Stepping Up to the Plate  

            Nazarian takes a step forward towards the plate, preparing himself mentally for what looks like is going to be a pivotal moment in his life. From here on out, things can only get good, or heartbreakingly awful. He gets in the correct stance then picks up his instrument and taps it on the plate for good luck. He crosses himself, as he learned to do in Sunday School for moments like this, and then cracks his knuckles in anticipation of the oncoming experience. Nazarian has a 0.0 RBI against his foe, and hopefully after his turn to bat, that number will change. Nazarian signals that he is ready, and in less than a split second, he…

You’ve probably noticed by now that this really isn’t about baseball. Actually, I never was good at baseball, probably because I hate waiting, in general. When I had to stand around watching some other guy (or ten) take a turn at swinging the bat, I would ask myself, “Why wait on a wooden bench, when you can play some other sport?” I knew I liked tennis. My time was limited, so why would I choose to play a sport that is tolerable at best, and pass up the opportunity to play a sport I actually enjoyed? In a similar sense, I have avoided doing things outside my comfort zone. For example, if I could eat a bowl of buttery and garlicky al dente pasta with steamed broccoli instead of a bowl of pasta with slimy spinach, then why would I ever eat spinach? I already know what I like; therefore, I tend to find it pointless to not eat a favorite dish in order to experiment with the unknown. What a waste of a perfectly good bowl of noodles. One must be practical in life.  Eventually, my mom, being the wise woman that she is, realized that all her feeble attempts to turn me to the ‘green side’ would inevitably fail.

Perhaps, she like me learned some endeavors are simply not worth the pursuit. Since then, we both have moved forward and our relationship has improved. When I think about it, my mom was partly to blame. Of course, she being my mom, I would never dare point this out to her. Perhaps, I sensed the angst in her voice when she was presenting a new dish, and that made me question why it was such an anxious moment. She never had that concern when she bought a new flavor of ice cream, because she knew I would like it (ice cream is ice cream, after all). Maybe I picked up on the subliminal message that I was being offered a dish that I might not like, and this alone, was reason for me to reject it. Again, as with my experience playing baseball, why would I pass up an opportunity to do something with proven success to try something that might waste invested time and energy? That kind of obvious logic defined how I tried new foods. If I saw some kind of food that didn’t fit my existing schema for acceptable food characteristics (white, as in pasta, rice, a peeled banana, and milk; brown, as in a chocolate and a heavenly steak), I would immediately connect some form of negative feelings with the event. In effect, I classically conditioned myself to attach aversions to foods. For that reason, whenever I smell spinach in its full intensity, my gag reflex is triggered in the same way it was the first time my mom tried to spoon-feed it to me, under threats of skipped desserts. With every subsequent attempt, this reflex only became more and more enforced. At this point, you might be asking me, “Aram, how do you expect to train yourself to eat a food like spinach, if it triggers your gag reflex?” I owe it to my older, and sometimes wiser, brother. As a kid, my brother would tell me that the best response to any question about any accomplishment can be answered with, “with hard work and dedication.”  I am confident that, with that mantra, through many excruciating trials, my aversion towards spinach can be undone with the same mechanisms that created it in the first place. Dedication, Baby.

In last week’s blog post I referenced Dana Small, who essentially discovered that our representations of flavor can be improved through some form of a ‘mere exposure effect’. I think this is what my psychology teacher called, “the familiarity principle.” While Dana Small was one of the first to look at the brain’s chemical reaction to novel flavors and their post-ingestive effects, there have been many more before her who have studied why humans develop food aversions. From an evolutionary perspective, food aversions have helped us to live pretty long. When our body develops an illness, like a stomach ache or nausea after a meal, our body is voicing its unhappiness with what we just put in our system, which means our brain is probably not going to be an enthused fan the next time it sees that food. For this reason, patients are told to not eat liked foods when going through chemotherapy. When my above-referenced brother had to take icky antibiotics, he told me that “mom tried to hide it in ice cream” and it took him a long time to like ice cream, again. Similarly, I had a friend who hated the smell of peanut butter, and sure enough, allergy tests revealed an allergy. His aversion to peanut butter could have quite possibly saved his life.

So, if food aversions are what have helped humans evolve, then why fight evolution? Why on earth would I go through the painful process of trying to undo the inherent tendency to want to survive? In addition to addressing the embarrassing social effects in my last blog entry, I contend that irrational food aversions suck the joy right out of our lives. To clarify, let’s first imagine how we respond to foods we like.  Everyone has a fave five of dependably delicious foods, much like T-Mobile’s fave five unlimited call and text plan(is this how I start getting some advertising money?). Simply thinking about any one of these dishes is euphoric and makes life wonderful. It triggers the salivary glands to kick in, as do joyful images of unicorns, rainbows, and the San Jose Sharks winning the Stanley cup. Oh, wait, that ain’t gonna happen soon. Now, think about how much it would stink  if each time you put a  food close to your mouth, it were to trigger a psychological response to throw it away as far as possible. That is how I see food aversions. Why not increase the potential of blissful moments? What if my psychological hang-ups included an aversion to pasta? Not only would I would have lost out on a defining food of my childhood which was involved in so many of my experiences, I could cross off trips to Maggiano’s from my list of childhood moments of bliss. I can’t imagine how my all-time dream trip to Italy would’ve gone if pasta were not my most cherished food at the time. Today, when I see images of the Vatican, I am reminded of that amazing restaurant in Siena, where they made the pasta by hand, moments before it was served. With that same logic, why should I deprive other foods of the same opportunity? Who knows, maybe spinach might be tolerable, nay, enjoyable, after this exposure therapy.

Nazarian hits a bunt! Yeah! To an extremely small but measurable extent, I did it. Aram Chef added three whole spinach leaves to his salad at Benson. Hey, not quite a home run, but I had to start somewhere. My fan (my roommate) cheered. Not quite an out-of-the park experience like Italy; but hey, at least a bunt gets me closer to home plate.

Next week on Fear Factor: Aram Chef

What kind of dish will Aram prepare for his first official cooking challenge with special ingredient: Spinach! Will he be able to use his knowledge of ‘mere-exposure’ to get his tastes buds ready in time for the big day? Only time will tell, so stay tuned!