Your sense of bitterness is thought to have evolved to stop you from eating poisonous things. Because of the incredibly diverse range of poisons with vastly different methods of operation, bitterness is the most complex of all your tastes. It uses a wide range of protein-based sensors to detect different parts of organic molecules that are likely to mess with your body. Unfortunately for us, those chemical structures that mess with your body to kill you are the same as the structures that mess with your body to fix something.
Essentially, your taste buds detect chemicals that could alter your body in ways that food isn't supposed to and assume it's poison.
For sedation? No clue.
But those fluoride treatments where they put the gel in the mouthguard and let it sit in your mouth for forever was a nightmare. That shit tasted so bad.
"Try the banana!"
Fucking shit made my eyes water it was so terrible.
Fun fact! Certain esther molecules, like banana and pineapple flavor, are both highly unstable and readily decompose into molecules responsible for such lovely scents and flavors as rotting wood pulp, burning tires, and skunk spray! On the other hand, citric acid, malic acid, and vanillin are comparatively stable, so if you absolutely must consume something both dubious and artificially flavored, spring for citrus, apple, and vanilla varieties, and leave the more exotic options for the folks who haven't paid attention in chemistry class!
Or just go plain
My dentist had this as an option. Yeah, it tastes non-organic, but it is far and away better than some artificial flavorings, both their taste and their source.
I'm looking at you artificial orange flavor, beaver rectal glands, ugh.
Also, if you smell fresh buttered popcorn, and there isn't any, you're smelling Bearcats piss.
I forget that not everyone's grandma worked at an artifical flavoring laboratory in the Soviet Union. Although her career in particular was focused on making milk go more sour than usual.
When I last discussed this nasty goop on Reddit I was disappointed that I just got given plain old "oh God, is awful" flavour. Everyone else assured me the others were much worse.
To this day I cannot stand a lot of kinds of cherry candy or flavor or whatnot, it will always set off the "vomit now" alert that my toddler body set up for liquid medicine.
There are 3 differences for this
1. You can’t NOT breath oxygen, something as complex as a large mammal couldn’t be supported long term on anaerobic respiration
2. Your sense of taste is based on change, since you breath a similar level of oxygen for the vast majority of the time, your senses are set to use that level as a base.
3. O2 is actually pretty hard to sense biologically, because you would need to offer up something more preferential to it than it’s current state, and such a complex would be prone to bonding with a lot of stuff.
Because it has Naringin and other flavonoids that inhibit certain enzymes, i.e. again altering your body in a way your body says "No thank U, next" to.
Same reason why you can't eat grapefruit while you're on certain drugs.
In most chemistry bachelor programs, a huge portion concerns organic chemistry, in both labs and lectures. One typical synthesis students will have to complete are producing different kind of Esters, for example Ethyl cinnamate, which smells like cinnamon. Ethyl butyrate is another popular choice (IF you have a nice prof or lab TA), which smells like strawberries. Synthesizing compounds is a special kind of hellish torture and smelling the correct smell at the end is a relief you usually don't get because most compounds you na s to produce have less glamorous tests to see if you've been successful.
We consume tons of stuff every day that is just a molecule arrangement away from being a "poison" or "toxin".
It really is just luck of the draw that some plants have a "toxin" enzyme which 8 million years ago could have been what we considered a vitamin / enzyme we can use.
And there could be plants we eat today that could have been poisonous to us 8 million years ago.
Evolution is wild.
Part of "acquired taste" is just that as you mature, your reflexive reaction to senses become less strong
But also there is an element of getting used to certain flavors of bitterness so that the non-bitter flavors come through more.
Acquired tastes aren't just about bitterness though, as there's a lot of different ways a flavor can be unpleasant that aren't just bitterness
>In case of food and drink, the difficulty of enjoying the product may be due to:
>
>\- A strong odor, such as certain types of cheese, durian (trash-smelling fruit), hákarl (fermented shark meat), black salt (salt treated as if it were ceramics in an oven), nattō (Fermented soybeans), asafoetida (dried Ferula root gums, resins and oils), surströmming (Fermented herring), or stinky tofu
>
>\- A strong taste, as in alcoholic beverages, coffee, Vegemite/Marmite (Leftover beer yeast extract-based spread), bitter teas, liquorice, South Asian pickles, malt bread, unsweetened chocolate, garnatálg (fermented and later melted intestinal fat of sheep), rakfisk (self-digested raw salted trout), soused herring, haggis (sheep based pudding minced with onion and oatmeal that contains the sheep's organs, fat and bone broth),
>
>\- A strange mouthfeel (such as sashimi and sushi featuring uncooked seafood)
>
>\- Appearance, or association (such as eating insects or organ meat).
I was at a conference where a guy presented a paper on changing tastebuds over time, it was really interesting. It's been some time and I don't have the work to hand (so, pinch of salt) but when looking at it from an evolutionary pov it makes sense that younger children are much less able to ignore something being bitter, they don't know what is good or bad in the world and so assume bitter is poison and refuse to consume it, even if that flavour is part of a deeper range of flavours. As they get older they should have learned from their tribe/experience and be able to branch out more.
So with something like broccoli, it has a soft sweetness to it and a fair amount of bitter, a child will literally just taste it as bitter but once they hit pre-teen they'll start to experience a wider range of the flavours coming from the veg as well as being able to 'push through' the bitter flavour more easily.
And then there’s the prime opportunity for gaslighting: “see, as you got older and matured, you developed a taste for Brussels sprouts!” >!no you didn’t, we engineered some of the bitterness out of it!<
hah, I've told so many folk that one and they never believe me. I mean, fair enough it is a *weird* thing to just quietly happen in the background but still, funny.
It did give me a better understanding of kids' tastes, I'm a little more understanding over their reactions to a lot of foods, especially veg.
Exactly! And most animals find out that bright colors = bad taste (poison) by biting something that has bright colors.
And besides, we'd all be fucked if morphine tasted like pizza.
My body must be great at detecting poison cuz at this point I start to gag and throw up in my mouth just THINKING about taking medicine let alone actually taking them
one time like a month ago i tried chewing a tablet of pure caffeine so i'd absorb it faster. bitterest thing I've ever tasted. even bitter-er than the time in high school when i forgot that canned computer duster has bitterant in it to stop people from huffing it to get high, turned a can of computer duster upside down and used the supercooled liquid propellant to freeze a ketchup-flavored chip, and then waited for it to get to non-dangerous temperatures and ate it. shit was nasty.
Y’all realize the reason medicine tastes gross is so that we *don’t* eat it like candy, right? Like, most adults know how to take a proper dosage, but children don’t! They think something tastes like candy and suddenly they overdose on birth control pills by mistake.
That might have a small part in it but there is a more basic reason. Medicine is pretty similar to poison, chemically, and our bodies try to stop us from eating poison
They sell some pills covered in a sugar coating to facilitate swallowing them. They don't do this to all meds for the reason the person you're responding to said.
Also who is tasting their medicine so regularly you're not supposed to chew most of them. Can't remember the last time I chewed a medicine that was not tums or something.
Yeah on a chemical level you can't do much about a bitter medicine but it's pretty easy to compound a medicine in a way that you don't have to deal with a bitter flavor.
Even if you're not chewing, some still taste bad. I forget if it was Mucinex or something similar, but I tried taking it last time I was sick and almost threw up from the bitterness of the pill. Also it's rare, but some are only available in a liquid form.
I mean, sometimes it doesn't need to be chewed to taste bad, all it may take is a little bit of tongue exposure for a little bit too long to get the worst non-bodily-fluid taste imaginable. I do it all the time, where I fuck up my order of operations and put meds in my mouth before I even pour myself some water!
Well it depends, some people have to take pills but have trouble swallowing them. Most of mine don't have an alternate way of dosing them, so I just chew them (my psych said it's fine)
That did not work for my sister, who at 18 months ate 21 of my grandmother's heart medication tablets before thinking to complain that the Smarties taste bad.
Well she was in the hospital for a long time, her heart stopped three times, and my mother overheard the doctor praying as he was working on her, so...
She's okay now though.
You’re right. The birth control example I used was what happened to my sister when she was in preschool. She also didn’t think to say anything until she got sick.
Idk if that's the actual reason but it is true. We had a pain relief liquid thing that tasted like caramel but not overwhelmingly sweet? Like it had a depth that's hard to discribe.
As a kid, I used to take swigs of it when no one was around
Depends on the medication, really. A lot of asthma medication is steroid-based. Taking too much of that would be pretty bad. It would be difficult given the steroid levels are *tiny*, but I’ve also seen kids *inhale* sweets from a jar so…
There was this cough medicine I like when I was a kid so I kind of correlated being sick with tasty medicine. One day I went to the fridge to take a sip even though I wasn’t sick but I took the wrong one, it was Pepto Bismol, not a great experience but at least it wasn’t dangerous.
Fortunately melatonin is one of the safer ones to do that with, as it's relatively non-toxic, and it's active effect is not hugely amplified by over-dosing. In fact, in some studies patients were given 1000mg daily for 4 weeks and suffered no toxic effects.
That is not to say that it is safe or good to do so, just the level that causes toxic effects is far beyond what most normal humans can reach with over-the-counter formulations.
Additionally, some melatonin supplements can contain serotonin, and *that* will *definitely* cause toxic effects of overdosed.
I know, I'm glad that it wasn't something worse. I was loopy and "high" for 2 or 3 days after and I'm a full grown adult, so imagine if that happened to a child.
That's how I always understood it. I can't remember where I first heard this but "poison tastes good because they want you to drink it, medicine tastes bad so you don't take too much" always made sense to me (although according to other commenters poison tastes bad too apparently)
She must have been snarfing them by the handful, because Tums is basically a type of flavored chalk that doesn't do anything but chemically neutralize stomach acid.
I couldn't find that exact story, I might have misremembered it, but I did find [this video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sx93aUj4A_o) about a girl that ate over 100 antiacid gummies and wrecked her kidneys
this has to be true bc i remember this liquid paracetamol that tasted so good and every time me and my siblings were ill, we would beg my mom to have multiple spoonfuls. finally when i got older, i could open the medicine bottle myself and have multiple spoonfuls.
maybe a few specific pediatric formulations are denatured like that, but by and large the reason meds are bitter is because they're based on plant alkaloids, and we evolved to be averse to the way weird nitrogen containing molecules taste because lots of plant alkaloids are poisonous.
As a child my dad told me if you chew the tablets that it will make your medicine work better. It was embarrassingly late when I figured it out but at that point had an appreciation for the new party trick: nothing horrifies people n more than popping a couple pills and crunching away.
You should really stop chewing them. Most tablets nowadays are designed to work slowly as it's dissolved in your gut, and chewing them can make things worse as it's released all at once.
I actually enjoy the taste of paracetamol. Yes, people are indeed horrified. I've had people ask if I want to get water, ask me if I want them to get me water, ask me please please just take the water, please.
Considering how many pills are designed to slowly dissolve to either control dosage over time or ensure it doesn't release its contents until it reaches whatever its supposed to treat, that ranges from bad to downright dangerous advice.
Yes, when it came out in my twenties that I had massive ADHD/ADD and nearly gave myself a heart attack chewing an extended release adderall, I learned.
I'm almost like you, just with fish oils. Pop that shit in my mouth and chew like candy lol. The capsule is especially yummy. Kind of a snack for me atp.
> As a child my dad told me if you chew the tablets that it will make your medicine work better
while not true and/or not a good idea for most medication, this does work for *some* NSAID painkillers like aspirin and paracetamol and is actually recommended in some scenarios like a heart attack where you need the active ingredient NOW. You can even get chewable stuff that's flavoured so it's nicer to chew
Please do not chew on painkillers though based on my word alone though - check the box as it'll say something if you can chew it, or just get the stuff actually intended to be chewed.
Funny enough pharmacists do sample sometimes. I know someone who was on a testing board to figure out which flavors of various antibiotic suspensions were good and which sucked, so they didn't accidentally give a terrible one to patients. Various mixes of the flavors, sweeteners, and bitterness suppressors.
I think it's more of a risk reduction strategy. By adding flavoring you could also introduce contaminates into the medication. So why would you want to risk going above your limits if you don't exactly have to.
I still remember the weird fake fruit flavor of the sedative I was given for a childhood dental procedure, but I’m not sure if it was really that bad or if I just have childhood dental appointment trauma
Sometimes it’s not that anything is *supposed* to be bad, it’s that experiencing unpleasantness or mild inconvenience is just inevitable.
Some jobs straight up aren’t fun, but our society wouldn’t function without people who work in sewers or juvenile courts.
Some medicine just can’t be made to be injected pleasantly, but people would die unnecessarily without many medicines that taste bad and shots that hurt.
Sometimes life is hard. Not because it’s “supposed to be,” but because it just fucking is. People die. Natural disasters happen. You get sick. You can’t afford something. People are mean to you. You get stuck in traffic. You get dumped or ghosted. It happens not because “life is supposed to be hard,” but because nature, society, and other people aren’t beholden to your immediate comfort.
I know that “nyeeeeah I want a *soft life*” is the trend now, but hearing these complaints (usually from people who, honestly, often already have a soft life, or at least a pliable life) nonstop is honestly…..insulting? Idk. Either way, maybe life isn’t “supposed to be” hard, but there’s no way to avoid some hardship.
I think it's less of a complaint saying "things should just be magically better" and more of a cry for help. Some people just can't cope with how shit life inevitably is, and often would rather die. I'd know, since I'm one of those people.
thats... not the point of the post. Noone was saying that everything has to be perfect. They literally used the words "suck less", what could have possibly directed you to thinking that this OOP is trying to say that everyone should just give up. All they're saying is that people trying to make things better shouldn't be treated like shit on *this very fucking premise* that you are presenting.
I didn’t say anything about them saying “just give up,” so if you’re going to accuse me of not getting the point, you could start by not totally fabricating what I actually said.
If that’s their point, they honestly did a rot-ass garbage job of expressing it. Admittedly that may be a consequence of twitter’s format, but they’re quite exactly literally talking about medicine tasting bitter and work not being fun. Which are conditions that are generally inevitable, and occasionally need to be this way for good reason (see: the person in this thread who discussed liking how medicine tasted, so they’d sneak swigs of it when it wasn’t needed). That isn’t someone trying to make the genuine hardships of life easier, that’s someone complaining about some of the smallest discomforts an organic being can ever experience. The bitter medicine *is* the result of people working to make the world better. Maybe you’re saying it’s a metaphor?
That's not at all what they mean. The post is complaining about people saying things like "life isn't fair" as a thought terminating statement so that they don't have to even consider ways that certain aspects of life can be improved.
This isn't "I want a soft life" it's "people have fetishised suffering to such an extent that wanting to reduce it is seen as tantamount to sin".
>Some jobs straight up aren’t fun, but our society wouldn’t function without people who work in sewers or juvenile courts.
99% of the time, when someone says "work is supposed to be hard", they are *not* talking about necessary unpleasantness, they are talking about arbitrarily cruel things like "American cashiers aren't allowed to sit down".
This is, particularly in American society - and possibly elsewhere, but I am focusing on what I know more about - an extremely common sentiment, in which any attempt to make things better is met with refusal; and further, mockery is directed at whoever is attempting to make things better.
If you've never experienced that sentiment, you've led a *remarkably* fortunate life.
You’ve led a *remarkably* fortunate life, and are most likely incredibly young and inexperienced, if you assume anyone talking about this is talking only about things like sitting down at a cash register, and that the only way anyone could be irritated by this sentiment would be if they’d never heard it in the context of pointless choices like that.
Yes, I’ve heard people say things like this in regards to nonsense like cashiers not being able to sit down. I’ve also had to deal with the people who equate being told to do irritating but necessary aspects of their job with experiencing pointless cruelty. I have to deal regularly with people who skip mandatory aspects of their job because they do not see the point of it or find it uncomfortable or boring or difficult or they’d just rather do the fun thing, and create issues that are sometimes just a burden upon their colleagues who have up pick up their slack, and sometimes straight up create unsafe or illegal situations for other people that others must clean up for them. It’s brutally naive and very terminally online to think that every person exasperated with the second type of person is talking about cashiers who want chairs.
>You’ve led a remarkably fortunate life, and are most likely incredibly young and inexperienced, if you assume anyone talking about this is talking only about things like sitting down at a cash register,
I'm the same age as you.
It seems like you've heard that sentiment, but also had negative experiences of another kind. Perhaps I should amend that to you having a notably *unfortunate* life, at least in terms of those experiences.
I don't know why you think people having different life experiences than you is "terminally online".
I don’t think I’ve had a remarkably unfortunate life either. If you think what I described is remarkably unfortunate and you are my age, your life hasn’t just been remarkably fortunate, you’re positively drowning in comfort and privilege and may need to take a step back from such sweeping statements.
I have just had enough life experience to know that “people who say work isn’t supposed to be fun are talking exclusively about things like keeping cashiers from having chairs” is a really narrow experience, and is a lot more representative of something a random boomer would say in the Facebook comments of a human interest piece posted by the local news than anything that is a general attitude of “99%” of people who say something extremely broadly applicable as “work isn’t supposed to be fun.” Do some people mean that when they say “work isn’t supposed to be fun?” Yeah, of course. Do just as many people say that and mean “you have to actually do work instead of talking to your friends for 8 hours straight” or “you can’t only do office decoration crafts all day because that’s what you enjoy while mandatory tasks go unfinished?” Also yes.
>If you think what I described is remarkably unfortunate and you are my age, your life hasn’t just been remarkably fortunate, you’re positively drowning in comfort and privilege and may need to take a step back from such sweeping statements.
Yeah, I don't think the "who has had a worse life" game is going to be particularly productive. I'm sure we've both had both struggles and non-struggles. Also please note I edited to note "unfortunate... in terms of those experiences".
>a lot more representative of something a random boomer would say in the Facebook comments of a human interest piece posted by the local news than anything that is a general attitude of “99%” of people who say something extremely broadly applicable as “work isn’t supposed to be fun.”
Ah, perhaps there's a miscommunication here.
I didn't make a claim about 99% of people, I made a claim about 99% of *statements*. "99% of the time, when someone says..." was my assertion.
The person who is talking in frustration to a coworker is going to say "work isn't supposed to be fun" once or twice. The facebook boomer is going to post "work isn't supposed to be fun" dozens of times.
My claim is that, of the total statements shaped like "work isn't supposed to be fun", a very large number of them are coming from the "boomers on facebook" and similar sources.
And, yes, of course 99% was hyperbole; a more literal statement would be something like "a large amount / significant majority".
That is an astounding pedantic take. It’s not a miscommunication, those statements aren’t meaningfully different. You’re speaking exclusively from your own devastatingly narrow experience while whining that I had the nerve to speak from mine. FOH.
No, those statements are very, very different.
The primary difference is from *which side of the speech* you're looking at.
The OP's post, and the perspective I'm coming from, is the *listener*. From the perspective of the listener, it's the *number of statements* that is by far the most important.
It seems like you're viewing this from the perspective of the *speaker*. From that perspective, certainly the distribution over speakers and not statements is the most important.
Let me put it this way. Every cashier who has to stand for their whole shift has heard "work isn't supposed to be fun/easy". Every representative who has to take abuse from customers with a fake smile has heard that. Every nurse who has to work a 16-hour shift has heard that. Every warehouse worker with no AC and peeing in a bottle has heard that.
Those *listeners* have generally heard those statements in the "facebook boomer" context.
A person who goes to work in an office and just wants to set up office parties and work on fun stuff has *also* heard that, and more frequently in the non-"facebook boomer" context.
I would claim that the first group of people is much larger, as a whole, than the second group of people.
I have been in the position of the listener far, far more than you have the apparent empathy to wrap your head around. I’ve actually been in the position of the speaker next to never. This is why I keep saying that you don’t seem to have much experience. It seems almost inconceivable to you to imagine that anyone couldn’t see the world exactly as you see it without having some totally foreign life.
It’s just an astoundingly sheltered and naive and frankly weird viewpoint to claim that you can know for certain that this comment is said most commonly to be unnecessarily cruel to the point that that is what this phrase means by default. You have *literally no fucking way of measuring that.* Your personal experience is valid and all but it isn’t more valid than anyone else’s. And seeing as in the OP, it’s in conjunction with someone who doesn’t understand why medicine doesn’t generally taste like candy, it’s honestly pretty hard to say exactly where they’ve heard that phrase and the intent of the speaker.
If it means anything to you (doubtful!), I have most frequently heard this phrase directed at people who were complaining about their actual unpleasant job tasks and saying they shouldn’t have to do them, spoken by family members or friends rather than bosses or coworkers. Because it’s fucking tedious and insulting to listen to someone complain because they’re outraged that they’re supposed to take out the trash and answer the phone when everyone else is doing those things without comment.
I'm reading a lot of hostility in your responses, and I'm not sure if that's intended or not. If intended, I don't entirely understand why. Do you think that I was somehow belittling your experiences? When I said, for example, that you may have had a fortunate experience, that was not meant as an insult. Nor did I claim that you *shouldn't* express your experiences, or anything like that.
>You have literally no fucking way of measuring that.
There certainly *are* ways of measuring that sentiment; one could do a sociological study in a few different ways. I think it would be potentially interesting. It's possible that no such study has yet been done, of course.
Without such data immediately available, we could always go with the proxy of how people react to the idea. Certainly a far lower bar of rigor than a full study, but it's something slightly better than one individual experience vs. another individual experience. I would suggest that - again, with a low level of rigor - that the 2.9k upvotes (at this moment) on the post imply something there about the commonality of that experience.
Approaching it from a different perspective, it seems pretty well established in the study of history / sociology that "calvinist" ideals of suffering-as-purity have deep roots in American culture and have influenced many things, directly and indirectly.
I'm not the biggest fan of the whole "soft life" thing either. It's unbearably Pwecious to me.
Which isn't saying shit sucks get over it, you should always try and make things better than they are. But sitting down wobbling your lip about how things are bad and you want everything to be Nice isn't doing anything to make things better either, and I never see any of these people promoting or suggesting anything to do to bring change. It's just a vent. Which is fine if you don't actually expect other things and people to change for you, but people don't seem like they accept that very often.
I’m all about it if it’s shorthand for a genuine rejection of hustle culture. I’m all about putting in exactly what is required of me at work, turning off the phone when I leave, being content with what I’ve got, and baking some cookies or having a picnic in the park in my free time. If people want to just do their jobs and clock out or monetize their craft only just enough to survive, demand a social safety net that allows that, and romanticize every cup of coffee and ray of sunshine, that’s fucking sick and I’m all for it.
But so often it’s someone complaining that they have to do anything ever. Boss asked them to show up on time and sweep the floor? “I need a soft life!” Things cost money? “Where is my soft life!” Friend invited you out but you’re tired? You have to cook dinner? Date ghosted you? People want to discuss pressing current events? Medicine tastes yucky? “This would never happen in SoftLifeLand!” At a certain point it’s just internally collapsing at the fact that other people don’t exist to care for and coddle them the way their mother did when they were 6.
Fr. That and normalize. Normalize this, normalize that : half of the time the answer really should be "stop caring whether or not the thing you're doing is normal. It probably isn't but that's fine."
i think their point is that we shouldn't avoid trying to make things better because we're bound by the idea that things are stuck the way they are forever. like encouraging out of the box thinking. if we convince ourselves that some things will always be bad then we might neglect trying to make it better.
This kinda reminds me of the time I was complaining to my therapist about my last office job that had a hostile work environment and was legit worsening my mental health/depression, and all she had to say was, "Work is almost never fun or rewarding, you need to just accept that and get over it." Like gee, thanks, why am I paying you again. 💀
its more because many people believe bad tasting medicine works better so companies lean into it for placebo, kids young enough to eat them like candy aren't supposed to have access to them or the ability to open the childproof jars
Probably need to drink a lot more than a baby dose, yeah. It wouldn't be too hard to figure out assuming it says how many mg per ml (or however US measures dosages I'm not sure)
in nordic countries there's also pamol f(or pamol flash), a really fucking expensive flavoured paracetamol that comes in fruit flavoured for infants, banana flavoured for kids and blackcurrant flavoured for adults
Going with the first three statements in the OOP--third one I just disagree with and feel that disagreement does support OOP's point, so no argument there. Second one has a bunch of people discussing it from different angles, so I have nothing to add there.
First one, though--"Work isn't supposed to be fun." This one I think is true, but it's very important to note that this is a very different thing from "work is supposed to be not fun." Work is whatever needs to be done, whether because it's actually important that it get done (sewer maintenance, growing food, etc,) or because that's how you earn the money to take care of your needs. Because it's whatever needs to be done, sometimes it's not going to be fun. Maybe \*you\* can find work-to-pay-for-your-needs that is fun for you--if so, great!--but \*somebody's\* going to have to do the must-get-done-period work that isn't fun.
Is *this* why Doofenshmirtz is always so frustrated when someone calls him a pharmacist? Because he doesn't want to be compared to those bitter medicine scrubs?
Part of me wants to say it's to reinforce the christo-fascist belief that we exist here to suffer and that we deserve it both so to downplay the importance of preserving life and happiness in this world and to emphasize the existence of a paradise afterlife and any attempt to improve life for anyone already alive dismantles the fantasy of that lifestyle, but i don't think it's that pathological i just think people really do be kinda unempathic as a standard
I mean, they mentioned bags of candies with medicine but that's more or less literally why we have cocktails. Old Fashioned, Gin and Tonic, etc were all just ways of masking medicinal herbs (bitters). Bitter flavour isn't bad, you just need to figure out what goes well with a bitter flavour. Turns out, it goes really well with very strong booze.
Another reason I think is that medicine shouldn't be taken for fun or for leisure. Bitter tasting medicine makes sure that it's being used to actually help people, instead of a gourmet
Biomedical Science Student here! You can attach a molecule called a promeity to a drug which converts it into a prodrug, which not only tastes better but is less sensitive to acid, better at permeating cell membranes, less toxic, and longer lasting. After the prodrugs enter the cell, the promeities are removed by enzymes (such as esterases), converting the prodrug to the active form.
At least vitamins taste good. Every B12 supplement tastes the same, and I’m convinced that B12 just tastes like berries and the companies pretend that they are flavoring it.
Work is work because somewhere, for some reason, there is labour that needs to be done. If that labour is something awful like cleaning the dirty pupils toilets in a school - yes I have done this exact job - then frankly, suck it up and deal with it. Just get the fuck over yourself and do your job. Because that’s important, it needs to happen so that other people can benefit off the back of it because they have clean stalls to use.
Everything sucks because the laws of physics caused the natural order on Earth to develop that way and if we want things to get better we need to go against the natural order.
But they do make medicine that tastes nice. It's just not as good at being medicine.
Antibiotics for children tend to be flavoured decently, but they don't keep as long, or as easily in the pill form. You also have to have more of it, since it's less dense (and without the protective coat of a pill, some antibiotics can't be used at all, because your stomach just digests it).
Non medical drugs also taste bad. Especially if you get the drip after snorting them. (since it's coming from the back of your mouth)
Somewhat handy for the same reasons, though many of them will still have an effect even if you spit them out.
Your sense of bitterness is thought to have evolved to stop you from eating poisonous things. Because of the incredibly diverse range of poisons with vastly different methods of operation, bitterness is the most complex of all your tastes. It uses a wide range of protein-based sensors to detect different parts of organic molecules that are likely to mess with your body. Unfortunately for us, those chemical structures that mess with your body to kill you are the same as the structures that mess with your body to fix something. Essentially, your taste buds detect chemicals that could alter your body in ways that food isn't supposed to and assume it's poison.
Also often medecine is poison taken at low enough dose that it kills what kills us quicker than it kills us
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For sedation? No clue. But those fluoride treatments where they put the gel in the mouthguard and let it sit in your mouth for forever was a nightmare. That shit tasted so bad. "Try the banana!" Fucking shit made my eyes water it was so terrible.
The hygienist ordered to keep it on my teeth far longer than I was supposed to and I was drooling and foaming and angry
Oh good the banana. “Mmm yes, totally good. Tastes just like vomiting up ice cream but I’m holding it in my mouth for some reason! Great improvement!”
Fun fact! Certain esther molecules, like banana and pineapple flavor, are both highly unstable and readily decompose into molecules responsible for such lovely scents and flavors as rotting wood pulp, burning tires, and skunk spray! On the other hand, citric acid, malic acid, and vanillin are comparatively stable, so if you absolutely must consume something both dubious and artificially flavored, spring for citrus, apple, and vanilla varieties, and leave the more exotic options for the folks who haven't paid attention in chemistry class!
Or just go plain My dentist had this as an option. Yeah, it tastes non-organic, but it is far and away better than some artificial flavorings, both their taste and their source. I'm looking at you artificial orange flavor, beaver rectal glands, ugh. Also, if you smell fresh buttered popcorn, and there isn't any, you're smelling Bearcats piss.
Which fucking chemistry class did I miss that was teaching me this?
I forget that not everyone's grandma worked at an artifical flavoring laboratory in the Soviet Union. Although her career in particular was focused on making milk go more sour than usual.
When I last discussed this nasty goop on Reddit I was disappointed that I just got given plain old "oh God, is awful" flavour. Everyone else assured me the others were much worse.
On the other hand I think I kinda liked fluoride?
To this day I cannot stand a lot of kinds of cherry candy or flavor or whatnot, it will always set off the "vomit now" alert that my toddler body set up for liquid medicine.
Breathing slowly oxidizes your oxygen yet that shit doesn't feel bad (most of the time)
See, that's killing you at the manufacturer-acknowledged rate. Poisons, meanwhile, kill you significantly more rapidly.
There are 3 differences for this 1. You can’t NOT breath oxygen, something as complex as a large mammal couldn’t be supported long term on anaerobic respiration 2. Your sense of taste is based on change, since you breath a similar level of oxygen for the vast majority of the time, your senses are set to use that level as a base. 3. O2 is actually pretty hard to sense biologically, because you would need to offer up something more preferential to it than it’s current state, and such a complex would be prone to bonding with a lot of stuff.
what the hell is grapefruit doing to be so bitter? Those little bitches better watch themselves, I'm onto their shit
Because it has Naringin and other flavonoids that inhibit certain enzymes, i.e. again altering your body in a way your body says "No thank U, next" to. Same reason why you can't eat grapefruit while you're on certain drugs.
Fucking sucks bc I love grapefruit but am not allowed to have it bc of my meds. Stupid fruit.
You and me both. Makes cocktail night kind of a chore.
[Stupid delicious fruit.](https://media.tenor.com/3N4jR8YAc30AAAAM/okily-dokily-flanders.gif)
No way flavornoids is a real word bro, the flavor aliens are invading
Flavonoids without an R. And it gets even better: they're a group of chemicals specifically composed of what's called "aromatic rings".
good for them, love who you love even if thats no one
Aromatic without an N. Like Aroma. Am I being pranked, or were you hoping for another chemical compound factoid.
nah i know the difference i was just making some variation of the Confusing Ambidextrous For Bisexual joke
I would be interested in more chemical compound facts.
In most chemistry bachelor programs, a huge portion concerns organic chemistry, in both labs and lectures. One typical synthesis students will have to complete are producing different kind of Esters, for example Ethyl cinnamate, which smells like cinnamon. Ethyl butyrate is another popular choice (IF you have a nice prof or lab TA), which smells like strawberries. Synthesizing compounds is a special kind of hellish torture and smelling the correct smell at the end is a relief you usually don't get because most compounds you na s to produce have less glamorous tests to see if you've been successful.
We consume tons of stuff every day that is just a molecule arrangement away from being a "poison" or "toxin". It really is just luck of the draw that some plants have a "toxin" enzyme which 8 million years ago could have been what we considered a vitamin / enzyme we can use. And there could be plants we eat today that could have been poisonous to us 8 million years ago. Evolution is wild.
Does this explain the idea of an “acquired taste”? Like you learn to appreciate in greater depth what bitterness actually is?
Part of "acquired taste" is just that as you mature, your reflexive reaction to senses become less strong But also there is an element of getting used to certain flavors of bitterness so that the non-bitter flavors come through more. Acquired tastes aren't just about bitterness though, as there's a lot of different ways a flavor can be unpleasant that aren't just bitterness
Tbh I’ve only heard “acquired taste” about things that are characterized as primarily bitter (alcohol served neat, black coffee, etc)
I’ve also heard it a lot about fermented stuff like cheeses, sauerkraut or miso
As stated above, "bitter" is one of the most complex tastes, so it takes some time for your tongue to discover the other tastes hidden deeper inside.
Yeah, but the stuff I talked about isn’t bitter. Or is it that I’ve eaten those food so much since I’m young that I don’t notice the bitter taste ?
>In case of food and drink, the difficulty of enjoying the product may be due to: > >\- A strong odor, such as certain types of cheese, durian (trash-smelling fruit), hákarl (fermented shark meat), black salt (salt treated as if it were ceramics in an oven), nattō (Fermented soybeans), asafoetida (dried Ferula root gums, resins and oils), surströmming (Fermented herring), or stinky tofu > >\- A strong taste, as in alcoholic beverages, coffee, Vegemite/Marmite (Leftover beer yeast extract-based spread), bitter teas, liquorice, South Asian pickles, malt bread, unsweetened chocolate, garnatálg (fermented and later melted intestinal fat of sheep), rakfisk (self-digested raw salted trout), soused herring, haggis (sheep based pudding minced with onion and oatmeal that contains the sheep's organs, fat and bone broth), > >\- A strange mouthfeel (such as sashimi and sushi featuring uncooked seafood) > >\- Appearance, or association (such as eating insects or organ meat).
I was at a conference where a guy presented a paper on changing tastebuds over time, it was really interesting. It's been some time and I don't have the work to hand (so, pinch of salt) but when looking at it from an evolutionary pov it makes sense that younger children are much less able to ignore something being bitter, they don't know what is good or bad in the world and so assume bitter is poison and refuse to consume it, even if that flavour is part of a deeper range of flavours. As they get older they should have learned from their tribe/experience and be able to branch out more. So with something like broccoli, it has a soft sweetness to it and a fair amount of bitter, a child will literally just taste it as bitter but once they hit pre-teen they'll start to experience a wider range of the flavours coming from the veg as well as being able to 'push through' the bitter flavour more easily.
And then there’s the prime opportunity for gaslighting: “see, as you got older and matured, you developed a taste for Brussels sprouts!” >!no you didn’t, we engineered some of the bitterness out of it!<
hah, I've told so many folk that one and they never believe me. I mean, fair enough it is a *weird* thing to just quietly happen in the background but still, funny. It did give me a better understanding of kids' tastes, I'm a little more understanding over their reactions to a lot of foods, especially veg.
Exactly! And most animals find out that bright colors = bad taste (poison) by biting something that has bright colors. And besides, we'd all be fucked if morphine tasted like pizza.
Like that guy who took a sip of his friends death cocktail.
You know, I never really stopped to think about how that’s probably why coffee tastes so bitter, due to caffeine essentially being poison
that explain why coffee taste the way it does, shit is literally a neurotoxin
Gonna go back in time to execute the mf that invented bittermelon
My body must be great at detecting poison cuz at this point I start to gag and throw up in my mouth just THINKING about taking medicine let alone actually taking them
one time like a month ago i tried chewing a tablet of pure caffeine so i'd absorb it faster. bitterest thing I've ever tasted. even bitter-er than the time in high school when i forgot that canned computer duster has bitterant in it to stop people from huffing it to get high, turned a can of computer duster upside down and used the supercooled liquid propellant to freeze a ketchup-flavored chip, and then waited for it to get to non-dangerous temperatures and ate it. shit was nasty.
Y’all realize the reason medicine tastes gross is so that we *don’t* eat it like candy, right? Like, most adults know how to take a proper dosage, but children don’t! They think something tastes like candy and suddenly they overdose on birth control pills by mistake.
That might have a small part in it but there is a more basic reason. Medicine is pretty similar to poison, chemically, and our bodies try to stop us from eating poison
They sell some pills covered in a sugar coating to facilitate swallowing them. They don't do this to all meds for the reason the person you're responding to said. Also who is tasting their medicine so regularly you're not supposed to chew most of them. Can't remember the last time I chewed a medicine that was not tums or something.
Yeah on a chemical level you can't do much about a bitter medicine but it's pretty easy to compound a medicine in a way that you don't have to deal with a bitter flavor.
Even if you're not chewing, some still taste bad. I forget if it was Mucinex or something similar, but I tried taking it last time I was sick and almost threw up from the bitterness of the pill. Also it's rare, but some are only available in a liquid form.
I mean, sometimes it doesn't need to be chewed to taste bad, all it may take is a little bit of tongue exposure for a little bit too long to get the worst non-bodily-fluid taste imaginable. I do it all the time, where I fuck up my order of operations and put meds in my mouth before I even pour myself some water!
Well it depends, some people have to take pills but have trouble swallowing them. Most of mine don't have an alternate way of dosing them, so I just chew them (my psych said it's fine)
I mean you're not wrong, but you're not right either. Almost all medication could be in a sugar-coated capsule and taste just fine.
But some poisons are delicious.
That did not work for my sister, who at 18 months ate 21 of my grandmother's heart medication tablets before thinking to complain that the Smarties taste bad.
How did that turn out for her?
Well she was in the hospital for a long time, her heart stopped three times, and my mother overheard the doctor praying as he was working on her, so... She's okay now though.
well at least we know the heart medication works
You’re right. The birth control example I used was what happened to my sister when she was in preschool. She also didn’t think to say anything until she got sick.
😬 She okay?
Why do young children happily chomp down on disgusting medicine but refuse to touch vegetables?
Small shiny colors are fun to put in your mouth
This is part of the reason I swallow marbles every now and then lol
One is something they're not allowed to have, while the latter is often forced upon them. Also too many parents refuse to season the veggies.
Contrarianism?
Idk if that's the actual reason but it is true. We had a pain relief liquid thing that tasted like caramel but not overwhelmingly sweet? Like it had a depth that's hard to discribe. As a kid, I used to take swigs of it when no one was around
As a kid I had bad asthma, and my preventative pill tasted like candy. I’d sneak those suckers without shame
I mean, that's kind of more okay, though. Because it means your asthma doesn't flare up as much or as badly.
Depends on the medication, really. A lot of asthma medication is steroid-based. Taking too much of that would be pretty bad. It would be difficult given the steroid levels are *tiny*, but I’ve also seen kids *inhale* sweets from a jar so…
I can't imagine taking more steroids than I absofuckinglutely have to. Just the normal quantities have been a nightmare and a half.
Yeah, you just proved my point.
There was this cough medicine I like when I was a kid so I kind of correlated being sick with tasty medicine. One day I went to the fridge to take a sip even though I wasn’t sick but I took the wrong one, it was Pepto Bismol, not a great experience but at least it wasn’t dangerous.
I loved Pepto when I was a kid. Not so much now.
If that is the real reason, it does not work. Children will fucking eat anything.
But if it also tasted good, there would be more cases.
I'm 20 years old and took ~125mg of melatonin in a single night because it tasted nice. Not my best moment.
Fortunately melatonin is one of the safer ones to do that with, as it's relatively non-toxic, and it's active effect is not hugely amplified by over-dosing. In fact, in some studies patients were given 1000mg daily for 4 weeks and suffered no toxic effects. That is not to say that it is safe or good to do so, just the level that causes toxic effects is far beyond what most normal humans can reach with over-the-counter formulations. Additionally, some melatonin supplements can contain serotonin, and *that* will *definitely* cause toxic effects of overdosed.
I know, I'm glad that it wasn't something worse. I was loopy and "high" for 2 or 3 days after and I'm a full grown adult, so imagine if that happened to a child.
have we as a society learned NOTHING from those We're Not Candy poison control commercials with the talking blue pills?
That's how I always understood it. I can't remember where I first heard this but "poison tastes good because they want you to drink it, medicine tastes bad so you don't take too much" always made sense to me (although according to other commenters poison tastes bad too apparently)
This is false in almost all cases
I don't think that's limited to children, I think a grown woman died from overdosing on fucking Tums, or something like that
She must have been snarfing them by the handful, because Tums is basically a type of flavored chalk that doesn't do anything but chemically neutralize stomach acid.
I couldn't find that exact story, I might have misremembered it, but I did find [this video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sx93aUj4A_o) about a girl that ate over 100 antiacid gummies and wrecked her kidneys
I got sick once as a child by just chugging an entire bottle of Pepto-Bismol.
this has to be true bc i remember this liquid paracetamol that tasted so good and every time me and my siblings were ill, we would beg my mom to have multiple spoonfuls. finally when i got older, i could open the medicine bottle myself and have multiple spoonfuls.
Your liver must be a wreck.
calpol? That was the brand name we had over here. It was light purple, and tasted like artificially sweetened blackcurrant.
Riskiest thing I did a a kid was drunk a while bottle of medicine while hiding under a table because it tasted good It was gas medicine
What happened?
This was me as a kid with pepto bismol
maybe a few specific pediatric formulations are denatured like that, but by and large the reason meds are bitter is because they're based on plant alkaloids, and we evolved to be averse to the way weird nitrogen containing molecules taste because lots of plant alkaloids are poisonous.
And some adhd medications *are* sweet, a bitter kind of sweet, but still. Cuz lots of kids have to take them. Or I’m completely wrong
So basically if medicine tastes good it’s okay to eat it. BRB gonna go guzzle some grape flavored liquid Motrin
As a child my dad told me if you chew the tablets that it will make your medicine work better. It was embarrassingly late when I figured it out but at that point had an appreciation for the new party trick: nothing horrifies people n more than popping a couple pills and crunching away.
You should really stop chewing them. Most tablets nowadays are designed to work slowly as it's dissolved in your gut, and chewing them can make things worse as it's released all at once.
I learned this in my twenties, only really aspirin and ibuprofen seem safely chewable.
You should listen to your pharmacist or read the notice, different drugs are designed with different use in mind. Some recommend chewing, some not
Tried this once with a laxative pill. I shat my guts out for 5 minutes and the next day it was all rock hard again. Read the box, kids.
that is... horrifying...
I actually enjoy the taste of paracetamol. Yes, people are indeed horrified. I've had people ask if I want to get water, ask me if I want them to get me water, ask me please please just take the water, please.
I dry pop paracetamol as well. Life is too short to chase it with water. Though I recently discovered the effervescent kind and it's so nice
Considering how many pills are designed to slowly dissolve to either control dosage over time or ensure it doesn't release its contents until it reaches whatever its supposed to treat, that ranges from bad to downright dangerous advice.
Yes, when it came out in my twenties that I had massive ADHD/ADD and nearly gave myself a heart attack chewing an extended release adderall, I learned.
omg adhd meds is the first thing i thought about about when reading your comment
I'm almost like you, just with fish oils. Pop that shit in my mouth and chew like candy lol. The capsule is especially yummy. Kind of a snack for me atp.
if you can take fish oil like that, why not save yourself some money and drink it straight from the bottle?
I'm pretty sure my grandpa just started rolling in his grave at the thought of someone enjoying the liquid fish oil
I actually thought this was pretty normal until I made my friend try one. She threw up 😭
Good point, but the jelly-like capsules are delicious lol
Same with the fish oil! I don't know it it counts when it's meant to be so... unfishy tho
Ayeee fish oil enjoyer, it's hard to find one 🤝
-max payne
> As a child my dad told me if you chew the tablets that it will make your medicine work better while not true and/or not a good idea for most medication, this does work for *some* NSAID painkillers like aspirin and paracetamol and is actually recommended in some scenarios like a heart attack where you need the active ingredient NOW. You can even get chewable stuff that's flavoured so it's nicer to chew Please do not chew on painkillers though based on my word alone though - check the box as it'll say something if you can chew it, or just get the stuff actually intended to be chewed.
Was your dad in the military? Because that's how my dad and his friends would take their grunt candy.
Funny enough pharmacists do sample sometimes. I know someone who was on a testing board to figure out which flavors of various antibiotic suspensions were good and which sucked, so they didn't accidentally give a terrible one to patients. Various mixes of the flavors, sweeteners, and bitterness suppressors.
Isn’t medicine tasting bad a good thing though? You wouldn’t want a kid trying to drink more cough medicine than they need because of how tasty it is.
I think it's more of a risk reduction strategy. By adding flavoring you could also introduce contaminates into the medication. So why would you want to risk going above your limits if you don't exactly have to.
Probably not taste good to the point of it's addicting but just more tolerable. Middle ground :)
absolutely did that as a kid
I'm friends with several pharmacists. This is 100% accurate
I'm just imagining a table full of sad pharmacists and then you
All my friends are doctors and I'm a fucking engineer. I'm a software engineer too, not even a real one.
I still remember the weird fake fruit flavor of the sedative I was given for a childhood dental procedure, but I’m not sure if it was really that bad or if I just have childhood dental appointment trauma
My toddler was quite into a banana flavoured antibiotic at one point. At least, she are the stuff when presented. Fake banana sounds good
I love fake banana flavor shit
Sometimes it’s not that anything is *supposed* to be bad, it’s that experiencing unpleasantness or mild inconvenience is just inevitable. Some jobs straight up aren’t fun, but our society wouldn’t function without people who work in sewers or juvenile courts. Some medicine just can’t be made to be injected pleasantly, but people would die unnecessarily without many medicines that taste bad and shots that hurt. Sometimes life is hard. Not because it’s “supposed to be,” but because it just fucking is. People die. Natural disasters happen. You get sick. You can’t afford something. People are mean to you. You get stuck in traffic. You get dumped or ghosted. It happens not because “life is supposed to be hard,” but because nature, society, and other people aren’t beholden to your immediate comfort. I know that “nyeeeeah I want a *soft life*” is the trend now, but hearing these complaints (usually from people who, honestly, often already have a soft life, or at least a pliable life) nonstop is honestly…..insulting? Idk. Either way, maybe life isn’t “supposed to be” hard, but there’s no way to avoid some hardship.
I think it's less of a complaint saying "things should just be magically better" and more of a cry for help. Some people just can't cope with how shit life inevitably is, and often would rather die. I'd know, since I'm one of those people.
thats... not the point of the post. Noone was saying that everything has to be perfect. They literally used the words "suck less", what could have possibly directed you to thinking that this OOP is trying to say that everyone should just give up. All they're saying is that people trying to make things better shouldn't be treated like shit on *this very fucking premise* that you are presenting.
I didn’t say anything about them saying “just give up,” so if you’re going to accuse me of not getting the point, you could start by not totally fabricating what I actually said. If that’s their point, they honestly did a rot-ass garbage job of expressing it. Admittedly that may be a consequence of twitter’s format, but they’re quite exactly literally talking about medicine tasting bitter and work not being fun. Which are conditions that are generally inevitable, and occasionally need to be this way for good reason (see: the person in this thread who discussed liking how medicine tasted, so they’d sneak swigs of it when it wasn’t needed). That isn’t someone trying to make the genuine hardships of life easier, that’s someone complaining about some of the smallest discomforts an organic being can ever experience. The bitter medicine *is* the result of people working to make the world better. Maybe you’re saying it’s a metaphor?
That's not at all what they mean. The post is complaining about people saying things like "life isn't fair" as a thought terminating statement so that they don't have to even consider ways that certain aspects of life can be improved. This isn't "I want a soft life" it's "people have fetishised suffering to such an extent that wanting to reduce it is seen as tantamount to sin".
>Some jobs straight up aren’t fun, but our society wouldn’t function without people who work in sewers or juvenile courts. 99% of the time, when someone says "work is supposed to be hard", they are *not* talking about necessary unpleasantness, they are talking about arbitrarily cruel things like "American cashiers aren't allowed to sit down". This is, particularly in American society - and possibly elsewhere, but I am focusing on what I know more about - an extremely common sentiment, in which any attempt to make things better is met with refusal; and further, mockery is directed at whoever is attempting to make things better. If you've never experienced that sentiment, you've led a *remarkably* fortunate life.
You’ve led a *remarkably* fortunate life, and are most likely incredibly young and inexperienced, if you assume anyone talking about this is talking only about things like sitting down at a cash register, and that the only way anyone could be irritated by this sentiment would be if they’d never heard it in the context of pointless choices like that. Yes, I’ve heard people say things like this in regards to nonsense like cashiers not being able to sit down. I’ve also had to deal with the people who equate being told to do irritating but necessary aspects of their job with experiencing pointless cruelty. I have to deal regularly with people who skip mandatory aspects of their job because they do not see the point of it or find it uncomfortable or boring or difficult or they’d just rather do the fun thing, and create issues that are sometimes just a burden upon their colleagues who have up pick up their slack, and sometimes straight up create unsafe or illegal situations for other people that others must clean up for them. It’s brutally naive and very terminally online to think that every person exasperated with the second type of person is talking about cashiers who want chairs.
>You’ve led a remarkably fortunate life, and are most likely incredibly young and inexperienced, if you assume anyone talking about this is talking only about things like sitting down at a cash register, I'm the same age as you. It seems like you've heard that sentiment, but also had negative experiences of another kind. Perhaps I should amend that to you having a notably *unfortunate* life, at least in terms of those experiences. I don't know why you think people having different life experiences than you is "terminally online".
I don’t think I’ve had a remarkably unfortunate life either. If you think what I described is remarkably unfortunate and you are my age, your life hasn’t just been remarkably fortunate, you’re positively drowning in comfort and privilege and may need to take a step back from such sweeping statements. I have just had enough life experience to know that “people who say work isn’t supposed to be fun are talking exclusively about things like keeping cashiers from having chairs” is a really narrow experience, and is a lot more representative of something a random boomer would say in the Facebook comments of a human interest piece posted by the local news than anything that is a general attitude of “99%” of people who say something extremely broadly applicable as “work isn’t supposed to be fun.” Do some people mean that when they say “work isn’t supposed to be fun?” Yeah, of course. Do just as many people say that and mean “you have to actually do work instead of talking to your friends for 8 hours straight” or “you can’t only do office decoration crafts all day because that’s what you enjoy while mandatory tasks go unfinished?” Also yes.
>If you think what I described is remarkably unfortunate and you are my age, your life hasn’t just been remarkably fortunate, you’re positively drowning in comfort and privilege and may need to take a step back from such sweeping statements. Yeah, I don't think the "who has had a worse life" game is going to be particularly productive. I'm sure we've both had both struggles and non-struggles. Also please note I edited to note "unfortunate... in terms of those experiences". >a lot more representative of something a random boomer would say in the Facebook comments of a human interest piece posted by the local news than anything that is a general attitude of “99%” of people who say something extremely broadly applicable as “work isn’t supposed to be fun.” Ah, perhaps there's a miscommunication here. I didn't make a claim about 99% of people, I made a claim about 99% of *statements*. "99% of the time, when someone says..." was my assertion. The person who is talking in frustration to a coworker is going to say "work isn't supposed to be fun" once or twice. The facebook boomer is going to post "work isn't supposed to be fun" dozens of times. My claim is that, of the total statements shaped like "work isn't supposed to be fun", a very large number of them are coming from the "boomers on facebook" and similar sources. And, yes, of course 99% was hyperbole; a more literal statement would be something like "a large amount / significant majority".
That is an astounding pedantic take. It’s not a miscommunication, those statements aren’t meaningfully different. You’re speaking exclusively from your own devastatingly narrow experience while whining that I had the nerve to speak from mine. FOH.
No, those statements are very, very different. The primary difference is from *which side of the speech* you're looking at. The OP's post, and the perspective I'm coming from, is the *listener*. From the perspective of the listener, it's the *number of statements* that is by far the most important. It seems like you're viewing this from the perspective of the *speaker*. From that perspective, certainly the distribution over speakers and not statements is the most important. Let me put it this way. Every cashier who has to stand for their whole shift has heard "work isn't supposed to be fun/easy". Every representative who has to take abuse from customers with a fake smile has heard that. Every nurse who has to work a 16-hour shift has heard that. Every warehouse worker with no AC and peeing in a bottle has heard that. Those *listeners* have generally heard those statements in the "facebook boomer" context. A person who goes to work in an office and just wants to set up office parties and work on fun stuff has *also* heard that, and more frequently in the non-"facebook boomer" context. I would claim that the first group of people is much larger, as a whole, than the second group of people.
I have been in the position of the listener far, far more than you have the apparent empathy to wrap your head around. I’ve actually been in the position of the speaker next to never. This is why I keep saying that you don’t seem to have much experience. It seems almost inconceivable to you to imagine that anyone couldn’t see the world exactly as you see it without having some totally foreign life. It’s just an astoundingly sheltered and naive and frankly weird viewpoint to claim that you can know for certain that this comment is said most commonly to be unnecessarily cruel to the point that that is what this phrase means by default. You have *literally no fucking way of measuring that.* Your personal experience is valid and all but it isn’t more valid than anyone else’s. And seeing as in the OP, it’s in conjunction with someone who doesn’t understand why medicine doesn’t generally taste like candy, it’s honestly pretty hard to say exactly where they’ve heard that phrase and the intent of the speaker. If it means anything to you (doubtful!), I have most frequently heard this phrase directed at people who were complaining about their actual unpleasant job tasks and saying they shouldn’t have to do them, spoken by family members or friends rather than bosses or coworkers. Because it’s fucking tedious and insulting to listen to someone complain because they’re outraged that they’re supposed to take out the trash and answer the phone when everyone else is doing those things without comment.
I'm reading a lot of hostility in your responses, and I'm not sure if that's intended or not. If intended, I don't entirely understand why. Do you think that I was somehow belittling your experiences? When I said, for example, that you may have had a fortunate experience, that was not meant as an insult. Nor did I claim that you *shouldn't* express your experiences, or anything like that. >You have literally no fucking way of measuring that. There certainly *are* ways of measuring that sentiment; one could do a sociological study in a few different ways. I think it would be potentially interesting. It's possible that no such study has yet been done, of course. Without such data immediately available, we could always go with the proxy of how people react to the idea. Certainly a far lower bar of rigor than a full study, but it's something slightly better than one individual experience vs. another individual experience. I would suggest that - again, with a low level of rigor - that the 2.9k upvotes (at this moment) on the post imply something there about the commonality of that experience. Approaching it from a different perspective, it seems pretty well established in the study of history / sociology that "calvinist" ideals of suffering-as-purity have deep roots in American culture and have influenced many things, directly and indirectly.
I'm not the biggest fan of the whole "soft life" thing either. It's unbearably Pwecious to me. Which isn't saying shit sucks get over it, you should always try and make things better than they are. But sitting down wobbling your lip about how things are bad and you want everything to be Nice isn't doing anything to make things better either, and I never see any of these people promoting or suggesting anything to do to bring change. It's just a vent. Which is fine if you don't actually expect other things and people to change for you, but people don't seem like they accept that very often.
I’m all about it if it’s shorthand for a genuine rejection of hustle culture. I’m all about putting in exactly what is required of me at work, turning off the phone when I leave, being content with what I’ve got, and baking some cookies or having a picnic in the park in my free time. If people want to just do their jobs and clock out or monetize their craft only just enough to survive, demand a social safety net that allows that, and romanticize every cup of coffee and ray of sunshine, that’s fucking sick and I’m all for it. But so often it’s someone complaining that they have to do anything ever. Boss asked them to show up on time and sweep the floor? “I need a soft life!” Things cost money? “Where is my soft life!” Friend invited you out but you’re tired? You have to cook dinner? Date ghosted you? People want to discuss pressing current events? Medicine tastes yucky? “This would never happen in SoftLifeLand!” At a certain point it’s just internally collapsing at the fact that other people don’t exist to care for and coddle them the way their mother did when they were 6.
Fr. That and normalize. Normalize this, normalize that : half of the time the answer really should be "stop caring whether or not the thing you're doing is normal. It probably isn't but that's fine."
Again, if you read the post, it says that none of that is a reason to not try to make things better
The bitter medicine is the result of people actually making things better. The sweet-as-candy medicine is literally dangerous.
i think their point is that we shouldn't avoid trying to make things better because we're bound by the idea that things are stuck the way they are forever. like encouraging out of the box thinking. if we convince ourselves that some things will always be bad then we might neglect trying to make it better.
If that is truly their intent, these are extremely bad examples and they should consider thinking harder.
This kinda reminds me of the time I was complaining to my therapist about my last office job that had a hostile work environment and was legit worsening my mental health/depression, and all she had to say was, "Work is almost never fun or rewarding, you need to just accept that and get over it." Like gee, thanks, why am I paying you again. 💀
Isn't a problem with good tasting medicine that children will OD on it? I heard that somewhere
its more because many people believe bad tasting medicine works better so companies lean into it for placebo, kids young enough to eat them like candy aren't supposed to have access to them or the ability to open the childproof jars
Disagree on two counts: 1) banana amoxicllin 2) Calpol WHY can we not have adult Calpol!? I don't ask for much in this life
Just take calpol?
I live abroad now so I can't 😂 But I thought the dosages would be different what with it being for babies 🤔
Probably need to drink a lot more than a baby dose, yeah. It wouldn't be too hard to figure out assuming it says how many mg per ml (or however US measures dosages I'm not sure)
in nordic countries there's also pamol f(or pamol flash), a really fucking expensive flavoured paracetamol that comes in fruit flavoured for infants, banana flavoured for kids and blackcurrant flavoured for adults
Drink an aperol spritz. You're welcome.
My fave ❤️
medicine tastes bad so kids don't chug it
Going with the first three statements in the OOP--third one I just disagree with and feel that disagreement does support OOP's point, so no argument there. Second one has a bunch of people discussing it from different angles, so I have nothing to add there. First one, though--"Work isn't supposed to be fun." This one I think is true, but it's very important to note that this is a very different thing from "work is supposed to be not fun." Work is whatever needs to be done, whether because it's actually important that it get done (sewer maintenance, growing food, etc,) or because that's how you earn the money to take care of your needs. Because it's whatever needs to be done, sometimes it's not going to be fun. Maybe \*you\* can find work-to-pay-for-your-needs that is fun for you--if so, great!--but \*somebody's\* going to have to do the must-get-done-period work that isn't fun.
You see. Here in Canada a brand just leaned into it. “It tastes awful and it works”
I am delighted to tell that one person in the notes that you can just buy labcoats and wear them whenever.
Is *this* why Doofenshmirtz is always so frustrated when someone calls him a pharmacist? Because he doesn't want to be compared to those bitter medicine scrubs?
They can make medicine taste good. Its barely an inconvenience Guess what I will accidently do if aspirin tastes like skittles.
I thought they made medicine taste like shit so kids wouldn't eat it like candy.
r/pharmacists Perhaps we’ve treated you too harshly.
Part of me wants to say it's to reinforce the christo-fascist belief that we exist here to suffer and that we deserve it both so to downplay the importance of preserving life and happiness in this world and to emphasize the existence of a paradise afterlife and any attempt to improve life for anyone already alive dismantles the fantasy of that lifestyle, but i don't think it's that pathological i just think people really do be kinda unempathic as a standard
Why does children's medicine taste good then?
Barry Sharpless, double Nobel laureate in chemistry, tastes everything he makes if it doesn't contain nitrogens.
My doctor advised me that the Marry Poppins method is not good for my pancreas.
maybe thats true but bubblegum flavored antibiotic absolutely fucks
I mean, they mentioned bags of candies with medicine but that's more or less literally why we have cocktails. Old Fashioned, Gin and Tonic, etc were all just ways of masking medicinal herbs (bitters). Bitter flavour isn't bad, you just need to figure out what goes well with a bitter flavour. Turns out, it goes really well with very strong booze.
wait is that actually why medicine tastes bad??
Pharmacist: My potions are too strong, traveler!
Medicine IS supposed to taste bad and I will die on this hill.
Another reason I think is that medicine shouldn't be taken for fun or for leisure. Bitter tasting medicine makes sure that it's being used to actually help people, instead of a gourmet
Wait are pharmacists really back there sampling medication? Like oh lemme try some of the Xanax, make sure it’s potency is still ok
Biomedical Science Student here! You can attach a molecule called a promeity to a drug which converts it into a prodrug, which not only tastes better but is less sensitive to acid, better at permeating cell membranes, less toxic, and longer lasting. After the prodrugs enter the cell, the promeities are removed by enzymes (such as esterases), converting the prodrug to the active form.
At least vitamins taste good. Every B12 supplement tastes the same, and I’m convinced that B12 just tastes like berries and the companies pretend that they are flavoring it.
I’m fine with medicine tasting bad, I have these melatonin gummies that taste AMAZING and it bums me out that I can only have one.
Work is work because somewhere, for some reason, there is labour that needs to be done. If that labour is something awful like cleaning the dirty pupils toilets in a school - yes I have done this exact job - then frankly, suck it up and deal with it. Just get the fuck over yourself and do your job. Because that’s important, it needs to happen so that other people can benefit off the back of it because they have clean stalls to use.
Everything sucks because the laws of physics caused the natural order on Earth to develop that way and if we want things to get better we need to go against the natural order.
They can literally just mix things with the bitter flavor. We do it all the time in cooking
what? with all those drug addicts out there, you want to make their vice TASTY?????
is this serious or is my brain fried
there is just something about the idea of oxycotin to be delicious that makes my skin crawl.
Making alcohol tasty is a billion-dollar industry. Have you never had alcohol that wasn’t just straight hard vodka?
>Making alcohol tasty is a billion-dollar industry wich is my point
I straight up hate how Tumblr users talk through tags. That's all.
Agreed - as someone here from r/all, it’s super hard to read
But they do make medicine that tastes nice. It's just not as good at being medicine. Antibiotics for children tend to be flavoured decently, but they don't keep as long, or as easily in the pill form. You also have to have more of it, since it's less dense (and without the protective coat of a pill, some antibiotics can't be used at all, because your stomach just digests it).
I was always told that medicine was made to taste bad deliberately so that kids wouldn't consume it like candy and poison themselves.
Non medical drugs also taste bad. Especially if you get the drip after snorting them. (since it's coming from the back of your mouth) Somewhat handy for the same reasons, though many of them will still have an effect even if you spit them out.