Food for Thought

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Food forThought

• Lecture 4
• Joe Lau

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Mobile phone policy

• 10 fine when your phone / pager rings.

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Last time

• Food can be art.
• Food can be a distinctive form of art.
• Not all food is art.

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But can food be GREAT art?
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Food is a MINOR art

• Transience
• Limited emotional engagement
• Lack of representational content.See Telfer
  (1996), chapter 3.

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Art involves evaluation

• Good art vs. bad art
• Food, paintings, sculptures,
• Evaluation presupposes standards
• Are there objective standards for taste?

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Two positions with regard to aesthetic evaluation

• Subjectivism Taste preferences are entirely
  subjective. It is up to the person whether
  something is good or not. There is no right or
  wrong in judgments of taste.
• Typically some kind of relativism.
• Objectivism There are objective standards for
  evaluating taste.Some people can have bad taste.

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Problem with objectivism

• Claims about artistic value cannot be discovered
  scientifically.
  
• Mars is larger than Venus.
• Yung Kees roast goose is better than Maxims.
• Taste seems to change withtime and culture.
• But same for empirical beliefs.
• What about progress?

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Evaluative judgments as expressing preferences

• A X is better than Y.
• Translation I like X better than Y.
• B No. Y is better than X.
• Translation I like Y better than X.
• Problem
• There is no real disagreement.
• So why do we argue?

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Value judgments in food

• Jamie Oliver is a better cook than Yan.
• White wine goes with shellfish.
• X does not know how to appreciate good food.

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Is taste really completely arbitrary?
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Sources of differences

• Same food, different taste
• Genetic differences
• Physical condition, context
• Training
• Same taste, different preferences
• Is one preference better than others?

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Genetic differences

• Phenylthiocarbamide, also known as PTC, or
  phenylthiourea, is a synthetic organic molecule.
  
  
• See http//faculty.washington.edu/chudler/bitter.h
  tml
  
• Researchers found a single gene for a bitter
  taste receptor that completely explains different
  PTC tasting abilities. There are actually three
  versions of this gene This small difference in
  the gene, and in the protein that it makes,
  eventually forms a tongue taste receptor that has
  a different shape from a "normal" bitter taste
  receptor. This altered shape means that the
  person's receptors will not respond to PTC and
  the person will not think the PTC tastes bitter.
  Since all people have two copies of every gene,
  different combinations of the bitter taste gene
  (two copies of form 1 one copy of form 1 and one
  of form 2 two copies of form 3 etc.) determine
  whether someone finds PTC intensely bitter,
  somewhat bitter, or without taste at all.

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Supertasters, tasters, non-tasters

• A good summary (PROP sensitivity)
• http//forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic4144
  1
  
• Empirical studies
• Taste sensitivity to 6-n-propylthiouracil
  predicts acceptance of bitter-tasting spinach in
  36-y-old children(http//www.ajcn.org/cgi/conten
  t/full/76/5/1101)
• Sensory acceptance of Japanese green tea and soy
  products is linked to genetic sensitivity to
  6-n-propylthiouracil. (http//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  /entrez/query.fcgi?cmdretrievedbpubmedlist_uid
  s9427978doptAbstract)
• Genetic variation gives a taste for alcohol
  (http//www.newscientist.com/article.ns?iddn6668)
  
  

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Training

• New phenomenal concepts through training.
• THAT kind of taste.
• Allows recall, imagination, recognition

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Wine vocabulary

• MELLOW
• Smooth and soft, with no harshness.
• NUTTY
• Port, Sherry, huge Chardonnays, and a few other
  wines may have a nutty characteristic.
  
• SPICY
• It can refer to pepper spicy, or a flavor you'd
  associate with something from your spice rack,
  but can't quite place, such as coriander,
  rosemary, clove, cinnamon, etc.
• STRUCTURE
• The framework of a wine, encompassing the levels
  of tannin, acidity, and alcohol. Often called
  backbone.
  
• TANNIC
• Term used to describe wine in which the tannins
  overpower.
  
• THIN
• A wine that is light-bodied and lacks flavor.
• VELVETY
• An adjective describing a wine with REALLY smooth
  texture

• ASTRINGENT
• The "puckerish" quality of high tannin content.
• BODY
• Used to describe the "weight" of a wine.Wines can
  be categorized as light-, medium-, or
  full-bodied.
  
• CRISP
• Wine with a lively acidity level.
• EARTHY
• Wines described as "earthy" will have aromas and
  flavors of soil, minerals, leather, and/or wet
  leaves
  
• FLABBY
• A wine that has a lot of ripe fruit but little
  acidity is considered "fat" or "flabby"
  
• FRUITY
• A wine in which fruit flavors dominate the aroma
  and taste.
  
• JAMMY
• This is a term used to describe intensely ripe,
  concentrated fruit in the nose and/or palate of a
  wine.
  

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(Rough) Proposal

• X is better than Y
• I like X more than Y and
• The opinion is shared by experts on X and Y.
• Comments
• Accounts for disagreement.
• Experts Similar biology, wide experience,
  sensitive perception, free from cultural biases
  and prejudices.
  
• Evaluation relative to a group of people.
• What if experts disagree?

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Morality

• Relativism in morality is less plausible than
  relativism in taste.
  
• Isnt this true?
• We should not torture innocent babies merely for
  fun.
  
• Even if other people disagree we tend to think
  that the moral standard applies to them as
  well.
  

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Further readings

• Ch.17 Taste The Routledge companion to
  aesthetics
  
• http//eproxy.lib.hku.hk/login?urlhttp//site.ebr
  ary.com/lib/hkulibrary/Doc?id2002431
  
• Humes 1757 essay Of the Standard of Taste
• http//www.csulb.edu/jvancamp/361r15.html
• Discussion http//plato.stanford.edu/entries/hum
  e-aesthetics/
  
• On moral relativism
• http//plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism