Alright friends, I’ve got a weird one.
My dearest friend (and ex-wife, mother of my son. Long story) has a condition that has caused her stomach to no longer function. There’s a lot of details, a lot of which I’m not intimately familiar with, but the short story is she cannot eat nor drink most things by mouth. She can sometimes drink tea, occasional other drinks. Fats are bad. She has a feeding tube that supplies her with a nutrient solution.
But she doesn’t get to eat. She doesn’t get to enjoy food. She was telling me today she got a broth or something that has no fat and it was so tasty and it was basically the first actual food flavor she’s had since November. She’s overjoyed with being able to enjoy it. We’re still waiting to see if she can keep it down.
But my idea was (and I’ve discussed it with her and she’s shown interest - I’m not just going off on a tear) to find like flavor isolates or concentrates? If they’re concentrates, they’d need to be diluted. But then she could like dip a toothpick in them or something like you do when you’re sampling a hot sauce.
But they need to be good. I don’t want to give her a vial with the shadow of the idea of the taste of a food. I want it to be convincing, so she can really enjoy it. She’s being deprived of one of the basic pleasures in life, and I really want to remedy that situation.
So, internet friends, with all of your varied and wild interests and expertise, how may I help my friend?
There’s a drink called Hint that’s just water with some flavoring in it, and nothing else. It’s mostly fruit based flavors but it may help break up the monotony a bit.
What you’re looking to extract are terpenes. These are the taste/smell compounds in food. There are a few ways to isolate terpenes (steam distillation is one) but you can also find terpenes that have already been isolated. I am not an expert in isolating terpenes, I wish I could help more, but I hope maybe you are able to search along the direction you need if you look into terpene isolation.
Yes! This seems to be the route. Thank you.
Can they chew gum? You can buy unflavored gum base and use it as a substrate for a variety of flavors I imagine. Would take some experimentation but gum base and bouillon cubes or something idk
I think it’s important to get as much information as possible about her health issue so that you can find appropriate flavors. Some aspects of strong flavor are acid - like lemon juice or vinegar or tamarind. Some are sweet like sugar - or if you get miraculin, you could make lemon juice taste sweet. Some are specific organics like terpenes memtioned here (e.g. limonene tastes citrussy, is a common additive for processed foods to taste lemony). Wintergreen, mint, etc. Root beer flavors without sugar. Others are herby. Salt can make bland flavors strong. Glutamate can make thin flavors into savory and satisfying ones. Capsaicin makes things spicy. Some spices are numbing.
But depending on her condition many of those could make her sick. I’m guessing sugar is to be avoided and therefore probably most sugar alternatives that are similarly sweet to sugar (and so trigger downstream metabolic responses). But something like aspartame is much sweeter per gram than sugar so you can sweeten things with a smaller chance of impact. But also if she has phenylketonuria you’d want to be careful with aspartame. Etc etc.
You could try dehydrating meals, crushing them into a powder format and then applying them to like a chip or something that she could suck on without swallowing. 💁
on the topic of broth, would portable soup be something she could enjoy?
this is a moon shot I don’t know much about myself, but maybe the absolute food perverts of molecular gastronomy could be a line of research, there might be some useful insights into distilling the flavors and textures out of food
Had to Google portable soup, and I think that’s what she’s got, basically based on her description. So good guess lol
I’ll give it a look!
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Dashi broth maybe? Depends on what she can specifically get away with
Lol the worst part of making posts online is the anxiety I feel because I think I have to respond to everyone and I get overwhelmed. Fortunately I think we all understand that better than most. That’s why it’s so damn good to be a bear.
Thanks for all the responses so far! This will definitely be something we’d explore together and with caution. She has a pretty good idea of the flavors that trigger her and not. Sometimes it’s just a gamble though and even water is hostile.
So far I think my direction of research will be towards infusing flavorless chewing gum with terpenes. She told me yesterday that she wishes the Wonka chewing gum that’s like a full meal sounds amazing to her.
I’m obviously under no illusions that I’m just going to be able to get this right. I’m no food scientist, or a scientist at all. Hell, I barely even cook. But I think this could be something really fun for us to explore together, and hopefully bring a little bit of joy to her life. Even if it’s just playing around with the flavors.
That sure is a weird one. One thing that comes to mind is lollipops or boiled sweets, being flavouring and a small amount of sugar, but I don’t know if the sugar would be a problem. Someone out there has to specialise in untraditional flavours.
