The New York Times published an interesting article about other tasty articles—Thai food:
Hopscotching the globe as Thailand’s prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra repeatedly encountered a distressing problem: bad Thai food.
Too often, she found, the meals she sampled at Thai restaurants abroad were unworthy of the name, too bland to be called genuine Thai cooking. The problem bothered her enough to raise it at a cabinet meeting.
Her political party has since been thrown out of office, in a May military coup, but her initiative in culinary diplomacy lives on.
At a gala dinner at a ritzy Bangkok hotel on Tuesday the government will unveil its project to standardize the art of Thai food — with a robot.
Diplomats and dignitaries have been invited to witness the debut of a machine that its promoters say can scientifically evaluate Thai cuisine, telling the difference, for instance, between a properly prepared green curry with just the right mix of Thai basil, curry paste and fresh coconut cream, and a lame imitation.
A boxy contraption filled with sensors and microchips, the so-called e-delicious machine scans food samples to produce a chemical signature, which it measures against a standard deemed to be the authentic version.
The government-financed Thai Delicious Committee, which oversaw the development of the machine, describes it as “an intelligent robot that measures smell and taste in food ingredients through sensor technology in order to measure taste like a food critic.”
I myself am a bit hesitant to believe that a machine can truly judge the quality of food, especially its authenticity. From my experience, the only real judge of good Thai food is when it's so spicy that my head is about to explode. Does the machine have a similar response?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 30 2014, @03:36AM
Lots of sugar, sodium, lard: bad
Expensive spices: good
So in other words, it knows enough not to sign off on $6 Pad Thai.
But you don't have to be a cook to create a concoction that gets the nod the robot. You just need to open your wallet to get the ingredients it'll approve of.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Tuesday September 30 2014, @03:53AM
You sound like a bad cook.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 30 2014, @03:58AM
The absolute worst.
Hey, it's a distinction. That's something!
(Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday September 30 2014, @06:38PM
I'm more fond of spicy Indian and Pakistani food instead of Thai food but there is one thing I've learned: The best Indian and Pakistani food is always very spicy. That's because the spicier it is, the more flavorful it is. I really don't care what shortcuts they use (so long as they don't make me sick). What I care about is texture and flavor. Bland Indian, Pakistani, and Thai food is bad food.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday September 30 2014, @03:53AM
Someone came up with a scientific system to quantify the amount of protein in animal foods. All scientifically measured, mind you.
A cheap chemical - "melamine" would make the numbers look good.
A lot of people started using it in cat food so they could print juicy numbers on the packaging - as people bought the numbers. It wasn't like they had to eat the stuff.
I lost several cats before I found out what happened. Kidney failure.
When the cats got sick, they literally rotted from the inside out.
The culprit: "Special Kitty" from Wal-Mart [archive.org]. Before ragging on me about buying catfood from Wal-Mart, look at the lists - you will find the premium stuff in there too. Even the high falutin' Blue Buffalo was in the fray. [wikipedia.org]. So much for thinking you get more because you pay more.
If interested, google "melamine pet food recall 2007" [google.com]
Sometimes doing things by machine has unintended consequences.
I guess its like "teaching to the test", where who cares what or how much a kid thinks, rather its all about passing some standardized test.
Talk to any dedicated teacher to get an earful on that one.
But to get back on topic, if I am paying for the dinner, genuine Thai food might be quite a bit too much for me. Spices are not that expensive. I am sure each restauranteur is trying to make what his customers want. I would say the best judge is the customer, not the critic.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday September 30 2014, @04:37AM
And that's exactly why she had this experience, it's pretty simple actually. Whether Thai, Mexican, Indian, or whatever, you have to tone the spices down considerably if you want anyone to eat it in many countries. The natives dont have the tradition and have very limited tolerance for it. These restaurants have to make a living from the locals, if they made this politician happy their customers would go somewhere else.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday September 30 2014, @11:16AM
But to get back on topic, if I am paying for the dinner, genuine Thai food might be quite a bit too much for me.
Thai food is incredibly cheap -- at least, it was in Thailand when I was stationed there forty years ago. Dinner for four at a nice restaurant cost about $1.
My favorite was "cowpot", which is how the Thai word for "fried rice" sounds. Those Thai hot peppers are tiny but scalding hot, most Thai food I ate there was spicy as hell. I haven't had any Thai food here in the US at all that's anything like what they serve in Thailand.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by n1 on Tuesday September 30 2014, @07:43PM
Thailand is still quite cheap for food, probably one of the cheapest places i've been. $1 for four is very much 40 years ago though. Best deal I got was about $1.20 for fried chicken and noodles from a street vendor. Was extremely tasty, as was nearly every meal I had in Thailand.
Saying that, I wasn't a huge fan of the thai style curries, in Thailand or anywhere else. Maybe I have spent too long with Indian and Pakistani curry (probably have one every week), which is quite a different experience as i'm sure you know.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 30 2014, @12:00PM
Exactly. Even if this is some kind of gas chromatograph to measure the presence or balance among key substances, GCs can be fooled. Not as easily as protein assays, but volatility is still a pretty coarse measure.
It's more interesting, to me, as a social experiment: now there is an automated system that someone claims capable of validating cuisine. "Impartial," and "not subject to bribery." I can see market segmentation, even voluntary market segmentation, based on places willing to submit their food to testing and receive a "Seal of Approval." I can see naive consumers seeking "authenticated" Thai food. It sounds like the invention of a VP of Marketing, like "Freedom Fries" hidden behind a techological doodad.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday September 30 2014, @06:30PM
Ah! So this is why my adorable but incredibly evil black cat is the embodiment of Satan. She's ate some bad cat food but did not die. She's certainly rotten on the inside.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SlimmPickens on Tuesday September 30 2014, @06:16AM
For one thing, there's no tradition of cookbooks in Thailand, hence the arguments referred to in TFA, it's notoriously poorly defined.
But who is going to buy this thing? It says embassies in TFA, but you either know the difference or you don't, and people that don't may well think that the "tepid" Thai food is a bit too spicy anyway ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01 2014, @12:59PM
It has achieved its goal of funnelling public funds into private hands. Nobody cares if it actually does anything useful. This is all quite normal in this thoroughly corrupt power structure, although it is a more amusing example. Over here, positions of power cost money and are an investment that is expected to provide returns. About the only government position you don't have to pay for is street sweeper.