tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 09 01:11:49 1996
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RE: yuch
- From: Michiel Uitdehaag (Saito) <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: yuch
- Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 18:14:53 +0900
Greatly offtopic, but as a scientist I just can't keep my mouth
shut (or my fingers from typing :]
>>get refined sugar from. If there is a coco native to the Homeworld, it
>>would be
>>bitter like the Aztec beverages first imported to Europe from the New World.
>It WOULD be? or it MIGHT be? Perhaps the native coco equivilant is
>already sweet. For that matter, maybe something native to the soil makes
>many of the edible plants sweet; like many of the veggies of Earth are
>green.
It's nothing in our soil that makes vegetables green.
And nothing in soil would make plants sweet. Sweetness is a sugar and sugars
represent fuel. So if the plant finds fuel in the ground, it will use it.
If it decides to use it to attract animals, it will be sweet on non-sweet
grounds too.
Also, although we have artificial sweeteners, natural sweets would always
be some sort of fats or sugars, because they're the only ones that contain
energy for us (and klingons) to consume. By evolution, we would only like
such energy providers, so only they will be sweet, so only those will be
produced by plants, not the artificial ones (unless they have some other purpose).
The coco is stuffed inside beans (or am I mistaking here?), where a high
concentration of energy/weight is wanted. Sugars don't belong there, so
coco beans will never be sweet by nature.
Maybe the beans are surrounded by a fake-fruit like shell, that can be
sweet. But when you make cocoa butter or candy, you'll extract the coco
from the bean and have to add sugar to it. Maybe klingons don't experience
coco as bitter, but terrans would probably experience klingon coco as
bitter too.
Sorry for this off-topic mail, and no, I can't say it in klingon :)
jejQIb