I came across with some people who can hardly tell the differences of tea in terms of Hou Yun. There are a few reasons why they could not appreciate the depth of taste and the richness of flavor. Firstly if one is taking medication, such as simple flu medicine, it will be difficult for that person to tell the differences of taste and flavor. Most of the antibiotics will affect our sensory ability. Same goes to those who are having sickness. When we are sick, we cannot enjoy food because everything we eat or drink seems to be tasteless. In other words, the ability to judge the Hou Yun is kind of health index.

However there is another critical reason that makes us unable to detect the Hou Yun.

Have you ever wonder if your teeth are affecting to the taste?

Some of us have a false tooth that is made of metal. Usually it is either silver or gold in color. This metal tooth is neither made of pure silver nor gold.. This silver or gold tooth is neither made of pure silver nor gold. It contains copper and other heavy metal materials as well. As a matter of fact, the copper and heavy metal obviously affects the taste. I carried out some experiments with my own metal tooth.

1. When I drink tea, I ran it through my metal tooth first, then swallow the tea
2. When I drink tea, I swallowed tea directly without having the tea get in contact with my metal tooth.

The result is pretty obvious.  By tasting the same tea, I can easily detect that the tea has much better Hou Yun in drinking method No. 2, while the same tea taste flat in drinking method No. 1. For a person with metal tooth like me, I must drink tea by guiding it directly passes my tongue and let it flow down my throat, in order to enjoy and detect the Hou Yun of tea. If I casually drink tea and let it spread all over my mouth, I would not be able to taste and detect its quality.

Sometime, it is hard to believe that such a small piece of metal tooth gives so much effect to the taste. I have one example to explain that metal tooth keeps releasing metal ion.

Q: What if you bite an aluminum foil with your metal tooth?
A: You will have intense pain from your metal tooth. This pain is caused by the electricity that triggered by the metal ion that is eluted from both aluminum foil and metal tooth. This experiment indicates that metal ion is constantly releasing ion.

To be honest, I used to have many metal teeth in my mouth. It is my on-going project that I am changing my metal teeth to white teeth. As a result, it really changes the feeling when I taste food. The same food tastes more delicious than before, and my tasting ability is sharper compared to the old days.

Have you ever tried eating curry with your fingers?

Many of my friends who tasted curry with their fingers told me that the taste of curry was nicer than eating using a metal spoon. In fact, metal spoon relatively makes taste of food very flat. I attended a tea tasting session in a Japanese Tea Company the other day. They asked me to taste tea using a metal spoon. I was very shocked with the result. All teas, including my own tea that I brought along and used as a control sample, gave very flat taste. For this, I suspected it could be due to the metal spoon I used. Therefore, I tasted the tea directly from the cup. The taste was completely different. With direct tasting method, tea gives much stronger Hou Yun and richness in flavor. Many utensils like spoon are made of stainless steel and sometimes it contains unwanted metals, especially many spoons used in Asian country are suspiciously light and obviously it is not made of the right type of stainless steel metal. It is not our finger that is improving the taste but the metal spoon that is deteriorating the taste of curry. Try using a wooden spoon or ceramic spoon instead. You can simply enjoy a much better taste.