Taste buds and will power

If we do decide to dip our toes into ‘chillier waters’, by putting soy milk on our corn flakes or cooking with tofu or falafel, our taste buds at first protest. Then we need will power to get over the initial glitches and get used to new tastes … and who hasn’t been there? Who hasn’t, at first, disliked unfamiliar tastes and turned back to more familiar foods? After a life time of cultivating our tastebuds, here we are, trying to re-educate them overnight. We can’t expect them to ‘roll over’ to vegetarian replacements without a struggle. This is where patience is a real virtue.
It’s a short lived struggle usually, surprisingly short, but one wouldn’t know that until one starts. So at first we need will power, something extra to push us on, a self discipline based on a ‘no-touch-animals’ policy, something strong enough to overcome the bright coloured packaging of familiar foods, something strong enough to override memories of favourite foods. We are, after all, up against two million years of meat-eating culture, but on no lesser scale we’re up against the easy associations with foods we’ve shared with our friends. We consider, we conclude, we take steps to put our favourite foods behind us, to put the whole animal-food culture behind us . . . and prepare to take on the new regime as bravely as we dare.
Changes happen. A subtler food experience unfolds. Not so sugary perhaps, nor as salty, nor as blood-soaked, nor as fattening, nor as rich, but instead new flavours, new textures and a whole new culture coming through.