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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3593 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 8, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Where would I go to learn about tales from the trenches in the food science industry? I've always been interested in how food that's produced at scale is developed much more so than a guy in france taking 3 years to make an egg. A great example of something I'd love to hear about is Jimmy Dean Stuffed Hashbrowns. These are incredible little meals that somehow crisp up in the microwave a bit, they're hot and melty on the inside, and taste pretty incredible IMO. If you look at the ingredient list it's a fucking absolute freak show. It must have taken years and a serious team to perfect such a monstrosity of artificial chemicals to appear like food.

We get detailed blog posts like this about software all the time, but I feel like I never get them elsewhere. Trade secrets I guess? Anyone have some one-off posts they'd share?

I'd normally turn to Reddit, but https://old.reddit.com/r/foodscience/ is incredibly underwhelming.

Also as an aside thanks to whoever posted the latest on the weight loss pill research in Friday fun. I too am a walking parody of conformity and am considering losing weight via chemical means.

The YouTuber Adam Ragusea seems to have pretty good connections to academic food researchers and the content from those discussions often shows up in the videos. Maybe see what resources he uses?

I suspect its going to be hard to find this stuff for products that are still on the market since these processes are closely guarded trade secrets. But if you find any good sources let me know, it sounds interesting.

I'd skipped claire's takes on gourmet makes since I figured she'd be looking down on a lot of the food while trying to imitate it. I'll still give it a look. BA always had a too-friendly atmosphere in their videos. I assumed that, given any sort of social justice blow-up, they'd all have disappearing spines or be happy to stab their coworkers in the back.

I consumed plenty while locked in the house, but I'm super glad to hear their racial groveling/confirmation of my suspicion has been rewarded with declining viewership. The whole episode was pretty gross.

How It's made is 75% of what I'm looking for. Waking up hungover on a Sunday and crushing a couple episodes of it is fantastic. If you're similarly interested, here's a video about the humble aluminum can I really enjoyed:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw

I assumed that, given any sort of social justice blow-up, they'd all have disappearing spines or be happy to stab their coworkers in the back.

And, sadly, you were right. As soon as the scandal started, there were a number of people there who were only too happy to try to stab co-workers in the back and/or advance their careers by whining about being mistreated. Sohla in particular was obnoxious about it (not shocking), but I remember one of their photographers being really dumb as well. Dude was going around complaining that nobody knew it was an Asian guy behind the camera, as if that is something we should be worrying about.

I'm not surprised that the BA fan base evaporated. Either people were upset with them for the "hostile" work environment (like the BA subreddit was), or they were upset because social justice corrupted yet another pleasant apolitical form of entertainment (like I was). There was really no way for them to win.

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