Over the course of any weekend where you watch a fair dose of televised sports, you’re sure to hear at least one color analyst commend a coach for creating a role that allows a somewhat limited player to prosper. It’s called putting the player in a position to succeed.

While the phrase has become a cliché, that it’s a calling card of high-quality coaching is also the truth.

So are the words behind another sports cliché that color analysts say just as frequently. That you learn more from failure than success.

I recently ran a taste test of a vegan soup containing seitan - a high-protein meat substitute made from wheat gluten - that went awry. I mention the first sports cliché because a color analyst covering the event would’ve certainly uttered a variation of it.

He or she would’ve explained the experiment as constructed didn’t allow for success.

I mention the second cliché because I did learn from my failure.

A lesson I’ll now share because it should help you walk that sometimes fine line between eating what keeps your taste buds happy yet makes your body healthy.

Last Nov. 1, Heather Wakely, Senior Account Executive at Reach Public Relations, offered to send me a sample of an Upton’s Naturals product: Vegan Roast Slices in Gravy https://uptonsnaturals.com/products/. She pitched the product as a healthy alternative to typical Thanksgiving turkey and worthy of mention in a good-for-you foods article.

But on the day I accepted her offer, she withdrew it - and rightfully so.

Although other Upton’s Naturals products are available in local grocery stores, what she offered me isn’t. To make up for the miscue, Wakely sent me a variety of Upton’s vegan soups.

Now I’m not a big soup eater, but my father and his girlfriend are, and they rave about an Italian Wedding soup they order at one of their favorite Berks County restaurants. So I asked them to try the Upton’s Naturals version and they agreed.

Always the diplomat, dad’s girlfriend admitted the first spoonful of the soup “did not make me want to eat more.” She expressed particular disappointment in the taste, or lack thereof, of the seitan-based, imitation meatballs. My father, bereft of his better half’s tact, called the soup “tasteless.”

And I called myself a few names not suitable for print.

For their comments were not as much criticism of the soup as additional proof of something I’ve written many times before. So many times, in fact, that I should’ve known not to ask meat lovers to compare a vegan version of anything to its meat-based match.

That many taste preferences are acquired, that acquiring them takes time - and so does changing them.

If you start thinly slicing and baking sweet or golden potatoes and eating them instead of nightly snack of potato chips, for instance, it only stands to reason you will find the new food bland. For while you’ve been eating a starchy plant tuber, what you’ve really been tasting really is the sodium and fat added to it.

In about three weeks, however, your taste buds adjust to the pure potato taste and learn to be satisfied by it.

Since I’ve trained my taste buds this way for over the last 40 years, I taste tested the remaining Upton’s Naturals soups and guess what?

I like them. I really liked them.

(Anybody else having a flashback to chubby-cheeked Mikey in those 1970s Life Cereal commercials?)

Liked them so much I intend to keep a couple cans of Minestrone, Chick & Wild Rice, and Chick Tortilla in my cupboard for those times when a lack of time keeps me from cooking from scratch. I believe other healthy eaters would be well served to do the same.

I enjoyed the Chick Tortilla soup the most. Its combination of corn, black beans, and a chicken substitute made me - unlike the more tactful of the two Italian Wedding soup taste testers - want to eat more, not after the first spoonful but after the entire can was gone.

Since the chicken substitute I liked is seitan-based - just like the fake meatballs my dad and his girlfriend didn’t like - I asked them to do another taste test. It’s just I withheld a key bit of information from them this time.

Prior to this, they both had remarked a meal I eat for lunch twice a week - consisting of onions, mushrooms, cauliflower, a bit of sauerkraut, and shirataki noodles - smells great and believed they would like it if it didn’t contain shirataki noodles.

So I made the mix without them, added pieces of a new, secret ingredient, and had them eat a few spoonfuls.

They liked it. They really liked.

What I liked the best is that they liked the new, secret ingredient. They said it reminded them a little bit of bacon.

That’s because it is - in the vegan world.

I had prepared, cut up, and added Upton’s Naturals Seitan Bacon, the same ingredient in the fake meatballs they didn’t like in the Italian Wedding soup.