I Have Been Thinking...

Medicine Man, Keep Your Hands Off My Cherry Flavor!!! [i]

Having dedicated a few minutes of my life to pondering upon a certain topic that I feel is important to the world in general, I now dedicate a few more minutes to expressing my feelings on said topic. I leave it to you, the reader, to decide if my time was well spent, or just sad.

Today,[ii] feeling that I had put in a hard days work, and finding that I had a little change in my pocket, I treated myself to a cherries and cream soda. Warm weather had parched me, and the drink was nice and cold; wonderfully refreshing. And it tasted great… it really did. Now my experience with this wonderfully delightful beverage might have ended there, if the delicious cherry flavor had not recalled to my mind the comment of many, many people when cherry flavored anything is brought up: YUCK! IT TASTES LIKE MEDICINE!

I cringe! I lament! I buckle! It tastes like medicine?! How can this soda, which had just brought me so much satisfaction, be compared to medicine… the bane of any flavor experience? How can the flavor of such a delicious and otherwise well respected berry[iii] be attributed to such an utterly awful experience as is a mouthful of medication?

First off, let me clarify that I do understand that “cherry flavored” is very different from “the flavor of cherries”. Cherry flavored is to cherries as Adam Sandler movies[iv] are to comedy. There association is rather poor. But it is still a flavor associated with cherries (hence the name), and therefore the fruit’s reputation does in fact suffer. I also understand that there are some people who do not enjoy the taste of cherry flavor for reasons other than “it tastes like medicine”. They just don’t like deliciousness[v], or something, and I am fine with that. My problem is not that some people dislike cherry flavor, but that cherry flavor has become synonymous with medicine flavor. How did such a thing happen? Let me explain…

Once upon a time, a mother was trying to get her little sick child to swallow a mouthful of putrid tonic. It bears affirming here that medicine is suppose to, and always will, taste bad[vi]. After all, medicine is just another word for drugs, and if drugs tasted good… well… the D.A.R.E[vii] program would be in big trouble, wouldn’t it? Anyway, our fed up mother, out of desperation to get her child to take the medication knowing it will not only lead to wellness, but quite possibly knock him/her out in the process and give fed up mother some much needed un-fed-upping time, goes to her pantry to find something to mask the vile medication. She pulls out her cherry flavor (a staple for cupboards in those “once-upon-a-time” times) and creates a concoction that would forever change the world, winning mommies around the world countless hours of un-fed-upping time.

But at what cost? Let us be clear here: flavoring of any kind in medicines does not, in fact, make it any more appealing. Those commercials, where the kid is sick in bed and the production of a spoonful of red or purple liquor (no… not grape flavor, too!) brings a smile across the face, are just lies. Kids hate medicine, no matter what flavor you add to them. That’s just the way it works. Tell a kid that the chocolate chip cookie they are eating is medicine, and it will fall right from their hands. The two are nemeses’, and will forever remain.

And these flavors pay the consequence. You see, there is a little thing a man named Pavlov[viii] invented, called conditioning. Conditioning is where something becomes associated with something else, and therefore they both produce the same response independently. In this case, cherry flavor is added to medicine. The medicine still tastes bad, and the result is the reviling of… drum roll… both the medicine and the cherry flavor! We hate the medicine, and as consequence, we wrongfully associate that hate with the flavor that was added to it. Cherry flavor doesn’t taste like medicine: it has been added to medicine, to do nothing but make it sound more appealing to the kids that normally would not touch the stuff. It still tastes awful, and the child grows up thinking cherry flavor belongs in the pharmacy department.

Unconvinced that this “conditioning” is the culprit responsible for the cherry flavor dogma? Well, here is another example for you…

How many of you readers love root beer? If you said no, chances are very good you are un-American.[ix] You see, my fellow Americans, root beer does not bear the same appreciation and love around the world that it does in the States. Now, I cannot explain the dislike for such a fine flavor everywhere else, but I do happen to know that on the British Isles the flavor of root beer is associated with medicine… or a type of toothpaste… or something. Anyway, it’s the same game, different name. A fine flavor is associated with some despised thing, and becomes a companion in revile.

How about one a little closer to home… for me. When I was a youth, visits to the dentist usually concluded with a mouthful of disgusting fluoride treatment, which was to remain in my mouth for something like an hour before I could then spit it out into that little cup that must have had holes in it, because it always got everywhere. The flavor added to this fluoride? Bubblegum or cinnamon, depending on my naïve choice. Now I can’t stand bubblegum, and any cinnamon flavor has to be very real (“the flavor of cinnamon”, really) to have any appeal to me. Having unflavored fluoride would not have made my dentist experiences any less pleasant (how could it have been any less pleasant?)[x], and I might not have developed the gag reflex I experience any time someone offers me a piece of bubblegum.

So, now we know the problem, and we know the cause. Now I imagine every moral individual reading this must be asking themselves “What is to be done?!” I am glad you asked. The solution is simple, my friends: stop buying flavored medicine. Just stop. Avoid the stuff like the plague[xi]. I know this is difficult, as so many medications now of days have flavor added to them, but they must not be purchased. They must not be used. The implementation of this regimen must be followed, especially by those of you with little kids. It may be too late for you and your relationship with cherry flavored culinary treats, but don’t ruin it for your posterity. With your help, comments like “It tastes like medicine” can become a thing of the past…

… Unless, of course, one is speaking of how medicine tastes.

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[i] If, after seeing this symbol following the title, you scrolled down to here, then you know how an endnote works. Awesome! There will be plenty, so feel free to come down here whenever you want to see what else I have to say. If you just finished reading my ranting and came across this section, enjoy it for what it is worth and better luck next time.

[ii] Actually, I wrote this yesterday, but I didn’t want to go through and correct all references to this thought process taking place “today”. Although I think this is the only one…

[iii] Are they really berries? Despite the fact that cherries rhymes with berries, cherries are actually related to peaches, plums, apricots, and almonds. Not berries. I looked it up on Wikipedia. And yes, I believe everything I read there…

[iv] Don’t get me wrong, Happy Gilmore is an hilarious movie. I love it every single time I watch it. Chubbs is one of the greatest fictional characters ever created. But one film… out of, like, a bazillion… spray and pray humor, at best. Little Nicky… that’s all I have to say…

Actually, I have never seen Little Nicky… but I have it on good authority (Wikipedia) that it is an awful piece of cinema…

[v] Real word. No red squiggly line from Microsoft.

[vi] Okay, so I don’t know this for sure. In fact, that lemony hot drink that they have for colds is pretty good, and I find craving it from time to time. I also like those chewable vitamin C pills… but I don’t think they count as medicine. I have heard (or read, from an article we discussed in my organic chemistry class… booyah!) that we only absorb a certain amount of vitamin C daily, which we usually from our regular diet, and that all the excess we take in just gets flushed out of our system with all the extra water we would be drinking with the vitamins to get better.

[vii] An anti-drug program that goes to schools, shows awful pictures of what drugs can do to them, and hopes it will keep kids away from recreational substance abuse. The Acronym stands for something like Drugs Are Really Just Excrement, I think. The “J” would be silent, and is therefore just dropped altogether.

[viii] Pavlov was working with dogs, as is often the case with so many great discoveries. When it came time to feed his dogs, a bell would be rung, and food would be brought to the salivating dogs. What Pavlov noticed, however (and, therefore, invented), was that over time the ringing of the bell alone, with no production of actual food, would still cause the hungry dogs to salivate. Whether this phenomenon had been occurring before this is debatable, but it is quite a part of our world now. People do it all the time. Be on the lookout for it, its fun to observe!

[ix] As in, not from the United States. I know that this statement bothers people from other countries on the American continents, as they are also technically Americans. But really, what am I suppose to say? Un-United Statesian? That just sounds and reads silly. Sorry, I understand your discouragement for this undeserved misusage, but I’m not changing it.

[x] I am so sorry for my general negativity towards dentist visits, mom, but there is a reason that any other unpleasant experience is compared to “a trip to the dentist’s”. Please don’t let the opinions of your son deter you from your goals, though. Love ya!

[xi] Pick the one you fear the most, and use that as your motivation.