Astral: (Theosophy) Consisting of, belonging to, or designating, a kind of supersensible substance alleged to be next above the tangible world in refinement; as, astral spirits; astral bodies of persons; astral current.
Food for Thought: Priced Appropriately
This is the season between major holidays when food is a topic of interest. Holiday treats emerge as we set the stage for the health and diet resolutions of the New Year. While we do emphasize tradition in this season, some traditions pass away. Some do so quietly as they slip into the night, while others are tossed out while kicking and screaming.
Currently, we can notice the kicking and screaming over the demise of the Hostess Company and the infamous Twinkie Brand® as people gobble up the shelf supplies before they expire!
Of course, we know that the “hard science” experts have determined that matter never disappears – it just changes appearance. That seems to be the case as the people at Cracker Jack® are coming up with a new variety: Cracker Jack’d®, which will contain coffee.
They say you get what you pay for!
However, my students and I have wondered if that is really true. To test this theory, the students and I in my English 128 class (research writing in science, business, and engineering) run an experiment to test that concept. We ask the question: “Does the higher price for certain food items reflect the better taste of the product?” To answer this question and test our claim that it does, we use student taste preferences for salsa. It always seems like an appropriate subject since each quarter usually ends in some sort of party atmosphere. Students may wonder if they should go out and buy a more expensive version of salsa to offer at the party they are hosting or attending.
To conduct our research, we limit the “population” to red tomato based salsa in 12-24 ounce containers found at local grocery stores or supermarkets (thus not Costco nor 7-11 stores). Each student goes out to a particular location (we make sure that a variety of stores are covered) and they are quite surprised to find the proliferation of salsa products that fit the profile, for salsa can be found in the ethnic foods aisle, in the deli section, in the chips aisle, in the refrigerated section, and within any natural food or nutrition section – both on the shelf and in the refrigerators. Students find about 25 potential products in a typical store.
To get an overview as a basis for a good representative sampling of the population, we put together a composite population survey by combining the results from three different stores. We find anywhere from 40-60 different varieties with store brands in one of the locations, “national” brands in all three, and “premium” brands showing up in one or two locations. They vary in price from the “cheap” store brands costing a couple dollars for a 16 ounce jar up to some premium brands costing five or six dollars for a 14 ounce package. (We use the normal prices, ignoring any sales going on.)
We anticipate the cheaper ones not tasting as good as the expensive ones, and we gather a random assortment of a dozen or so of the products, making sure to have refrigerated and non-refrigerated samples represented from each of the three categories (store, national, and premium brands). We do a blind taste test and then rank the samples based on taste preference, with the best tasting ranked #1. We then rank them on cost, with the cheapest ranked #1. If we have a dozen samples, we anticipate that the one ranked #1 in cost will be #12 in taste and the one ranked #1 in taste will be #12 in cost. Thus, if we add the cost and taste ranks, they should all add up to thirteen, or close to it (say from eleven to fifteen). If this is the case, then we can confirm that level of taste corresponds to the level of cost.
This quarter when we finished our project, the students were surprised that the basic “Fred Meyer” store brand salsa finished first overall. In fact, it wasn’t even close, as it was the cheapest (at $1.89 for a 16-oz jar) as well as the second-best in the taste ranking, giving it a combined rank score of 3! (With 14 samples, we expected a range of 11 to 17.)
As I mentioned, the students were surprised at this result, but I wasn’t. This was about the 15th time I have had my students conduct this activity, and the Fred Meyer product has finished in first place every time but twice. (The Safeway Select brand finished first once and Amy’s Organic brand finished first the other time. However, both of those times the FM product finished in a close second place!)
Every time we have done this activity, the store brands end up in the top third, the national brands finish in the middle, and the premium brands come in at the bottom. The “fresh” refrigerated versions always finish lower overall compared to the non-refrigerated in the same categories.
Thus, we have found that, based on student taste preferences, the cheaper the product, the better the “quality”! Of course, often the higher price is driven by factors such as marketing and such, which is why in advertising, since most restaurants are selling a similar chunk of meat, they say “Sell the sizzle – not the steak!” (Children don't consider the burger as the attraction to their favorite fast location - they are attracted by the playground and "happy" meal toy!)
We might wonder if the results might be different if we conducted the same experiment with the folks dining at the country club. From a humanities science perspective George Orwell could offer some insight into that aspect because during the Great Depression he lived on the edge of poverty and worked in the kitchens of an expensive hotel in Paris for several months. He related the experience in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, and described the “care” given to the premium meals:
In the kitchen the dirt was worse. …The French cook is an artist, but his art is not cleanliness. To a certain extent he is even dirty because he is an artist, for food, to look smart, needs dirty treatment. When a steak, for instance, is brought up for the head cook’s inspection, he does not handle it with a fork. He picks it up in his fingers and slaps it down, runs his thumb round the dish and licks it to taste the gravy, runs it round and licks again, then steps back and contemplates the piece of meat like an artist judging a picture, then presses it lovingly into place with his fat, pink fingers, every one of which he has licked a hundred times that morning. When he is satisfied, he takes a cloth and wipes his fingerprints from the dish, and hands it to the waiter. And the waiter, of course, dips his fingers into the gravy-his nasty, greasy fingers which he is for ever running through his brilliantined hair. Whenever one pays more than, say, ten francs for a dish of meat in Paris, one may be certain that it has been fingered in this manner. In very cheap restaurants it is different; there, the same trouble is not taken over the food, and it is just forked out of the pan and flung onto a plate, without handling. Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it. (80)
To which we can all say, bon appetite!
Or, as Hemmingway might say, “Nada, nada, nada.”
Astral Facts is a somewhat regular presentation of Humanities Science, produced in the bowels of the Humanities Science offices during the academic year.
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