serious question: why is citric acid so tasty?
@bea because loads of our ancestors died of scurvy, leaving only we who like the taste
@clayote that makes sense for ascorbic acid, but makes less sense to me for citric acid. also i feel like ascorbic acid doesn't taste as good as citric acid?
@bea I guess most fruits with one also have the other. Our palates don't need to be especially refined to keep most of us alive
@clayote i suppose. a bit unsatisfying if it is that though.
@clayote @bea not sure if this is true!
scurvy was basically physically impossible to get prior to the invention of fire and, realistically speaking, prior to the invention of canning and only *really* became an issue when humans decided they needed to spend many months at a time on boats where they had zero access to their natural environment. Lots of stuff we don’t think tastes “sour” at all, like raw cabbage is actually completely sufficient as far as the amount of vit c you need for not dying from scurvy goes
meanwhile the inability to tell the difference between citric acid and ascorbic fucked the British navy up big time when they switched types of lime to one that was equally sour but with the wrong type of acid and no one realized (this was mostly only an issue for the polar explorers bc your average naval voyage had shrunk to “short enough to not get scurvy” by then)
@clayote @bea as i kid i was not a huge fan of vinegar (so also no pickles etc) tho during late puberty i mostly came around and now i am positive towards those flavors ( @Lady can confirm we go thru a lot of rice vinegar in this house, and that i will drink apple cider that is decidedly trending towards “vinegar”)
sauerkraut is typically lactoferment and it is definitely a bit funkier but idk if the funk is bc lactic acid tastes diff to me or if its just a side effect from sticking a bunch of cabbage in a clay jar in the ground lol
@Satsuma @clayote makes sense to me, though unfortunately leaves me none the wiser on citric acid