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So, perhaps you could inform as to what *isn't* an "acquired taste," milk maybe...? And are you even sure about THAT...?

Hey, calm down, anybody would think I rattled you or something. Fruit tastes don't need much acquiring. Slightly acidic, sweet and succulent hits the spot with us and most mammals and birds.

Think about fruits, they are supposed to be eaten, therefore they taste good. That is not some idea about a creator making things for us to enjoy, fruits have evolved to taste good and be eaten by large animals in order to distribute their seeds. Few fruits contain drugs. If they do then the drug part tends to be inside the kernel of the seed, like in coffee. The botanical sources of drugs tend to be in bits designed not to be eaten. No plant wants its leaves eaten. That is why many plants fill their leaves with poisons, some of which can also be drugs. Both tobacco and cannabis use this strategy. Cocaine too comes from a leaf. Opium is formed in the seed pod in order to protect the seeds from herbivores until the seeds are ready for distribution.

Any herbivore eating cannabis or tobacco is going to feel rather peculiar quite quickly and so will probably stop eating. That is the way it had worked up until the point when man comes along and decides that feeling peculiar is not such a bad thing. Then things get really screwy.

The sugar in the candy stimulates the kid, doesn't it...

Not only that but I have heard that it can act to relieve their pain too, but that really is a side-track.

Don't tell me salad dressings aren't "acquired." And hated eggs, as a child. Coffee was weird, and beer and wine (and hard liquor) sure weren't attractive. What have you GOT...?

What I have got is you helping my case. My son spits out any alcoholic drink if I offer him a sip. I also recall being offered a cigar by my uncle when I was a toddler and rejecting it quite forcefully. Children usually see no reason to acquire the tastes of adults drugs.

Later, I even took to raw liver 'cause it was so powerful with nutrients (Nutritionist Adelle Davis had often recommended it, to "cure" conditions). A word like "mature" taste might be more appropriate, but with adults, how on Earth are you going to relativize to a "blind eye to EFFECT(S)"...??? Sometimes our supposed "frameworks" are, indeed, mythical.

Indeed. I don't believe in alien visitations but in some ways I wish they would hurry up and come here to arbitrate on some of these endless subjective discussions. As they are not likely to show up anytime soon I think I will leave it at that. My case has been registered.

"Smoky" flavours are quite popular, in case you hadn't noticed. Smoked cheese, smoked ham, smoked bacon, smoky crisps etc. "Smoky" is a positive way of describing a whisky. So people do like the taste, and their taste is catered for.

I see your point about smoke flavour, but I am not talking about smoke flavour but tobacco smoke flavour. You smokers don't just put oak chippings in your fag papers do you? Neither do you search out more interesting flavoured substances to smoke, you smoke tobacco, it contains nicotine. Deny the link if you want. The more you do the more pompous you look.

You also did not answer my post. I indicated that there are a great many acquired tastes and that very few of them are used as taste enhancers in other foods.

Acquired tastes are interesting phenomena. The interesting point is why we acquire tastes for things that are not immediately appealing. The answers are usually potentially controversial and open to debate. Many of the acquired tastes do depend on drug effects, others on other associations. Without getting too graphic and disgusting certain foods have flavours reminiscent of our body odours, especially in particular parts of our anatomies.

As for your claim on the motives of beer and wine drinkers, where do you get this crap from? If the alcohol were all that mattered, people would buy spirits -- more bang for the buck, so to speak. I am quite aware that some people use wine or beer to get drunk. Most don't. Most imbibe for the taste.

Really? You believe that? As far as bang for the buck goes I find the UK tax regime makes cider the best value, so it is my usual inhibition loosener.

A humble steak and kidney pie becomes an altogether more pleasant repast when accompanied by a pint of Speckled Hen. If you are incapable of appreciating this, I pity you. Your life must be drab indeed.

I too enjoy beer and wine and spirits for the taste, but I am also almost certain that if it wasn't for the alcohol I would not have acquired such tastes, or at least I would not have bothered to consume so much. I drink cider to get drunk, or at least to experience the sensation of being relaxed by a dose of alcohol. I choose Scrumpy Jack rather than White Lightning because of the taste.

When I simply fancy a long drink with a meal I will often have a pint of bitter and I really enjoy the satisfying taste. Many people take the first and second drinks of a session for the taste, but that is very rarely the explanation for the fifth and beyond. This argument is getting us nowhere. If you do not want to admit that drugs shape your tastes then you never will and nobody can disprove it. All I can say is that when I take drugs be it a cigar, a cup of coffee, cider, a paracetamol, a bottle of South African red or anything else I do so happy with my own motivations. If you want to go along with the idea that it is all down to taste then go ahead. Some people will believe you.

Oak chippings are a bit hard to roll, and they are too rough in flavour. The point about cigars is that several centuries of human ingenuity and perseverance have gone into creating a product which delivers far more than just a hit of nicotine. The main point about cigars and pipe tobacco is flavour, without doubt. If people want a quick nicotine fix, they grab a cigarette instead.

A pint of cider is around £2 these days, at around 5 per cent of alcohol. So to ingest a quarter litre of alcohol, you'd have to drink roughly ten pints, at a cost of £20. I can get a 0,75l bottle of alcohol from Tesco's for less than £15, i.e. three times more booze for a quarter less money (unless you spend the other fiver on cheesy Wotsits). Of course there is the attraction of alcohol in the drink. A few pints will make you pleasantly uninhibited and able to solve all the problems of global politics and the England football team at a stroke of genius. It is also, to an extent, self-limiting as it takes real determination to drink a minimum of a gallon of fluid to get drunk; the human digestive system is not built for it. But on the whole, people tend to limit themselves to an amount sufficient to lower inhibition thresholds.

You, like most of us, acquired two things: the taste for the taste (so to speak) and the association with pleasant occasions. Conversations flow easier when lubricated by a certain amount of booze, the light becomes more romantic, ladies (or gentlemen) become more attractive, the memory of making fools of ourselves becomes more hazy. To try and separate the two is just about impossible, but looking at the way the French introduce their children to the delights of wine I am inclined to think that a lot depends on the social environment. If, like the French, you are brought up considering your drink as a cultural value, you will appreciate the bouquet and flavour much more than the alcohol; indeed, the alcohol will just be a good means of transporting these delightful tastes. If you happen to be introduced to alcohol in a working-class environment, you are more likely to view booze as an escape from dreary reality and to imbue it with connotations of manhood.

Scrumpy Jack is good (anything is better than Strongbow ) farm-brewed scrumpy is best of all. I'd venture to guess that often the fifth or sixth pint appear on the table because of the reduction of inhibitions caused by pints number one and two, by the common human failing to suppose that if two pints make me feel this good, five must make me feel all that much better (we are a stupid species, after all) and because of social pressures: sitting in a convivial round you start to look a bit of a dour fellow if you stick to orange juice after the second pint while everybody else is enjoying another pint. Not to mention having to pay for this round... ;-)

Of course drugs have something to do with it. Just about any substance that enters our bodies will have an effect on our bodies and minds. Coffee perks us up, cider reduces inhibitions, antihistamines make us drowsy, chocolate contains natural tranquillisers. The very air we breathe can affect our minds; sea air charged with negative ions helps us sleep, air with a high ozone content gives us headaches and makes us grumpy, too much or too little oxygen makes us lightheaded. I used to live in Germany in the foothills of the Alps; every spring, a warm breeze comes down off the mountains which makes people irritable, prone to headaches and bad dreams, and is connected to an increase in household and traffic accidents. The point is our primary motivation. In my case, and in most any cigar smoker's case, the point of smoking is not the nicotine hit. If we wanted that, we would smoke cigarettes; it's *much* cheaper, quicker and more efficient. But we don't. So what does that tell you?

*South African* red? You mad or something?

Dodgy maths mate. [E mailed direct, not posted]

Are you by any chance employed as a spin doctor? Nice going. Compare pub prices against supermarket prices and assume that a "bottle of alcohol" (s'funny, I've never seen any at a supermarket) contains 100% alcohol.

Cider 5% alcohol. My favourite brand is "50% extra free".

I buy 2 or 3 litre bottles and it works out much less than than £1 per pint. Supermarket cheap spirits are usually 37.5% alcohol, or sometimes 40% for the Scotch.

I can't be arsed to work out the figures exactly but I know that to get to the point at which I tell my wife I really really love her takes about half the dosh it does to do it on spirits.

As far as strong drink goes the best I have had is Polish Pure Spirit. At 70% alcohol it is almost the same strength and flavour as the stuff used as fuel for the V2 (75% alcohol made from potatoes.) But to get drunk on it costs a fortune as it is so heavily taxed. I don't fancy doing sums on alcohol again. The last time I did it was to tell a wino that he was wasting his money on Special Brew, I showed him how to do it cheaper. Three days later he stepped off his fifteenth floor balcony. Sometimes putting people straight isn't always the best policy.

"Where are the other products that taste of cigarette smoke?" That question has been asked and answered. You refuse the answer.

I'll try one more example if only to practice my typing skills. I really like lox. A lot of people look at me as if I'm crazy for eating it. Not only do they not like the taste of it but they don't even like the look of it. Put it on a bialy with a slab of onion and a good schmear and mmmm mmmm.

Where are the other products that taste of lox? (insert "cigarette smoke" in place of lox and maybe you will see the comparison).

" To me the answer is simple. There are no cigarette taste-alikes for the same reason there are no pussy taste-alikes. People don't do it for the taste, that is a rationalization for their behaviour."

LOL!! Some man you are. Take a poll. You'll certainly find some men that the taste sits just fine with them.

And if there was no taste they wouldn't do it???? I think this has gone far enough, sitting on faces and so on. My point was that the taste is incidental. BTW how come so many people say don't eat the nuts at the bar because some men don't wash their hands after shaking hands with the wife's best friend but then they happily engage in cunning linguistics or playing the belly flute with virtual strangers. The sooner this planet gets conquered by an intelligent race the better.

(I'll eat the nuts, I ain't inconsistent)

"Naturally there is a taste to cigarette smoke and it is not particularly unpleasant, over time the flavour of cigarettes has been worked on to make them more palatable. But the flavour is not a reason to smoke, it is merely a reason to chose one brand over another."

And a reason to keep on smoking. And a reason to choose a brand you like and a reason to keep smoking. Still don't get it? I didn't think so.

"Similarly low alcohol drinks are never going to be a huge market because most people drink wine and beer because of the alcohol not principally because of the taste."

And Diet Dr. Pepper takes just like Regular Dr. Pepper, huh?

Don't get me started on soft drinks, I could go on for days. (You can believe that, can't you?)

"You can never separate the motivations completely but I think the clues are rather strong. No society that I know of smokes anything that does not have a drug effect And as I have pointed out.... the effect of drugs on you has toasted your reasoning abilities. and I am unaware of any product that tastes of tobacco smoke.

...and I am unaware of any product that tastes of lox (insert "tobacco smoke" in place of lox and maybe you will see the comparison).

You can dismiss that as nonsense and coincidence if you want to but I think most independent observers (on this newsgroup there are, of course, no such thing) might consider that I have a point worth considering.

Yeah, and I consider it to be self-centered bullshit.

Very considerate of you.

OK you want to play fishy I play fishy.

Taste versus addiction. So you addicts are still in denial. The difference between acquired tastes and addictions. There can be a little bit of an overlap. Not every acquired taste is supported by addiction or a drug effect. Not every instance of taking a habit forming drug is directly caused by addiction, naturally, if nothing else how could you ever explain a first use of a drug? People who take heroin do so for several reasons, addiction explains most instances but obviously it does not explain the first use. Not every urge to light a cigar is caused by a nicotine craving. But many of them are.

I like anchovies. They are an acquired taste. Many people do not like them, many people find them repulsive. Many people can't understand how I can eat them and would rather not watch me when I do. But the parallel with smoking ends there. I am not addicted to them. I can go a day without them, eat a meal without them, I can go a month or two without them, I can even eat in an Italian restaurant, sat surrounded by people eating pizzas and not eat them.

The smoker who "does it for the taste... everyday" is not in the same category. They are addicts. Sometimes I fancy eating anchovies so I do. If that means there is some left over I may finish them off the next day. My wife doesn't like me leaving them in the fridge too long, I don't suppose she would be happy if I kept an ashtray in the fridge either. It might be six or eight weeks before I get the urge to eat anchovies again, not as soon as the anchovies have left my bloodstream.

I never feel the need to go to the toilet on a train to eat anchovies.

I never pull over the car on a long journey to buy more anchovies.

When I step off an aeroplane in a new exciting country my first thought is not about anchovies.

I don't feel the need to subscribe to a newsgroup about eating anchovies.

I don't identify myself as a consumer of anchovies.

Most of the people who know me would not be able to tell you whether or not I was an anchovy eater.

The first time I ate anchovies I didn't boast about it to my friends or hide it from my parents.

I don't feel the need to eat anchovies after I have sex.

I have never cajoled anybody to eat anchovies.

I have never felt the need to insult people who don't eat anchovies.

I don't lie to my doctor or my insurance company about how many anchovies I eat.

I have never begged for money and then spent it on anchovies

I have never spent money on anchovies that should go to feed and clothe my children.

I never start to shake when I haven't eaten anchovies.

I never lose my temper due to cravings for anchovies.

I don't have a favourite brand of anchovies.

I feel entirely comfortable about eating anchovies.

I never feel the need to eat anchovies to be sociable.

I have never eaten an anchovy without being conscious of doing so.

I have never asked my boss for break on another pretext and then eaten an anchovy.

I have never considered quitting eating anchovies, or felt the need to deny I had.

Taste. Addiction. Not clear cut, I grant you, few things are, but I think fair minded people would see the distinction. If you wanted to test that hypothesis naturally we would have to look beyond the alt.smokers newsgroup to do so. There is not a single fair minded person on the group, fair minded people have better things to do.

Here's one to drive you over the edge. The incidental aroma that a lit cigarette creates is something I enjoy.

So? Some people like the smell of cowshit, creosote, gunpowder and even "Giorgio of Beverley Hills."

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

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