Product: NOVA: Mystery of the Senses - Taste (2007)
Rating: 3.0
informative, girly, Latin, etc.
Our taste buds only have four receptors: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty (maybe?) Some people have many taste receptors; others have few, but the work doesn't say this is related to weight in any way. The etymology for "companion" is "for whom one eats bread." I love learning new stuff.This work was very girly. The narrator is a woman who hosts a chi-chi, Manhattan-based dinner party and spends too much camera time ordering chocolate. All of the taste researchers shown were women. The narrator spoke with a soft, vampy voice that would have shamed Martha Stewart. This work could have focused on fat, male, football fans or guys that frequent all-you-can-eat buffets. In striking contrast, it takes a very feminine route.The work is also very Latin. It touches on Asia (and shamefully never mentions Africa or the Black Diaspora), but focuses on Latin America as a comparative note to the West. The camera and narrator focus on an indigenous Mexican woman's cooking and never once comment that she lived in a shack and had a dirt floor. They discuss how Columbus raved about chili peppers. It brings the feminine and Latin aspects together by speaking of how Cortez failed to learn how Native women enhanced the niacin in tortillas. I appreciated this multi-culti twist.Miscellanea. It talks of how smell and taste work together, but I wish it had included sight. They show a woman (with a cleft chin) enjoying a grape lollipop but not knowing it's grape. Some food makers add purple coloring to grape-flavored food because people wouldn't believe it has grape in it otherwise. The work focuses on children's taste buds, but says nothing of the elderly, who may lose taste sensations. It mentions fugu, but says nothing of Homer Simpsons' bad experience with the dish. The narrator raves, "We have so many food options now!" However, this may play a role in the obesity epidemic that the US faces and other nations may face soon. One researcher asks children what they think of pizza ingredients and it ends up being a product placement for Sbarro. There is a fascinating Brit named Nicholas Lander interviewed here. He wears those cool John Lennon specs. Most importantly, he has the world's deepest chin dimple. He could put Joe Namath, Steven Pemberton, and Henry Rollins to shame. Mother Nature must have used her biggest ax when she chopped his chin dimple into place! What Dolly Parton is to a certain body part, he is to cleft chins.