Food occupies an unusual place in our lives. It’s a basic human necessity, of course, but there’s so much more to it. Some of us don’t have enough, some of us have an abundance. Some don’t care either way. We have turned food into art, into an expression of wealth or creativity, and have made it entertainment. People experiment with new flavors and ingredients constantly to make the next big thing.

If you reel it all in and ignore all the frills you’re left with how your, as a human, experience food. Beyond the look and smell and feel it often just comes down to taste. So what do you know about how you even taste things?

10. You Can Taste Dimethyl Sulfoxide Just By Touching It

Most of us don’t play with medical grade solvents but you may come across dimethyl sulfoxide in a hospital and, if you do, don’t be surprised by the taste. Now, you may think you won’t need to worry about the taste because you have no intention of tasting dimethyl sulfoxide for any reason. Unfortunately, that may not matter. 

The compound is used to dissolve medications to make them easier to administer sometimes, and that’s because DMSO, as it’s also known, has a remarkable ability to travel easily across membranes. So easily that you can just handle it and it will pass through your skin and potentially produce a noticeable garlic taste in your mouth. It can even pass through rubber gloves to do this. 

Weirdly enough, it’s a by-product of paper manufacturing and comes from wood pulp.

9. Babies Have Three Times as Many Taste Buds as Adults

Human babies are pretty helpless in every way. They have little going for them in terms of impressive skills, at least compared to the babies of other species which can be up and running in a matter of hours. But they do have one ability that even adults lack and that’s hardcore taste sensation. 

Babies have about three times as many taste buds as an adult, meaning they are enjoying a far more flavorful world, at least for a little while. This also explains why tastes change as you age. Many people hate certain vegetables as children but grow to like them as adults and this can account for why. Kids are being fussy little jerks if they hate broccoli or peas, it’s just that they legitimately taste bad because the kids may pick up on more bitter notes, for instance. 

Babies’ mouths are more receptive to sweet and fatty flavors. Salty doesn’t register well, nor does sour and bitter is extremely offensive to a baby’s taste buds.

8. Toothpaste Blocks Sweet Receptors, Which is Why Food Tastes Bad After Brushing

Nearly all of us have had that terrible experience of grabbing a glass of juice in the morning right after brushing our teeth and discovering it tastes terrible. But why does it taste terrible? The answer is in the toothpaste, but just part of it. It’s not the flavor, it’s what it does to your tongue.

Toothpaste has a foaming agent in it, something like sodium laureth sulfate. Its only purpose is to make it foaming. But the chemical also temporarily blocks the sweet receptors in our mouths. If you drink something after, and orange juice is very effective at this, you will not taste the sweetness, but you will get the sour and bitter notes. Orange juice without sweetness, as many of us learn, tastes terrible. 

7. You Can Trick Your Taste Buds With Smells

Taste and smell are closely linked. Obviously something that smells good is more enticing and will get your mouth watering but you can actually alter taste with smell, that’s how closely tied the senses are. 

There are easy home experiments you can do to trick your brain into tasting things based on different smells. The way our brain interprets taste involves the sense of taste but also the texture and the smell of the food you’re eating. It’s estimated 70% to 75% of what our brain tells us is taste is influenced by smell. 

Experiments regarding how this works have shown that by adding the aroma of something like ham can make people taste more salt even though none is there. The same product, with no ham smell, will taste less salty. 

6. Supertasters Can Taste More Intensely Than 75% of People

Of all the superpowers a person could dream of, being a supertaster is rarely on the list. But you may actually be a supertaster, so it’s at least worth looking into what that means. About 25% of people qualify as supertasters while an exceedingly small percentage may even be super-supertasters. But let’s focus on the regular kind.

As the name implies, a supertaster is better at tasting than other people. For them, flavors are more powerful and rich. Different flavors may be more amplified and powerful, which is not always a good thing. Imagine something that tastes too sweet or bitter to you. To a supertaster it may be unbearable. Likewise, a dish you consider perfect could be too salty or too sour to a supertaster because their taste perception is more attuned to those tastes. 

Women tend to be supertasters more often and men and, as we’ll look at later, it’s also affected by ethnicity. There’s a test to determine if someone is a supertaster since taste is very subjective. A chemical called 6-n-propylthiouracil can be added to something being tasted. About 25% to 30% of people can’t taste this at all, and those are non-tasters. The average taster will notice a faint bitter flavor in the food. But a supertaster will be completely grossed out by the bitterness when they taste it. 

Bitter is the standard for testing since more people are not sensitive to bitterness, or at least nowhere near as sensitive as a supertaster. They really hate popular bitter things like beer, for instance. Supertasters seem to have far more taste receptors in their tongue than average which accounts for the increased sensitivity.

5. Your Taste Buds Only Live for About 10 Days

If you’ve ever eaten something hot and burned your tongue, you know it dulls your sense of taste. But, give it a bit of time, and the sense returns and everything is tasting normal again. This isn’t because your taste buds heal up and go back to work. It’s because they die and are replaced quickly. The average taste bud only lives between one and two weeks, or around 10 days.

Your taste buds are just a bundle of cells capable of sensing taste. Like most cells in your body they are constantly growing, dying, and being replaced. As you age, their ability to regenerate and keep tasting like they used to fails. Research has shown older people are slower to regenerate taste buds and their sense of taste wanes in time. Women start losing the sense of taste earlier, in their 50s, while men hold out to their 60s.

Some cells in your taste buds are very short-lived and may die off in a few days, while longer-lived cells maintain for up to three weeks.

4. You Only Taste About 20% of the Salt on a Potato Chip

Have you ever opened a bag of chips, eaten one and then winced at how salty it was? Some chips are so salty that there are brands that market reduced salt ones either for health or flavor reasons, depending on your motivation. But the reason some chips are so salty is that you taste little of the salt in the first place.

When you eat a chip, you taste about 20% of the salt present. In order to taste salt it has to dissolve in our saliva, just like any other food. If you eat food with a dry mouth, you can’t taste anything. Also, it would be hard to swallow so please don’t try it. But when you eat a chip normally, the process of chewing and swallowing happens so fast you can’t usually get more than 20%.

The way we eat chips is actually such an inefficient way to enjoy them that Lays developed an entirely new kind of salt crystal that allows it to dissolve more quickly so you can taste more while they use 25% less salt in the recipe. This makes a tastier and healthier chip, at least in terms of sodium intake. 

3. Nothing Tastes Spicy Because Spice is Not a Taste

People love spicy food as witnessed by the proliferation of hotter and hotter hot sauces, spicy food challenges and, of course, Hot Ones. What some people don’t realize is that, love it or hot it, spicy is not a flavor but a pain response. We often list it alongside things like salty and sweet, but it’s not correct. You can’t taste spicy, not specifically. 

Capsaicin, the chemical in peppers that triggers that heat response, is actually tricking your brain. The chemical compounds activate heat sensors and it makes them feel like they are hot when they actually aren’t. The more chemical in the pepper, the worse the sensation, and this is measured by Scoville units.

When you do taste something spicy in a sauce or pepper, it’s the other things that add flavor. So the actual taste of the pepper itself or flavorings added to a sauce like salt or tomato or vinegar. 

2. Testicles Have Taste Receptors

Feel free to take a moment with the headline for this entry. Testicles do have taste receptors and, what’s more, the internet decided they are keyed to sweet or umami flavor, so that’s fun. When news of this first hit the internet, people apparently tried to make the most of it by dipping their testicles in soy sauce. Naturally this didn’t get them far because, if you recall how biology works, your testicles are on the inside and there’s a whole scrotum in the way to prevent any snacking below the equator.

The truth is that the testicles don’t have taste buds but they do have taste receptors. These cells exist throughout the body, but their function isn’t fully known. The internet’s belief that they can taste sweet or umami came from a Daily Mail article which took the original research and misunderstood it to state that taste buds in your testicles can taste different flavors. 

You can’t rub food on your downstairs to sate your hunger but the science of taste receptors existing there is correct. They may help detect certain bacteria and be necessary for sperm production.

1. Gender and Ethnicity Affect Your Taste Perception

Few subjects are ever as touchy for most people as issues surrounding both gender and ethnicity. But the fact is there are some notable differences between genders and ethnicities and one of the most unexpected ones is the sense of taste.

According to research, people of Asian ethnicity have superior tasting abilities compared to Caucasians, or at least their taste perception seems to be more finely honed. Asians are more likely to be known as a supertaster, which we covered in that previous entry. Those of Asian ethnicity also seem more sensitive to metallic and sour tastes.

The same study that showed this determined that men are more likely to favor sweeter flavors than women.

Additional research shows that Hispanics and African Americans rated taste sensations higher than white participants. There’s long been a joke that “white people” food is rather bland, especially British food, and it’s possible this may account for some of that if a large portion of Caucasians simply don’t taste food intensely.

Celebrities are often pretty eccentric. It makes sense. You don’t seek out fame because you want to blend in with the crowd and go unnoticed. If that were the case, they’d manage a Chili’s in Akron, not play dress-up pretend for a living or dedicate their lives to getting sports balls to go in stick-mounted baskets. So it’s no surprise, then, that celebrities tend to reflect their peculiarities onto their homes. 

With the mishmash of messianic and conspiratorial nonsense that Kanye spews, you just know he doesn’t go to bed in a practical 2-bedroom in a quiet, suburban cul-de-sac. No, he would absolutely have to have a home that makes as much of a statement as he does. And even for the celebs not quite at Kanye’s level of oddness, their unique lives of wealth and constant public scrutiny are practically guaranteed to rub off on their home life. 

This had led to some truly baffling decisions in design, which force reactions from laughter to gagging. Here are ten of those celebrity homes, homes whose interiors make you question if money truly does buy happiness… or just madness.

10 Dick Clark

The late, great Dick Clark was known to and loved by millions for his time hosting American Bandstand and the decades spent as America’s most popular New Year’s host. But beneath all the charm, the beloved TV personality had a dark side. I refer to, of course, his unbridled love of classic 60s cartoons.

Specifically, “The Flintstones.” Clark had his multimillion-dollar home in Malibu, California designed to be an almost perfect replica of Fred and Wilma’s granite cave-home. For what’s it worth, the designers nailed it. Both the inside and out look like they truly were made for a (cue music) modern stone-age family. 

The uneven, wavy furniture, windows, and walls look like they were slowly formed by geologic processes. Though the place would make definitely a fun-themed hotel room for a night or two, the idea of spending decades of your life there does not sound dino-mite. In fact, it sounds ptero-ble.

9 Penn Jillette

Penn Jillette is a brilliant magician, and his numerous other appearances in film and TV demonstrate his intelligence, enthusiasm, and eloquence. He’s also kinda crazy. Outspoken on his political and religious views, Jillette has at times forced audiences to ask the question: is he good crazy or bad crazy? Luckily, his home—nicknamed “The Slammer”—answers the question. He’s just plain, all-around crazy (and it’s good).

The outside looks like an oversized McDonald’s play pit, and the inside, even weirder. Entrance and exit are accomplished by fire-pole. Moving through the house, you’ll encounter fake crime scenes, sex dungeons, and a huge array of odd curios. These range from a mural that reads, “One day, you will die. Get moving!” to actual human skeletons. 

Most prominent is the statue in his center room, a giant, pink, four-armed praying mantis in a leather collar, appropriately named “The Atheistic Buddha of Vegas.”

8 Christie Brinkley

I think I can explain this one. At some point, an advanced alien race contacted former supermodel Christie Brinkley and tasked her with cataloging the entirety of human culture for them in one place. She chose her living room.

This house isn’t particularly kooky and doesn’t have some unifying concept like others on this list. It’s just a lot. Brinkley is to wall accents what hoarders are to old stacks of Time magazine. Many rooms of her home are absolutely covered with decoration and furniture. In some places, decorations are stacked atop one another just to fit them all in. And none of them work together. She has guitars next to seashells next to white columns next to cheetah print next to Victorian tintypes next to natural stone next to Chinese lanterns. 

The aliens will be pleased.

7 Dale Earnhardt Jr.

NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. commissioned a custom 1800s Wild West town as an extension of his home. A whole town, which he named “Whiskey River.” There’s a chapel, a saloon, an outhouse, a mercantile, a sheriff’s office, and more. That’s definitely unusual, but still—it’s easy to get behind someone realizing an innocent childhood dream. It’s the interiors that lose you. 

Some buildings feature authentic, Ol’ Western interiors. Some, like the saloon, use their vintage exteriors to hide modern, functioning recreation spaces. Kinda kills the illusion, but okay. Still some, like the outhouse, are just empty shells, meant (I guess) as a joke. That’s the rub—that someone went to all that trouble and spent all that money to make their fantasy a reality, and then stopped halfway through. At some point, DEJ looked at it and thought, “Nah, half a dream is good enough.” Say what you want about Michael Jackson. At least when he builds a fantasy town on his property, everything actually works.

6 Bella Thorne

Actress, musician, and adult-entertainer(ish) Bella Thorne has a reputation for being a little out there, both professionally and her personal life. Her home does not do anything to refute this. Watch the video, and any other, and you’ll understand. The whole place is bright, loud, and chaotic. I’ve decided to truly capture its essence with a roast. Here goes.

The place looks like Ke$ha ate a whole box of Fruit Roll-ups and puked out an apartment. It looks like the Red Light District in there, if every escort was possessed by Basquiat’s ghost. The place looks like Andy Warhol was forced at gunpoint to design a house, but the gun only shot vape smoke. It looks like the trial run for Sherwin-Williams’s new paint line “MC Hammer Surprise.” You get the idea.

5 Robert Downey Jr.

One of Robert and Susan Downey’s several houses is known as the Windmill House. It does in fact have a built-in windmill, but the inside is what really captures attention. There’s an old proverb that a camel is a horse drawn by committee. Well, the Windmill House is a decent-looking home drawn by committee.

Every room is so close to being tasteful, and then gleefully rips that satisfaction away. It’s the living room that demonstrates this more than any other. The drab, olive-green fireplace lies below a lilac and gold clay mural of fish. To the immediate right of the mural is a clashing yellow Shel Silverstein-esque painting of a child that seemingly collects severed heads; and to the immediate left an equally clashing 70s-comic-book-style painting of a gun-toting soldier relaxing atop a theoretically symbolic wall. 

Apparently, Susan uses the room to meditate, and one can only assume the wall helps to clear her mind by being so loud it drowns out her thoughts.

4 Dr. Phil’s Son

Okay, I was too harsh on the Downeys. I’ll make up for it being even harsher on Dr. Phil’s wannabe-musician son Jordan McGraw. His former home greets you with a foyer whose railings are covered in sculptures of snaking tentacles that hang over a mini-bar whose design style can best be summarized as Santorini-meets-Satan. The rest of the house is really no better, with its glittering-gold wallpaper, suede everything, and wall-sized art piece of assorted melting guns. There’s an odd, bronze Mickey Mouse statue; somehow-intentional paint-splatter on the floors; and most creepily, a collection of cutesy bear figures throughout. It gives you the impression that the young man could use a psychiatrist. If only he knew a real one.

3 Jojo Siwa

If I had planned ahead for this one, I wouldn’t have blown all those sweet roasts on Bella Thorne. Teenage YouTuber, singer, and human Lite-Brite JoJo Siwa has her own home that I believe can be found between the Lollipop Woods and Licorice Lagoon. 

Inside, the neon and candy-printed walls enclose a treasure trove of childhood fantasy items. These include a life-size, rainbow-maned unicorn; a complete concession stand straight out of a 90s-era AMC; a working claw game; several candy buffets; and a series of glittering mannequins throughout that make it look as if Siwa had captured Jem and the Holograms in carbonite and displayed them as trophies.

2 Donald Trump

This isn’t political. Love him or hate him, the guy just has no idea what tasteful design means. Here are some other words missing from his vocabulary: “accent,” “nuance,” “minimal,” “complimentary,” “warm,” and “comfortable.” His residence in Trump Tower makes the point on its own. 

Where a normal human might add gold trim or a smattering of dark marble to select furniture to create an aura of luxury, former president Trump has chosen a different strategy. Several rooms are gold everything with gold accents, gold designs across them, and golden lighting (just in case another color snuck through somewhere). Apparently, Mr Trump modelled the rooms after the iconic Palace of Versailles. 

But if the Palace of Versailles is like a painting, Mr Trump’s home is like a canvas covered in a hardened mound of monochromatic paint.

1 Oprah

The one and only Oprah used to own a home in Telluride, Colorado. Looking at the beautiful stonework mansion with its stately open courtyard and treetop walkways, it would seem to not belong on this list. Even looking inside gives the same impression. Most of the home’s rooms are minimalist, coordinated, and show off a serious knack for grand-yet-homey design. Then there’s the Wine Mine.

I repeat: the Wine Mine. 

Oprah’s home has a wine cellar built to look like an authentic ore mine. The walls are natural stone and square timbers prop up the ceiling. The lights flicker to mimic old flame lanterns. A sound system plays mining ambiance, including the regular clanging of pickaxes. But one feature beats them all: the actual, working mining cart that Oprah can ride into and through the cellar. 

When you contrast the Wine Mine with the rest of the house, you’re forced to consider the possibility that, when going over the house’s plans with her contractors, Oprah may have actually been possessed for a minute there by the ghost of an old-timey prospector who died while lamenting his sobriety.

Taste is a very subjective thing. Some people love pineapple on pizza, some hate it. Some folks are happy to eat a vegan diet, others are practically full-time carnivores. But what accounts for those foods that can change their taste over time. Is that you and your personal tastes changing over time, or is the food itself different? Turns out that, sometimes, things really don’t taste the way you remember and for some very interesting reasons.

10. Some Authentic Chinese and Indian Dishes Taste Different (in the US) Because Of Oil That Can’t Be Used in America

Most of us are aware that there is a distinct difference between Chinese food in China and Chinese restaurant food that you’ll find in America. When it comes to Szechuan Chinese, one of the reasons for a difference in taste goes a little beyond the predictable however and has to do with not just what is being cooked but how. In this case, it’s the oil.

In America, most food is cooked with things like vegetable oil, canola oil, even peanut oil. But in China, most Szechuan food is cooked with things like mustard seed oil or Caiziyou oil which you can almost never find in the US.

Mustard seed oil has a spicy aroma and gives food a little kick. You’ve probably never seen it for sale at your supermarket, however. Expressed mustard oil is banned by the FDA. That’s because the oil has a high erucic acid content. In the ’70s, experiments found that erucic acid caused heart and kidney disease in rats. The oil was therefore banned, but later studies showed that effect didn’t really carry over to humans and, in fact, the oil may be beneficial to us. But science is slow sometimes and red tape is slower, so the ban never got lifted.

The oil has a very high smoke point and imparts great flavor, especially in spicy dishes, so it’s favored for things using chiles. If you want to eat foods you first discovered in parts of China and Northern India, they’ll likely never taste the same in America unless you use the oil which, legally, is very hard to do.

9. Brussels Sprouts Really Did Taste Worse Back in the Day

The humble Brussels sprout. Bane of children everywhere. But as an adult, have you found you kind of like the taste now? Even though your childhood memories were of a bitter, unpleasant little cabbage? You probably just thought your taste buds matured, and maybe they did, but that’s not the whole story. Brussels sprouts really do taste better.

The fact is, kids weren’t wrong back in the day. The sprouts were bitter and unpleasant. So, in the 1990s, Dutch scientists and farmers worked together to isolate the bitter tasting compounds in the sprouts. Once identified, they put in the effort to begin breeding strains that naturally had the least amounts of those bitter compounds. 

Once they managed to create the tastiest new hybrids, those were farmed and eventually they replaced the old, bitter strains of the veggie and, since the 1990s, Brussels sprouts really have tasted better. 

8. Banana Candy Tastes Like Banana, Just Not The Bananas We Eat

Is any candy flavor more of a perplexing let down than banana? It tastes nothing like banana and yet every banana candy tastes the same. How did that happen? This all dates back to a time before Americans even ate bananas.

Fake banana flavor comes from a fruit ester called isoamyl acetate. You can find it in a lot of fruits and it was introduced before most Americans had ever tasted banana back in the 1860s. But when the Gros Michel banana became a real thing people could buy about a decade later, there was a distinct similarity. Gros Michel contained a reasonable amount of isoamyl acetate. But then, as you may know, the Gros Michel fell victim to a serious banana plague and was wiped out. In the 1960s, the Cavendish banana replaced it and we still eat those today. 

The Cavendish has some isoamyl acetate in it but not nearly as much as the Gros Michel did. So it and “fake” banana taste almost nothing alike. But once upon a time that flavor was much closer to banana.

7. American Purple Skittles Taste Different From Purple Skittles Everywhere Else 

Speaking of candy, do you think you could identify every flavor of Skittle in a blind taste test? It would be much harder than you think if you were using international Skittles because, as it happens, purple Skittles don’t taste the same around the world. Or, more specifically, the US government has ensured American Skittles aren’t the same as everyone else’s.

In most countries, purple Skittles are flavored with the delicious black currant. Not so in America where that flavor wasn’t legal for ages. Many years ago, black currant was outlawed in America because the plants carried a disease called white pine blister. In time the ban was lifted but by then the black currant had missed its opportunity. Few people wanted to start growing it and the flavor was not part of the American experience so it never caught on.

6. Coca-Cola Tastes Different From Country to Country 

One of the most important things for a product that’s enjoyed all over the world is consistency. For something like Coca-Cola that has to be extremely important, or you’d think so anyway. And even though the company claims on their own websites that it’s the same everywhere, that’s not 100% true. 

The formula for Coca-Cola is the same the world over, so the syrup will always be the exact same in any country. But there’s more than syrup in Coke. The product is always bottled locally, and each country uses their own water sources and sometimes their own sweeteners as well. This is why Mexican Coke is a thing, because they use cane sugar as a sweetener which gives it a different taste than the high-fructose corn syrup of American coke. 

If you have traveled around, you know for a fact water tastes different from country to country and even city to city sometimes. So the end product that Coca-Cola releases in some countries will absolutely taste differently. 

5. Kit Kat Bars Taste Different Around the World 

Every country has their own candy and treats but there are a handful of candies that transcend borders and are enjoyed the world over. One of the most popular has to be Kit Kat, which can be found all around the world in about 100 countries. That said, it’s not going to taste the same all around the world because, despite the name and familiar package, it’s not even made by the same company everywhere.

Kit Kat is huge in Japan, so much so that people in Japan actually think it’s a Japanese product, though it comes from the UK originally. In Britain, Kit Kat is a Nestle product but in America it’s made by Hershey. The US version has far more sugar while the UK version has a higher cocoa and fat content. In taste tests, most people agree the UK Kit Kat is far better. In Japan, it comes in dozens of varieties. 

4. McDonald’s Fries Changed Four Times in 30 Years

One of the most popular items on the McDonald’s menu is the french fries which a lot of people seem to feel are the best among the fast food competition. But if you’re old enough, you may be wistful for an even more delicious fry that McDonald’s used to sell because they really were different once upon a time. In fact, they’ve changed a number of times over the years.

For a very long time, McDonald’s fries were cooked in beef tallow which imparted a lot of flavor and made them hugely popular. But it was also big on saturated fat and cholesterol. Over the years, campaigns against unhealthy eating took their toll and McDonald’s finally relented. Vegetable oil replaced the beef tallow in 1990. People were largely unimpressed and stock prices dropped.

McDonald’s tried to add beef flavor to the fries to compensate, but that led to lawsuits from vegetarians and Hindus who didn’t know they were eating beef.

By 2002 the oil changed again because the vegetable oil’s trans fats became a concern. In 2007 another oil change happened. So that’s four different oils in 30 years, each one altering the overall french fry flavor. 

3. Tomatoes Have Lost Their Flavor Because We Bred Them That Way

Try to imagine a world without tomatoes. All those delicious sauces we’d be missing out on from ketchup to pizza to marinara. It’s harrowing. But even more harrowing is the fact that tomatoes are legitimately becoming less tasty. If you’ve ever picked up a tomato at the store to slice up for a burger or a salad and thought it was bland and tasteless, it wasn’t just an unlucky pick. We’re doing it on purpose.

Scientists sought to answer why tomatoes don’t taste as good and compared hundreds of varieties around the world. They determined that there are 13 compounds which chiefly contribute to the taste of a tomato and as we seek to breed bigger tomatoes that are more resistant to pests and bad weather, we’re sacrificing those compounds. 

Less popular or artisanal varieties of tomatoes still pack a flavor punch because these ones have not been bred to death, as it were. But the most popular tomatoes only became the most popular because we stripped away everything we liked about them in the first place. 

You can still find a tasty tomato now and then, but you’re not wrong if you think they used to taste better. You’re also not wrong if you think they’re going to keep getting worse. 

2. Apples Used to be Tastier and Crisper

Apples are one of the most popular fruits in the world. America alone grows 2,500 different varieties and there are over 7,500 in the world. And if you’re feeling like apples these days just aren’t as good as they once were, you’re not wrong. The humble apple is being bred into the ground. 

Climate change has been contributing to a decline in flavor and crispness from apples which have a harder time adapting to environmental changes and are losing natural levels of malic acid as a result. Apples that are less sweet, less crisp and even mealy are the result. There are also diseases killing off a lot of apple varieties, leaving us with fewer to enjoy overall. And that’s not the only issue.

The Red Delicious apple is a standout in the world of, well, bad apples. The name is generally half accurate. Red? Check. Delicious? Not always. This is because the fruit has literally been bred, just like those tomatoes, towards looking better than it tastes. Growers have consistently tried to perfect that brilliant red color, eliminating any variations that lead to green or yellow, but sacrificing the deliciousness as a result. Nowadays Red Delicious are extremely unpopular in North America because they just don’t taste good anymore. 

1. Airplane Food Tastes Bad Because of Where You’re Eating, Not What You’re Eating

Airplane food has been mocked for being tasteless, textureless and gross for years. And while it’s not always that bad, there’s definitely something weird about it sometimes and you’re not wrong for thinking so. There’s actual science behind why food just isn’t as good on an airplane.

First, the basics. Airplane cabins are dry. Literally desert dry. Cabin pressure and this lack of humidity play havoc with your taste buds, dulling them terribly. You lose as much as 30% of your ability to taste salty and sweet at altitude. Your mucous membranes also swell, affecting your sense of smell which also dulls flavor. 

Surprisingly, there’s also a little more going on. Even the sound on a plane makes the food taste worse. The sound of airplane engines become a distraction to your already taxed senses and make it even harder to perceive any decent flavor from the food.