Food: Gourmands versus stoics

“I do not mind the lack of taste because I can eat anything,” my husband said to me in a condescending tone in response to my complaint that the mango was tasteless and smelt bland. He will eat a bowl of papaya or apple or melon every day regardless of its taste. I, on the other hand, will forgo eating the mango if it does not have the delicate layers of tartness and sweetness, and the luscious aroma that accompanies the intense flavour of a fruit ripened on the bough and grown in a soil rich with natural (not artificial) nutrients.

Paeans have been composed on the art of taste, so the question—why some of us are fussy (I prefer the term ‘gourmands’) while others, like my husband, are stoic about the absence of tastiness—is important to answer. By gourmandism, I mean what Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said in The Physiology of Taste in 1825: ‘An impassioned, considered and habitual preference for whatever pleases the taste… and morally… an implicit obedience of the rules of the Creator (nature for those who don’t Believe) who, having ordered us to eat in order to live, invites us to do so with appetite, encourage us with flavour, and rewards us with pleasure.’

Stoics may view our anguish as being unnecessary, but those of us who appreciate tasty fare secretly think of ourselves as connoisseurs, as gourmands, and look on with pity at stoics like my husband, for putting up with being deprived of the joy that accompanies the intense sweetness of a green melon or the buttery perfection of a pan seared Chilean sea bass in olive oil, sea salt and pepper, served with a twist of lemon, and accompanied by a chilled glass of crisp chardonnay. These stoics, we think, will tolerate the oily aftertaste of a Vietnamese Basa fish, and the cardboard taste of mass-produced bread.

Our puzzlement pertains to the fact that unlike a third group I will call ‘existers’, who don’t care about the taste of food, stoics do know what they are missing but they don’t seem to mind its absence. My husband does experience the joy and the awe that accompanies the taste of a delicacy—a tunday kebab from the famous eatery in Lucknow, or a fragrant Avadhi biryani at Dum Pukth. But the absence of such an experience does not seem to bother him.

I am not disputing the fact that gourmands too have to be stoics and existers at some moments of their lives (such as during a war, or after a tsunami or an earthquake), but what I am analysing is not moments but patterns of behaviour. If neither stoics nor gourmands are missing taste buds, and if both have access to wealth and to the finest produce, why are the stoics not as impassioned about taste?

Taste is the sense that puts us in contact with savorous or sapid bodies by means of the sensation that they cause in the organ destined to appreciate them, wrote Brillat- Savarin. He considered taste under three headings: in the physical man, it is the apparatus by which he distinguishes various flavours; in the moral man, it is the sensation which stimulates that organ in the centre of his feeling which is influenced by any savorous body; and lastly in its own material significance, taste is the property possessed by any given substance which can influence the organ and give birth to sensation.

Science has discovered a lot about the physical man. Normal taste occurs when tiny molecules released by chewing or the digestion of food stimulate special sensory cells in the mouth and throat. These taste cells send messages through three specialised taste nerves to the brain, where specific tastes are identified. Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami (or savoury) are the five basic taste sensations, which, when combined with texture, spiciness, temperature and aroma, produce flavour. Taste cells are clustered within the taste buds of the tongue (the small bumps on the tip) and roof of the mouth, and along the lining of the throat. Taste and smell are closely linked, as all of us know from having experienced colds.

These facts answer the physiological questions about how taste functions in the human body. But we are still left with an inadequate answer to the question of why stoics and gourmands have such different attitudes to the absence of taste. At birth, we all have about 10,000 taste buds scattered on the back, sides and tip of the tongue. But just like with the brain’s grey cells, we still don’t know why some use more of their taste buds than others; and in the case of stoics, deliberately choose to use less of their taste buds at certain times.

Scientists like Edmund Rolls and others have found strong evidence demonstrating age-related differences in the acceptability of foods and beverages. They investigated brain and hedonic responses to orange juice, orange soda, and vegetable juice in three different age groups: young (22), middle (40) and elderly (60 years). All three groups liked orange juice and orange soda; the young disliked vegetable juice but the elderly liked it. Among older people, they found a normal decline in the sense of smell, making their taste veer towards blandness (hence the liking for vegetable juice). Other research has found that taste buds begin to die after the age of 50. But this study doesn’t answer our question about those stoics who are below 50, and gourmands who are well above 80.

It could be stress, science says, that affects taste negatively. ‘The food tasted like ashes in my mouth’: how many times have you read or heard an emotionally wrought person (by that I mean very excited or extremely depressed) say this? But all of us, gourmands and stoics alike, have experienced stress at one time or another.

As a last resort, science brings up the notion of a disorder. Perhaps gourmands are picky eaters who have a disorder and consume only a limited set of dishes. Stoics and existers could be satisfied with this explanation, but I am not. Many gourmands would adhere to the title of Jeffrey Steingarten’s book The Man Who Ate Everything, the only requisite being that everything has to be chock-full of flavour.

I can tell you what worries me about adopting a stoic’s response to food. If I begin to eat tasteless food, and I do this for a while, will I lose the link that some dishes have (so beautifully captured by Marcel Proust’s ‘Madeleine’) with my memories? Will my gourmand taste buds die from lack of use?

In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle investigated the basis of talent and came up with the formula that talent requires deep practice by which he meant making mistakes, recognising them and correcting them in a sustained and systematic fashion. If we apply this to gourmands and stoics, the former are those who continue the deep practice while the latter do not. If so, it is not far-fetched to conclude that one’s taste buds could become atrophied through lack of use, of practice. Such a situation might even become an eventuality in a world of genetically engineered and ‘good looking’ produce with zero flavour. A study done by Imperial College researchers found that spinach in Delhi’s vegetable markets is heavily contaminated and requires two washes to remove 70 per cent of the heavy metal deposits. We end up consuming spinach that has 30 per cent contamination and has been washed by the farmer in the filthy water of the Yamuna river.

Stoics would say that gourmands have been enslaved by their taste buds. Philosophically, Stoicism (formulated by the followers of Zeno in 4th century Athens) sees self-possession as the key to an existence lived ‘in accordance with nature’; it calls for the restraint of animal instincts and the severing of emotional ties. The ancient stoics were not ascetics; in fact, they believed that one should partake of every pleasure as long as one is careful not be enslaved by it.

Perhaps they are right about gourmands. But is being enslaved such a bad thing? We don’t tell scientists or doctors: ‘Be satisfied with the little you know’. No, we say, ‘Keep searching till you have found the cure for cancer or tumours or Ebola.’ So why are gourmands, who have a ‘deep practice’ approach to taste, castigated for being divas? What if, by losing the sense of taste, we regress to the hominid era? What if anthropologist Richard Wrangham is right that big brains that came from humans mastering fire and cooking their food (chewing raw food requires more energy being directed to the jaw and stomach, leaving less for the brain), set us on a different—and civilisational?—path from our simian relatives? While we don’t yet have a clear answer to our initial question, at present, gourmands, stoics and existers all perform important functions. By consuming indifferent fare, the latter two groups allow us to continue along our investigative path to further refine and nurture the civilisational qualities of humankind.

About The Author

Shylashri Shankar

Shylashri Shankar is the author of Turmeric Nation - A Passage Through India's Tastes