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Back to Chapter 2-6: What is deliciousness?

In the food industry, there is an emerging trend to apply subtraction directly to our definition of deliciousness. This is a completely new paradigm compared to conventional diet methods which focused only on reducing quantity without really paying attention to the status of how we found deliciousness in food. But new approaches try to work directly with our taste buds before working with our stomach. This way subtraction can be appropriately connected with satisfaction and happiness.

Plum Organics

In the food industry, there is an emerging trend to apply subtraction directly to our definition of deliciousness. This is a completely new paradigm compared to conventional diet methods which focused only on reducing quantity without really paying attention to the status of how we found deliciousness in food. But new approaches try to work directly with our taste buds before working with our stomach. This way subtraction can be appropriately connected with satisfaction and happiness.

Take a look at Plum Organics, which was founded in Emeryville, California in 2007 to provide safe, healthy and delicious baby food. The co-founder, Neil Grimmer, who was a designer at a renowned design firm IDEO (interesting marriage of subtraction and aesthetics here), decided to start Plum Organics when he realized that he couldn’t find any products at grocery stores he wanted to give to his newborn baby.

What’s really revolutionary about Plum Organics is the fact that they introduced “culinary-inspired recipes” in a baby food market, not just safe, high quality and organic ingredients. Despite our obscure perception that babies are unaware subtle flavors, our taste buds critically (often irreversibly) develop in the first 1000 days of life – 10 months as a fetus, and two years as a baby. Believe or not, the taste development of babies begins in utero as they taste the food their mother eats. Once born, they start recognizing what they are eating after about four months. Then, when it’s time for solid food, they’ve already developed some (often strong) likes/dislikes towards foods.

Plum Organics’ baby food comes in a re-sealable pouch. It contains 99g of food with 70 Calories, of which 16 grams is carbohydrate including 10 grams of sugar. Whereas it contains almost as much sugar as a cup of yogurt, it mostly from the fruits rather than refined sugar. As a result, it is not that intense sweetness you taste at a first bite: you immediately find a sensible combination of different vegetables and fruits. The sweetness is there only to emphasize their natural deliciousness, helped by very smooth texture.

If you fail to develop your taste buds early in life during that period when critically they establish their own definition of “deliciousness,” they will easily become prone to those intense, strong flavors you need to avoid if you want to stay healthy. It will become very hard to change your diet after your taste buds have stubbornly made their mind and want to stick to intense food.

Plum Organics are keenly aware of the importance of developing babies’ taste buds and advocates delivering well-prepared, fine foods from the very first bite the baby takes – which is crucial. Their product lines contain spinach, pea, kale, broccoli, carrot, zucchini or parsnip among other vegetables that are nutritious but avoided by many people because they taste “bad.” But Plum Organics combines and cooks those otherwise “unwelcome” ingredients with fruits, grains and dairy products to maximize their deliciousness. Yes, babies can definitely learn to appreciate kale. It is encouraging.

Gluten-free foods and Paleo diet

Other niches in food market that leverage subtraction include gluten-free or Paleo diets. The gluten-free category was created to take care of the people who are allergic to gluten but has been evolving ever since as a driver to re-discover deliciousness outside wheat and other gluten-rich grains.

Subtracting wheat and other grains is a big deal because they are literally everywhere. They are even found in ketchup or salad dressings, not just bread or pasta.

But if you remember the history of our diet, wheat is with us only for 0.05% of our entire history – it is still new. The fact that so many people are allergic to it demonstrates that our body hasn’t quite finished the feasibility study to fully embrace wheat. It is still a foreign food that causes stress in digestive systems of many of us. But nonetheless, we love it and kept growing the amount of production and consumption dramatically ever since we domesticated it. Why? Because it’s a very concentrated form of carbohydrate, for which our taste buds are designed to find deliciousness. Because it’s so intense, it’s almost addictive.

As we increased our reliance on wheat, we forgot other food we used to eat previously. So we need to remember them by re-tuning our taste buds. It will take effort because wheat dominates our definition of “deliciousness” in many ways, but increasing number of people are re-discovering the joy of eating forgotten foods.

Gluten-free products. The package of the lentil cracker says: “High in protein and fiber, lentil beans have sustained the palates of kinds and peasants alike as a delicious food source.” It is interesting to remember that the food we eat today “only because it’s healthy” used to be eaten because it was simply palatable. Other ingredients used for gluten-free products are quinoa, amaranth, corn, rice, millet, potato among others.
Left: Quinoa is originated in the Andes. Right: Amaranth grains [Public Domain]

If you start subtracting more “new” food such as refined sugar, dairy products or processed foods from your diet, you will become a Paleo diet eater. (Beans, including lentil is gluten-free, but Paleo diet excludes them from “to-eat” list.) As the name suggest, Paleo diet tries to mimic what our Stone Age ancestors ate. But its purpose is not anthropological. The idea is to make sure you are eating the food that is completely compatible with your body and digestive system.

What is the Paleo diet, if it’s not about eating mammoth meat? Whereas it’s almost impossible to replicate what our Stone Age ancestors ate tens of thousands of years ago, it is important to remember how rapidly we changed our food supply without considering its impact on our body.

The emerging trend of subtraction in the food industry is aimed at reducing any sources of stress to our digestive system (which turn out to be a lot), and leverage its original abilities. It begins with our taste buds re-discovering natural deliciousness, then works for our digestive system to provide the environment in which it can perform best.

Nex: Chapter 2-8: Sparking joy by subtracion - decluttering and minimalists
November 30, 2017

Chapter 2: Abundance by subtraction

November 27, 2017

Chapter 2-2: Ikebana – the art of subtraction

November 26, 2017

Chapter 2-3: Haiku – the beauty of worlds’ shortest poem

November 25, 2017

Chapter 2-4: Effect of subtraction on your satisfaction

November 23, 2017

Chapter 2-5: Is sushi cuisine of subtraction?

November 15, 2017

Chapter 2-6: What is deliciousness by the way?

November 6, 2017

Chapter 2-7: Activate your taste buds by subtraction – Plum Organics

November 5, 2017

Chapter 2-8: Sparking joy by subtracion – decluttering and minimalists

Zero = abundance is your online resource to re-define “happiness” by exploring the potential of “less is more” by leveraging Japanese Zen aesthetics.

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