Imagine going to a work Christmas party and being greeted not by your current workmates and bosses but by everyone you’ve ever worked with. Imagine the mix of dread, nostalgia and excitement that would bring on. That’s how I feel every time I walk into Coles Broadway.
After trying 291 supermarket products for 14 taste tests this year (one more than last year’s haul) I feel as if I know all the characters in there and, despite only having relatively short interactions with many, I have strong opinions about all of them.
I want to tell everyone my opinions but supermarkets aren’t particularly welcoming places for giddy soap-box speakers. I once saw a man looking lost in the instant coffee section and excitedly told him I’d tried every brand, and asked if he needed help. He raised one eyebrow, and simply said no. Another time, in the muesli aisle, I asked a woman if she needed help choosing. She replied: “I don’t need help.”
It was me who needed help. I needed an outlet, a place to blurt everything I’ve kept rumbling in my head all year. This is my outlet. This is what I thought, felt and learned from trying hundreds of Australian supermarket aisle foods this year.
Price is a terrible indicator of deliciousness
Before I started these taste tests, I had a bad habit. Any time I planned to make a new recipe, particularly if I was serving it to guests, I would buy the most expensive version of every ingredient, assuming the most expensive items would deliver the best taste. I am both embarrassed and thrilled to realise there is almost zero correlation between price and deliciousness. This year the most expensive product (by weight) only won once, in the salami taste test. In the olives taste test, the priciest option came last.
I crunched the data on the most expensive product from each taste test I did this year – the median score was just a six out of 10. I did the same with the cheapest option from each taste test – the median score was also a six. Incredible.
I can make two conclusions here: 1. Deliciousness exists at both ends of the price spectrum, and 2. Most products in the supermarket, regardless of price, are average.
So is packaging
Next I investigated the most luxurious-looking brands from each taste test: products with fancy illustrations, organic certifications, aristocratic colour schemes and claims about the provenance of their ingredients. The median score of all those products: five out of 10. Also incredible.
Taste is more objective than I thought
As a Guardian commenter, AdvocadoOnToast, says: “The idea that a group of random people’s personal tastes are relevant to everyone else seems like a waste of time.” I used to think the same but now, mostly influenced by doing this job, I don’t.
We may all have different experiences and genes but the human nose and tongue is designed to do the same thing – warn us of unsafe foods and reward us for eating things that will give us energy and sustain us. That’s why mangoes – high sugar, high acid – are more popular than dragonfruit, and why ragu, packed with umami-producing amino acids, is more delicious than mugwort.
Those same principles apply to deciding which brand of milk is better than another but the process is complicated by our preferences. To give a practical explanation, if every human being on Earth joined in on these blind taste tests, there would still be a lot of disagreement about which olive is a six and which is a seven out of 10. But I think we would still unanimously vote Monini L’Oliva Leccino Pitted last.
Packet instructions are terrible
Packet cooking instructions are rarely designed to get the best out of the product, they’re there to convince you to buy it. They spruik quick cooking times and small serving sizes, telling you this is an easy product that will go a long way. But undercooked meat pies and bad coffee brews prove otherwise. As a fellow taste tester said, you have to “use your eyes, mouth and brain”. If you don’t have the capacity or confidence to do that, just add a little more cooking time or dosage than the packet says.
It’s very enjoyable to eat 15 sorbets in one sitting
Most taste tests are like following your favourite team during a rollercoaster season: the highs and lows are so extreme and chaotic, it can leave you feeling a little unhinged. But the sorbet taste test, and to a lesser degree, the chocolate ice-cream one, were simply pleasant afternoons with friends, chatting over rather pleasant foods.
Eating 19 crackers in a row is an awful and confusing experience
I asked one of my regular fellow taste testers about their thoughts for the year and they said: “Something you thought was completely reasonable and acceptable before, turns out to be absolute inedible trash in the lineup.” This sentiment comes up at least once in almost every taste test but during the cracker taste test, it came up in almost every round. After sampling 19 crackers, one taste tester said: “I felt like a jellyfish that had been beached on the sand and was slowly drying out from the inside out.”
South Australia makes great sorbet
There’s not much more to say about Golden North sorbets other than a thank you to the Guardian readers (Donald5252, MaxyMillions, Brenty56, TheAppilaKid, Gooseygirl and TMoore) who encouraged me, a New South Wales resident, to try harder to get my hands on some South Australian products.
Beware the villains that lurk in the supermarket aisles
At the end of every year my friends and I nominate who our person of the year is, someone who had a big impact, whether it was a stranger you met in a brief encounter or a loved one who’s been particularly present. This year, one of those friends asked me who my villain of the year was.
All I could think about were the villainous flavours I’d ingested: the meat pie I never want to see again, the pickles that taste like soft drink carbonated with fart, Persian fetas salty enough to make a professional cheese judge wince, coffees that smell like ashtrays, protein-boosted chocolate ice-creams with the appeal of cardboard-flavoured granita, and an olive brand that attracted these taste-tester comments, which I compiled into a poem:
Loss for words.
Back to the toxic.
Metallic bitterness.
Old mop bucket.
Reminds me of cigarette.
Not good. Not good.
Why are they being sold as food?
Absolutely fuck this olive.
Ugly Olives.