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Comment by chasing | Hacker News Reader

> “The difference between high and low amplitude is the difference between my son and a great pianist playing ‘Ode to Joy’ on the piano,” Chambers says. ... Pepperidge Farm shortbread cookies are considered to have high amplitude. So are Hellman’s mayonnaise and Sara Lee poundcake. [So are Coke and Pepsi.]

Ugh. Give me low-amplitude foods, then...

Also, sounds like Coke and Sara Lee poundcake might be more comparable to "Happy Birthday" or "I Wanna Hold Your Hand:" bland and popular. "Ode to Joy" performed by a great pianist is a specialized taste usually only experienced by people who care about what they listen to.

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> Ugh. Give me low-amplitude foods, then...

The whole point of the article was to explain why this does not work. Low amplitude foods spike in one category eg "Worlds Best" had the highest "tomato" score but failed in other areas. The reason people are not buying it in droves is because heinz has all 5 components in harmony.

The music analogy was perfect also. Take your personal favorite bands and songs and imagine their works being played by musicians in training. The results would not be as impressive.

The music analogy fails, for me, because the foods they mention aren't meaningful or interesting, they're bland to the point of complete neutral inoffensiveness. It's like taking "Blitzkreig Bop" and turning it into perfectly balanced Muzak and calling that "high-amplitude."

I think you are taking the terms used too literally.

I certainly wouldn't call coke or pepsi bland or inoffensive. They are certainly familiar since we have all had them hundreds of times. The article does a good job of explaining why the store brand sodas don't capture the same market share.

And, yes, mayo and poundcake are "bland" and "unexciting". But I've had some pretty terrible homemade mayo and poundcakes.

That... actually sounds like an amazing idea.

I'm pretty sure that "bland to the point of complete neutral inoffensiveness" is a pop music category.

>Ugh. Give me low-amplitude foods, then...

Exactly. Doritos and Mountain Dew thrive on this concept of "amplitude", and they're palette annihilating crap for which "moderation" is so far removed from typical consumption that it hardly even enters into the model. Amplitude is at its core, a trick on the senses, and once you're out of your teens/twenties it's not a very nice one.

I would also point out the difference between traditional sources of "amplitude" (mayo is a good example mentioned in the article, fish sauces would be another) are almost always condiments, sauces, or soup bases. There is a difference between the expectation that you use some mayo on your sandwich, and the expectation that you should drink soda.

Doritos and Mountain Dew are low amplitude.

Incorrect, read the article: 'When something is high in amplitude, all its constituent elements converge into a single gestalt.'

Incorrect, read the whole paragraph:

> When something is high in amplitude, all its constituent elements converge into a single gestalt. You can’t isolate the elements of an iconic, high-amplitude flavor like Coca-Cola or Pepsi. But you can with one of those private-label colas that you get in the supermarket. “The thing about Coke and Pepsi is that they are absolutely gorgeous,” Judy Heylmun, a vice-president of Sensory Spectrum, Inc., in Chatham, New Jersey, says. “They have beautiful notes—all flavors are in balance. It’s very hard to do that well. Usually, when you taste a store cola it’s”— and here she made a series of pik! pik! pik! sounds—“all the notes are kind of spiky, and usually the citrus is the first thing to spike out.

Mountain Dew is citrus. Doritos is nacho cheese. There is no higher order flavors here. They are strong flavors. But they lack the "balance" of creations.

I should have been clear, I was thinking of Cool Ranch Doritos (this was covered in an NPR piece years ago and that was one of the examples). As for Mountain Dew... "citrus". It is the classic case of amplitude.

Take away the acid and it would be sickeningly sweet. Dial down the sugar and it would be absurdly tart or bitter. It's only together, in mass quantities that it achieves a kind of blitz effect.

Cool Ranch could be high amplitude since if offers Fat and Salt in addition to Sweet and Spice.

Mountain Dew has a strong flavor but is still low amplitude since the "blitz" or main flavor is easily identifiable. You would make billions if you could figure out how to add salt and fat to a mountain dew.

...Drink it through a hollowed-out Slim-Jim?

I'm not getting any money am I...

You, sir, are a mad man and a genius.

package it up and you might

You know, as I think about it in the context of some of the bat-shit crazy products we've seen over the years, I'm guessing that this has been considered and focus group tested.

I say for maximum amplitude you should do both: Put Hellman’s mayonnaise in your Pepsi. Then dip your Sara Lee poundcake in it. And cover that in Heinz ketchup. Maximum amplitude EXTREME BAJA BLAST #YOLO.

Oh... you joke, but I have a good friend who has some interesting issues (totally worth adapting to them, he's a great guy) especially around foods and tastes and smells. He figured out that you can buy flavoring from those big labs out in New Jersey, and they make everything.

He has a different mouthwash for each day of the week, and one of them is Bermuda grass. To his credit, it really tastes specifically like fresh Bermuda grass. So... your idea might not be unattainable, and IIRC soda is one of the forms those companies often experiment in.

YOLO indeed.

> "Mountain Dew [is] palette annihilating crap"

You take that back!

Palms out

Look... it's nice. I like it too sometimes. In fact, when I can't get it I just ferment the urine of young rams, it's practically the same thing!

Kidding aside though, it's not as though a soda is going to ruin you, but a diet of mainly Dew and Doritos and other "high octane" foods will make normal food taste unbelievably bland for a while.

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