How Kids Taste Plastic

“Now, don’t get me wrong, capitalism here does not mean Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, or Prada, but fresh, crisp polyethylene (and not just at the few stores just selling plastic bags). The smell of synthetics is all-pervasive, whether you’re in the colorful toilet seats, Kanye glasses, or ‘silk’ flowers section; your nostrils be flaring like at a launch for one of Comme des Garçons more deliciously outré perfumes.” — Stil in Berlin

Neurogastronomy for Toddlers

If you find yourself an opportunity to visit Berlin and end up at the Dong Xuan Center, a Vietnamese megalopolis in what otherwise feels like the middle of nowhere, you will smell an assault of plastic. It’s not that the place is worse than your home or the organic supermarkets. It’s just that the sheer sum of plastic added up makes obvious: plastic has a smell and taste.

It does, doesn’t it? So, I suddenly wondered: can plastic… taste good? Are there such things as connoisseurs of “heirloom” plastic. A quick Google result shows me instead… restaurants that are getting rid of plastic.

One of the only Michelin restaurant I see that has plastic mentioned… won the award by mistake, Le Bouche à Oreille in Bourges. So, no tasting menu for eating plastic.

And, yeah, neurogastronomy is a thing at Yale.

My Little Girl Eats Everything, Does Anyone Else’s Child Eat Everything?

Yet, this is exactly the reality for our kids. For no reason other than the necessary truth that kids keep putting stuff into their mouth. A quick and crude Google search suggests an anthropological picture of adult humans finding this behavior inexplicable.

So, is this a problem? No chefs managed to make plastic taste good, yet kids keep eating and smelling it. Another quick Google shows a failure in consensus that chewing on plastic straws builds an acquired taste on plastic straws as adults. Instead, this article (written for Americans) laments that all people should consider moving to Paris (ostensibly because there is less fast food and plastic there). If nothing else, it would make Paris oddly crowded, and food delivery startups may suddenly feel like they are delivering airplane food if the city sprawls anymore than it already does.

Now, if we assume two things: predisposition can be influenced and preferences are modifiable, then we have affirmation of an obscure part of “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” where he explains the conundrum: to prepare the most ingredient food and ingredients in the world, the cooks have to train their own taste in order to be able to serve it — even when they cannot afford it themselves.

James Beard for Babies

Still, it might just be pseudo-science justifying fiction. So, then suppose we switch from fancy science words to fancy foodie words: terroir. Going back to fancy chefs, Matt and Ted Lee wins a bunch of awards, six James Beard and IACP Awards:

“Plough mud is the staff of life, the underpinning of our food chain, and it resembles a tarry gel. …As a child growing up in the Lowcountry today, you may venture into it, as we have, and return with stories that seem menacing or traumatic. Several feet deep, and pudding-soft, it sucks at the legs of anyone who tries to traverse it, at times swallowing a shoe or boot. Sharp shells hidden in the plough mud inevitably draw blood against bare skin. (If this happens to you, the image of a carmine drop against the battleship gray-black of the mud will be seared into your memory forever.) Still, these are experiences remembered with a kind of fondness.

The best way to unpack the rich tones of the mud are to smear it on your warm skin. The smell has sulfury overtones from anaerobic decay of grasses and organisms, but it’s balanced by other elements that seem sweeter — minerals and salts, grassy notes and shrimpy tones that wouldn’t seem out of place in a find Bourdeaux or crisp Sancerre. For many who live here or have visited, plough mud is the quintessence of terroir, and the unmistakeable aroma of summer in Charleston.” — from Fare Magazine, Issue #3, 2018

How Much Plastic Is In Your Home

If nothing else, it may be an amusing exercise on mindfulness. Try paying attention to what has plastic in your home: the keyboard on your laptop, the chord that plugs any electronics into the wall, your kid’s glasses, the buttons on clothes and bedding, the wax lining of a paper cup¹. National Geographic claims that reducing plastic as a family is easy, which is clever wording because “avoiding” plastic as a family is pretty impossible. At some point it becomes a humorous challenge, if plastic is part of the reality of the world that we must accept, or else our minds will never be at ease.

So, we are super curious. Are there parents out there with plastic-free households? How do they do it? Are their kitchens on instagram? We’d love some inspirations in the comments below.

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