
It’s human to succumb to temptations. Not all temptations are addictions.
Succumbing to a temptation occasionally is one thing. But even a single case of that happening leading to a month-long relapse? That’s much more addiction-ish.
It’s really a definitions argument, about what one can/should apply the word “addiction” to. As such it’s not very interesting, at least until it gets to connotations and consequences (e.g. if it’s an addiction, the government can regulate it or make it illegal).
The government can regulate or ban things as public health risks which are not deemed addictions though, and things which are recognized as addictive are not necessarily regulated or banned.
All true, but if you look at it from a different side: if you want to regulate or ban something, would you rather call it an addiction or an unfortunate exercise of the freedom choice? :-)
If you’re liberal enough about what people are allowed to do, should you call anything an addiction? I’m not sure if politics connotatively hijacking scientific terminology is a good reason to change the terminology. Would you suggest something like that?
If you’re liberal enough about what people are allowed to do, should you call anything an addiction?
Sure. I would call things which change your personal biochemistry in the medium term (e.g. opiates) addictive. I think it’s a reasonable use of the term.
There are opiate receptors in the brain because your brain produces transmitters that bind to those receptors. You should expect certain behaviours you engage to change your personal biochemistry in various time spans as well.
Well, the latter characterization would certainly not aid me in my attempts to get it banned, but if calling it an addiction were likely to result in semantic squabbling, I’d probably just call it a public health risk.
Also, while I don’t find pizza to be at all addictive, my experience is that hamburgers are very much so. I’ve had experiences where I successfully avoided eating any meat for two months in a row, then succumbed to the temptation of eating a single hamburger and then ate some several times a week for the next month.
Interesting. I just get such consistent meat cravings that I don’t even bother trying to not eat meat. I just buy a certain amount and eat it as a basic food group.
Because you didn’t offer any data or other evidence.
You’re not doing it either, y’know.
I think you have now (re?)defined at least two words, super-stimulus and addictive, to fit your purposes. Tobacco doesn’t fit your definition of addictive either.
I did define “super-stimulus”, but I don’t think I tried to define “addictive” (and that’s a slippery word, often defined to suit a particular stance).
Have you read this relevant article? It’s confusing when you say you’re disagreeing with a definition, when you actually mean you’re disagreeing with the connotation.
Addiction is “a slippery word, often defined to suit a particular stance”.
Super-stimulus is “mostly used to demonize certain “bad” things (notably, sugar and salt) with the implication that people can’t just help themselves and so need the government (or another nanny) to step in and impose rules.”.
Sure, you finally explicitly said these things but you could have said you disagreed with the connotations in the first place, which would have made the discussion about definitions pointless and perhaps dissolved some disagreement.
Well then, you have an unusual viewpoint :-) Any evidence to support it?
I do, but I prefer to stay focused on the subject at hand.
Because you didn’t offer any data or other evidence.
Let’s see if I have this straight—any time someone makes a generalization about human nature without simultaneously volunteering data or other evidence, one can reasonably assume that they are engaged in the typical mind fallacy? Do I understand you correctly?
Nope, not to my knowledge.
And of those 10-15%, roughly what percentage have tried to lose weight and failed?
Is it like an addiction? Nope,
So let’s see if I understand your position:
You deny that there are a lot of people who consume certain foods even while knowing that they are consuming too much food?
any time someone makes a generalization about human nature without simultaneously volunteering data or other evidence, one can reasonably assume that they are engaged in the typical mind fallacy?
If it contradicts one’s personal experience then yes, one can reasonably assume. Subject to being corrected by evidence, of course.
And of those 10-15%, roughly what percentage have tried to lose weight and failed?
I don’t know. None of them visibly yo-yos. Pretty much everyone once in a while says “I could lose a few pounds”, but it’s meaningless small talk on the order of “Weather is beastly today, eh?”
You deny that there are a lot of people who consume certain foods even while knowing that they are consuming too much food?
No, I don’t deny that, I just think that the word “addiction” is not the appropriate one.
If it contradicts one’s personal experience then yes, one can reasonably assume.
Well your personal experience contradicts mine. So please try to avoid engaging in the Lumifer Typical Mind Fallacy. Thank you.
I don’t know.
But you do know that none of them have a difficult-to-resist urge to eat certain foods or types of foods?
No, I don’t deny that, I just think that the word “addiction” is not the appropriate one.
Well please answer the question I asked and not the question you imagine I had asked.
I asked (among other things) if there were certain foods which “are like an addiction (in the sense that some people feel compelled to overconsume such foods despite knowing or having received professional advice that they are consuming too much food)”
I was careful to say “like an addiction” and to describe what I actually meant.
So it seems you DO agree with me that there exist certain foods which (1) are considered to be very yummy by a majority of Americans; (2) which a lot of Americans have a problem with (in the sense that they have difficulty controlling their consumption of these foods); and (3) which are like an addiction (in the sense that some people feel compelled to overconsume such foods despite knowing or having received professional advice that they are consuming too much food)
Good. Do notice that, as opposed to you, I did not attempt to “make a generalization about human nature” on the basis of my personal experience.
But you do know that none of them have a difficult-to-resist urge to eat certain foods or types of foods?
Of course not.
So it seems you DO agree with me...
I am not inclined to play fisking games (or lets-adjust-this-definition-to-split-the-hair-in-half games) on these forums. No, I do not agree with you. You have enough information to figure out how and why.
Good. Do notice that, as opposed to you, I did not attempt to “make a generalization about human nature” on the basis of my personal experience.
Ummm, here’s one thing you said before:
People generally overeat not because the food is too yummy. People generally overeat for hormonal and psychological reasons.
You didn’t offer any evidence or data to back this up.
It contradicts my personal experience.
Therefore you have committed the Lumifer Typical Mind Fallacy.
Please try to avoid it in the future.
Of course not.
Lol, then your personal experience doesn’t even contradict my basic point.
I am not inclined to play fisking games (or lets-adjust-this-definition-to-split-the-hair-in-half games) on these forums.
Say what? You just redefined my words so that you could answer a different question.
I asked (among other things) if you agreed that there are foods which are “like an addiction (in the sense that some people feel compelled to overconsume such foods despite knowing or having received professional advice that they are consuming too much food)”
You reinterpreted that question as though I was asking whether certain foods are addictive. So that you could easily answer “no” using your own definition of “addictive.”
Please answer the question I asked—not the question you wish or imagine I asked.
No, I do not agree with you. You have enough information to figure out how and why.
Yes, I have enough information to make a pretty good guess as to why you are evading my question.
It also seems that food scientists specifically try to make food as addictive as possible, which seems like an expected outcome from a capitalist food market—whatever encourages the most consumption will win greater market share.
Is it an addiction on par with heroin, alcohol, or tobacco? I doubt it, but using an addiction model might be helpful in treating overeating.
using an addiction model might be helpful in treating overeating.
Don’t have links handy but my impression is that this was tried, lots of times, and failed badly.
As to the general question of food being addictive, this is mostly an issue of how you define “addictive”. I find it useful to draw boundaries so that food (as well as, say, sex or internet) do not fall within them.
On the other hand, I don’t see a sharp divide between “food” and “drugs”. Eating certain kinds of food clearly has certain biochemical consequences.
I find it useful to draw boundaries so that food (as well as, say, sex or internet) do not fall within them.
What word would you use for people who eat so much they can’t move, get HIV from prostitutes, or play WoW with such dedication they die? These people clearly have something in common, and it’s definitely more specific than stupidity.
An unlucky choice of examples, I guess. Switch the question to “could brains that can’t seem to be able to regulate their behaviour to the point they’re severely damaged by it have something in common in their basic physiology that predisposes them to dysregulation when exposed to certain sensory stimuli?” This is still vague enough there’s room for evasion, so if you want to continue that way, I suppose it’s better we forget about this.
Well, as I have said several times it’s a matter of definition and how wide you want to define “addiction” is arbitrary.
Sure, you can define it as positive-feedback loops that subvert conscious control over behavior or something like that—but recall that all definitions must serve a purpose and without one there is no reason to prefer one over another. What’s the purpose here?
Note that the purpose cannot be “Can we call eating disorders addictions?” because that’s a pure definition question—however you define “addiction” will be the answer.
The purpose is to recognize harmful behaviours that people could benefit from fixing and that those behaviours might have similarities that can be exploited. If you browse porn 12 hours a day, it’s quite probable you realize you have a problem, but have significant difficulty in changing your behaviour. If you want to browse porn 12 hours a day, then that’s fine too, and nobody should try to fix you without your permission.
“Can we call eating disorders addictions?”
I don’t care what you call them, it suffices that the above purposes are fulfilled and that people understand each other.
those behaviours might have similarities that can be exploited.
I am highly suspicious of calling a variety of behaviors “addiction” as it implies both the lack of responsibility on the part of the subject and the justification of imposing external rules/constraints on him.
I don’t know of any successful attempts to treat obesity as if it were a true-addiction kind of disorder. One of the problems is that the classic approach to treating addiction is to isolate the addict from the addictive substance. Hard to do that with food and hard to avoid yummy stuff outside of a clinic.
I don’t know of any successful attempts to treat obesity as if it were a true-addiction kind of disorder.
What does this mean? That some people need bariatric surgeries to limit their eating is a pretty clear indicator they can’t control their eating. The kind of isolation rehab you’re talking about is an extreme measure even when treating drug addictions, and comprises a marginal proportion of addiction treatment.
Think nicotine replacement and varenicline for tobacco addiction or naltrexone and disulfiram for alcoholism and we’ll start to be on the same page. Note that I’m not implying these are hugely successful either. All addictions are difficult to treat.
Also certain addiction vocabulary and self awareness techniques like identifying triggers could be relevant for treating compulsive behaviour.
Super-stimulus foods are ether very sugary or very salty
Or fatty.
You seem to think that any tasty food is super-stimulus food.
Shouldn’t pretty much any cooked food be a super-stimulus considering the relevant ancestral environment and why we intricately cook food in the first place?
Small children in general also like pasta and even you probably wouldn’t consider it a super-stimulus food.
Super-stimuli could be different for different age groups. I’ve never seen anyone love plain pasta, they like their ketchup and sauce too.
Shouldn’t pretty much any cooked food be a super-stimulus considering the relevant ancestral environment and why we intricately cook food in the first place?
According to what I read in Scientific American, the human digestive system has evolved to require cooked food; humans can’t survive on what chimpanzees and other primates eat.
Are you saying that plain pasta and bread without toppings are super-stimuli for you? Are you not even using oil? :)
I can understand the bread part if it’s fresh, but as far as I’m concerned pasta doesn’t taste much like anything. Perhaps I’ve just eaten the wrong kind of bland crap.
No, I eat pasta with sauces other than ketchup. And I do eat much more plain bread than the average person e.g. when I’m at the restaurant and I’m waiting for the dishes to arrive, but I think it’s more got to do with boredom and hunger than anything else—it’s not like I have to refrain from keeping any bread at home whenever I’m trying to lose weight lest I binge on it, the way I do with cookies.
Anyway, my general point was that comparing pizza with toppings to pasta without toppings (in terms of how much people, in particular small children, enjoy them) isn’t a fair comparison.
When I was a kid, my grandmother had some trick that caused her bland spaghetti (possibly with some oils and stuff, but mostly things that weren’t visible after it was prepared) to be the best food that I knew of. If not superstimuli, then close to it.
Unfortunately she’s no longer alive, and she never passed the trick on to anyone else, so I can’t say whether I would get the same pleasure out of it as an adult.
Olive oil, lots and lots of it. Thank me later. I have been drenching food with it and getting compliments on my cooking skills for years, and I also use to say it’s a secret given my GF would freak out due to high calories.
(disclaimer: I weight 260 pounds)
Hmm. Well, you can vary the taste by throwing salt into the pot, but I’ve never found a level of salt that I thought would raise the quality more than a point on a ten point scale. Adding spices while boiling, like powdered garlic, will alter the taste somewhat but I think they’re more effective in sauces / applied afterwards, and are often visible.
If someone wants to experiment, my starting point would be this:
Take some good olive oil (extra-virgin, first cold press, etc.) and grate fresh garlic into it. Stir and let it stand covered for an hour or so. Once your pasta is ready, drain it, and then toss with the garlic-infused olive oil.
Apparently my mother tried to make some spaghetti according to my grandmother’s instructions, but it never tasted the same to me. So either it was something really subtle, or there was a placebo effect involved (or both).
ETA: Though now that I think of it, I’m not entirely sure of the “bland” thing anymore—there might have been a sauce involved as well. Damn unreliable memories.
I hear that fresh pasta is comparable to fresh bread.
Interesting. Links or stories? I am very much aware of the difference between fresh-baked bread and “plastic bread” from the supermarket. It’s huge. Are people claiming freshly-made pasta is different to the same degree?
Are people claiming freshly-made pasta is different to the same degree?
It appears not. [1][2][3] Fresh pasta has a more pronounced flavor, and is generally made with a superior variety of flour (that doesn’t keep as well), which means less of the flavor work is done by the sauce.
(I don’t think I’ve ever had fresh pasta, and so don’t have any first-hand reports. I do think fresh bread is worlds better than supermarket bread, though.)
Also, in America at least, making fresh pasta is a very grandmothery thing to do, and so my prior was high enough to be remarkable.
Not sure about that. Fat makes food more tasty (mostly through contributing what’s called “mouth feel”), but it doesn’t look like a super-stimulus to me.
Shouldn’t pretty much any cooked food be a super-stimulus
Well, depends on how do you want to define “super-stimulus”. I understand it to mean triggering hardwired biological preferences above and beyond the usual and normal desire to eat tasty food. The two substances specifically linked to super-stimulus are sugar and salt.
Again, super-stimulus is not the same thing as yummy.
Dunno about 99% (though if you set the bar as low as “willing to eat” I probably would), but I do find 85% dark chocolate quite addictive (as in, I seldom manage to buy a tablet and not finish it within a couple days). But I know I’m weird.
I meant it in the colloquial ‘takes lots of willpower to stop’ sense, not the technical ‘once I stop I get withdrawal symptoms’ sense. (Is there a technical term for the former?)
(OK, it does seem to me that whenever I eat chocolate daily for a few weeks and then stop, I feel much grumpier for a few days, but that’s another story, and anyway it’s not like I took enough statistics to rule out it being a coincidence,)
Not quite—I’m talking about the upper extreme of what Yvain here calls “wanting”, though that word in the common vernacular has strong connotations of what he calls “approving”.
I meant it in the colloquial ‘takes lots of willpower to stop’ sense, not the technical ‘once I stop I get withdrawal symptoms’ sense. (Is there a technical term for the former?)
Did our preferences mostly evolve for “tasty food” or for raw meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts etc? I thought super-stimulus usually means something that goes beyond the stimuli in the ancestral environment where the preferences for the relevant stimuli were selected for.
I don’t understand how you draw the line between stimuli and super-stimuli without such reasoning.
I guess it’s possible most our preferences evolved for cooked food, but I’d like to see the evidence first before I believe it.
ETA: I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with super-stimuli, so let’s drop the baggage of that connotation.
I don’t understand how you draw the line between stimuli and super-stimuli
Well, I actually don’t want to draw the line. I am not a big fan of the super-stimulus approach, though obviously humans have some built-in preferences. This terminology was mostly used to demonize certain “bad” things (notably, sugar and salt) with the implication that people can’t just help themselves and so need the government (or another nanny) to step in and impose rules.
I think a continuous axis going from disgusting to very tasty is much more useful.
Well, sure. Similarly, a continuous axis designating typical level of risk is more useful than classifying some activities as “dangerous” and others as “safe.” Which doesn’t mean there don’t exist dangerous activities.
So you disagreed with the connotation. I disagree with it too, and edited the grandparent accordingly. I still like the word though, and think it’s useful. I suppose getting exposed to certain kind of marketing could make me change my mind.
I define it as food I see and eat in my home as well as food in the restaurants. I like yummy food and I see no reason to eat non-yummy food.
You seem to think that any tasty food is super-stimulus food. That’s not how most people use the term.
Depends. There’s a lot of bad pizza out there. You can get very good pizza but you can also get mediocre or bad pizza.
I don’t see why this is relevant. Small children in general also like pasta and even you probably wouldn’t consider it a super-stimulus food.
The dose make the poison. In small amounts or consumed rarely, pretty much no food or drink is unhealthy (of course there are a bunch of obvious exceptions for allergies, gluten- or lactose-intolerance, outright toxins, etc.).
With this caveat, I generally consider to be unhealthy things like the large variety of liquid sugar (e.g. soda or juice) or, say, hydrogenated fats (e.g margarine, many cookies).
I’m not sure what kind of food you keep in your home, but thinking on the fact that a huge percentage of American adults are overweight or obese, I would probably agree that “most food around” is super-stimulating.
Well you asked me why I consider pizza to be a problem. If you don’t want to use the word “super-stimulus,” it doesn’t really affect my point. Pizza tastes good enough to most people that it’s difficult to resist the urge to over-eat. That’s my answer.
Oh come on. Please use the Principle of Charity if you engage me. When I assert that “pizza tastes really good,” you know what I mean.
Well small children are naive enough to come right out and express a strong preference for the foods they love. And they don’t beg their parents for pasta parties.
Well let me put the question a slightly different way: Do you agree that there exist certain foods which taste really good; which a lot of people have a problem with, which in many ways are like an addiction?
From what I remember, I did occasionally beg for pizza around that age, but if I’m modeling my early childhood psychology right that had as much to do with cultural/media influence as native preference. Pizza is the canonical party food in American children’s media, and its prominence in e.g. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles probably didn’t help.
Media counts for a lot! Show of hands, who here found themselves craving Turkish delight after reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe without actually knowing what it was?
Anecdote time! There was a period when I loved pasta but wouldn’t eat pizza because I had not yet grasped that Tomatoes Are Awesome. Also that book made me classify Turkish Delight as a drug, and Drugs Are Bad don’tcha know. And then when I finally got some I realized it also tastes bad.
Turkish Delight isn’t just one thing. I’ve had mediocre bright-colored (and probably artificially flavored) turkish delight, and delicious fresh transparent turkish delight flavored with rose water. If you care about the subject, you should see if you have access to a middle eastern shop where you can get the good stuff.
Tentative theory: the good stuff isn’t packaged, so it has to be fresh. If it wasn’t fresh, it would have dried out.
Thanks for the tip! The only Turkish delight I remember having was bright-colored and came in a box.
Do you agree that part of the reason kids beg for pizza is that it tastes really good?
Let me ask you this: If you gave lab rats a choice between pizza and oatmeal, which do you think they would choose?
I think pizza, at least in the United States and during the years around my own childhood, occupied a cultural position that’s not fully describable in terms of its nutritional content. Stimulus concerns are sufficient to explain favoring it over something like (plain) oatmeal, but not over something like spaghetti and meatballs or chicken-fried steak.
I’m told curry occupies a similar position in Japan. Other cultures probably have their own equivalents.
Ok, I guess I read your first post too quickly. You don’t seem to dispute my basic claim that pizza tastes really good. You also don’t seem to dispute my claim that children’s preference for pizza is evidence of this. Because whatever food children beg for—whether it’s pizza, hot dogs, or curry—is probably going to be something that tastes good.
I do agree that children ask for pizza—as opposed to other tasty foods—for cultural reasons. But I don’t think that contradicts any argument I have made.
My kids didn’t want pizza (pretty much ever), until they started school, and then they wanted pizza primarily when having friends over. I think its more social/cultural then anything else.
Also, they are pizza snobs- I’m not allowed to order from a local place because its “too salty, and too greasy.” They’d prefer no pizza, or a usual dinner (stir fry or something) to the wrong pizza.
Also, I’m not sure if “super stimulus” food are super stimulus consistently. I hate fast food burgers, and have since I was little (but sit me down in a hole-in-the-wall mexican place and I’ll eat until I wish I was dead).
Just adding a few anecdotes.
Well do you agree that despite your experiences, there do seem to be certain foods which are considered tasty and difficult to resist by large numbers of people?
I actually live in a fairly healthy “bubble,” I don’t know many significantly overweight people. I know the stereotypes, I guess, that fat people guzzle sodas and pound mcdonalds.
I guess the one example of someone who eats typical bad-for-you foods is my wife’s sister who basically grew up only eating burgers (an extremely picky eater with very permissive parents. She still pretty much only eats burgers). But she weighs 125 lbs and runs marathons.
But again, these are my selective anecdotes. I don’t claim representative knowledge.
And the overweight people you know don’t seem to have any specific foods or types of foods which they have trouble resisting?
I don’t know the answer to this, but I’d caution against using lab rats, which, keep in mind, have quite different dietary needs, as an indicator of human dietary preferences.
Well you are capable of estimating some probabilities, no? I agree that caution is in order, but I feel pretty confident, perhaps 90% probability, that lab rats will choose pizza over oatmeal.
Here’s a study which might affect your probability assessments:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0060407
I’d take the other side of the bet. Anybody willing to test this?
I’d guess it’s got to do with affordability and convenience as well as taste. If I had to cook my own food or spend a sizeable fraction of my monthly wage on it, I would be much less likely to eat it unless I’m really hungry, no matter how good it tasted.
I would agree, but the same thing could be said about pretty much any super-stimulating good or service. If a dose of heroin were available for a nickel at any convenience store, then probably a lot more people would abuse heroin.
Sigh. So you really think that the cause of obesity is that food is just too yummy, too attractive?
Before you answer, think about different countries, other than US. Japan, maybe? France?
Please try to avoid the typical mind fallacy. People around me don’t seem to have the urge to overeat pizza. A lot of them just don’t like it, others might eat a slice once in a while but no more. Nobody is obsessed with pizza and I doubt many will agree that “pizza tastes really good” -- they’ll either say “it depends” or shrug and say that pizza is basic cheap food, to be grabbed on the run when hungry.
No one—not a single person around me—shows signs of having to exert significant will power to avoid stuffing her face with pizza.
Presumably there is a logical “AND” between you sentence parts. Depends on what do you mean by “taste really good” (see above about pizza) and by “a lot”.
People generally overeat not because the food is too yummy. People generally overeat for hormonal and psychological reasons.
What is your hypothesis for why obesity rates have exploded to such an extent in the last several decades?
Well, here’s an easy one that I’ve even got some empirical evidence for: refined sugars being added to common foods where you simply don’t expect sugars to be.
I know that when I’m here in Israel, I have an easy time controlling my eating (to the point that skipping meals sometimes becomes my default), but when I’m in the States, I have a very hard time controlling my eating. I’ve noticed that when I even partially cut refined sugars from my diet, I get through the day with a much clearer mind, particularly in the realm of executive/self-disciplining functions. It’s to the point that I’m noticeably more productive at work without refined sugar.
There are lots of differences in diet between Israel and the USA, but the single biggest background factor is that in Israel, sweets are sweets and not-sweets are not sweetened. Whereas in the US, everything but the very rawest raw ingredients (ie: including sliced bread) has some added refined sugars.
With a large background level of “derp drug” in your basic foodstuffs, it’s probably quite easy to suffer blood-sugar problems, get cravings, and lose a degree of focus and self-control. It’s certainly what I experience when I’m there.
ISTM that for me in the short run it’s the other way round, but that’s probably got to do with the fact that most of my sources of refined sugars are sources of caffeine and water as well.
Try unsweetened black tea or coffee. Seriously: it works wonders.
Oh, dear. There are what, a few dozens of books on the topic, not to mention uncountable papers and articles?
I think it’s complicated and not attributable to a single easy-to-isolate factor.
Absolutely. (And too available.)
I’ve been thinking about this question pretty intensely for a couple years now.
Where did you get the impression that I am going just by my own experiences?
Roughly what percentage of the people around you are overweight or obese? Of those who are overweight or obese, do they seem to have the urge to eat any foods or types of foods to excess?
For purposes of this exchange, I will define “taste really good” as being at the high end of “yummy.” Since you used the word “yummy” before, you presumably know what you meant.
I will define “a lot” as more than 5 million Americans.
Ok, now do you agree that there exist certain foods which (1) are considered to be very yummy by a majority of Americans; (2) which a lot of Americans have a problem with (in the sense that they have difficulty controlling their consumption of these foods); and (3) which are like an addiction (in the sense that some people feel compelled to overconsume such foods despite knowing or having received professional advice that they are consuming too much food)
Well then, you have an unusual viewpoint :-) Any evidence to support it?
Because you didn’t offer any data or other evidence. It looked just like a classic stereotype—look at all these fat Americans who can’t stop shoving pizzas into their pieholes!
10-15%, maybe?
Nope, not to my knowledge. Of course some might be wolfing down bags of cookies in the middle of the night, but I don’t know about it :-)
I will still say no because I don’t think food is addictive. But let me try to see where to do you want to get to.
Let’s take full-sugar soda, e.g. Coca-Cola. There certainly has been lots of accusatory fingers pointed at it. The majority of Americans drinks it, so I guess (1) is kinda satisfied. Do people have difficulty controlling their consumption of it? Yep, so (2) fits as well. On the other hand, these people tend to have difficulty controlling a lot of things in their lives, for example credit cards, so I’m not sure there is anything food-specific going on here. Is it like an addiction? Nope, I don’t think so. “Knowing professional advice” is way too low an incentive for people to change their ways.
Contrary opinion:
Also, while I don’t find pizza to be at all addictive, my experience is that hamburgers are very much so. I’ve had experiences where I successfully avoided eating any meat for two months in a row, then succumbed to the temptation of eating a single hamburger and then ate some several times a week for the next month.
Yes, I am aware that such exist :-)
It’s really a definitions argument, about what one can/should apply the word “addiction” to. As such it’s not very interesting, at least until it gets to connotations and consequences (e.g. if it’s an addiction, the government can regulate it or make it illegal).
It’s human to succumb to temptations. Not all temptations are addictions.
Succumbing to a temptation occasionally is one thing. But even a single case of that happening leading to a month-long relapse? That’s much more addiction-ish.
The government can regulate or ban things as public health risks which are not deemed addictions though, and things which are recognized as addictive are not necessarily regulated or banned.
All true, but if you look at it from a different side: if you want to regulate or ban something, would you rather call it an addiction or an unfortunate exercise of the freedom choice? :-)
If you’re liberal enough about what people are allowed to do, should you call anything an addiction? I’m not sure if politics connotatively hijacking scientific terminology is a good reason to change the terminology. Would you suggest something like that?
Sure. I would call things which change your personal biochemistry in the medium term (e.g. opiates) addictive. I think it’s a reasonable use of the term.
There are opiate receptors in the brain because your brain produces transmitters that bind to those receptors. You should expect certain behaviours you engage to change your personal biochemistry in various time spans as well.
A fair point. I should add probably the necessity of a positive feedback loop to the definition.
Well, the latter characterization would certainly not aid me in my attempts to get it banned, but if calling it an addiction were likely to result in semantic squabbling, I’d probably just call it a public health risk.
Interesting. I just get such consistent meat cravings that I don’t even bother trying to not eat meat. I just buy a certain amount and eat it as a basic food group.
You’re not doing it either, y’know.
I think you have now (re?)defined at least two words, super-stimulus and addictive, to fit your purposes. Tobacco doesn’t fit your definition of addictive either.
I’m neither proposing nor defending a hypothesis.
I did define “super-stimulus”, but I don’t think I tried to define “addictive” (and that’s a slippery word, often defined to suit a particular stance).
Have you read this relevant article? It’s confusing when you say you’re disagreeing with a definition, when you actually mean you’re disagreeing with the connotation.
I am not sure what are you referring to...?
Addiction is “a slippery word, often defined to suit a particular stance”.
Super-stimulus is “mostly used to demonize certain “bad” things (notably, sugar and salt) with the implication that people can’t just help themselves and so need the government (or another nanny) to step in and impose rules.”.
Sure, you finally explicitly said these things but you could have said you disagreed with the connotations in the first place, which would have made the discussion about definitions pointless and perhaps dissolved some disagreement.
I do, but I prefer to stay focused on the subject at hand.
Let’s see if I have this straight—any time someone makes a generalization about human nature without simultaneously volunteering data or other evidence, one can reasonably assume that they are engaged in the typical mind fallacy? Do I understand you correctly?
And of those 10-15%, roughly what percentage have tried to lose weight and failed?
So let’s see if I understand your position:
You deny that there are a lot of people who consume certain foods even while knowing that they are consuming too much food?
If it contradicts one’s personal experience then yes, one can reasonably assume. Subject to being corrected by evidence, of course.
I don’t know. None of them visibly yo-yos. Pretty much everyone once in a while says “I could lose a few pounds”, but it’s meaningless small talk on the order of “Weather is beastly today, eh?”
No, I don’t deny that, I just think that the word “addiction” is not the appropriate one.
Well your personal experience contradicts mine. So please try to avoid engaging in the Lumifer Typical Mind Fallacy. Thank you.
But you do know that none of them have a difficult-to-resist urge to eat certain foods or types of foods?
Well please answer the question I asked and not the question you imagine I had asked.
I asked (among other things) if there were certain foods which “are like an addiction (in the sense that some people feel compelled to overconsume such foods despite knowing or having received professional advice that they are consuming too much food)”
I was careful to say “like an addiction” and to describe what I actually meant.
So it seems you DO agree with me that there exist certain foods which (1) are considered to be very yummy by a majority of Americans; (2) which a lot of Americans have a problem with (in the sense that they have difficulty controlling their consumption of these foods); and (3) which are like an addiction (in the sense that some people feel compelled to overconsume such foods despite knowing or having received professional advice that they are consuming too much food)
Right?
Good. Do notice that, as opposed to you, I did not attempt to “make a generalization about human nature” on the basis of my personal experience.
Of course not.
I am not inclined to play fisking games (or lets-adjust-this-definition-to-split-the-hair-in-half games) on these forums. No, I do not agree with you. You have enough information to figure out how and why.
Ummm, here’s one thing you said before:
You didn’t offer any evidence or data to back this up.
It contradicts my personal experience.
Therefore you have committed the Lumifer Typical Mind Fallacy.
Please try to avoid it in the future.
Lol, then your personal experience doesn’t even contradict my basic point.
Say what? You just redefined my words so that you could answer a different question.
I asked (among other things) if you agreed that there are foods which are “like an addiction (in the sense that some people feel compelled to overconsume such foods despite knowing or having received professional advice that they are consuming too much food)”
You reinterpreted that question as though I was asking whether certain foods are addictive. So that you could easily answer “no” using your own definition of “addictive.”
Please answer the question I asked—not the question you wish or imagine I asked.
Yes, I have enough information to make a pretty good guess as to why you are evading my question.
Casomorphins in dairy have opioid effects, as does chocolate. Overconsumption of high-sugar high-fat foods alters opioid receptors in the brain. Naloxone, a drug for treating opiate overdose, is effective in reducing binging.
It also seems that food scientists specifically try to make food as addictive as possible, which seems like an expected outcome from a capitalist food market—whatever encourages the most consumption will win greater market share.
Is it an addiction on par with heroin, alcohol, or tobacco? I doubt it, but using an addiction model might be helpful in treating overeating.
Don’t have links handy but my impression is that this was tried, lots of times, and failed badly.
As to the general question of food being addictive, this is mostly an issue of how you define “addictive”. I find it useful to draw boundaries so that food (as well as, say, sex or internet) do not fall within them.
On the other hand, I don’t see a sharp divide between “food” and “drugs”. Eating certain kinds of food clearly has certain biochemical consequences.
What word would you use for people who eat so much they can’t move, get HIV from prostitutes, or play WoW with such dedication they die? These people clearly have something in common, and it’s definitely more specific than stupidity.
That is not self-evident to me.
Sick (in the medical sense, I bet their hormonal system is completely screwed up).
Regular guys with bad judgement and worse luck.
Guys who do not know their limits.
An unlucky choice of examples, I guess. Switch the question to “could brains that can’t seem to be able to regulate their behaviour to the point they’re severely damaged by it have something in common in their basic physiology that predisposes them to dysregulation when exposed to certain sensory stimuli?” This is still vague enough there’s room for evasion, so if you want to continue that way, I suppose it’s better we forget about this.
Well, as I have said several times it’s a matter of definition and how wide you want to define “addiction” is arbitrary.
Sure, you can define it as positive-feedback loops that subvert conscious control over behavior or something like that—but recall that all definitions must serve a purpose and without one there is no reason to prefer one over another. What’s the purpose here?
Note that the purpose cannot be “Can we call eating disorders addictions?” because that’s a pure definition question—however you define “addiction” will be the answer.
The purpose is to recognize harmful behaviours that people could benefit from fixing and that those behaviours might have similarities that can be exploited. If you browse porn 12 hours a day, it’s quite probable you realize you have a problem, but have significant difficulty in changing your behaviour. If you want to browse porn 12 hours a day, then that’s fine too, and nobody should try to fix you without your permission.
I don’t care what you call them, it suffices that the above purposes are fulfilled and that people understand each other.
I am highly suspicious of calling a variety of behaviors “addiction” as it implies both the lack of responsibility on the part of the subject and the justification of imposing external rules/constraints on him.
I don’t know of any successful attempts to treat obesity as if it were a true-addiction kind of disorder. One of the problems is that the classic approach to treating addiction is to isolate the addict from the addictive substance. Hard to do that with food and hard to avoid yummy stuff outside of a clinic.
Taboo responsibility.
What does this mean? That some people need bariatric surgeries to limit their eating is a pretty clear indicator they can’t control their eating. The kind of isolation rehab you’re talking about is an extreme measure even when treating drug addictions, and comprises a marginal proportion of addiction treatment.
Think nicotine replacement and varenicline for tobacco addiction or naltrexone and disulfiram for alcoholism and we’ll start to be on the same page. Note that I’m not implying these are hugely successful either. All addictions are difficult to treat.
Also certain addiction vocabulary and self awareness techniques like identifying triggers could be relevant for treating compulsive behaviour.
Or fatty.
Shouldn’t pretty much any cooked food be a super-stimulus considering the relevant ancestral environment and why we intricately cook food in the first place?
Super-stimuli could be different for different age groups. I’ve never seen anyone love plain pasta, they like their ketchup and sauce too.
According to what I read in Scientific American, the human digestive system has evolved to require cooked food; humans can’t survive on what chimpanzees and other primates eat.
Oh God! Please never utter those two words in the same sentence where an Italian can hear you. I was about to barf on the keyboard! :-)
Then again, people (other than me, at least) don’t usually binge on flat bread without toppings, either.
Are you saying that plain pasta and bread without toppings are super-stimuli for you? Are you not even using oil? :)
I can understand the bread part if it’s fresh, but as far as I’m concerned pasta doesn’t taste much like anything. Perhaps I’ve just eaten the wrong kind of bland crap.
No, I eat pasta with sauces other than ketchup. And I do eat much more plain bread than the average person e.g. when I’m at the restaurant and I’m waiting for the dishes to arrive, but I think it’s more got to do with boredom and hunger than anything else—it’s not like I have to refrain from keeping any bread at home whenever I’m trying to lose weight lest I binge on it, the way I do with cookies.
Anyway, my general point was that comparing pizza with toppings to pasta without toppings (in terms of how much people, in particular small children, enjoy them) isn’t a fair comparison.
When I was a kid, my grandmother had some trick that caused her bland spaghetti (possibly with some oils and stuff, but mostly things that weren’t visible after it was prepared) to be the best food that I knew of. If not superstimuli, then close to it.
Unfortunately she’s no longer alive, and she never passed the trick on to anyone else, so I can’t say whether I would get the same pleasure out of it as an adult.
Olive oil, lots and lots of it. Thank me later. I have been drenching food with it and getting compliments on my cooking skills for years, and I also use to say it’s a secret given my GF would freak out due to high calories. (disclaimer: I weight 260 pounds)
Do you know if it was fresh? I hear that fresh pasta is comparable to fresh bread.
No, unless I misremember terribly it was ordinary market spaghetti.
Hmm. Well, you can vary the taste by throwing salt into the pot, but I’ve never found a level of salt that I thought would raise the quality more than a point on a ten point scale. Adding spices while boiling, like powdered garlic, will alter the taste somewhat but I think they’re more effective in sauces / applied afterwards, and are often visible.
If someone wants to experiment, my starting point would be this:
Take some good olive oil (extra-virgin, first cold press, etc.) and grate fresh garlic into it. Stir and let it stand covered for an hour or so. Once your pasta is ready, drain it, and then toss with the garlic-infused olive oil.
Apparently my mother tried to make some spaghetti according to my grandmother’s instructions, but it never tasted the same to me. So either it was something really subtle, or there was a placebo effect involved (or both).
ETA: Though now that I think of it, I’m not entirely sure of the “bland” thing anymore—there might have been a sauce involved as well. Damn unreliable memories.
Interesting. Links or stories? I am very much aware of the difference between fresh-baked bread and “plastic bread” from the supermarket. It’s huge. Are people claiming freshly-made pasta is different to the same degree?
It appears not. [1] [2] [3] Fresh pasta has a more pronounced flavor, and is generally made with a superior variety of flour (that doesn’t keep as well), which means less of the flavor work is done by the sauce.
(I don’t think I’ve ever had fresh pasta, and so don’t have any first-hand reports. I do think fresh bread is worlds better than supermarket bread, though.)
Also, in America at least, making fresh pasta is a very grandmothery thing to do, and so my prior was high enough to be remarkable.
Hmm… I am getting curious. Not yet to the degree of making fresh pasta myself, but I recall that there is WholeFoods nearby that sells it...
On the other hand pasta is basically boiled wheat dough and I generally find dough as bread to be yummier than dough as pasta.
It’s ok! I’ll prepare a tomato, garlic, and basil sauce with some Merlot cooked in, stat!
I binge on (fresh) bread without toppings, but I find pasta much more enjoyable with ketchup or some sort of spice.
Yuck!
Not sure about that. Fat makes food more tasty (mostly through contributing what’s called “mouth feel”), but it doesn’t look like a super-stimulus to me.
Well, depends on how do you want to define “super-stimulus”. I understand it to mean triggering hardwired biological preferences above and beyond the usual and normal desire to eat tasty food. The two substances specifically linked to super-stimulus are sugar and salt.
Again, super-stimulus is not the same thing as yummy.
I’m not sure it’s that simple—chocolate is more of a super-stimulus than fruits for most people.
True. On the other hand, take away the sugar and see how many chocoholics are willing to eat 99% dark chocolate :-/
Dunno about 99% (though if you set the bar as low as “willing to eat” I probably would), but I do find 85% dark chocolate quite addictive (as in, I seldom manage to buy a tablet and not finish it within a couple days). But I know I’m weird.
A couple of days! :-) That’s not what “addiction” means.
I meant it in the colloquial ‘takes lots of willpower to stop’ sense, not the technical ‘once I stop I get withdrawal symptoms’ sense. (Is there a technical term for the former?)
(OK, it does seem to me that whenever I eat chocolate daily for a few weeks and then stop, I feel much grumpier for a few days, but that’s another story, and anyway it’s not like I took enough statistics to rule out it being a coincidence,)
Is there something wrong with binging or compulsion? Withdrawal symptoms would imply dependence, but not necessarily addiction.
The verb “like” and a variety of synonyms :-D
Not quite—I’m talking about the upper extreme of what Yvain here calls “wanting”, though that word in the common vernacular has strong connotations of what he calls “approving”.
I know some chocoholics. Trust me, if it takes you a couple of days to finish a chocolate bar, you’re not addicted :-D
Addiction vs physical dependence.
Ever seen a child lick butter off a slice of bread? Don’t tell me they would lick off just salt too.
I’ve seen both. In the case of salt it’s lick finger, stick it into the salt bowl, lick clean, repeat.
Ah, now that you reminded me I’ve seen the latter too, dammit.
Did our preferences mostly evolve for “tasty food” or for raw meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts etc? I thought super-stimulus usually means something that goes beyond the stimuli in the ancestral environment where the preferences for the relevant stimuli were selected for.
I don’t understand how you draw the line between stimuli and super-stimuli without such reasoning.
I guess it’s possible most our preferences evolved for cooked food, but I’d like to see the evidence first before I believe it.
ETA: I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with super-stimuli, so let’s drop the baggage of that connotation.
Well, I actually don’t want to draw the line. I am not a big fan of the super-stimulus approach, though obviously humans have some built-in preferences. This terminology was mostly used to demonize certain “bad” things (notably, sugar and salt) with the implication that people can’t just help themselves and so need the government (or another nanny) to step in and impose rules.
I think a continuous axis going from disgusting to very tasty is much more useful.
Well, sure. Similarly, a continuous axis designating typical level of risk is more useful than classifying some activities as “dangerous” and others as “safe.” Which doesn’t mean there don’t exist dangerous activities.
So you disagreed with the connotation. I disagree with it too, and edited the grandparent accordingly. I still like the word though, and think it’s useful. I suppose getting exposed to certain kind of marketing could make me change my mind.
Do you still believe that fatty equals not good for you? Plus who the hell puts ketchup anywhere near pasta?
It doesn’t?
Probably depends on how much you eat it, and what kind. Let’s not oversimplify things.
No. Why would you think that?
People who torture kittens for fun. Both are an acquired taste.
I suppose I just expect from people, even intelligent people on LW.
The reverse correlation doesn’t work because I torture kittens too.