But what young people really, really love to hate on is mayonnaise. Back in 2013, BuzzFeed ran an article titled '24 Reasons Mayonnaise Is the Devil's Condiment.' (The writer called it 'slime of. Mayonnaise is easy to hate on. It's not sexy like Sriracha. It doesn't have the cult following of ranch dressing. And it's definitely not as intriguing as aioli (even though aioli is just garlicky mayonnaise). But it still makes a damn good tomato toast — one that millennials are going viral-crazy for. Some people really hate mayonnaise. And it isn't just always just simple dislike; among the anti-mayo crowd, there's a contingent who are vehemently opposed to the stuff. Even, horror of horrors, fabric softener. These items are just a small selection of what news outlets have accused Millennials of 'killing.'. News of the Week: Eagles Hit Number One, the iMac Turns 20, and Millennials Murder Mayonnaise. In the news for the week ending August 24, 2018, are the ongoing battle between Michael Jackson and the Eagles, a new look for animal crackers, the (exaggerated) demise of mayo, a waffle celebration, and more.
Weekly Newsletter
The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox!
Michael Jackson vs. the Eagles, Round 36
I hear from a very reliable source that pop music is better than ever. I don't happen to agree, but then again I'm an old fogey who is set in his ways when it comes to music, and would rather listen to my kitchen faucet drip all night than listen to something by Kanye West. (Note to self: get kitchen faucet fixed.)
There are a lot of people like that, and apparently they're all buying Eagles and Michael Jackson albums. They've been battling for decades. Some years the Eagles' Greatest Hits (1971-1975) is the number-one-selling album of all time, and other years Jackson's Thriller is in the top spot. It just so happens that this week Don Henley and company can brag a little bit, though I'm not sure if it's fair that a greatest hits album goes up against one specific album in an artist's catalogue. Then again, maybe it's impressive that one album can challenge a popular band's greatest hits album. The Eagles 1976 album has sold 38 million copies, while Jackson's 1982 album has sold 33 million (counting both album sales and online). Elaine's boyfriend Brett must own several copies of that Eagles album.
Sure, the Eagles are No. 1 right now, but maybe Jackson will come out on top eventually. You know … in the long run.
Subscribe and get unlimited access to our online magazine archive.
The Computer That Changed Everything
I remember getting into an argument with a friend of mine in 1997 — actually, a friend of a friend — about the fate and future of Apple. He thought the company was about to go out of business, and I thought they would one day be successful again.
Admittedly, the company went through some really bad times in the '90s, and it's not like I had any psychic visions of the iPod or the iPhone (I'd have a bigger bank account if that were the case). But I did know that Apple made great things and that their customers were loyal. I knew they'd be back in a big way eventually.
Apple became the first trillion-dollar company a couple of weeks ago, and it really started with a computer I loved, the iMac (I owned the Bondi Blue one). It's currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, and I wish Apple still made it, hockey puck mouse and all. It was retro and futuristic, nostalgic and forward-looking, all at the same time.
It's amazing how the computer influenced not just the computer industry, but pop culture too. Other tech companies started to copy certain features (or lack thereof) of the iMac, and everybody started to release products with rainbow colors. That even continues to this day.
Walmart Honors Shopping Cart Lady
We all have our pet peeves: the little things in life that annoy us. Some of us can't stand people who drive too slowly, and some of us hate it when people chew their food loudly or cough into their hand. I happen to believe that people who don't return their shopping carts to the carriage corrals are on par with murderers and arsonists.
Honestly, is there anything lazier? You can't take 10 seconds to place your cart into the corral after you've loaded your groceries into your car? Every time I go to the supermarket, I see random carts all over the place, blocking parking spaces and lanes. I've even seen people bring their carts to the side of the carriage corral and leave it there because they're too damn lazy to bring it a few more feet around to the corral's opening. It drives me crazy.
So a round of applause to 70-year-old grandmother Sue Johnson of West Virginia, honored by Walmart recently for returning her cart to the corral during a massive rain and wind storm. She got free grocery pickup for a year and a trophy shaped like — you guessed it — a shopping cart.
Think of Sue the next time you don't return your cart when it's 70 degrees and sunny.
The Cookie Cage
Score one for PETA.
In 2016, the animal rights organization wrote a letter to Mondelez International, the owner of Nabisco, to get them to update the front of their animal cracker boxes so the animals are out of their cages. Seems like the company actually listened. The new boxes recently made their debut.
Sure, we can be happy that the animal cookies (come on, they're more cookie than cracker) are now free from their cages, but you know that five minutes later that lion sank his teeth into the giraffe's neck.
Hold the Mayo
Those damn millennials. They're responsible for the destruction of everything. They're destroying the cereal industry because they don't want to clean their bowls; they don't go to the movies because they'd rather binge-watch something on Netflix; and they shun going on dinner dates for some reason. They even hate napkins! How are they wiping their faces after they eat their avocado toast and kale salads? With their sleeves?
You can now add mayo to the list of things young people don't bother with. Yes, they're mayo-haters, which means they're missing out on creamy potato salad and tuna fish sandwiches the way tuna fish sandwiches are supposed to be made. One of the reasons is because they don't like the texture and they think it's too disgusting to eat. They do know they're not supposed to eat mayo like ice cream, right?
I hate this story for the simple reason it has introduced me to the phrase 'identity condiments.' I had never heard of that concept before and I'm sorry I know what it is now. Soon colleges are going to have to set up safe spaces for students who don't want to deal with ketchup they don't agree with.
By the way, can we stop blaming millennials for everything? Not that they don't deserve a lot of the blame for RUINING EVERYTHING, but we have to direct our ire at the correct age group. Everyone seems to put any 'young' person into the millennial category. People in their teens or 20 aren't millennials! They're … well, whatever generation comes after that. I have trouble keeping track of all of the different names. Generation Y? Generation Z? As a Gen-Xer, I prefer to call them 'the generation who will never know what it's like not to own a smartphone.'
RIP Barbara Harris, Kofi Annan, Don Cherry, and Miriam Nelson
Barbara Harris was an acclaimed Broadway actress who also appeared in such movies as Nashville, Family Plot, Peggy Sue Got Married, Grosse Pointe Blank, and Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, for which she received an Oscar nomination. She died last week at the age of 83.
Kofi Annan was a former secretary general of the United Nations and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He died Saturday at the age of 80.
Don Cherry was not only a top amateur golfer, he was also a popular singer in the 1950s. That's him singing 'Band of Gold' in the very first scene of Mad Men. Cherry actually died in April, but his death is just now being reported. He was 94.
Miriam Nelson was a dancer and choreographer who not only worked with such people as Judy Garland, Cole Porter, and Doris Day, she also worked on many Academy Award telecasts, worked as a choreographer at Disneyland, and even helped put together several Super Bowl halftime shows. She died last week at the age of 98.
Why Do Millennials Hate Mayonnaise
This Week in History
Hawaii Becomes 50th State (August 21, 1959)
As if this summer's eruption of the Kīlauea volcano wasn't enough destruction from nature, the islands are now being hit by Hurricane Lane, which reached Category 4 status this week. Roblox online without downloading.
'Please Mr. Postman,' First Motown No. 1, Released (August 21, 1961)
The Marvelettes song was later covered by several other bands, including the Beatles and the Carpenters.
This Week in Saturday Evening Post History: Drink of Water (August 22, 1914)
The kid on this Frank X. Leyendecker cover should really put those papers down before he drinks from the fountain.
Quote of the Week
'I might not rate her as the single greatest female vocalist of the rock era — Kelly Clarkson and Linda Ronstadt come to mind as more versatile across more genres and more varied in their emotional resonances …'
—an actual sentence written by Dan McLaughlin in his National Reviewobituary for Aretha Franklin.
National Waffle Day
You ever think of a food and suddenly realize you haven't eaten it in years? That's how I felt when I found out today is National Waffle Day. I'm not really a waffle guy and haven't eaten them in probably 15 or 20 years. If I am going to eat something in that family, it would be pancakes or French toast. But if you like them, here's a recipe from Curtis Stone for Whole Wheat Waffles with Strawberry-Maple Syrup. Seems like too much work for me. I'd probably just buy a box of Eggo.
Don't get me wrong. Homemade waffles are good! They're just not 'Kelly Clarkson good.'
Next Week's Holidays and Events
National Toilet Paper Day (August 26)
I don't even want to know how you're going to celebrate it.
U.S. Open (August 27)
The tennis tournament is marking 50 years of being an 'open' event, with special celebrations and a brand new Louis Armstrong stadium, which has a retractable roof.
Become a Saturday Evening Post member and enjoy unlimited access.Subscribe now
There's no shortage of divisive foods in the world, but for many people, there seems to be a special kind of derision reserved especially for one particular condiment: Mayo. Some people really hate mayonnaise. And it isn't just always just simple dislike; among the anti-mayo crowd, there's a contingent who are vehemently opposed to the stuff. Feelings can run so strongly that it might lead you to wonder exactly why so many people hate mayonnaise so much — but perhaps not unexpectedly, there isn't just one explanation for the strength of feeling so many share about mayo. It might come down to any number of possibilities, according to several experts with whom Bustle recently spoke — but together, these possibilities paint a compelling larger picture about what fuels our likes and dislikes when it comes to our gastronomic experiences.
Could an extreme aversion to mayo be a result of picky eating habits developed in childhood that stuck around into adulthood? Maybe. Research has shown that people who are picky eaters as adults tend also to have been picky eaters as children; indeed, according to one study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity in 2018, the same 'picky eater profile' — one marked by high food avoidance and low food approach — has been observe in both kids and grownups. Furthermore, Natalia Stasenko, the registered dietitian and childhood nutrition expert behind Feeding Bytes, tells Bustle that although there aren't any 'concrete numbers' when it comes to how many childhood picky eaters continue to experience issues as adults, roughly 75% of adult picky eaters say that their picky eating habits started when they were kids.
But there isn't just one factor that accounts for picky eating. 'Picky eating is not a single disorder but rather a whole spectrum of issues,' Stasenko tells Bustle. In most people, picky eating habits first rear their heads in the toddler years and start to fall off again between the ages of five and seven, making it a standard part of childhood development. Crystal Karges, MS, RDN, IBCLC, Maternal Health and Child Feeding Expert at Crystal Karges Nutrition, agrees. Says Karges, 'Kids are often mislabeled as picky eaters, when in fact, they may just be going through aphase or ‘food jag,' which is a normal part of growth and development.' According to both Stasenk and Karges, this phase can manifest in behaviors like eating smaller portions, avoiding new foods, and skipping meals. They aren't usually cause for concern when they're not fueled by any underlying factors.
But some kids do struggle with picky eating habits that arise from something else — think gastrointestinal issues, anxiety, or sensory difficulties) — and generally, these kids have a little more trouble 'outgrowing' the habits as they get older. There's a lot we still don't know about these kinds of issues — the research is ongoing — but when they continue into adulthood, according to Stasenko, contributing factors may include 'unresolved underlying issues, combined with individual psychosocial makeup.'
What does this all have to do with mayonnaise, specifically? For some people, their experiences with mayo as kids may lead to continued negative associations with it as they grow older, making it something they want absolutely nothing to do with as adults. The pattern holds up at least to anecdotal evidence: As the Huffington Post's extensive 2018 piece on mayo-hating community noted, many self-proclaimed adult mayo haters report having had some sort of traumatic experience with mayonnaise as children which they credit with their long-standing and powerful dislike of the stuff.
Of course, even adults who aren't picky eaters can experience an aversion to mayo, so there's clearly more at play here. Some theories posit that it has something to do with the role disgust has long played in keeping us safe and healthy — and what happens when that impulse goes slightly awry.
Experts widely believe the human emotion of disgust to be a defense mechanism — in our hunter-gatherer days, it helped us avoid contamination, which could make us sick and endanger our survival. 'Disgust is a relatively old system, but I think it is uniquely human,' Paul Rozin, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the world's foremost experts in disgust, tells Bustle. 'In our ancestral environment, it probably functioned to keep us away from decayed food.' This instinct hearkens back to a time when we knew a lot less about our world than we do now — including the fact that some 'decayed' foods, like cheese or soy sauce, are perfectly safe to eat.
But our base instincts often aren't governed by the wealth of knowledge available to us in our modern world — so, even when we know a type of food is safe to eat, our ingrained sense of disgust might kick in anyway as it tries to protect us from something it has long identified as unsafe. For example, says Rozin, 'Most people don't want to eat a piece of chocolate shaped like dog doo, even though they know it is chocolate.'
Mayo, too, might trigger that protective instinct in some people. Indeed, Rozin's theory on why mayonnaise grosses so many people out is simple and elegant: As he notes, 'Soft and slimy things are often decayed, and tend to be disgusting.' Mayo is soft and slimy; ergo, it reminds us of decay; ergo, it is perceived as disgusting.
But that's still not the whole story. It turns out that picky eating habits and our evolutionary sense of disgust have something in common — and that 'something' can act as a sort of trigger that sets off our 'yuck!' reaction: Texture. Indeed, as a 2006 study published in the journal Appetite focused on how certain food properties affect whether we reject a food found, sliminess is particularly associated with food rejection — and mayo is nothing if not slimy.
Interestingly, though, how we experience food texture — and, therefore, how our experience of food texture informs our likes and dislikes — is a lot more complex than just the feel of the food itself, explains sensory science consultant Lauren Rogers to Bustle. Filepane drag & drop utility 1 10 4. We admittedly know less about the sense of touch in the mouth than we do about other senses related to our experience of food — research has more frequently focused on taste and aroma — but multiple senses are involved in how we experience food texture.
'In fact,' says Rogers, 'food texture is often split into three key areas: Initial phase (first bite), masticatory phase (chewing or mouth movement), and residual phase (after swallowing).' Throughout these three phases, we get 'cues' for a food texture experience not just from the feel of the food itself, but also from the appearance of it, the sound of it as we chew, the mechanical sensation of chewing itself, and even the temperature of the food in our mouths. Says Rogers, 'All these aspects will be different for different people due to, for example, differences in sensitivity, mouth and teeth health, and dryness of mouth.'
The context can change how we perceive certain foods, too. In the case of mayo, explains Rogers:
'It will be based on how the mayonnaise reacts with the other food products in the mouth, as well as how the other food products change its texture. So, if you are eating a dry product, this will absorb the saliva and will change the feel of other foodstuffs in the mouth.'
This specific context might therefore make the texture of a food more or less acceptable to you. As an example, I'm fine with mayo if it's used in, say, tuna or potato salad, but I shudder at the thought of eating it on its own or spreading it thickly on a sandwich. Initially, I had a hard time explaining why that was — but Rogers' point about context makes it all become clear: When mayo is mixed in with other foodstuffs, the mouthfeel is A-OK by me. When it's layered on top of other foodstuffs, it changes the whole experience into something I personally find kind of unpleasant.
As Rogers notes, though, exactly why any single person might love or hate a certain food is often unique to that individual. 'It might be something learned from our childhood or related to an episode of food poisoning,' she says. Some people may also simply be 'more sensitive to certain aspects of the food,' per Rogers — think super-tasters, who tend to be much more sensitive to some tastes than people typically are. Any of these possibilities — or countless more — might play into why someone, say, loves coffee or hates mayo.
Millennials Hate Mayonnaise
Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter why you might hate a certain food, whether it's mayo or something else entirely. https://bunnyfree.mystrikingly.com/blog/airy-pro-3-12-252-ft. You're allowed to have likes and dislikes, no matter what your reasoning behind them might be — even though our culture (wrongly, I would argue) tends to peg moral value to how adventurous an eater you are.
'What is missing from the current understanding of how and why eating problems persist in adulthood is empathy towards those who struggle and strategies to help them cope with potentially anxiety-triggering eating scenarios,' Natalia Stasenko of Feeding Bytes tells Bustle. Feeding research and policy tends to be aimed at 'fixing' the problem, says Stasenko — but that might not be the best way to go about addressing it. 'It is becoming clear now that some adults have a very limited dietary variety and it is not their fault,' she notes. 'Instead of feeling shame and guilt around their eating, they need understanding, tools for coping with anxiety and gentle and kind strategies to explore foods in a way and at a speed that works best for them.'
Hear, hear!
