A matter of taste

“It was like I could see clearer. My body revitalized in a second and I suddenly felt that I could do anything in the world. I felt free.” Unfortunately, these words did not come from a modern philosopher king who managed to step out of the Platonic cave that is this world. Rather, they were said by a friend who had just explained to me the effects of 355 milliliters of a carbonated drink containing 360 percent of your daily value of Vitamin B6, for only $3.95 and 15 calories, which can keep you awake for a while but also leaves an unsettling aftertaste. Bull’s eye! I’m talking about that energy drink you’re holding in your hand now as you procrastinate by reading my column in the midst of cramming for tests and papers.

Don’t worry, I’m not preaching for good health. And I admit, I’m guilty of caffeine addiction as well. But let me take you through a different sort of eye-opener—it’s free, and you only have 600 more words to go.

Taste, according to many philosophers, is the most inferior of the five senses—it is no coincidence that vision is linked to the term “perception,” where its clarity defines a person’s intellect, while “taste” also means “preference,” a less rational concept that defines character, culture, and divisions that can lead to various conflicts.

But David Hume, while acknowledging the difficulties in overcoming these differences in tastes, argued that moral decisions derive from immediate sentiment, which is linked more to people’s sense of taste than their ability to reason. Socrates might criticize this generation’s obsession with food-related movies and TV shows (last summer’s blockbuster “Julie & Julia” and the competitive TV show “Top Chef,” to name a few), because we are only feeding the appetitive part of our souls and neglecting the philosophical part. Hume, on the other hand, would sympathize with our consideration for deliciousness, because it coincides with our moral progress.

However, there’s something terribly wrong with that Humean parallel. What exactly is our aim when watching people make good food in popular media? These days, it seems like cooking shows on television stress the high level of ease and low level of fats and sugars to awe the audience and home-cookers worldwide. It’s easy, it’s healthy, and your family will love you for being a caring cook.

Even if you don’t watch these shows, supermarkets these days stock up on instant dinners—and some of them are popular for being ethnic, so that you can get a taste of the world without having to try it in the original country. It’s efficient. It makes you feel like a cultured person.

And college students who don’t have the time to watch TV shows or cook, let alone heat up instant dinners, often go to the nearest deli and order a sandwich that they can eat with their left hand as they flip pages of a textbook with their right. Our desserts are reduced to square, easy-to-hold brownies. If you want to be even more economical, you buy yourself a power bar and an energy drink, and you’re nourished for the whole day.

It’s capitalism. Hume claimed, “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.” But our use of reason to come up with easy, efficient, and economical solutions for survival undermines our appreciation for taste. This Machiavellian “reason” where the ends justify the means—however unhealthy the means may be—shatters Hume’s defense of submitting to our passions, our appetites.

In this sense, Socrates seems to win with his critique of our appetites, because whether or not we’re conscious of it, we suppress the desire to eat both quickly and exhaustively by feeding ourselves energizing foods. This leaves more room for us to study, which, from a certain angle, is our will to philosophize. We are, after all, here for the sake of education, and not necessarily for the sake of fulfilling a most pleasurable life. Like good residents of the Kallipolis, we’re placing our appetitive desires after our yearning for knowledge.

Is this what college culture comes down to? Is nourishing the mind through capitalistic means the road to a truly better end? Just a week ago, the British Journal of Psychiatry reported that a diet consisting of processed foods increases the risk of depression. But I don’t think it’s about what evil manufacturers are putting into our food—this just shows that the kinds of people who consume processed foods tend to value utility and believe that saving up on food will grant them better prizes later on. Is this a reasonable deal? Or is this Red Bull phenomenon a vicious cycle ingrained in the nature of capitalism to which you’re already addicted?

I suppose that, too, is just a matter of taste.

Yurina Ko is a Barnard College junior majoring in philosophy. She is a senior editor of the Columbia Political Review. 2+2=5 runs alternate Mondays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com