Also, beer, olive oil, and cigars, and every other food people argue over and say “No, just try it, you’ll see I’m right, and you’re wrong.”

I mean flavor, not nutritional quality, so yeah, some “cheese” is not actually cheese, but flavor-wise, it’s all fine. It’s designed to taste good, and people buy it by the truckload.

“Oh, you just haven’t had really good coffee.” No, I have had coffee people claim is “really good”, expensive coffee, brewed “just right”, but again, it’s just different to me, not better. And, no again, I don’t put sugar or anything in it.

“You just don’t have a ‘refined pallet’.” Bullshit elitism. Proven when it comes to wine, at least. People can’t tell the difference between expensive wine and box wine.

Different, not better. Yes, of course, it’s subjective, but the way people argue shows that many don’t actually believe that. And, you’ll be dismissed for not agreeing.

  • southsamurai (he/him/pronoun agnostic)@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    Looking at what you actually wrote instead of anything else, you’re mostly dead on.

    Almost all things food related are subjective, and that extends to all the items you listed.

    That being said, some aspects of flavor and scent are going to be damn near universally perceived as better. As an example, while it’s fine to enjoy plain old Hershey’s chocolate bars, trying to claim that they can match a decently crafted chocolate that puts effort into their process is going to be silly because they aren’t really the same thing when it comes right down to it. They just share basic ingredients.

    And, it is entirely possible to refine one’s palate. It doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means, and it absolutely doesn’t mean what snobs think it means. Refining your palate is the process of training your senses to pick up even minor differences. That’s it. Nothing else. Your opinion of those differences is still subjective, but you can absolutely develop the ability to not just detect, but describe the differences between two coffees, or two cheeses.

    When it comes right down to it though, some things are going to be so universally preferred that it’s accurate to call them “better”. A mass produced cheddar from Wal-Mart is just not going to have the same complexity as a locally produced, well crafted cheese. And complexity in cheddar is what makes a good cheese good rather than just edible. It isn’t that you have to like it because other people like it, but you also can’t invalidate that when enough people prefer something, using the word “better” is acceptable and accurate because of the word itself.

    I’m with you. I fucking despise food snobbery. But part of your post here is its own form of snobbery. Yes, it is. You’re saying that your subjective impression of foods is superior to others by virtue of not relying on their set of subjective values. That’s food snobbery.

    I’ll also add that sometimes the “better” thing isn’t necessarily the more enjoyable thing, particularly with ingredients. Using a deeply aged, complex cheddar in mac n cheese is very likely to suck, as an example. For something like chocolate, making a dip for apple slices and using some really precisely selected, single origin chocolate is going to make the experience of chocolate sauce dipped apple slices way less enjoyable.

    However, if you’re making a fruit and cheese plate, breaking out the right cheeses to pair with each fruit is likely to make the overall experience better because each given bite can be a unique thing, as the compounds in a cheddar that go so well with apples or (sometimes) pears make it a poor choice to go with berries, where something like a brie is going to do more in the mouth. Better would still be subjective to some degree, but exploring the senses in a well organized way can be said to be better than just randomly cramming things into your mouth and seeing what you enjoy the most.

    I’ll also say that brewing a cheap, poorly roasted coffee well can make it better than throwing it in a percolator.

    Food is like jazz. You get as much out of it as you’re willing to put into it.