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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:01:02 JST Adrianna Tan

   Just saw a story about people who make and eat ‘human kibble’.

   It’s so far out of my realm of understanding, culturally and socially, to see food as a drag, and something to minimize and productivize.

   But I understand that not everyone has access to food as a pathway to connecting with people, culture, community, migrant pasts and shared history.

   Food to me is experiencing the world through someone else’s tastes, sharing a table with people I have never met, being fed by random aunties who love to cook for strangers; and of course all of the shared joy of participating in food-based rituals in the cultures I enjoy being a part of.

   #Food

   • Embed this notice
     Chris Petrilli (petrillic@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:03:30 JST Chris Petrilli

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte At $previous there was a developer who pretty much only consumed Soylent. Nothing else.

     It was depressing. What kind of joyless existence is that?

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:05:21 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Part of it is also that I come from a culture where families are so emotionally repressed that without the shared partaking of food we would have almost no means of emotional exchange with each other. (Many Chinese people be like that)

     A lot of our meaningful relationships are forged over specific meals or dishes.

     When I take the time to cook the salted vegetable and duck soup that my grandma used to make for me, I think of her, and how I miss the hot days lazing about drinking the soup she made and how much she loved me.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:06:49 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Chris Petrilli
     • Jess👾

     @JessTheUnstill @petrillic when my parents were visiting me, I was reminded of how ‘oh wow, I guess having an incredible meal at every meal is not how everyone lives’ and a lot of my immigrant angst is basically.. that.

   • Embed this notice
     Jess👾 (jesstheunstill@infosec.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:06:50 JST Jess👾

     in reply to

     • Chris Petrilli

     I'll say, for breakfast and lunch during weekdays especially, I have very little care about my food. It's just kinda a fuel to keep me going. Dinners and other meals with my family are where I get enjoyment from food.
     @petrillic @skinnylatte

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:10:18 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Not saying this is ‘better’ than other people’s relationship to food! But that if what I’ve described above sounds alien to you, it’s also alien to me to think of food as fuel, as a solitary activity devoid of any links to people or relationships.

     I was not exposed to that way of thinking about food until I left Southeast Asia. I remember being really confused at the idea of eating food out of a cardboard box, to be microwaved

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:11:10 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Anthropy

     @anthropy I guess more and more I feel that way sometimes. But also that if i still lived in SE Asia my ‘lazy day’ options are plentiful and varied and don’t involve simple food. So im really kind of expressing a sadness for leaving that world as well

   • Embed this notice
     Anthropy (anthropy@mastodon.derg.nz)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:11:11 JST Anthropy

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte so I feel like I'm weirdly between opinions there.

     I absolutely love cooking myself and tasting other people's creations and that of good restaurants and such, both the mundane but good local dishes or exotic things of all kinds.

     ..but I can also relate to some days where I don't even really feel like eating at all and I just need some mealreplacement shake thing or whatever to sustain myself, or when I'm busy, or when I'm out hiking, etc. Though that's been a lot less recently ig

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:11:59 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     I miss Southeast Asia.

   • Embed this notice
     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:38:32 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I was raised in the culture of the US south, which also places a huge amount of emphasis on food and cooking. When my grandmother died, there was a huge family fight over who got her pound cake pan because it was the key tool to making her recipe correctly. Food is a chance for me to step away from the grind and have a little pleasurable experience. I know people who really loathe having to eat at all, who drink Soylent and see food as fuel, and I wonder about how this happened.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:44:47 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Anthropy

     @anthropy I cook a lot myself. Mostly to try to replicate the stuff I miss, but it’s the difference between ‘the 10 noodles I can prepare’ and the ‘100 noodles I can easily have for breakfast back home’ (that each take hours to prepare)

   • Embed this notice
     Anthropy (anthropy@mastodon.derg.nz)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:44:48 JST Anthropy

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I can imagine that can feel confronting. I personally left the city about 4 years ago and I can kinda relate there.

     Do you like cooking yourself? I personally found a lot of joy in finding out how simple some of my favorite dishes were to make once I got the hang of it.

     Noodles and asian (wok/hotpot/etc) dishes are kinda nice in that sense because they're extremely flexible and you can buy exactly the ingredients that you like, you should try searching for some recipes online!

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:46:46 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Glyph

     @glyph the part that makes people want to opt out of the labor of preparing the food? Yeah totally.

     In a more westernized environment where food is not always social, I can see that. In the ecosystem I come from, I expect my easy food to also be complex and varied (because other people’s labor). Which is its own thing. But if I hadn’t left it I wouldn’t have to ever eat food out of a box, so there’s that too

   • Embed this notice
     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 06:46:47 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte A lot of your writing about food (including this thread) really resonates with me and I find it both mournful and wonderful. But I think that some of the same cultural forces that built your relationship with food are actually responsible for at least one dimension of the "human kibble" / soylend phenomenon.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:35:17 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Glyph

     @glyph I get that. I have ARFID myself. It was difficult at times. But it helped that no one expected me to change, it was just my own special interest (food and food history).

   • Embed this notice
     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:35:18 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte There are people who've *repaired* their relationship with nutrition via human-kibble products, by knowing that a safe fallback exists; once they feel safe, they can break down their aversions. I don't know anyone who has fully gotten rid of a sensitivity this way but there are certainly people who learn to work around their sensitivity, modify recipes, and generally learn to actually enjoy food *because* these bland food-oid substances give them the space to unlearn anxiety.

   • Embed this notice
     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:35:19 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Imagine someone coming from a similar sort of culture as you, that places great emotional, social, and cultural weight on food, one which valorizes openness to culinary experience and in particular appreciation of specific, culturally-relevant dishes. Now, imagine that person has, roughly from birth, a strong food sensitivity around certain flavors or textures that are common in those same culturally-relevant foods. (Among the neurodivergent, not an uncommon experience.)

   • Embed this notice
     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:35:19 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Every family meal becomes a contest of wills; every time this person physically requires sustenance they need to prepare to psychologically do battle, advocating for themselves in ways they do not have language to express, fighting against the weight of culture and heritage and family, cutting off the only avenue their family understands for expression of care and support, and getting lectured about what a disappointment they are that they are so picky and difficult.

   • Embed this notice
     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:35:19 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte This sort of person probably does not develop great culinary skills themselves, as they have spent their youth meticulously avoiding the kitchen and anything to do with interacting with family around food, trying to become independent and living off of "safe" textures and flavors that they can scrounge up, probably a combination of hyper-processed packaged stuff and junk food.

   • Embed this notice
     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:35:19 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Now, imagine this person's reaction to learning that they could just buy… undifferentiated, boring, but thoroughly *adequate* food, meet their physical needs, and just not _think_ about it. They could grab a soylent _before_ meeting with family, say "sorry, I've already eaten, really full" and not worry about being starving after an emotionally exhausting visit. This would be a very exciting development in their culinary landscape.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:36:10 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • billy joe bowers-8647

     @billyjoebowers when I left my part of the world I was surprised and a little offended that people didn’t expect every meal they ate to be amazing and incredible every single day. It was hard to leave that food paradigm for this one.

   • Embed this notice
     billy joe bowers-8647 (billyjoebowers@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:36:11 JST billy joe bowers-8647

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte

     I like the communal nature of meals.
     Sometimes. Not all the time, not every freakin meal.

     But I'd be just as happy, or happier, hanging out and having coffee or whatever. The food is kind of a distraction there.

     It's just too much. I just want something to eat. I just don't care about food in that way.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:54:20 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Anthropy

     @anthropy yeah I’m not convinced a home cook could ever expertly make most of my fave dishes from home in a lifetime. They might get 80% there and that would be optimistic.i leave it all for my vacay when I have time in Malaysia and Indonesia

   • Embed this notice
     Anthropy (anthropy@mastodon.derg.nz)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:54:21 JST Anthropy

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte yea big mood there, I definitely miss the stuff I had in the city area too. And SE Asian streetfoods always seemed amazing, never actually been there to try them myself, but I've seen plenty videos of it and it always looked really good.

     Maybe you could get it on a holiday or something.. I can imagine the favorites are the complex ones to replicate though, I definitely had similar issues at the beginning when I was still looking for some easy but tasty recipes to keep returning to.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:59:49 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Glyph

     @glyph probably. Again, I’m an immigrant and not a second gen diaspora kid, so my experiences are super different. I won’t pretend I understand what it’s like for someone to make fun of my food, for example. The social dynamic of food there is also different: people who liked food a lot, were not mocked. It was just a thing everybody was into, in different ways. Even the people who liked food the least might be perceived as super foodies where I live now. It just.. was.

   • Embed this notice
     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 07:59:50 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Maybe there's also a native-environment/immigrant-environment aspect.

     When *all* food is social, if your family presents the sort of stressful environment I'm talking about, maybe you go grab the street food you like with your friends, and it has a different social significance.

     But if the family's dynamic is complicated by the fact that they're attempting to *preserve* a culture via food, while your friends are eating garbage at the mall food court… well I guess that's social too

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:05:55 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     I miss going to food stalls in countries I’ve never been to, not knowing what’s what, and just saying ‘feed me that’ or ‘I’ll have whatever that is’. That type of culinary surprise brings me a type of joy I miss tremendously.

   • Embed this notice
     Laura Langdon (lauralangdon@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:06:04 JST Laura Langdon

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I like food, don't mind cooking if it's not every day, but I definitely don't have the warm fuzzies for food that you do. I was a very picky eater growing up (ND, but none of us knew that then) and my family made a huge deal of it. I say "made", but I now eat a wider variety of foods than my parents and they still mention it at least a few times a year. Once I was made to keep collard greens in my mouth for eleven hours because I couldn't swallow them and wasn't allowed to spit them out.

     Eating at the home of a new person is still intensely anxious-making for me, because there are some flavors and textures I still can't handle and I desperately want to avoid giving offense.

     It's also just a slog, for me, having to eat every day, maybe several times. In fact, it's 4pm and I haven't gotten up the motivation to put something together and eat at all yet today. I like food when I'm eating it, but getting to that point can be hard.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:08:52 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Laura Langdon

     @LauraLangdon I had ARFID growing up, but it helped we didn’t have the mindset of everyone has to like something. I could not eat a single vegetable until I was an adult.

     I liked the approach we had at home where not liking something was a quirk, not a judgement. ‘I don’t know how to appreciate that’ instead of ‘I hate that’. No one ever made me eat anything I didn’t want, and I’m convinced that’s the only reason I like food now

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:12:46 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Glyph
     • Matt Campbell

     @matt @glyph I also have food sensitivities but my interest in novelty supersedes my need for comfort by far.

     I do have a higher tolerance for many textures that people find weird, so there’s that. I don’t expect to like everything and am okay with picking something I hate. In my experience, that’s only 1/100 things anywhere in the world for me.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Campbell (matt@toot.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:12:47 JST Matt Campbell

     in reply to

     • Glyph

     @skinnylatte Now _that_ I can't imagine enjoying. I'm a white American, but also I think I have some of that neurodivergence-related food sensitivity that @glyph was talking about. I think I would find the experience you just described terrifying.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:15:45 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Curious Magpie

     @CuriousMagpie I do that here going to immigrant restaurants in deeply immigrant neighborhoods in big cities. Recently I went to an Indigenous place and I was like I dunno what anything is but feed me and I’ll eat it. Do the same in Afghan and Tanzanian places near me.

   • Embed this notice
     Curious Magpie (curiousmagpie@beige.party)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:15:46 JST Curious Magpie

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I've never had that experience but I've always wished there were food stalls like that around the US. We are so lacking in that arena, among many others.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:21:17 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Matt Campbell

     @matt growing up where I did, and even eating only a basic subset of available foods when I was most food sensitive, probably exposed me to many textures and foods already. I was glad to have that base.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Campbell (matt@toot.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:21:18 JST Matt Campbell

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte For some reason I have an aversion to novelty when it comes to food. I guess that's something I should try to fix, if only because it will make some social situations, not to mention eating at conferences, less stressful.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:26:01 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Amy Maybe

     @APBBlue oh yeah the Bay Area has pockets of really good Burmese Chinese food

   • Embed this notice
     Amy Maybe (apbblue@thepit.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:26:02 JST Amy Maybe

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Literally no idea if it's authentic or not, but we had great Chinese/Burmese at Yangon in Burlingame, randomly.

   • Embed this notice
     Laura Langdon (lauralangdon@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:29:06 JST Laura Langdon

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Oh, interesting that you also weren't a vegetable eater as a kid! I love the "I don't know how to appreciate that yet" framing. ❤️

     I've now just looked up ARFID, and oh, hi, yep.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 10-May-2025 08:34:09 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     My grandpa was a deeply autistic old Chinese man whose autism and food intersected in:

     - he really liked the same 50 things
     - he cared a lot about the specific diameter of his rice noodles and disliked it if it was the wrong size

     I’m a bit like that!