Everyday Canvas

Taste Imagination

Prompt: How strong is your taste imagination? Have you ever felt the taste of any food inside your mouth just by thinking about it? Write about this.

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I have no criteria to test my taste imagination, and I wonder if one exists. The only thing is, I love food, and when I think of certain foods I like, my mouth waters. What is true for me is: I know how things taste but the memory of them do not bring the actual taste into my taste buds.

On the other hand, some people have claimed that this happens to them. During World War II, GIs and other people who were locked up in German camps and suffered from hunger passed the time thinking and talking about some dishes and actually feeling the taste and feeling good about their sorry conditions; however, this might be due to the human-resilience factor. I like to read about the holocaust and World War II because it is something that should never be forgotten, and I am now reading the biography of Kurt Vonnegut, And So It Goes by Charles Shields. In it, Kurt Vonnegut, as a US soldier, is captured and sent to a camp. Shields writes that the POWs there also reminisced about food, possibly experiencing the same or similar feelings.

Obviously, there is such a thing as taste imagination. It is certain that imagining the foods we like does offer an aesthetic pleasure, but I am doubtful about feeling the exact taste in one’s taste buds. I wish that could be true, though. It would make losing weight so much easier.