What Does Water Taste Like?
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I hate the way water tastes. Water tastes like nothing. Oh, does it? This is a hot dog as a sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What?

Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host, Josh Scherr. And I'm your host, Nicole Inayati. And today we are trying to get me to drink plain water, which I absolutely refuse to do. Oh my God, Josh, I don't know what you're on this morning, but you're so funny. Even with like one, I hate water.

Ugh! Water! This is based off of somewhat real life. People around the office seem to think that I don't drink any water.

I would argue and I have argued that I am drinking more water than anybody else in the office. Partly because of an oral fixation where I need to constantly be lifting something in my mouth. That is very true. You do have an oral fixation 1000%. Maybe I should just have like a toothpick or like a piece of straw, like a Dust Bowl Farmer. You'd look so cool if you had a toothpick in your mouth every day. And imagine you were like thinking about stuff and you're just rolling the toothpick in your mouth. You're like...

Quentin Tarantino character. There's a dude at the gym that just has a toothache in his mouth constantly. Oh. And at first I was like, okay, a little too aesthetic. But then now I see him and he's just doing bicep curls, kind of moving the toothache around his mouth. I'm like, this guy looks sick. It's probably better than a cigarette. Yeah. He also has like a giant Star of David tattoo on his back. And I understand the paradox of using tattoos. Yeah. It's pretty sick. It's like barbed wire too. Oh.

I'm like dead serious. It's a great aesthetic. But no, I happen to not drink very much plain water. Yeah, you are very hydrated, but you don't drink regular water. You love fizzy water. I love fizzy water. I love a diet soda pop. I drink more fizzy waters than diet soda pop, but the amount of my hydration that comes from plain water...

Probably sub 20%. Like, how many cups of plain water do you have? Oh, we'll say a week because not a day. A week. Actually, no, no. We could do a day. I go home and I drink probably a quart of plain water. So that's four cups of water? That's great. Yeah, great math. Okay. Well, not everybody knows what a quart in a cup is. Throughout the day, I'm probably drinking six cans or 72 ounces of fizzy water. Mm-hmm.

But I used to have a SodaStream at home, but the Bed Bath & Beyond went bankrupt. And that's where I used to refill my SodaStream canisters. Terrible, terrible. So now I just don't really know where to do it. So I started drinking plain water. But yeah, almost none of it is plain, especially since we banned water bottles. Well, four cups of water seems okay. I remember whenever we were growing up, everyone said, oh. Well, it's not four cups of water. It's four cups of water plus...

72 ounces. Four cups of plain water. But fizzy water hydrates you the same as plain water. Sure, but I remember growing up, we were always taught eight cups of water a day is what you need to stay hydrated. Now, I always interpreted that as regular, quote-unquote, plain water. Why? I don't know. How do you think it hydrates you differently than... I don't think it hydrates you any differently. I think the experience of, like, satiation and feeling quenched...

Whenever you drink a fizzy drink versus water are two different sensations for me personally. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because if I drink a can of Coke. A can of Coke? Have you ever seen the video that's like, where can I get chicken at a can of Coke? No, what video are you talking about? The internet. The internet.

Are you on it? I really tried to not be on the internet as much consciously. Becky, do you know what I'm talking about? No, dude. So is this guy that goes around and asks people in Scotland or Ireland, where can I get a chicken at a catacombs?

And this amuses you.

I'm in a giggly mood, clearly. But yeah, I don't know. In my mind, there's something about like, does a Coke satiate you? Yeah. But something about drinking plain water without anything else in it, just I imagine makes you feel better, look better, become better.

Yeah, I think we were one of the first generations raised on this weird fetishization of being hydrated. Well, I'll say that, but also nowadays people are obsessed with water bottles. Yes. I always think it's funny about how Americans, whenever they go to Europe or something and they're lugging around these big-ass water bottles, then European people are like, what are you doing with your life? Yeah. Why do you need to be so hydrated right now? There were a couple of pieces of media that went viral where people were like,

Europeans must be dehydrated all the time because they're not just drinking gallons of water. And then also, if you look at like any nutritional health markers, right? Europe is too broad of a brush to paint with. But like of a lot of developed Western European countries versus America, we have like no legs to stand on. Right, right, right. On any of our practices whatsoever. Is it fair to say that the foods that they eat hydrate them? Well,

Well, this is a great question. The foods that everybody eats hydrates them. Right. Right? As long as you're not eating like very dehydrated, salty processed foods. Like ramen all the time. Yeah, but if you're eating a salad, there's a lot of water that is locked up in vegetables that goes into hydration. But today we're talking about the biological mechanism of why you would drink water.

Water, right? The thing that incentivizes you. The reason sugar tastes good is because that's incentivizing you to get energy to continue living life. The reason we taste umami is because that's associated with protein and probiotics. But water, if it's so essential to life, why don't it taste more better? Right.

What is the taste of water? I have no idea what water tastes like. My whole life I was like, water tastes like nothing. Same. I've always thought that too. And I still like kind of believe that water tastes more like nothing than anything else. Right, right, right, right, right. And I also think the fact that it's a liquid, don't laugh at me, also makes it taste more like nothing. Because like if I were to bite into something...

Yeah. I imagine that crunch and that chew, that mastication in my mouth would lead me to believe I can extract flavors from it. But with liquid, since it goes down so easy... No, I'm not looking at you like you're crazy. No, no, this is actually really smart. Keep going. You're really smart. If he says it, it's true. But like with water, it just goes down so easy and so quick and it dissipates in your mouth and your saliva...

Kind of tastes like water too, right? Does your, does your, swallow your saliva. I'm welling it up. Ew. Okay, does that taste like water to you?

Yeah, it tastes more like water than like steak or a Dorito. Yeah, right? Yeah. And then do you have water in your cup? It's not plain. Is it fizzy? Oh, yeah, it's fizzy, man. Is like guava fizzy or regular fizzy? I don't even look at the flavor of La Croix anymore. Smell it. What flavor do you think it is? Oh, my gosh. If it's limoncello, I'm going to vomit. We can check the trash can. Peach pear. It might be peach pear. I'm looking at the trash can. I think it's Sao Paulo guava. What?

I don't even like the flavors anymore. I said guava. You really did. I just want the bubbles. Well, if you were to take out the peach pear guava Sao Paulo flavor, it should taste like your spit, right? More or less, but the reason you are left with a different taste is effectively because it is washing away your spit. And actually, there was a really incredible research paper. I'm pulling it up right here. Go for it. It was at Caltech by a researcher named Yuki Oka that—

It's called the cellular mechanism for water detection in the mammalian taste system. One, I have some buddies that went into like research after college. Really? I remember asking, Amelia, you've met him. He was doing something where they were trying to isolate like one particular type of stem cell within a sea monkey. And I was like, oh my God, the stem cells. So like, is this for cancer research? And he goes, oh, there's no practical application for it.

And I go, what? They're just doing it to do it? Yes. They're literally doing it because nobody has ever known it before. Science rocks. Science does rock. And also, you know, millions of dollars of funds that went into stuff like this and now a lot of it's probably going to be cut. But yeah, but you just sort of know it. So anyways, I'm really glad that they're out here finding out these things. But what they have

effectively found out is the taste receptors, the taste receptor cells that are being activated in your mouth are the same values

That detect acid. So sourness. Well, sourness, yes, effectively. But it's just a change in acid that is being activated by water because your saliva has an average pH of like generally slightly below neutral. Neutral on the pH scale is seven, right? Yes. It's a very user-friendly zero to 14 scale. So user-friendly. However, and then the lower one is the more acidic and the higher one is the less acidic. Makes sense to me.

Of course. But anyways, average saliva pH is roughly like 6.4. Uh-huh. So slightly more acidic. And then most water is, I believe, slightly basic. Okay. So what is that on the scale? So base would be anything from 7.1 and above. Okay. Right? But different waters have different pHs as well. That's right. That's right. We can get into that. But effectively, the taste of water is the taste of changing acidity in your mouth. That's

so cool if you really break it down and then there's mineral content that also comes into play which there's a lot of sparkling waters that I really love that really heavy mineral mineralization you like Gerolsteiner you love Gerolsteiner I love Gerolsteiner it looks anti-semitic but it's not yeah yeah is it the red one it

Yeah, it's got a lot of iconography on it that if I saw somebody... Is there a building on it? I don't know if there's a building. There might be. Look up, Maggie, people have the Gerolsteiner bottle. It's just spelled like it sounds. If I saw somebody wearing... Where's the umlaut? If I saw somebody wearing a military uniform that had the Gerolsteiner iconography and logos on it, I would be scared. You'd be uncomfortable. I'd be like, oh, bad things have happened in the world. Oh, no. See, I was thinking of another one, but... No, Gerolsteiner.

You know what I mean? I guess it kind of looks like the black sun. You know, it's anyways, the heavy German words and strongly geographic. They make him uncomfortable. Yeah, I'm not a big fan, but the water is incredible. They do good water. Did you know that if you ask for, again, I went to Germany twice, so don't quote me on this, but if you ask for Wasser, they give you sparkling Wasser and you need to ask for still Wasser. Ooh. It's just one of the things I learned in Munich when I was drunk at, um,

Oktoberfest. Trezor. I... Trezor is like the... No, that's Berlin. The cool club. No, it's not. Where they'll kick you out if you just don't look cool enough. No, it's called Berghain. Well, there's Berghain. Berghain? We should go to Germany together. I would love that. Hey, should we go on a double date? That's how you ask for two bottles of sparkling water in Italy. Should we go on a double date trip to Italy with our husband and wife? With my husband and your wife? Let's do it.

Josh, I want to spit in a cup. Speaking of double digits, can we spit in cups now? We should tell the people why we're spitting in cups. We're spitting in cups because Josh one time told me

That he thinks that his saliva is, quote, corroding his teeth. And I'm like, babes, that's literally not how saliva works. Your, like, best friend is literally my dentist. Yeah, I'm like, dude, that's literally not how saliva works. But so you can quell your worries about your freaking acid saliva like a velociraptor ruining your dental work.

Let's spit in a cup to see our pH. Because like you said, this test says 6.6. No, acidic saliva can lead to acid erosion and enamel loss. Do you think you're so special? Do you think you're so special that your spit, maybe it's all the fizzy drinks and Diet Cokes you drink that's ruining your teeth. Have you ever thought about that? I believe that's being called red to filth. I think I just got red to filth on that.

Um, so do you want to spit in a cup together? Yeah, let's do it. Um, we're going to measure our pH because that, if you have more acidic saliva and drink more basic water, that is going to be a heavier taste change, which might lead you to being more sensitive to the taste of certain waters. Right, right. So if you're like, oh, I don't like Dasani. Ooh, I don't like Crystal Geyser. Maybe this is why. Maybe it's because your spit's all left up. So, Nicole, spit in the cup. I'm going to watch you. Should I do it on camera? Yeah, yeah. Ew. Ew.

That's gross, dude. What part of the pH strip do you put in there? I'm welling up saliva in my mouth. All of it. So you just put it in for one second. Uh-huh. I don't like seeing my own spit in a cup. This is grosser than I thought it would be. Have you ever done 23andMe? It's bankrupt now, but have you ever done it? Yeah, did you cancel your... You have to manually delete your data, right? Literally the day before they went bankrupt, I literally...

You have so much. Did you put that bottom part in? Yeah. It's in there. Oh, she's manhandling my spit. Grow up. Yeah. Have you ever changed a diaper before? No. God, you're so effed up. I know. I really am. How are you going to parent? I don't know. I didn't think I got grossed out by anything anymore. Let's just let that hang out for like a minute. But what were we talking about? What waters taste good and bad to you? Oh, well, I like sparkling water.

You like sparklets? I was raised on sparklets. Okay, I was too. I think sparklets is far and away the worst tasting water on the planet. I love sparklets water. Do people know what sparklets is or is that a regional thing? I don't know. I feel like I haven't seen it in years. Sparklets was a water delivery system that would come in these large, like, what was it, like four gallon jugs? Like ten gallon jugs, yeah. They'd get delivered to your home. And my mom would say, solar power!

Come put this on the machine. And my brother would be like, no, I don't want to. You guys had the full machine? We had the full machine. Oh, wow. And we'd come in and my brother would tip it over. Some of it would fall on the floor, obviously. And it was in these big microplastic-y jugs. And it's probably why we have microplastics coursing through our bodies right now. But that was the water we drank at home and I loved it. And we had it for like 10, 15 years. And it was so wonderful.

Sparklets is one of the few waters that I have ever tasted where I was like, oh, this is different than other waters and it's bad. You think it's disgusting? I think I haven't had it. Again, I feel like it was much more common when we were kids that people would have those. Or you'd go into some random office or like a doctor's office waiting room and there's a 10-gallon Sparklets jug in a dispenser. It is a local L.A. company. It was founded about actually 100 years ago. Happy 100th birthday to Sparklets. Sorry for…

docking crap on your water. Yeah, the company was featured. Oh my God, Huel Hauser went to the Sparkless thing in an episode. I don't know. What's Huel Hauser? Legendary journalist. I think did a lot of NPR work. But anyways, that was the first water where I tasted and went, oh, I don't like this. Really? Yeah. It was like my baseline. So maybe I got used to it and I didn't think it was a bad flavor. I think that's definitely part of the taste of water. I was brainwashed into liking it. I just didn't grow up drinking water ever. I grew up drinking a lot of water.

Yeah. Did your mom like push it on you? Yeah. She's like, you need to drink. To this day, my mom literally texts me saying drink water. That's crazy. She loves keeping me hydrated. It's funny because as much as Americans talk crap about other parts of the world not drinking enough water, everybody that I knew growing up

up who was like made to drink water by their parents were kids of immigrants. Yeah. I don't know. You know, one of my best friends, Vietnamese growing up, it was just like got to drink water. Even, even my, my best friend deep, who's a Gujarati from India, his parents would always tell him to drink a room temp water out of a metal cup.

Room temp water. So to this day, room temp or ambient water is my preferred type of water versus cold water. Even if I'm sweating, dying outside in like 100 degree weather, ambient style water...

I feel like it hydrates me better. I think it kind of does. More still than cold? A lot of this is coming from, what was that movie? No, no, no, no. It's a movie, like Vertical Limit. It was a mountain climbing movie where they get trapped in the snow. And there's a scene where somebody's heating up water. And they're like, just eat the snow. And they're like, no, if you eat the snow, your body expends energy to melt it.

And I was like, oh, my God, that's genius. But when you drink cold water, your body does expend energy, turning that into the temperature of your body. Right, right, right. And so, like, if you eat something cold on a hot day, you're kind of making yourself hotter in a weird way, even though it feels good, you know? Sure. So, yeah, room temp water. Love it. I don't know, but people grow up with different things, different relationships to drinking water.

I was raised to survive on milk and Crystal Light and the three liter not name brand store brand soda pops that you'd get from Dr. Shasta. Yeah. And so I just growing up

water was a different taste because it wasn't like Tampico blue juice or the gallons of strawberry horchata that we'd get from the 99 cent store. Right. That makes a lot of sense. But for us, we just, we always had water and I used to drink it in a glass cups and I try to eat it in glass cups now too. How weird. Why glass cups? I don't know. I don't know. I'd rather eat, drink it in a glass cup instead of a plastic or paper cup.

How do you drink water now? Because I still do drink flat water at home, but I'm very picky about it. How do I drink water now? Honestly, I hoard water bottles. I love water bottles, but if there's like a water filter, like I'll go. But you filter your water.

Yeah. Why? I don't know. Because I feel like L.A. tap water is trash. What do you mean you feel like L.A. tap water is trash? I feel like big cities tend to have better tap water. I've been told that. Listen, when I go to the restaurant and they're like, stiller sparkling, I'm like, give me L.A.'s finest. Give me the tap. Tap is fine. Yeah. But now, I don't know, at home, I'm like, whatever, let me just filter it. Let me feel good about myself a little bit. It's just that little extra step.

In taking care of yourself. Do I think it does anything major? Probably. Do you think your life would be different if you never filtered your tap water? Would my life be different? Yeah. Like, do you think if you could run those two models side by side...

Like if I didn't care and just grabbed water from the tap and drank it versus if I got it from like my fridge filter. Yeah, yeah. No. I mean, yeah, my life would, what do you mean? My life would be better if I did it and I do it. You do it. Okay. But you believe that. I believe. In what way? You think like your skin would be blotchy if you. Yeah. You'd get cancer two years earlier. Yeah.

Yeah. So what I do, check this out. This is a life hack. You get a Brita filter. Oh, you still use Brita filters? No, check this out. No, I don't. Okay, you get a Brita filter. You use the filter until it's all black and filled with plastic or whatever. Whatever the Brita filter catches, I still don't know. And then you throw that out. You keep the Brita pitcher...

And you just fill that with tap water, put it in your fridge. I swear to God, I've done that for my whole life. Because that way, people think that you're doing something good for your health and you're not just running a sink under the faucet. But it's just tap water. You're such a freak.

Yeah, so I just, I drink straight tap water. You know, I used to drink hose water growing up. That's true. That was most of my water consumption. To be fair, hose water does taste good. Yeah, yeah. Straight from the hose. I think it's the plasticine lining. Life gets busy, but that doesn't mean you have to put your language learning goals on hold. With Rosetta Stone, you can practice anytime, anywhere, whether you have five minutes or

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I'm gonna check the pH of our spit, okay? Yeah, we need a little update on the spit. So right now I'm looking at my lovely little spit test, and it looks as though I am at a strong six. I'm at a six. Can you look at my spit? Why is your spit so blue? Josh, why is your spit so blue? Is that acidic or basic? You're very alkali. I have basic spit? Yes.

Do you see this? Josh's spit is... Josh's spit is vi- is... Is it because of your sparkly water, you're kidding? I don't know, I made sure to not drink any for a while. Bestie, you... Your spit is literally in the 8 to 9 region. What does that mean? Very alkaline spit. So this is my strip, you know? This is Josh's strip.

Do you see this? I don't want any of his spit to get on me. Do you see this? This is alarming. I think you need to go to urgent care. Wait, wait. Okay, what number? Is there a number correlated to it? Right now, what I'm seeing is you're somewhere in the 8 to 9. Dang. Okay, so normal saliva pH is typically between 6.2 and 7.6. That looks like where I am. Okay.

Apparently alkaline saliva can also lead to a bunch of dental issues, which makes sense. Because if you think about lye, lye is a very, very fight club. Yeah, they make soap out of the fire. They put the lye on his hand and it burns him because heavily basic solutions can also burn, degrade things. Do we just find out I have a serious health problem on the show? That'd be pretty cool. Oh, no, I really hope not.

Or maybe it's good for the views. Yeah. Well, we'll figure that out. But anyways, so water probably tastes very different. You got a number on your saliva? Yeah, you're in like the six. I'm like in the six or sevens. I'm right where I need to be. Yeah, interesting. Because even if I had sparkling water in the saliva, then I think it would have been more acidic. Oh, my gosh. This is crazy.

I need to go to one of those. Okay, I've actually had them kind of reach out to me a couple times. Who's they? I'll tell you what. I don't know if the Turkish government is behind it, but some like health spa from Turkey. Even like dental spas from Turkey. You see all these influencers going, getting the hair plugs, whatever. Come with me to do a whole screen, a body screen in Turkey. Yeah, they just like email you because I guess it's connected to the Instagram and I've never taken them up on it. But some of them...

You can just knock out every health test in two days. I mean, have you ever been to Antalya? I can eat some doner. I love turkey. I can get a colonoscopy, see what my basic saliva is about. You don't need hair plugs either. No, no, no. And that way I could get more colonoscopies or whatever. Because I think with the amount of meat that I eat,

Uh-huh. And creatine. Probably pretty predisposed to colorectal cancer. Why don't you just go? Why don't you just... To Turkey? Well, I can get it... You know what? You and Julia... We have colonoscopies at home. You and Julia should go on a honeymoon there and then you guys can both get health scans there. Oh, what a romantic honeymoon. Just watching another guy put his finger in my thumb. Yes.

But Turkey's a beautiful place. That's just like one, that's like one 28th of all the fun things you're going to do. And maybe you'll learn a lot about yourself. You know, it'd be a nice time. Maybe some polyps. But this is why you have such a sensitivity to water, to water tasting different maybe because of your highly alkaline spit.

Yeah. Dude, you're all effed up. And I'm just chasing acidic drinks to try and counter out the alkaline in my spit. That's what it is. We've figured it out. Josh. Incredible. And we didn't even need a water sommelier to figure that out. What's a water sommelier?

We got to talk about the water song. What is a water song? I think it's just one guy, but I remember, I think the Patina Group, which is like the most Michelin-starred restaurant group in Los Angeles. Who's the head of Patina Group? His name is Joachim Splichal, but I think he's an Austrian guy. But anyways, they do all the food at the Disney Concert Hall and big fancy stuff. I remember getting a press release probably 10 years ago that was like,

Big new thing at the Patina Michelin Star Restaurant Group, they got a water sommelier. And they would trot this guy around and he would do these demonstrations where he'd bring like six bottles of water and you'd drink it and he'd be like, this one is slippery.

And you'd be like, what? Huh. And he'd be like, because of the propensity of magnesium, this is slippery and pairs well with sashimi. Okay. And so... I see it. I hate it, but I see it. There are people that take the taste of water very, very seriously. Yeah. I just don't think that I...

ever need that in my life i don't think i need a water sommelier to like walk me through why um this water works well with doc laurenge i just don't think i need that in my life right now and i don't think i'll ever need that in my life but i think it's cool that someone found their niche and found a group of people that also want to know about the best water to pair with

Frickin' tuna carpaccio. That's not interesting to me. Martin Rees. Martin Rees is his name. Good for you, Martin Rees. I think what Martin Rees has is what we're all looking for. Happiness and joy? Yeah. One thing that you can really call your own and devote your entire life to, and his is sipping water and telling people about it. That's cool. I think it's really cool. We should all find our own water sommelier of our own lives.

You know what I mean? It's got a lot more introspective than I was thinking. On the one end of the water tasting spectrum, you have Martin Rees, Water's on Me. On the other end, you got Water Talk.

F water talk. F water talk. Why F water talk? Because just drink water. No, I refuse to drink water. I'm so tired of seeing people... I want to mix coffee made hazelnut creamer in my diet Dr. Pepper and then call it water. Water? Stop that. People are putting mermaid powder, which let me tell you, if it leads to you getting more hydrated, cool, do it. But also, I think it's total BS. Just...

Drink water. Find a water you like. Maybe it's Fiji. Maybe it's Voss. Also, I love Voss water. I just remembered. Have you read Voss water before? Yeah. I don't like the shape of its bottles. What? It's just too phallic. I love the shape of the bottles. No, because I love smart water and they're phallic. I don't like straight water. You don't like straight women?

Why not? I don't like smart water. You don't like smart water. I'm so sorry. I misread what you said entirely. I also don't care for lots of straight women. Rank your favorite to least favorite straight women. Of all time? All time. Who's number one? My favorite straight woman of all time? Leslie Bibb. Do you know she's straight? No. No.

She's with Sam Rockwell. Big Leslie Bibb fan? She's with Sam Rockwell. Oh, really? Yeah, they've been together for a long time. Oh my God, incredible. And they were both in the season of White Lotus. Yeah, I don't care for White Lotus, but I think Leslie Bibb is fabulous. You just dropped a Leslie Bibb reference in 2025 and you don't watch White Lotus? Yeah, she's like all over my feed.

I know. Leslie Bibb's been in a lot of great stuff. She has an incredible body of work. She was in Rattling's Buddy System and then it's on TV. But the reason you were referencing Leslie Bibb in 2025 is not because of White Lotus. Yeah. Is that okay? Yeah, it's okay. It's just I find it bizarre. You want to know who my least favorite singer is? And Sam Rockwell. Did you even hear Sam Rockwell's whole soliloquy? To be fair, I did see three billboards outside of Ebbing, Missouri, like five.

a week ago, so Sam Rockwell was on my mind. You're referencing both Leslie Bibb and Sam Rockwell in the year of our Lord 2025. It is not about...

The White Lotus Season 3. You can have, like, past experiences that can help define you as who you are today. I understand that. It just seems uncanny. That's okay. Okay. Not everything is as it seems, Josh. Who's your least favorite straight woman? It can just be, like, the name of somebody you met once. A Carol. F Carol, man. You don't like Carol? She's so...

Carol's never even like experimented around a little bit Get out of my face Carol Okay this is a dumb conversation Let's talk about water Josh Water a very smart conversation Josh Hi After all of this Yes All of the spitting in cups And talking about people that aren't relevant anymore to our lives Yes I need to know What does water taste like?

Water tastes as close to nothing as nothing can taste. However, water does taste like something. Water tastes like the mineral content that is in it, including salinity. Water also tastes in direct opposition to what the pH of your saliva is. So you are mostly tasting a little bit of salt, a little bit of rocky minerals, and then also a change in...

And pH could be more basic, could be more acidic than your spit. Generally swings both ways. But I will say we have fundamentally altered our biology and caused epigenetic shift in the way that we taste foods because we grew up just drowning ourselves in artificial cherry flavor, red dye number 40, and malic acid inside these drink powders and Hawaiian punches. So we've completely fried our motherboards and our brains to where things that nature gives us now taste like poison.

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Now it's time for a segment where Nicole and I put our trivia knowledge to the test. It's time for our very own trivia segment called... Yummy in My Tummy Got Some Trivia For You. That's right. Robot Maggie has three questions prepared. Nicole, you and I will wait until the question is complete, and then we will answer. If wrong, the other person will get a chance to guess and earn the point. Let's hear that first question. What condiment was used for its medicinal qualities in the 1800s? I know it. I know it. I believe it to be ketchup. Oh, I was going to say mustard.

The correct answer is ketchup. F off. It was ketchup. Here's the thing. All food was just medicine at some point. You know, they believe they're like, hey, you got a headache, you got a gunshot wound, eat a couple walnuts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put some leeches on it, get some walnuts in you, you'll be all right. What is the prognosis for Cool Ranch Doritos? Malaise. Wasting disease. Malaise. The process of baking a pie crust before adding the filling is called what? Ah!

I know it. I know it. One, two, three. Blind baking. The correct answer is blind baking. Very good. I have nothing to say about that other than good job. Thank you. Yeah, you as well. It's good for custard pies. Bake the crust, add the custard. You know what I love? I love a silk. You ever had a Mississippi mudslide silk pie? Yeah, like a silken chiffon. You know, a little, yeah. A little chocolate mousse. Love chocolate mousse. I hate it.

You hate chocolate mousse? I actually had the worst chocolate mousse I ever had at a restaurant this weekend. I would never order it, but it was such a bad restaurant. Oh, the one you were telling me about? They just sent a ton of desserts. Oh, lol. I remember. It was just... They called it a panna cotta, but...

But it was a mousse, but it was an awful version of either. Ew. Ew, oh man. No, chocolate mousse has never done it for me. A great chocolate mousse is like... You know what I love? A gâteau. Have you ever had like those fancy gâteaus? Like cremeux gâteau. Gâteau cremeux? Gâteau is just kind of French for cake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What does it look like to you? Maybe I like mousse cakes. Like a nice mousse cake? What about like an opera cake?

I don't like the chocolate on the outside. No, I love cake soaked in liquid, and opera cake does it for me. Like Baba Rum? Like Baba Rum, yeah. Baba O'Reilly, another great song by The Who. All right, send it, Maggie. True or false? Nutmeg is a hallucinogen. That's true. That is true. The correct answer is true. Yeah, actually, nutmeg has a crazy slim margin between psychoactivity and overdose. So, kids, don't smoke nutmeg.

Do great fresh nutmeg in your bechamel. I think arguably the best use of nutmeg in savory foods. You know what? I'm influencing the kids to stay off drugs. I'm more effective than the DARE program. You are. Me and Nancy Reagan have a lot in common, if you know what I mean. I love throat goat. You are the local throat goat of mythical.

All right, Nicole. What? Heard what you and I had to say. Now it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are out there in the universe. I know I won. Congrats. It's time for a segment we call Opinions Are Like Casseroles. Okay.

Maggie, may you please play the first opinion? Yes. So polite. He's never been this polite. A polite young man. Hey, Josh and Nicole. This is Isaac from Tennessee. I'm 12 years old. And my food opinion is hot sauce makes everything better. Any food that you add hot sauce to will be better. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Love the pod. Thank you. Bye. Isaac, we love you. Thank you so much for listening to the pod. Isaac's a young person. Isaac sounds like my husband.

His tenor of voice? No, no, no. My husband agrees and says that hot sauce is better on everything. He eats hot sauce with every single meal. It doesn't matter what country it's from. It doesn't matter what temperature the food is. He puts sriracha on gourmet sapsi. That's the kind of husband I have. So, Isaac, when you're talking about hot sauce, you're generally talking about three things. You're talking about salt, you're talking about acid, and you're talking about heat or capsaicin. And I do generally agree, like, acid can wake up food.

A lot of foods, you know, that could usually hit a salt. Salt tastes good. And then heat, that actually stimulates a positive brain response. I was thinking about something recently, though. So like hot chicken, right? It's so, so, so big right now. Saw this big explosion. You mean like Nashville hot chicken? Nashville hot chicken, yeah. But I think just spicy foods in general, we're kind of seeing this, you know, a bigger trend towards. Okay. Even Sichuan cuisine across China is getting more popular with young people specifically. Mm-hmm.

Young people, especially Isaac's age, right, grew up with so much dopamine hits constantly, right? From technology, everything being gamified, increased screen time, all this stuff. I wonder if any of that need for that intensity and dopamine hit has translated into food taste. For sure. Because if you think about like every new chip flavor, right?

Oh, my God. Spork just got a new one. It's flaming hot Korean barbecue Doritos. Yeah. It's all getting more sour. It's all getting spicier. It's all getting saltier. We're kind of like chasing this intensity. And so, Isaac, I would challenge you.

Try not putting hot sauce on some foods. I say as I go home and slather hot sauce on everything. I just complained about how much spicy food this guy eats. Isaac, you're right though. Hot sauce is good. Hot sauce is bomb. Just as always, just be aware if you start to feel any sort of stomach pain or any sort of irritation, you know, just pull back on the hot sauce, please. Yeah, Isaac, limit your screen time. Come on. It's like, it's like, you know, that one rap

kid that was eating Hot Cheetos and he got an ulcer, he had to go to the hospital. Lil Xan, the rapper. Do we think that was actually, because his name Lil Xan, which is short for Xanax, a drug. Oh my gosh. Do you think maybe he was in the hospital for not Hot Cheetos? And maybe it was for Xan. Maybe it was for Xan? If his name was Lil Hot Cheeto and he was in the hospital for Hot Cheetos, I would buy it. That'd be too on the nose, Josh. It might have been benzodiazepine. Is that what Xanax is?

I think benzos, I think zans are a type of benzo. I think so, right? If I can think back to all of the rap music I listen to, it seems as though I might be correct. Do you keep looking it up on the internet, Josh? Yeah, it's a type of benzodiazepine. What? What are you saying? Anyways, next opinion. Isaac, you rule. Sorry for talking about drugs.

Hi, Josh, Nicole, Maggie. My name is Matt. I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So I just had a question about my mom. Where is she? As far as I've ever known, she's put her green beans out of a can when she cooks it.

in just a bunch of Italian dressing. Nothing else. And when I asked her about it, she said that, I don't know, she saw her aunt do it once. So I literally have no context for this, and I'm just wondering if you guys have ever heard of this or know why she would do that. So that's good. All right. Thanks. Love the pod. Bye. Bye.

I mean, the green beans are cooked to death. They're canned green beans. Oh, they're canned. Do you think they're hot? I would guess probably, yeah, hot, a little warm. Okay. But I feel like I could see either. Okay, if I had to guess where this came from, it was probably like good housekeeping 1973. I was going to say good housekeeping 70s. Oh, my God. Incredible. Yeah.

Back then, recipes could have just been. Whatever. It could have been called green bean surprise or like zesty Italian green bean surprise. And the ingredients could have just been open can of green beans, drain, add Italian dressing. Legit. And then if you want to transform that into zesty Italian three bean salad surprise. Guess what? Add a can of kidney beans, add a can of garbanzo beans. That's right. So I'm guessing that's where that came from because there's a lot of weird quirks like that.

Like, even thinking back to my childhood, like, stuff that my mom would make, just what I can only describe as, like, white trash casserole salads. Yeah. Like, all that stuff just came from one magazine in, like, the 70s. Yeah, when I was cooking for Rhett and Link as their moms, which is something we did in the past where, like, it would be, like, their recipes, it's basically just, like, store-bought stuffing,

Chicken and a slice of cheese And that would be the meal So it reminds me of that Listen if it tastes good and you like the way it tastes No problem shout out to your aunt She sounds lovely And your mom I'm sure your mom sounds lovely as well

And so many of those foods back then were a status symbol in a certain way, right? The fact that you could get, like, canned stuff. The fact that you could get canned stuff. And also this is generally when women started entering the workforce in larger numbers. And I think it's funny when we look back and, like, fetishize these eras, and especially, like, the 50s, where it's just like, oh, single-income households could just, you know, cook homemade meals all the time. It's like they didn't have access to foods like that. They didn't. The produce section in the grocery store looked real, real different in the 1950s.

You know what I mean? So anyways, yeah, probably that. Probably tastes pretty good. Hi, my name is Tanner from Northern Colorado. I just need you guys' opinion on something. My girlfriend of four years has recently eaten sunflower seeds around me for the first time.

Now, I normally like to crack the shell, eat the seed, and then spit out the shell. Yeah, you know where this is going. My girlfriend likes to take a small handful of sunflower seeds, put them in her mouth, crunch the shell and seed all together, and swallow all of it. She does not spit out any shell, does not separate anything, and I think that is insanity.

Let me know what your opinion is. Thank you. Want me to go first? Yeah, you go first. I do not know...

How to crack seeds. Same. And spit them out. I have no oral dexterity. No, zero oral dexterity. So my whole life, I know Persians love seeds. Just mashing around blind in there. Persians love eating seeds. It's truly a pastime activity for us. So literally like our whole lives, what we do is we just, my mom just buys these seeds and she roasts them fresh and we, you know, we get in there. I would just eat handfuls of them.

And also all of the flavors on the outside of the seed anyway. So like, why would I not suck down and eat all that yummy, yummy goodness? You know, whenever the seed on the inside is just about roasted, there's no salt on it. So the nicest thing, like to this day, sometimes like my mom and dad, sometimes my husband, David, they crack it for me and they give it to me because I'm so big. Yeah.

A sunflower seed? Everything, like a sunflower seed or like a pumpkin seed. You would need to do that a thousand times. You crack a whole walnut for somebody. That's nice. No, no, no. You don't understand how kind my family is. You're cracking it with their mouth? Yeah, but it's okay. They're my family. It's my mom. I am half of her. I see why you're so cavalier with my spit. Nice.

Now you get it? Now you get it. But, like, you know, my mom, I'm half of my mom, and my husband is, like, we're the same person. Your husband is also your mom. I get it. I get it. But, like, sometimes, like, even if it's, like, opening pistachio shells, like, sometimes people do it with their mouths. Like, they do it for me. It's very nice. Like, I get the cutting fruit as a gesture, but a sunflower seed seems too much. And then you just go, and then you hold your hand out for more.

Like a little bird? Like a hummingbird? That's crazy. Well, whenever you're the baby of the, like, I'm the, like, super baby of the family. Like, reminder, my brother's 12 years older. My sister's 13 years older. Like, American baby. They still treat me like that. So you're saying what he should do is you, like a bird, like a goldfinch, should use your little beak to peck open each sunflower seed for her if you are so disgusted by her swallowing the seeds. Because I have a different take. Because my mom used to literally say, you are goldfinch.

She's like, we're going to have to take you to the doctor. Your inner lining is going to rip. And I'm like, I'm not going to stop doing it. And then they're like, I guess I'll just crack that for you. Let her cook. Let her cook. Because that's what I do too. I just, yeah, I shove it all in there and I keep chewing it like a cow chewing its own cud. And then I swallow it.

And look at me, I'm kick-ass, dude. I'm, like, wildly successful, you know what I mean? I keep looking at your spit. I keep looking at your spit strip, and I'm like, I don't think you're kick-ass.

I would literally like watch. I'd be like in a dugout, like a baseball dugout in like PE or something. And, you know, the PE coach would give you sunflower seeds. Like, ah, this is what baseball players do. And I'd watch the other kids, you know, and then go and spit out the seeds perfectly or spit out the shells perfectly. And I would just try and do it. And then I'd go.

And I would just like spit, spittle, like spiky spittle onto myself. We have no oral dexterity. None. And that's fine. It's so embarrassing. Yeah. But either way, I live and let live or you have to crack every seed for her. Is what I said weird? No, dude. No, no, no. Is what I said weird? Different strokes for different folks.

You make me feel like what I said is weird. I'm weirded out by the amount of labor that it would take to satiate you with that. It's not about satiating. You know what I mean? It's about doing it out of the kind. It's not about... It'd be like someone peeling individual grapes for you. You know? That's not that outside... Yeah, what do you mean? It's not that outside of, like, what happens. Like, if there's seeds in the grapes...

It's called caring about the people around you. I'm probably going to do that for my kids. I'm projecting because I wish I had somebody that cared about me enough to feed me like a bird. You're going to baby bird sunflower seeds at me? That sounds nice. Thank you for that. How much spit gets in there?

Well, it depends how hard the seed is, I guess. It depends how hard the seed is and how wet your mouth is. Like little watermelon seeds all over. Just like hand in like a little kernel filled with spit. You're eating watermelon seeds?

Have you ever had a watermelon seed? Like a roasted watermelon seed? No, people are doing this? Jesus Christ on a cross. Now I'm the uncultured one. You're getting sunflower seeds spit in your mouth. All right, on that note, thank you for listening to a hot dog. You've never had these? You've never had roasted watermelon seeds? No, I didn't know you could do that. These are all tabrizi roasted. Dude, are you kidding me? This is a Persian staple. How do you say it in Farsi?

Why didn't you say so? Yeah, I've had. On that note, thank you for listening to Hot Dog is a Sandwich. We got new audio only episodes every Wednesday. They have a video version here on YouTube every Sunday. If you want to be featured on opinions or like casseroles, hit us up at 833-DOG-POD1. The number again is 833-DOG-POD1. Tell us your favorite way to eat. Your favorite way to eat.

You're first. He's getting so good. Chili lime. Merci. For more Mythical Kitchen, check out our other videos. We launch new episodes every week. See you all next time.