I’m not the only one who noticed. Yay.

I found this article from the Bad Astronomy Blog waiting for me when I woke up this morning. It really made my day.

I’m glad that someone else, someone who may be considered to be more credible than I am [for no good reason other than ‘he’s a real live scientist!] has noticed this taste difference. From the day that Wendy’s took their first [fully voluntary] step and changed their fries, things haven’t been the same.

And Wendy’s fries? Have never been that good. McDonalds fries are strange, soggy little water-tasting things now, and I’m not sure why, except that they’re now ‘0 trans fat’ fries.

I’m sure that KFC’s newly ‘zero trans fatted’ chicken is equally ‘ih’.

And for people who claim that there’s no way to tell the difference [‘there is no difference, it’s just healthier!’], or that ‘it’s just because your tastebuds have been brainwashed and overloaded with fat, give them time, you’ll get over it!’ I say: It must suck to be you. To be not only that tasteless, but that easily fooled? I’d be careful if I were you. You’re one website away from believing that Bush is a reptillian alien.

These are likely the same people who tell me that ‘Pepsi tastes just like Coke’ and ‘You can’t tell the difference between whole and 2% milk. And you’ll never know if I slip you some soy milk instead.’

What the hell is wrong with them? Were they born without a full compliment of functioning tastebuds? Are these people just…vindictive, and trying to sentence the rest of us to a viceless world of nasty-tasting, ‘healthy by current standards’ horrors?

And, hey, what’s this I hear about further studies on trans fats showing that there are actually good ones, just like there’s good cholesterol? Can we maybe stop ripping things out of our foods to fit trends before the research is fully done?

Also, can we maybe please stop running around telling eachother what we can and cannot taste? Because I really don’t care about your deficiencies. The only thing that matters to me is the way it tastes to me. Yeah, I know, that’s terribly selfish of me, to be concerned about how much I enjoy eating something, but it’s none of your fucking business. There’s maybe a handfull of people who get to be concerned about what I put into my body, and most of them are immediate family.

Unless there’s something I don’t know about [like family in charge of certain companies — in which case, we need to talk about truckloads of freebies], we just need to mind our own business, okay? You can have your 0 trans fat options, and I’ll have the stuff that tastes good. Barring unusual conditions in which we are literally unable to make a choice, we will each make our own, and take responsibility for them.

That’s just too much to ask, isn’t it?

2 thoughts on “I’m not the only one who noticed. Yay.

  1. I used to have this argument with my mother when I was a kid, over butter v. margarine. I love butter, and you will not find margarine in my house. I love Miracle Whip, can’t stand mayonnaise. Because there really, really is a tangy zip.

    Here’s the thing about fats. Fats make food taste good. It absorbs the flavors that might otherwise be water soluble and spreads them around within the food, and since it’s an oil it sticks to your tongue more and hence it tastes better because you taste it more. No oil = that lovely cardboard flavor. Ever watch a cooking show where they talk about picking out a good roast or steak? They use this term, a nice marble. Which means an ideal amount of fat in the cut of meat. Enough to help the flavors come across properly. Works for lots of things. Mashed potatoes, for example. Potato in and of itself tastes like nothing. It’s only when you add some fat and some salt that it starts tasting like, well, potatoes. It enhances the natural flavor. So it’s not necessarily that trans fats taste good, go take a swig of whatever oil you got in the house and you’ll find out what oils taste like.

    I’m betting that these companies are just not replacing the trans fats with as much of some other fat – at least in flavor enhancing terms. Though I can well imagine it’s likely some companies are afraid to add something else instead, because in a few years they’ll probably find out that olive oil or whatever is even worse than the trans fats were.

    • First off, Miracle Whip? Tastes nothing like regular mayo. Nothing at all. It has its place in my fridge, but it’s only good on certain sandwiches. I wouldn’t put it in tuna, myself. Ew. I don’t know how anyone can say there’s no difference between Miracle Whip and regular Mayo. And while I’ll occasionally skimp on my brand of butter [or unbutter, as Country Crock may be], I only skimp in a sort of lateral downgrade with a specific nearly-identically-labeled store brand.

      Also, yeah. The fat makes stuff tasty. Just like salt. [Which reminds me, remember when salt was evil?] I don’t like [for example] the 90% ground beef — it doesn’t taste right at all without that fat.

      On the subject of substituting one fat for another, it wouldn’t help the flavour much. Replacing it with olive oil [just to go with your example] probably wouldn’t taste as good, because it does alter the flavour. A lot.

      At least, to me it does. I notice when Gremlin uses olive oil to make things instead of the not-quite-butter.

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