Kirkus Reviews
[A] provocative investigatory foray into the nature of taste…McQuaid is an enthusiastic writer undisturbed by dead ends, and he provides an entertaining exploration of "the mystery at the heart of flavor," which "has never truly been cracked."
Library Journal
"Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist McQuaid offers up with gusto this fascinating and meticulously researched consideration of flavor and the sense of taste...Tasty is an appetizing and satisfying chronicle of what we know of taste, so far. An excellent (and relatively agenda-neutral) choice for those who enjoy Michael Pollan and Gary Paul Nabhan..."
Boston Globe
"An excellent and absorbing investigation into the origin and nature of taste..[McQuaid] distills and presents in lively and entertaining prose a dizzying amount of scientific and cultural research throughout.”
Scientific American
A fascinating story with a beginning some half a billion years ago…McQuaid’s tale is about science, but also about culture, history and, one senses, our future.”
starred review Publishers Weekly
A fascinating blend of culinary history and the science of taste.
Business Week
An exploration of taste in all its complexity and contradiction…McQuaid is a deft writer with a talent for vivid metaphors.”
David Perlmutter
"McQuaid explores how deliberate manipulation of flavor influences virtually every aspect of the human experience, from pleasure to pain, from joy to sorrow. This is an awe inspiring landmark book, one that clearly deserves several readings."
Booklist
[A] thoroughly investigated work. . .McQuaid unpacks with appealing gusto the reasons for the wide variety of human reactions to taste...Tasty offers a full meal.
Melanie Warner
A delightful and eye-opening romp through the evolutionary story of one of the least understood drivers of human behavior. Taste has defined our migration across continents and propelled us to set sail for foreign lands. It even determines whether we can digest milk or are more likely to become alcoholics. John McQuaid packs this ripe and succulent account with one revealing detail after another, leaving readers with a greater understanding of what it means to be human.
Paul Jaminet
Our tastes evolved to help us: delicious food nourishes us and makes us healthy. John McQuaid, in teaching us about taste, engagingly shows how our food can be more pleasing and our lives more healthful. The only thing better than a delicious meal, is a delicious meal eaten after reading Tasty!
From the Publisher
"McQuaid is an enthusiastic writer undisturbed by dead ends, and he provides an entertaining exploration of 'the mystery at the heart of flavor,' which 'has never truly been cracked.'" ---Kirkus
Booklist
[A] thoroughly investigated work. . .McQuaid unpacks with appealing gusto the reasons for the wide variety of human reactions to taste...Tasty offers a full meal.
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"McQuaid is an enthusiastic writer undisturbed by dead ends, and he provides an entertaining exploration of 'the mystery at the heart of flavor,' which 'has never truly been cracked.'" —Kirkus
Kirkus Reviews
2014-10-22
"Pleasure is never very far from aversion; this is a feature of our anatomy and behavior. In the brain, the two closely overlap." So writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist McQuaid (Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms, 2006, etc.) in this provocative investigatory foray into the nature of taste.The author begins with a debunking of the still-practiced basic geography of the tongue that identifies—spuriously—zones for the five basic tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami. As he notes, every taste bud has five receptors waiting to be tickled and "detect molecules of one of the basic tastes." Though eating is as important as reproducing, it has been significantly less studied in the scientific community, from isolating taste receptors to finding the genes in the genome that play critical roles. "Like other senses," writes the author, "[flavor is] programmed by genes; unlike them, it is also protean, molded by experience and social cues, changing over the course of a lifetime. This plasticity is wild and unpredictable." McQuaid examines flavor chemistry and perception, and he notes that our fields of taste are oddly individual, both within and without our communities—though availability obviously plays a role in diet. The author is especially interesting when noting certain oddments and curios: the berry that turns the tastes around in our mouth; the sugar trap; the creepy, brave new world of the bland milkshakelike drink that does it all, "Soylent" (created through research into "the human body's nutritional needs" to create "the perfect food, building it from first principles"); the advent of cooking; and the arrival of alcohol. McQuaid is an enthusiastic writer undisturbed by dead ends, and he provides an entertaining exploration of "the mystery at the heart of flavor," which "has never truly been cracked."
