I'm sure the author exaggerated some parts since it's part of an essay competition, but I feel like they're making a tad too much of a fuss about things. They spend a lot of time consternating why...
Exemplary
I'm sure the author exaggerated some parts since it's part of an essay competition, but I feel like they're making a tad too much of a fuss about things.
They spend a lot of time consternating why we would ever make such things as "instant mashed potatoes". It's not that complicated; it's no different than instant ramen, for instance. A great deal of most food's weight is water, and in many situations water is easy to come around locally. Food that can be rehydrated is valuable for times when space and weight is at a premium.
It's no different than when explorers in the 1600s made portable soup. Is portable soup an affront to soup? An abomination that god would avert their eyes from?
McNuggets reconstituted out of pink slime, American cheese product, instant coffee, deli ham, Pringles minted from the very same potato flakes that go into IMPs.
The McNuggets thing is a lie, first and foremost. Jamie Oliver created it and got clowned about it for years. There's two issues: one, McNuggets are not made from "slime". Second, "pink slime", as Jamie Oliver showed, is also just called ground meat, and it's a bit bizarre to be grossed out about eating more of a chicken. We should eat more of animals - the parts that he's being all "ew" about are both nutritious and a waste to throw away.
American cheese is just cheddar, water, and emulsifying salts which make it melt more evenly.
Deli ham is older than most countries.
Is pringles chips being made of potato flakes any weirder than bread being made of wheat starch, or corn bread being made of corn starch? We have a long history of grinding starches to powder then forming them into shapes.
I'm also particularly bothered when the author talks about how early wartime mashed potatoes are bad because the process released the potatoes' gluten. Potatoes do not contain gluten. I had a hard...
I'm also particularly bothered when the author talks about how early wartime mashed potatoes are bad because the process released the potatoes' gluten. Potatoes do not contain gluten.
I had a hard time reading through this essay but it seems that the author is trying to use this story as a way to advocate for real human output over AI output. But honestly, I think this is so poorly written that it makes a good case for AI. One of the things I hate about AI is that if it's not able to come up with an answer, it will come up with a ton of conjecture. And this article is full of it. He even has sections where he puts conjectures together in a bulleted list with bold text, just like ChatGPT does, which honestly makes me wonder if it were written by an AI with some manual massaging? And it's just so incredibly and unnecessarily long and repeats the same points over and over again. If they had just let AI write the whole thing it probably would have been better.
Good catch on the gluten. I missed that entirely. It’s certainly possible that they might have used AI, but this is becoming an all-purpose complaint that people use for any writing they don’t...
Good catch on the gluten. I missed that entirely.
It’s certainly possible that they might have used AI, but this is becoming an all-purpose complaint that people use for any writing they don’t like. I think it might be better to point out problems with the end result without speculating about the author’s writing process?
Did I not? I specifically called out how he used a writing pattern that seemed really common with ChatGPT. I agree with your assertions but I believe that my comment embodied those ideas. My...
Did I not? I specifically called out how he used a writing pattern that seemed really common with ChatGPT. I agree with your assertions but I believe that my comment embodied those ideas. My problem is less with it being written with AI assistance and more on how badly its points are being made.
I'm with you in spirit for your whole comment, but your examples are making me suspicious about the overall reliability..... American cheese is not "just" cheddar and bunch of stuff, the buncha...
I'm with you in spirit for your whole comment, but your examples are making me suspicious about the overall reliability..... American cheese is not "just" cheddar and bunch of stuff, the buncha stuff make it its own very unique non cheddar product. American McNuggets are really different when one is used to chicken strips or Canadian McNuggets: they're not gross, but they're definitely just not the same thing.
Sure, those are good points. It’s all in the name of efficiency. Removing water and putting it back in happens with juice, too. I didn’t think it was all that deep, but it’s a fun read. It got me...
Sure, those are good points. It’s all in the name of efficiency. Removing water and putting it back in happens with juice, too.
I didn’t think it was all that deep, but it’s a fun read.
It got me thinking about low-end 3D printing, which is nowhere near as good as what a real factory could do when making plastic parts, but can be done at home.
I agree that it was a fun read, and has some interesting thoughts that it shares. (Also I'm biased, I grew up in Idaho, potatoes are great, and here's a whole article on them.) They did lose me at...
I agree that it was a fun read, and has some interesting thoughts that it shares.
(Also I'm biased, I grew up in Idaho, potatoes are great, and here's a whole article on them.)
They did lose me at the point where they start trying to apply the "IMP-ification" of potatoes to other things and it rapidly reaches into territory where the comparison just ceases to make any sense at all. Removing that entire chunk would honestly have made the entire essay better. At it's core I think what the author is driving at is essentially enshittification, but using potatoes. And it's not entirely a good fit, but I appreciate the attempt.
What other foodstuffs did you grow up with that was real only in the mind of your parents? What foodstuffs do you eat now that is only a memory? my answers 1. My parents' memories: 1a. Red...
His body ate the slurry, but his mind still ate the maſhed potatoes of his youth.
What other foodstuffs did you grow up with that was real only in the mind of your parents?
What foodstuffs do you eat now that is only a memory?
my answers
1. My parents' memories:
1a. Red Delicious "apples".
1b. Super hard rice. My dad starved for a bit in his youth and he never wants to see soaked rice or thin gruel again. My jaw is masticating dried kernels, but my father is eating the incarnate form of food security
1c. Restaurants that used to be good 15 years ago. Meal served with the same stories about the restaurant we've been hearing for 20 years.
My false memories:
2a. McDonald's. My brain will occasionally try to suggest we attempt to eat this, but every single time McD foodstuffs is disappointing beyond the first 5 seconds the illusion lasts. Thankfully, my kid is my Odysseus, and they urge us to drive past it every time the siren calls.
2b. Tim Hortons baked goods. Timbits used to be baked in store, and my favourite Duchess bits has actual whole raisins (plural) throughout. These days they're stale re-bakes with a memory of raisin (singular).
2c. Tropical fruits purchased in rural Atlantic Canada: durian, lychee, mangosteen, atemota/cherimoya etc. I haven't seen any wampi or loquats yet, and I doubt they'll be any good, but I would buy them at exorbitant prices and try to eat their memory.
2d. Coal Fire roasted sweet potatoes (碳燴蕃薯). Childhood memories of going to outdoor barbecues with my mom's friends/extended family. Unlike American BBQs where there's one chef at a propane grill, the Hong Kong variant came about after the '67 riots, and the colonial gov't tried to give the youth something to do and actually invest in us. They installed parks, trails, and designated campfire spots, which we immediately co-opted to bring skewers and marinated meats to roast communally over the open coal fires. The English wiki notes the atmosphere is closer to a fondue or hotpot, and that is correct: it's about everyone grilling things together, sort of like S'mores but longer and way better food. Fire side sweet potatoes/yams are wrapped in tinfoil, to rest on the sides from the beginning of the event, but untouched until the very end when the adults are cleaning up getting ready to go home. What I am attempting to eat is the memory of a full day of playing in the sun, of the sub-tropical woods at dusk, a tummy already full of honey grilled chicken wings, and the smokey flavour of almost time to be carried home on piggy back.
Thanks for sharing! I loved the line Well-written essay, and an enjoyable read. I grew up not liking potatoes in any non-French Fry form, but slowly came around as I got older. I don’t think it...
Thanks for sharing! I loved the line
We’re Philadelphia Cooked, and we’re stewing here together in the microwave.
Well-written essay, and an enjoyable read.
I grew up not liking potatoes in any non-French Fry form, but slowly came around as I got older. I don’t think it had to do with instant mashed potatoes, because I didn’t like baked or roasted potatoes either.
But now, I’m a huge potato fan and can’t believe I didn’t like them in my childhood.
Thanks skybrian! This is such a whimsical essay, but it really touched me, for completely opposite reasons than the author intended. You see, I grew up on real mashed potatoes. Potatoes. Milk....
Thanks skybrian!
This is such a whimsical essay, but it really touched me, for completely opposite reasons than the author intended.
You see, I grew up on real mashed potatoes. Potatoes. Milk. Butter. Salt. Day after day after day after day. Until I left home and discovered the magic of adding flavor to an otherwise plainly inedible dish.
To be fair to my mother, who was the primary cook, she was very, very sick for my entire childhood.
Also to be fair to her, I occasionally would get a little variety.
Maybe mashed potato in Shepherds Pie. Maybe refried mash potatoes for breakfast the next day.
Very rarely we would dine without mashed potatoes. Those glorious days would involve heavenly lasagne, or lazy fish and chips, or my grandmothers curried rice.
Needless to say, I didn't simply hate mashed potato. I loathed mashed potato with a furious passion.
And I was not a fussy eater. My mother was sick. I made my own breakfast and lunch from an early age. Breakfast was always the same. Basically pure wheat with maybe some sugar. Lunch was always the same, bread with a simple filling like Jam or Honey. I would use the same filling for years at a time. Yet it was this real mashed potato that I loathed with a passion.
After leaving home, I discovered mashed potato could be transformed with one simple ingredient, garlic, into something with an actual taste, and..... I found I actually liked garlic mashed potato. I didn't just like it, I loved it.
I simply did not like making it. Real mashed potato is a pain to make. Why, why, why, after going to all that effort, did my parents not add garlic to potato? The answer was, that was the way my dad liked it, with no flavor at all.
So what do I do now I cook my own meals? I buy instant mashed potato, with the flavor already added. And I enjoy it. It is consistently tasty and always easy to make. I dedicate my cooking time to focusing on the protein. Because my son, being much wiser than me, refuses to eat mashed potato, so I am often just making it for myself.
So I am like the bizarro version of this author. I grew up on real mashed potato, grew to despise it, and now find myself preferring the simplicity of Instant Mashed Potato.
Except perhaps this author hasn't tried Idahoan mashed potatoes. The instant mashed potatoes they took a photo of look utterly appalling to my educated Instant Mashed Potato palette.
For god sake, don't go to the effort of buying Instant Mashed Potato, and then buy the cheapest box you can find. Doing so would be like going to the effort of making real mashed potato and adding no chives, no garlic, no onion...
If you are buying instant mashed potato, for gods sake, splurge an extra $1 and get the good stuff.
Instant mashed potatoes were like a godsend to me growing up. That was about the time when the Idahoan brand started selling them in pre-flavored packets instead of just the big boxes of plain...
Instant mashed potatoes were like a godsend to me growing up. That was about the time when the Idahoan brand started selling them in pre-flavored packets instead of just the big boxes of plain flakes. My family was always in varying degrees of poverty, so having something that cost less than a dollar at the time that tasted great, and more importantly was easy enough to make that depression wouldn't stop me and could be a meal in and of itself.
But I've grown up quite a lot since then and those things are not as important to me as they once were. The one thing that instant mashed potatoes don't have is the taste of "green" that fresh potatoes have to them. I also prefer them unmashed because I prefer texture to my food.
Mashed potatoes are something that people have pretty specific tastes on. My grandmother, for instance, would eat the instant ones with way too much water in it, so it was like porridge. Some people like it super smooth with so much cream in it that it might as well be called potato butter. I prefer mine to be thicker, and usually with bits of unmashed potato left in it. Also with the skins still in it.
I too also am quite fond of instant potato purée for not so dissimilar reasons to your first paragraph. But as much as I love them, I have a pretty big complaint about them... They didn't actually...
I too also am quite fond of instant potato purée for not so dissimilar reasons to your first paragraph. But as much as I love them, I have a pretty big complaint about them... They didn't actually "fill" my stomach, at all. One 125g packet may make ~1L of purée, give or take, but it's still only 125g of solid mass and 800g of liquid, so as soon as you process the water out of it you're still left with a completely empty stomach. And for me that didn't take much time. Flavour-wise, never had a complaint, but digestion-wise...
From an anonymous entry in an essay-writing contest: …
From an anonymous entry in an essay-writing contest:
Upon taking my first bite, I realized three things:
Mashed potatoes are good.
Whatever my dad had been eating at home was not mashed potatoes.
My world is built on lies.
…
At this point in the review you might say, “what’s the big deal? It’s just mashed potatoes. Chill out.” Which, fair enough - if it were just mashed potatoes then 2500 words on them might be excessive. But the pattern I’ve described is far from unique to pureed tubers.
Consider an abstracted version of the saga of my father’s instant mashed potatoes. It has a few steps:
Humanity develops a Thing from ingredients that exist in the world.
Seeking efficiency at scale, an industry chops the ingredients of the Thing into teeny tiny bits.
Using an artificial emulsifier, the bits are bound back together into an aesthetically deficient but more convenient slurry that resembles the Thing.
Because it contains traces of the ingredients of the original Thing, this IMPish admixture is sold to us as if it were the original Thing.
I'm sure the author exaggerated some parts since it's part of an essay competition, but I feel like they're making a tad too much of a fuss about things.
They spend a lot of time consternating why we would ever make such things as "instant mashed potatoes". It's not that complicated; it's no different than instant ramen, for instance. A great deal of most food's weight is water, and in many situations water is easy to come around locally. Food that can be rehydrated is valuable for times when space and weight is at a premium.
It's no different than when explorers in the 1600s made portable soup. Is portable soup an affront to soup? An abomination that god would avert their eyes from?
The McNuggets thing is a lie, first and foremost. Jamie Oliver created it and got clowned about it for years. There's two issues: one, McNuggets are not made from "slime". Second, "pink slime", as Jamie Oliver showed, is also just called ground meat, and it's a bit bizarre to be grossed out about eating more of a chicken. We should eat more of animals - the parts that he's being all "ew" about are both nutritious and a waste to throw away.
American cheese is just cheddar, water, and emulsifying salts which make it melt more evenly.
Deli ham is older than most countries.
Is pringles chips being made of potato flakes any weirder than bread being made of wheat starch, or corn bread being made of corn starch? We have a long history of grinding starches to powder then forming them into shapes.
I'm also particularly bothered when the author talks about how early wartime mashed potatoes are bad because the process released the potatoes' gluten. Potatoes do not contain gluten.
I had a hard time reading through this essay but it seems that the author is trying to use this story as a way to advocate for real human output over AI output. But honestly, I think this is so poorly written that it makes a good case for AI. One of the things I hate about AI is that if it's not able to come up with an answer, it will come up with a ton of conjecture. And this article is full of it. He even has sections where he puts conjectures together in a bulleted list with bold text, just like ChatGPT does, which honestly makes me wonder if it were written by an AI with some manual massaging? And it's just so incredibly and unnecessarily long and repeats the same points over and over again. If they had just let AI write the whole thing it probably would have been better.
A good example of how ChatGPT learned those behaviors in the first place, ig
Good catch on the gluten. I missed that entirely.
It’s certainly possible that they might have used AI, but this is becoming an all-purpose complaint that people use for any writing they don’t like. I think it might be better to point out problems with the end result without speculating about the author’s writing process?
Did I not? I specifically called out how he used a writing pattern that seemed really common with ChatGPT. I agree with your assertions but I believe that my comment embodied those ideas. My problem is less with it being written with AI assistance and more on how badly its points are being made.
Yes you did do that! Sorry for implying otherwise.
Heck, we do it to potatoes. Potato bread is quite common in some places.
See also croquettes and hash brown patties.
I'm with you in spirit for your whole comment, but your examples are making me suspicious about the overall reliability..... American cheese is not "just" cheddar and bunch of stuff, the buncha stuff make it its own very unique non cheddar product. American McNuggets are really different when one is used to chicken strips or Canadian McNuggets: they're not gross, but they're definitely just not the same thing.
Sure, those are good points. It’s all in the name of efficiency. Removing water and putting it back in happens with juice, too.
I didn’t think it was all that deep, but it’s a fun read.
It got me thinking about low-end 3D printing, which is nowhere near as good as what a real factory could do when making plastic parts, but can be done at home.
I agree that it was a fun read, and has some interesting thoughts that it shares.
(Also I'm biased, I grew up in Idaho, potatoes are great, and here's a whole article on them.)
They did lose me at the point where they start trying to apply the "IMP-ification" of potatoes to other things and it rapidly reaches into territory where the comparison just ceases to make any sense at all. Removing that entire chunk would honestly have made the entire essay better. At it's core I think what the author is driving at is essentially enshittification, but using potatoes. And it's not entirely a good fit, but I appreciate the attempt.
What other foodstuffs did you grow up with that was real only in the mind of your parents?
What foodstuffs do you eat now that is only a memory?
my answers
1. My parents' memories:1a. Red Delicious "apples".
1b. Super hard rice. My dad starved for a bit in his youth and he never wants to see soaked rice or thin gruel again. My jaw is masticating dried kernels, but my father is eating the incarnate form of food security
1c. Restaurants that used to be good 15 years ago. Meal served with the same stories about the restaurant we've been hearing for 20 years.
2a. McDonald's. My brain will occasionally try to suggest we attempt to eat this, but every single time McD foodstuffs is disappointing beyond the first 5 seconds the illusion lasts. Thankfully, my kid is my Odysseus, and they urge us to drive past it every time the siren calls.
2b. Tim Hortons baked goods. Timbits used to be baked in store, and my favourite Duchess bits has actual whole raisins (plural) throughout. These days they're stale re-bakes with a memory of raisin (singular).
2c. Tropical fruits purchased in rural Atlantic Canada: durian, lychee, mangosteen, atemota/cherimoya etc. I haven't seen any wampi or loquats yet, and I doubt they'll be any good, but I would buy them at exorbitant prices and try to eat their memory.
2d. Coal Fire roasted sweet potatoes (碳燴蕃薯). Childhood memories of going to outdoor barbecues with my mom's friends/extended family. Unlike American BBQs where there's one chef at a propane grill, the Hong Kong variant came about after the '67 riots, and the colonial gov't tried to give the youth something to do and actually invest in us. They installed parks, trails, and designated campfire spots, which we immediately co-opted to bring skewers and marinated meats to roast communally over the open coal fires. The English wiki notes the atmosphere is closer to a fondue or hotpot, and that is correct: it's about everyone grilling things together, sort of like S'mores but longer and way better food. Fire side sweet potatoes/yams are wrapped in tinfoil, to rest on the sides from the beginning of the event, but untouched until the very end when the adults are cleaning up getting ready to go home. What I am attempting to eat is the memory of a full day of playing in the sun, of the sub-tropical woods at dusk, a tummy already full of honey grilled chicken wings, and the smokey flavour of almost time to be carried home on piggy back.
Thanks for sharing! I loved the line
Well-written essay, and an enjoyable read.
I grew up not liking potatoes in any non-French Fry form, but slowly came around as I got older. I don’t think it had to do with instant mashed potatoes, because I didn’t like baked or roasted potatoes either.
But now, I’m a huge potato fan and can’t believe I didn’t like them in my childhood.
Thanks skybrian!
This is such a whimsical essay, but it really touched me, for completely opposite reasons than the author intended.
You see, I grew up on real mashed potatoes. Potatoes. Milk. Butter. Salt. Day after day after day after day. Until I left home and discovered the magic of adding flavor to an otherwise plainly inedible dish.
To be fair to my mother, who was the primary cook, she was very, very sick for my entire childhood.
Also to be fair to her, I occasionally would get a little variety.
Maybe mashed potato in Shepherds Pie. Maybe refried mash potatoes for breakfast the next day.
Very rarely we would dine without mashed potatoes. Those glorious days would involve heavenly lasagne, or lazy fish and chips, or my grandmothers curried rice.
Needless to say, I didn't simply hate mashed potato. I loathed mashed potato with a furious passion.
And I was not a fussy eater. My mother was sick. I made my own breakfast and lunch from an early age. Breakfast was always the same. Basically pure wheat with maybe some sugar. Lunch was always the same, bread with a simple filling like Jam or Honey. I would use the same filling for years at a time. Yet it was this real mashed potato that I loathed with a passion.
After leaving home, I discovered mashed potato could be transformed with one simple ingredient, garlic, into something with an actual taste, and..... I found I actually liked garlic mashed potato. I didn't just like it, I loved it.
I simply did not like making it. Real mashed potato is a pain to make. Why, why, why, after going to all that effort, did my parents not add garlic to potato? The answer was, that was the way my dad liked it, with no flavor at all.
So what do I do now I cook my own meals? I buy instant mashed potato, with the flavor already added. And I enjoy it. It is consistently tasty and always easy to make. I dedicate my cooking time to focusing on the protein. Because my son, being much wiser than me, refuses to eat mashed potato, so I am often just making it for myself.
So I am like the bizarro version of this author. I grew up on real mashed potato, grew to despise it, and now find myself preferring the simplicity of Instant Mashed Potato.
Except perhaps this author hasn't tried Idahoan mashed potatoes. The instant mashed potatoes they took a photo of look utterly appalling to my educated Instant Mashed Potato palette.
For god sake, don't go to the effort of buying Instant Mashed Potato, and then buy the cheapest box you can find. Doing so would be like going to the effort of making real mashed potato and adding no chives, no garlic, no onion...
If you are buying instant mashed potato, for gods sake, splurge an extra $1 and get the good stuff.
Instant mashed potatoes were like a godsend to me growing up. That was about the time when the Idahoan brand started selling them in pre-flavored packets instead of just the big boxes of plain flakes. My family was always in varying degrees of poverty, so having something that cost less than a dollar at the time that tasted great, and more importantly was easy enough to make that depression wouldn't stop me and could be a meal in and of itself.
But I've grown up quite a lot since then and those things are not as important to me as they once were. The one thing that instant mashed potatoes don't have is the taste of "green" that fresh potatoes have to them. I also prefer them unmashed because I prefer texture to my food.
Mashed potatoes are something that people have pretty specific tastes on. My grandmother, for instance, would eat the instant ones with way too much water in it, so it was like porridge. Some people like it super smooth with so much cream in it that it might as well be called potato butter. I prefer mine to be thicker, and usually with bits of unmashed potato left in it. Also with the skins still in it.
I too also am quite fond of instant potato purée for not so dissimilar reasons to your first paragraph. But as much as I love them, I have a pretty big complaint about them... They didn't actually "fill" my stomach, at all. One 125g packet may make ~1L of purée, give or take, but it's still only 125g of solid mass and 800g of liquid, so as soon as you process the water out of it you're still left with a completely empty stomach. And for me that didn't take much time. Flavour-wise, never had a complaint, but digestion-wise...
From an anonymous entry in an essay-writing contest:
…