I noticed that David Chang likes to add a bit of agave nectar to his fried rice. I never thought about adding something sweet to this, so I started adding a small amount of brown sugar (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 tsp) to my fried rice, and it really seems to make it tastier. It doesn’t read as “sweet” - it just gives it a tiny bit of an additional flavor boost. Since then I’ve also tried playing around with adding a tiny amount of sugar to other things, and it’s usually pretty good.
Sugar is basically a drug. Restaurants have been adding small amounts of sugar to everything for years because it’s addictive. It doesn’t have to change the flavor at all to make food “better” because your body wants the sugar.
Yep. That’s why everyone loves McDonald’s fries.
I googled and every answer says there’s a very small amount of sugar in McDonald’s fries (less than a 5th of a gram for a medium fry). Is that really enough sugar to make a difference?
Yep. Junk food, too. A lot of flavors of potato chips have sugar added.