Talk to ze Hand

Talk to ze Hand

Dear Hand,

I’m kinda pretty, and a lot of guys are courting me. I don’t know who to choose. Guy number one’s really sweet, but guy number two has a tang which makes life fun and exciting. Guy number three’s very sensible, a real salt of the earth, but he’s not as hot as guy number four. Guy number five is recovering from a break-up. He claims I’m the only one who can remove the bitterness from his life. There are more, but currently these five are my prospects. Any suggestions?

Boy Gourmand

Dear Gourmand,

Love life is like a buffet, each person a dish and every dish having its own unique flavor. According to Goldstein (2007), flavor is taste plus olfaction. Lawless (2001) specifically defined it as the overall impression that we experience from the combination of nasal and oral stimulation. In other words, this means that each person has a personal associated flavor, created by other people through the physical and social information received by the different sensory modalities. Now that you’ve assigned a specific flavor to each one of your top choices, we’ll now see how each could be right, or wrong, for you.

Sweetness was once associated with healthy-living, because in the olden times nomads prefer eating fruits and vegetables which are sweet. Being full of sugar means that something is a good supply of energy, and of course you can never go wrong with that. However, the sweetness factor has evolved through the ages and has been exploited by junk food makers, such that the people of today with a fondness for sweets are at a higher risk for being obese and unhealthy. So for guy number one: beware. His sweetness could just be on the outside; inside he could be bad for your health.

Guy number two brings excitement to your life, but then again all play and no work makes for high credit card bills. Just like sour food, he could bring acid reflux to your stomach if you have too much of him, and that could just result in baby barfing all your life.

We all need someone who tends to put a grain of salt in what he hears; in other words, a critical and levelheaded guy. Indeed, similar to how our bodies need salt, crave it and unconsciously force us to eat salty food when we’re low on sodium, we also unconsciously look for someone who can be honest and rational with us in our times of need. However, too much salt is a bad thing, which can lead to hypertension and complications of cardiovascular disorders. In the same way, a guy who lets rationality rule his head can make for heartache if he doesn’t know how to lighten up.

Hot and spicy, always remember, equals pain. There are no taste receptors for the spiciness of food; rather, the capsaicin in chili-filled eats and drinks registers on our pain receptors. In other words, we ‘taste’ spicy food by ‘feeling’ pain. As for guy number four, the principle works nearly the same way: hot is equal to pain. Hot guys mean more competition, more competition to jealousy, and jealousy tantamount to emotional pain. So unless you’ve got a really high threshold for pain, I suggest you stay away from superhot guys.

Evolutionarily-speaking, you shouldn’t eat bitter foods. They taste icky because they’re bad for you. However, that doesn’t apply to everything: bitter gourd (ampalaya in Filipino) tastes dead, but it’s extremely nutritious and has a lot of health benefits. Use the same rule for guy number five: survey his previous girlfriends. If they broke up with him just because he was bitter but not necessarily because of anything else, keep him. If he’s really as toxic as he seems to be, then drop him as soon as you can.

Remember, though: one taste can affect another, and this is evidenced by the physiological phenomenon of cross-enhancement. Cross-enhancement is perceptive intensification of the level and quality of a specific taste caused by prior exposure of the tongue to a different taste stimulus. According to Kuznicki and McCutcheon (1979), this sensory phenomenon is attributable to the biological interactions among the physiological systems responsible for coding taste quality. In terms of love and relationships, try to evaluate each person, with his own flavor, based not on how he compares with his competitors to your heart, but rather by how comfortable you are with the way his flavor grows on you. Of course, cross-enhancement makes it hard, which is why choosing one person over another is understandably difficult as well.

A good dish is a flavorfully-balanced dish. If you can find one person who has all the flavors that you crave, then lucky you. But if not, then you’ll just have to choose your favorite.

Tastefully speaking,

Hand Sam

p.s. Keep them all, if you can. Whole meals are better than single dishes. Try ‘em all. You’re not gonna be the first person to do so, and you certainly won’t be the last. Bon appétit! :)

Reference:

Goldstein, E. B. (2007). Sensation and Perception (7^th Eds.). Wadsworth: Belmont, CA.

Kuznicki, T. J. & McCutcheon, B. N., (1979). Cross-Enhancement of the Sour Taste on Single Human Taste Papillae. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 108 (1), 68-89

Lawless, H. (2001). Taste. In E.B. Goldstein (Ed.), Blackwell handbook of perception (pp. 601-635). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.