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Taste, Part 2 of 2

This entry is part 2 of 9 in the series The Five(ish) Senses

The Five(ish) Senses

Our Five(ish) Senses series continues with the second part of “Taste”. Kevin, Joe, and Toren look at taste in the animal kingdom, the dangers of bitter orange, miracle fruit, vomit fruit, Scientist/Taster Carl Wilhelm Sheele , what happened to French wine, breast milk ice cream and pop culture!

Note: The mentioned bonus content will appear mid-week!

Music: “There Ain’t No Sweet Man (That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears)” by Bix Beiderbecke & Bing Crosby

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14 Responses

  1. I’ve tried miraculin. It’s really cool. Cocoa powder tasted like the best chocolate. While the sour food did taste wonderfully sweet, things like lemon juice still have that harshness so you have to be careful otherwise it can upset your stomach. Pickles just taste weird though.

  3. I love Big Night. And I concur, after watching it I wanted to eat and cook everything.

    I even tried making the baked pasta dish that is Primo’s specialty, the timpano.

  4. Here’s another good food movie…it’s not necessarily about taste but more abut the sensualism surrounding food:

  6. Hey guys, just a quick note about ephedra. While ephedra is banned in north america, the extract of ephedra, ephedrine, its not. Ephedrine basically behaves like Ritalin or any other amphetamine based stimulant in the body. Ephedrine is still legal because it’s excellent not only for weight loss but also asthma symptoms and is sold over the country in the US as primatene or bronchaid. Ephedra extract was basically banned for two reasons, number one is a but of alarmism but number two is that because its a ‘natural extract’ the amount of the amphetamine salt in the substance can vary MASSIVELY. This leads to fun situations like people thinking they’re taking a normal dose and suddenly getting 50 times what they thought they were getting which leads to sudden, catastrophic cardiac arrest. Pretty caustic in my opinion!

    I’m not sure where you can fit it in but there’s another substance called 2,4-Dinitrophenol (DNP for short) that the Nazis used on the Eastern front to keep their soldiers from freezing to death. It led to things like men going into battle in their underwear sweating in -30c temperatures and reportedly melting the snow around them with their body heat, as well as losing 20-30lbs a month. Fun times!

  7. I hope you keep a character on your tv show for Pauly Shore, Toren buhhhhhhhdee! 😉

    Great shows guys!

    You’re not the only one who brushes their tongue, Joe: I’ve brushed my tongue (just using my toothbrush) ever since I heard on an Australian science show (Sleek Geeks) that the bacteria left on your tongue contributes to bad breath. And I was hoping it would help sort out my “geographic tongue”, where the surface appears quite patchy, although there’re no other symptoms (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_tongue). It works a bit.

    One of my favourite episodes in the Simpsons is when Homer eats that super hot chili and has visions about his power animal.

    I think you missed a great opportunity to do some live testing of all sorts of bizarre, or at least rare, tastes. That would have been a great addition to the show.

    Oh, and when will that recording of The live Lesser of Two Evils be up on CausticGear.com? I couldn’t find it under the audio or new sections.

  8. I’ve tried vomit fruit! Like Joe said it really does grows everyfuckingwhere in the tropics. I saw it on hilltops, as garden ornamentals in cities, and as scraggly volunteers on rocky lava beaches. That last one was a nearly-dead bushlet about a foot tall, growing in the intertidal zone, yet it still had a few half-pound fruits on it. Tough little guy. Really pretty trees, and the fruit has a really interesting iridescent translucency studded with dark spots. They can also take a wide variety of sizes and shapes.

    Thus, I took to calling them Shoggoth Fruit.

    The smell is more like…vaguely bad-breath-y? Maybe a bit feet-y? Uncannily reminiscent of unwashed human, either way. The taste is just kind of…planty. Not particularly offensive or particularly delicious. Might be of more interest if you guys do a Snake Oil or Unregulated Dietary Supplements ep…it’s marketed pretty heavily as ‘noni fruit’ in such contexts.

  10. You guys should have played the bambooozled bean game… By far the most disgusting things I have ever put in my mouth.