Have you noticed that many of the foods we eat have lost their taste?  I have thought may be my taste buds were on over load and started to stop working. I started to notice it when I ate chicken. It started to only have the taste of whatever sauce was served on it. I called it a blank palate or cardboard waiting for flavor. I then started to notice that the bananas I was buying had no flavor. I started to ripen them on the kitchen counter, then a test in the fridge to ripen and then way to brown skinned and every time it had no flavor. No wonder kids are not eating fruits and vegetables- they have no flavor or even taste good.

I just got back from a trip to Belize and ate a banana and knew I had not lost my mind. It really had flavor, good taste, it tasted like a banana.  I know that the Central America is where a lot of where I our fruits and vegetables are grown.  But why do our fruits and vegetables have no flavor and theirs taste so great?  I will blame it on our agri-business where the goal is to get them to the stores before they start to color so they don’t show bruises but I think it is also before the flavors are developed.  Chicken has been created to have large white breasts and chemicals that keep the chicken alive for its short life. Flavor is not a goal or they have missed their mark.

I think before we start begging our children to eat more of these fruits and vegetables we need a study if to see if we have also depleted the nutrients out of these vegetables that we want them to eat. And just maybe we can entice them to eat them when they taste good again. If we manage to figure out how???

Now you may say, “Hella, you blog about heirloom cookbooks and creating cookbooks, why would you write about food flavors and kids nutrients.” One of the ways to get kids back into the kitchen is to cook those heirloom recipes, eating what Grandma or Great Grandma would have served at her table. But the ingredients need to be the kind Grandma would have been proud to serve and they need to taste great. They need to taste great to honor her recipes and her memory and that means just like she created them in her home. Those home cooked meals were not dropped because the meals tasted bad but we don’t have the time these days to create the same kind of meals. I think we can adapt them to be quick made meals but it all starts with the ingredients. Maybe we would not be fighting an obesity epidemic if what we feed our kids really did taste good. The competition is only fat sugar and salt served on a  bun. Not really that much of competition when I served Aunt DeDe’s Mostaccoli.

We need to find ingredients that are loaded with nutrients and good flavor to create heirloom foods and just maybe kids will be rushing into the kitchen to eat it and even help cook it.

Do you miss the flavors of your foods? Does any one have a suggestion on how we make the changes we need to make? Let me know—I am serious!