*waves hands* It wasn't your post in particular, so I didn't want to grumble on you! This is one that's been building on me for a while.
The amount of sugar that goes into nearly every element of the current Western diet is certainly off the curve (thank you, corn lobby), but one thing you can count on pretty much every culinary culture, at every stage of development, to have discovered is the local sources of sweet. If you're far enough north/south, it may be a seasonal food, but it's only when you get into /serious/ subsistence-level ecologies that it's all that rare.
*reins her foodways enthusiasm in* Anyway! What I'd absolutely buy Shen Wei being startled by, tastewise, is the... let's call it the /sharpness/ of the sweetness in a modern hard-candy. The flavorings used to mimic 'fruit' are often pretty acidic, and that would be quite different from the richer sweetness of honey or actual fruit or fruit preserves.
no subject
The amount of sugar that goes into nearly every element of the current Western diet is certainly off the curve (thank you, corn lobby), but one thing you can count on pretty much every culinary culture, at every stage of development, to have discovered is the local sources of sweet. If you're far enough north/south, it may be a seasonal food, but it's only when you get into /serious/ subsistence-level ecologies that it's all that rare.
*reins her foodways enthusiasm in* Anyway! What I'd absolutely buy Shen Wei being startled by, tastewise, is the... let's call it the /sharpness/ of the sweetness in a modern hard-candy. The flavorings used to mimic 'fruit' are often pretty acidic, and that would be quite different from the richer sweetness of honey or actual fruit or fruit preserves.