Maybe “Fake” is the Problem
Yesterday I stopped by a local discount store to buy gum balls: not the tiny ones that go in home gum ball dispensers, but rather the large kind that can really only be eaten one at a time if any conversation is to happen without drooling; the kind that sometimes are coated in sour dust, and other times contain small, sour-sweet nuggets of sugar-coated candy; the kind that you have to warm up for a while in your jeans pocket or your bra (with the wrapper still on, of course — I have a bit of couth) or you will strain your jaw trying to get them started. Big ol’ gumballs are one of my comfort items, in large part because they keep my oral fixation busy without the resulting pen damage.
Anyway, I grabbed a bouquet of gum-sheathes and lined up to pay. Along the way to the cashier, I noticed bagged pop-corn from a company called Herr’s. Popcorn is also one of my comfort foods, and I’d not tried this kind before, so I took a look at the package which read:
Herr’s Fire Roasted Sweet Corn Flavored Popcorn
Memories flooded in of Japanese corn potage-flavored snacks, and the corn soup that is ubiquitous in Japanese dual-temp vending machines, especially in the colder months. I must have had that soup daily while waiting on the Hirakata Station platform. I still get the corn potage crisps, as well as the powdered soup packets, when our local Japanese grocery shops carry them (and when I am in a mental place to forgive snacking). The flavor is one of warmth in winter, or the slightly loopy ghost of American food as depicted in a morning anime. I snagged two bags of the Herr’s popcorn and crossed my fingers. I was not disappointed! Both bags are already gone — I had one for lunch yesterday, and one for lunch today. I will need to get more before the shop that carries them runs out.
My family is nice enough to not tease me (much)for my less-than-gourmet tendencies. I love gum balls, Kraft macaroni and cheese, 7Eleven taquitos, diet root beer, liverwurst, banana runts, onion dip made from yogurt and Lipton soup mix, any savory popcorn (no kettle corn for me), Quavers, grainy grocery-store cake frosting, and any pickled vegetable. Some of these things are made using “fake” flavoring. I occasionaly think of conversations I have had regarding fake flavorings, including the ones I hold most dear: banana candy and Kraft cheese powder (I half expect Herr’s sweet corn flavored popcorn to join this list). I try to reason with people who rate artificial flavors based on how close they come to approximating the real thing (https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/ranking-artificial-flavors-by-how-much-they-taste-like-the-real-thing) because this comparison more often than not sets the food up for failure.
For example, if you love bananas, and are told that a candy is banana-flavored, you may be disappointed, or even disgusted in a culinary uncanny valley kind of way, when you try it. Because I have learned not to make the comparison, this does not hold true for me: I don’t like bananas, though the dislike is more texture than flavor, so I am unburdened by this comparison in my love for the candy flavoring that I prefer to think of as “inspired by bananas” rather than as an attempt at recreation. Also, Kraft Mac-n-Cheese powder as a comfort flavor is unhindered by my genuine love for real cheese. I am able to eat KMnC knowing that, tho it borrows the name “cheese”, its salty, orange goodness secures it a place in my heart (by way of my tastebuds). I try to explain to people that, if they can taste a thing without comparing it to something that it may be based on and still dislike it, that is fair. However, if the failed comparison is the game-stopper, they will miss out until they can divorce terminology from taste.
Sometimes it is the food producer that initiates the problem: why call a vegetable patty a hamburger? Call it what it is: a quinoa patty or garbanzo mince. So many of the issues I have heard voiced about vegetarian food seem to stem from claims that an item is a vegetarian version of [some kind of meat]. I think comparison of any kind allows people to more easily find reasons to be disappointed. Marketers, don’t mention the inspirational food! Come up with a new name, or a less euphemistic one, at any rate. Before someone else describes what you’ve made as “fake” flavor, introduce it as “influenced by” a food.
I was going somewhere with all this… I swear I was. It was a message about comparison as enemy to contentedness… I have eaten today’s gumballs, however, and am now crashing. Have a good rest of your New Years Day, all, no matter what it tastes like.
