Sunday, July 16, 2006
One of the stories on CBS's "Sunday Morning" mentioned a very expensive coffee, which sells for up to $600 a pound. It's harvested from the back ends of Indonesian mongooses (mongeese?) who had eaten and partially digested the beans. However, the average taste tester couldn't taste anything special. "It tastes like ... coffee."
In fact, in coffee taste tests, people almost always choose the least expensive of the samples as the best.
I don't find this surprising at all.
Chocolate snobs are always surprised when Hershey's always wins chocolate taste tests, preferred over all those expensive imported chocolates.
I don't find that surprising either.
The reason is simple: People always prefer what they are familiar with over something new. They might like to try new stuff, but when asked which tastes best, they will always choose the familiar (comforting) sample.
And most people are familiar with cheap coffee and cheap chocolate.
There's a lesson there somewhere.
5 comments:
Great post :) You could take that lesson any number of ways... I think I'm going to remember this as the Hersheys effect.
it's true about the chocolate. i've bought the expensive stuff and while it is good, it's never hits the spot like the tried and true.
That's disgusting! Who wants ass coffee? And I wanna know who thought of harvesting that!
I have to say that I've been drinking organic Catskill Mountain Coffee lately at work and it's WAY better than store bought Maxwell House, or other supermarket brands. Might have something to do with freshly roasted and ground beans. It's a bit more expensive, $10/lb.
But I do have to say that NOTHING I've ever had beats Hershey's chocolate. I told that to Kristen, and she denied that Hershey's was best. Until she got some other chocolate and some Hershey's for Easter and she said Hershey's really is better.
I hate to confess this, but I like Lindt (I think that's the name) over Hershey's. The taste is more "on top" and it doesn't coat my mouth as much.
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