Why Food Tastes Good in Autumn
Comments: 8
Food tastes so good this time of year. There are persimmons to stew and fry (slice them thinly and cook them like tenpura — just delicious!), the rice harvest is in (such as it is this year), fish fatten up to face the cooler waters and their flesh gets an extra layer of flavour. It seems like not only does everything taste better, but our appreciation of it is keener.
I’ve decided there has to be a reason why food and eating in general should be so pleasurable this season, and it must be because we’re being given a kind of metabolic cue — winter is coming: eat up!
A vestigial and long-buried sense of impending deprivation heightens our sense of taste, thereby encouraging us to eat and prepare ourselves for the winter.
Of the millions of happy accidents of evolution, this has to be up there in the top hundred thousand or so.
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2003.12.14 (Sun) • 00:42
Comments
Posted by JB 2003.12.14, 01:21
I absolutely agree with you! In Portugal, where I live, it’s the smell of the chestnuts (toasted on the streets, or at home with fireplaces), the recently wet (by rain) ground, … All this makes food taste better and one eat more…
Posted by Pete Barr-watson 2003.12.14, 02:03
interesting theory - and perhaps with some weight too.
You should try and get hold of ‘Survival of the Fittest’, by Dr Mike Stroud (he of globe trotting, adventurous, pioneering dare-doing with Ran Feinnes) in which he expounds such theories backed up by extensive research and conjecture. A thoroughly recommendable read - if you’re into that kind of thing.
Posted by Richard Wanderman 2003.12.14, 03:53
I live in New England (North East US) where seasonal change means fall colors, ritual leaf raking, putting up firewood, apple picking and cider pressing, and more. I like the idea that a year has these changes and rhythms and I like folding your idea that colder weather might change our food cravings.
However, I happen to be in Los Angeles, California at the moment, a place that Woody Allen calls “munchkinland” and where seasonal change is much less aparent.
I wonder how your food theory plays out here?
Or, in a bigger sense (and smaller), if these seasonal food needs are built in (nature) then one would think they’d follow us anywhere, to any clime. Is it possible to have a “traditional” fall without colder weather? Or, what is the threshold of coldness necessary to make fall fall and make us hungry for soup?
Soup in LA might be the cold variety…
Posted by patik 2003.12.14, 22:15
You stew and fry persimmons?! That’s sick.
Posted by kirsten 2003.12.15, 19:46
i thought it sounded good myself…
Posted by jh 2003.12.15, 20:54
I ate persimmons stewed with a cinnamon sauce the night I wrote that post, and I’ve mentioned the Takashi Soba shop before where they serve a mean persimmon tenpura with their noodles.
But don’t take my word for it: try it. You may like it.
Posted by Bijou 2003.12.16, 02:20
I live in LA now and people here don’t eat, so your theory doesn’t apply. But I used to live in NYC/Boston and the autumn there is just spectacular not just for the leaves, but for apple cider.
Posted by frrgg 2005.05.20, 22:47
I live in New England (North East US) where seasonal change means fall colors, ritual leaf raking, putting up firewood, apple picking and cider pressing, and more. I like the idea that a year has these changes and rhythms
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