Food meanings can change dramatically, notes Herz, who believes that the consumption of insects as food will soon take off in the U.S. (In a 2012 Bon Appétit blog post, one mayo detractor begged, “STOP trying to force me to un-hate it … I don’t force my love of Jamiroquai on anyone else.”)īut Rachel Herz, a smell scientist and author of That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, thinks it can be done. If mayonnaise haters are not born but made, does this mean they could be reprogrammed to covet the sauce? Could mayonnaise even shed its image as a humble condiment-a stigmatized food type, since they can only be eaten in small quantities before taboo ensues-and be recast as a standalone snack? Anti-mayo activists will surely recoil at the suggestion.

Charles Darwin commented on the social aspects of taste in his 1872 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: “In Tierra del Fuego a native touched with his finger some cold preserved meat which I was eating at our bivouac, and plainly showed utter disgust at its softness whilst I felt utter disgust at my food being touched by a naked savage, though his hands did not appear dirty.” And scholars have long noted that revulsion can rarely be reduced to sensory factors alone. Horwitz also denounced the condiment’s terrible viscidity, and called the emulsification process by which it achieves its peculiar density “black magic” and “Satanic-type stuff.”īut vanilla ice cream and pudding are also jizzlike slimes, and they arouse little animus ketchup is cherished despite its likeness to blood.

“I have consistency issues in general,” admitted Gotwals.

And anti-mayo campaigners do seem to agree that the condiment’s gloppiness is central to its repulsive powers. Mayonnaise contains an animal product, it is reminiscent of pus or semen, and it is remarkably slimy and jiggly.

Undercover brother mayonnaise