Sunday, February 8, 2009

Watching old people act like little kids

I have been making extra cash giving demos for a green nutrition powder called Green Vibrance. I mix it with water and apple juice, serve free samples and talk about it to people in health food stores. I'm promoting a product I feel good about, show off my nutrition skills, hand out the occasional business card and I'm giving people little hits of something really nutritious, something I really get a kick out of.

What is most interesting is the variety of reactions when people try it. It's purpose is to be jam packed with nutrients, and fairly bland tasting. It doesn't try to imitate any particular flavor, and it does taste planty. Most people under 40 think it's palatable. A toddler of a friend of mine was bogarting her momma's cup. Most people over 50 stand there and look afraid for a few seconds, take a sip and make dramatic eeewww faces. (Why do these people stop at my booth if they are so phobic?) And then there are those who take a sip, make an indecisive confused face and then make the yucky face once I mention sea vegetables. I figure I'm introducing the concept of eating things primarily because they make us feel good to a larger population. Everything you eat doesn't have to be chocolate flavored or disguised as a candy bar. We have to try it the first time and maybe go eewww before it can become familiar and part of what is "normal."

5 comments:

Unknown said...

keep going with your product...

happy blogging,

Toddler Nutrition

Bianca James said...

I know little kids are supposed to have way more active tastebuds than adults, which is why stuff tastes gross to them that is OK as an adult. I dont know about oldsters, though. Set in their ways, maybe?

Vally Val said...

I think its a combination of:

1. taste buds changing with age (a friend's grandmother got to a point where the only thing she could taste was sweet so the last 5 years of her life she only wanted sweet stuff)or totally quit on you

2. the current elderly/old/etc grew up in different times* when meals didn't have that much variety to them (look through an old time cookbook, its pretty much variations of a few basics)

*especially those that lived through the Great Depression-oy

The Snarky Nutritionist said...

I think the concept of "normal" is a big factor. Older people (and folks from the mid west) were forced to eat canned spinach, and now categorize all green foods are yucky and scary. (Because they were!) Little kids are still in the process of discovering what they like. I've known a few toddlers who love seaweed, and of course their parents are hippies who eat it too.

AS said...

The red on black type on this blog is difficult to read.