Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce are topics that Malcolm Gladwell gave a talk on TED2004. How are these three topics related and interconnected? Let’s find out the answers from this story.
If you initially clicked on this article because you wanted to find the connection between happiness and spaghetti sauce, you’re in luck. But this isn’t a cooking tutorial on how to make the best spaghetti sauce for dinner. Because, let’s be real, there’s no single best sauce for everyone!
Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author and speaker, and the author of the bestselling books Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, among others, which have all been New York Times Best Sellers. He gave a TED Talk in 2004 and shared the story of one of his favorite uncles who taught him how to be happy with spaghetti sauce.
Howard Moskowitz, the man who revolutionized spaghetti sauce
At the time, this man was in his 60s. He kept parrots, loved listening to opera, and was fascinated by medieval history. These hobbies might not seem like the right fit for a psychophysicist, but they were. He was as passionate about measuring the world around him as he was about opera. He earned his PhD from Howard University and opened a consulting firm in White Plains, New York.
“How to make the perfect drink?”
One of Uncle Howard’s customers was Pepsi, the most popular carbonated soft drink company at the moment. They discovered a new sweetener and wanted to produce Diet Pepsi, or Pepsi that doesn’t make you fat. So, they consulted with Uncle Howard to find out how much aspartame (a sweetener) to put in each can to make the most perfect drink. And this was the beginning of the change.
“What went wrong was that the questions we asked prevented us from getting the answers we wanted.”
After conducting a test by having a large number of people taste Pepsi with levels of aspartame ranging from 8, not sweet at all, to 12, which is too sweet, the results were not clustered and could not be used to draw conclusions. Normal people would use a random guess, pointing somewhere in the middle between all the results. But Uncle Howard saw things differently. He sat down and thought about everything to find the point of error, and he discovered that the problem he had been given was the error.
“You are looking for one perfect Pepsi. You are wrong. You are looking for many perfect Pepsi.”
After finishing the sentence of presenting the results, he was almost immediately fired, but he still insisted. This is not just Pepsi. It means everything in the world. Vlasik Pickles Company came to his office and wanted him to find the perfect pickle. Of course, he didn’t even have to do the experiment. Because Uncle Howard immediately replied, “You don’t have to improve the normal pickle. You have to create other flavors.”
“I wouldn’t suggest that you look for a favorite sauce because it doesn’t exist.”
The beginning of a revolution in the spaghetti sauce industry was just beginning. Super Campbell’s came to him and wanted him to make Prego spaghetti sauce, which Super Campbell owned, outsell Ragu, which was the star of the spaghetti sauce industry in the 70’s and 80’s. But Uncle Howard was still Uncle Howard. He gave the same advice, same old Pepsi, same old pickles, and again, same old spaghetti sauce.
“The unmet preferences of 1 in 3 Americans”
People were loaded onto a 10-wheeler truck, their destination a large hall that could hold a large number of people, and they were given 10 small cups of spaghetti along with 45 different spaghetti sauce combinations. The result was #1 original, #2 spicy, and #3 coarse sauce with extra chunks of sauce. It’s not hard to guess which was the most important. Prego dominated the spaghetti sauce market as soon as it introduced its extra chunks of spaghetti sauce.
“Oh my God, we were all wrong.”
We food business owners started thinking about the spaghetti sauce phenomenon. Uncle Howard was right, we were doing it all wrong. There are seven flavors of vinegar in the supermarket, 14 types of mustard on the shelves, and 71 types of olive oil. And that’s not all. Ten years later, Prego was making $600 million selling its extra-large spaghetti sauce.
“The mind doesn’t know what the mouth likes.”
One thing that confirms that we can’t really answer what we like to drink is the example of the group of people who drink coffee. If we ask anyone, “What kind of coffee do you like?” Most people will automatically give the same answer, which is “Strong and aromatic.” But our Uncle Howard doesn’t think so. From his test that gave people a chance to actually taste it, the result is that only 25%-27% like to drink strong and aromatic coffee. Because most of them like light coffee mixed with milk. But because of the values, drinking coffee like that looks very childish.
“We live in a world that values the unique encounter with exquisite food.”
A value that ensures that there can only be one type of fine dining, no choices, no variety, everyone will get the same dish because it is the best. For example, imagine walking into a fancy restaurant where the chef serves premium sashimi with the restaurant’s special sauce, which every table gets. And if you start asking for other sauces because you don’t like it, then you are instantly weird. This is a value.
“We just thought it would make everyone happy.”
Tomato sauce is an idea that originated in Italy, where they made a very thin, very fine sauce. But it became incredibly popular in the 70’s. Since then, everyone has agreed that a good, original sauce has to be very thin and fine, simply because it was originally invented that way. It’s like a cultural tradition that has become a value, but Uncle Howard changed that. There’s only one cultural tradition. It’s impossible to make it good for all people.
“Humans are obsessed with finding a single universal solution that will work for everyone on Earth.”
Most theories in the 19th and 20th century were obsessed with finding a universal concept, whether in psychology, medicine or economics. They tried to find a rule to control human behavior, which they wanted only one to apply to the whole world, forgetting that there is no way that all the people in the world can like the same food, the same clothes or the same movies, because they are diverse.
“A practical idea is to change the universal to embrace diversity instead.”
Doctors know that cancers are all the same, but sometimes the same treatment cannot be used. Therefore, it is not enough to just know how to treat cancer. You have to know how each person’s cancer is different. Similarly, the same dish cannot please every customer. Not all customers like the same meat. Some people eat vegetables, and many do not like vegetables. Or some people may be disgusted by garlic, while many people really like the smell of garlic. The best food is one that can adapt to everyone’s preferences. Accept variety and create a special dish for each person, not just one dish for everyone.
“When we accept our differences, we will find the path to true happiness.”
What we cannot deny is that in this world, not everyone looks the same, does not have the same skin color, does not have the same body shape, even each person grows up in different places, environments and foods. Diversity, which is like art that decorates this world, is all beautiful things that make our world have different shades. Why do we have to choose only one color when we can have all colors? Accepting each other’s colors is not beyond a person’s ability. Accept the differences of others as we want others to accept us, just like we have to accept that coarse tomato sauce with big chunks of meat stuck on top of those spaghetti noodles is really delicious.
Conclusion
Introducing yourself to a universal theory could be a huge disservice to yourself? A single value robs us of the right to know our true preferences, and the opportunity to stand out in the way we want to be.
Are the benefits of being the same really greater than the benefits of diversity? Out-of-the-box thinking, creativity, and innovation come from diversity of thought.
If you want to be a bright spot in the world, why worship that sameness? And if you want to be accepted, can you accept the diversity of the people around you today? There are 71 different types of olive oil, and there are 14 different types of mustard. Do you think it’s possible for you, your neighbor, and the next few houses to use the same mustard?
“Because humans are made from humans, not photocopiers.”
Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce | Malcolm Gladwell
