Not sure why but out of the blue a couple weeks ago, I remembered a vegetarian pate called Tartex, which I used to love on toast, when I was in my teens and twenties.
I googled it and found it for sale on Ebay, so I ordered 3 tubes. It arrived today and boo ya it doesn’t taste like I remembered it. It’s lighter in consistency as if it’s been whipped, and has a sesame taste I don’t remember.
I should have left that memory in the past. It’s ok as it is but just isn’t the same. Or maybe it’s me!!
Anyone else wished they’d left a food memory in the past?
SPAM, baked beans and mashed potatoes. My favourite meal when I was young. I recreated it a few months ago and it was nothing like I remembered. I’ll chalk it up to my cooking skills and try and hang on to that childhood memory.
I used to love instant ramen. In college, some were known to even it eat dry by breaking off bits, licking it, and sticking it in the seasoning packet. Now that I’ve been enlightened as to non-instant ramen, there’s no going back.
Very recently: Hydrox. I had high hopes, but they were nothing like I remembered them to be. These tasted like the ones they were making in the mid-seventies, when they started screwing around with the recipe.
Even as a kid with a dentist-enriching sweet tooth, I turned my nose up at Hydrox. I was an Oreo snob. But now the biscuit is too sweet for me, and the white filling tastes tacky and dry.
I almost included all chocolate chip cookies, not only Chips-Ahoy, but Mrs. Fields or Famous Amos. In the case of some of chains, it’s not the sugar but the greasiness of whatever fat they use (including the ones that use butter) that I no longer like.
There are a lot of staples-of-my-childhood-brand-name foods I now reject as too sweet, too salty (Campbell’s tomato soup, Heinz pickle relish, Underwood Deviled Ham, Peter Pan peanut butter) but also some foods I discovered in college which I thought at the time were a huge improvement over what I had been fed at home – Progresso soups, Stouffer’s soufflés, Boursin herbed cheeses – and now they taste terrible to me.
When I lived in the UK for an extended period, I loved eating Cadbury chocolate, but now I don’t think I would. Haven’t tried.
Oh there are so many skewed memories that I have had!
As kids, we would beg for TV dinners. Good old foil tray, heated in the oven.
I tried one for the heck of it the other day and couldn’t eat it. The chicken was some sort of vile processed cutlet that tasted like a sponge. I knew it wouldn’t be great by any means but this was downright vile.
Dill pickle chip dip has some sort of chemical taste to it.
Canned pasta tastes like somebody washed out a ketchup bottle and made it into a sauce.
I’m certain none of this stuff was ever amazing but these make me wonder how my palette ever developed to what it is now.
It is interesting isn’t it? I think the body/palate responds to good food without training, and recognizes it instantly, even if you’ve been eating junk food all your life. I think it even responds to better food – like, if all you ever ate was white bread or white rice, your first taste of whole grains, you’ll be interested, even if it is instant brown rice and plastic-packaged soft “wheat” bread.
I have met some people who all their life eat lousy industrially produced food and are unhappy if I propose eating at a restaurant with quality food. They want a grilled cheese sandwich from the diner and a coke. But most people I know will perk up instantly at fresh food and homemade food that is nutritious and well prepared. I’ve seen people abandon the pigs-in-a-blanket and chips at an office party and eat things they’ve never tried before if it is basically good food. A lot of people overeat junk food I think because they are craving basic good food that would satisfy them.
In my 20s, I used to enjoy the occasional Big Mac & fries — haven’t eaten at McDonald’s in over a decade and likely won’t… the last time I set foot into a BK on a road trip (probably just as long ago), the Whopper Jr. was so goddamn awful I’ve never had one again either.
Butterfinger. My kryptonite as a kid. Interestingly enough, I remember it being less sweet than when I had it recently, or maybe my tolerance for sweet things is just much lower these days.
I also used to love canned ravioli as a kid and can’t fathom the idea of ever putting those nasty things near my face ever again. Blech.
We have no way of knowing if the perceived differences are due to different ingredients/manufacturing processes, or natural changes in our own palates/perceptions/preferences. Furthermore, many prescription medications affect our sense of taste.
Yes, I agree. I think kids do fine with tons of sugar and super high fat dishes, and their palates don’t reject things like canned ravioli, but later we really can’t tolerate it, and it tastes bad.
But there is a lot of naturally supersweet and high fat food that even kids will respond to and prefer to the manufactured stuff if they get a chance to eat it. Like wonderfully ripe fruit fresh picked and many good cheeses. Kids will eat them ahead of commerical candy and other junk food if it’s there.
