Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, yummy, yummy, yummy.
Speaker 1: I got love in my tummy. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm
Speaker 1: Lauren Bam, and I'm Joe McCormick. I thought you were
Speaker 1: going to do there's a party in my tummy. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know that one. Nobody knows this. There's a
Speaker 1: party in my tummy. Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy. No, No,
Speaker 1: I I have no no clue what you're going on about.
Speaker 1: We must move on. Today. We're gonna talk about robots
Speaker 1: and cooking more because we did this before, right, We
Speaker 1: did this back in August two fifteen. We did an
Speaker 1: episode called The Borg Chef, and in that we talked
Speaker 1: about AI, we talked about robots, we talked about a
Speaker 1: couple of different approaches people were thinking about. But there's
Speaker 1: been more since then that I thought would be fun
Speaker 1: to kind of revisit and talk about, maybe even get
Speaker 1: a little debate going about the value of a robot
Speaker 1: in the place of a chef or um, you know,
Speaker 1: is the is there enough value to uh to to
Speaker 1: combat the cost of these um doesn't make sense. So
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit, uh backtrack a bit. Well,
Speaker 1: we've we mentioned in the previous episode that kitchen automation
Speaker 1: is one of those things that's been going on for decades. Uh,
Speaker 1: from everything from pretty simple stuff dishwashers toasters, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: electric can openers up to digital ovens where you can
Speaker 1: program things so that they preheed at a certain time,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And then there are all those
Speaker 1: very specific little appliances you know, the bread and machine
Speaker 1: stuff like. Yeah, a lot of stuff where we have
Speaker 1: tried very hard to make it easier, less time consuming,
Speaker 1: less labor intensive. Right, anything we can do to make
Speaker 1: make the process of cooking more accessible and and less
Speaker 1: of a requirement on our energy and time. UM. That's
Speaker 1: been the case for for decades, but we are really
Speaker 1: seeing a push for that to go into overdrive, particularly
Speaker 1: with home automation and robotics being the two big areas. Also,
Speaker 1: I would argue apps play a big part in that too,
Speaker 1: being incorporated into every device you can imagine at this point,
Speaker 1: like refrigerators and stoves and that kind of stuff. I
Speaker 1: also think some of this demand is simply based on
Speaker 1: people not understanding how bad robots are it cooking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that. Well. I mean, I think part
Speaker 1: of it is just, you know, all it takes is
Speaker 1: that one day where you've had a really hard day
Speaker 1: at work and it took forever to get home because
Speaker 1: traffic is terrible, and you walk through the door and
Speaker 1: you're hungry, but you have no energy left, and you're thinking,
Speaker 1: what am I going to do? I don't want to
Speaker 1: go out, I don't want to order food. If only
Speaker 1: I had a robo chef, I could just push a
Speaker 1: button and say, you know, make me fedacchini alfredo or
Speaker 1: something along those lines, and it would just do it
Speaker 1: for you. Wouldn't that be lovely? Wouldn't that be awesome?
Speaker 1: And the problem is that, yeah, that would be awesome,
Speaker 1: But we're not there yet. We're not at a point
Speaker 1: where where robo chef can jump in and take over. Um.
Speaker 1: But well not if you care about it being cost
Speaker 1: effective and good. Right, if you wanted to be expensive
Speaker 1: and bad, we got you covered. But uh yeah. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I wanted to bring this
Speaker 1: up as I had read a book review in Popular
Speaker 1: Science as a book review for the book Unnaturally Delicious,
Speaker 1: written by Jason Lusk, and Lusk is a professor of
Speaker 1: agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University. Now, this this book
Speaker 1: actually covers a ton of different stuff, not just robotics
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. That was some of the apparent only
Speaker 1: the early chapters had some of that. A lot of
Speaker 1: it had things to do with like genetically modified organisms
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Um and uh, and I don't
Speaker 1: actually agree with all of Lusk's points on everything that
Speaker 1: that he argued, but the robot stuff was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: He talks about going to a restaurant with his wife
Speaker 1: and they were it was actually one of Bobby Flay's restaurants,
Speaker 1: and uh, ordering an appetizer, and they loved the appetizers
Speaker 1: so much that they bought the cookbook for the restaurant
Speaker 1: at which included the recipe for the the appetizer they loved.
Speaker 1: Then they went back home and they tried to make
Speaker 1: the appetizer. And first off, he said, the amount of
Speaker 1: time that it suggested it would take to make the
Speaker 1: appetizer was orders of magnitude off, Like, it was way
Speaker 1: less time than what actually took. Sure, I'll save my
Speaker 1: comments for the end of the story, okay uh, and
Speaker 1: then he says, well, then we go through. We follow
Speaker 1: the instructions, were done with everything, but I just wasn't
Speaker 1: the same. It wasn't as good as when we went
Speaker 1: into the restaurant and had it there. It was something
Speaker 1: was missing, and they weren't sure if they messed up
Speaker 1: something with the recipe, if maybe they left something cooking
Speaker 1: too long or didn't cook it long enough. There was
Speaker 1: no way for them to really know short of retracing
Speaker 1: every step they had taken up through preparing that appetizer.
Speaker 1: So he said, what if we were able to have
Speaker 1: a robot UH that could prepare a dish exactly the
Speaker 1: way a chef prepares it. So the robot uses machine
Speaker 1: learning to study the way a chef prepares a dish
Speaker 1: and can, without fail, replicate that same sequence to the
Speaker 1: point where it's using the the perfect temperature, it's using
Speaker 1: the perfect motion to uh to fold ingredients together or
Speaker 1: stir them or whisk them or whatever, so that you
Speaker 1: would have consistent results every single time. That was that
Speaker 1: was the dream. So you'd have a not just a
Speaker 1: robot chef, but SpeI typically a robot Bobby flay. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: that sounds terrifying. But but okay, my my other whole, my,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to put a tiny caveat into this
Speaker 1: story here that you know, it's it's assuming, it's assuming
Speaker 1: a lot of things about a recipe to to say
Speaker 1: that a robot chef would be able to duplicate a
Speaker 1: recipe perfectly. And you know, if if if it's if
Speaker 1: it's using machine learning to to watch a chef and
Speaker 1: repeat steps back, then then that's a thing. But if
Speaker 1: it's it's reading off of a recipe, then there's there's
Speaker 1: many many things that can go wrong, mostly the human
Speaker 1: error in writing recipes, which I suspect is what was
Speaker 1: the problem. It could very easily have been that someone
Speaker 1: had put in the wrong measurement for something or left
Speaker 1: an ingredient out entirely sure, but I mean you also
Speaker 1: have to assume that the atmosphere conditions in your house
Speaker 1: are comparable to those of the chef's kitchen, that your
Speaker 1: appliance as an equipment are precise and nonreactive. Is in
Speaker 1: you're not having a reaction between like aluminum and lemon juice,
Speaker 1: which is a thing that happens all I'm trying to say,
Speaker 1: here is that cooking and especially baking our our edible chemistry,
Speaker 1: and there are so many things that can go awry. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, the first thing that occurred to me when
Speaker 1: you said that they went home and they made it
Speaker 1: and it wasn't the same was, well, did they get
Speaker 1: their ingredients from the same place? Because I imagine the
Speaker 1: ingredients they bought were probably not as good as the
Speaker 1: ingredients that were bought by this restaurant. It's quite possible
Speaker 1: did they weigh them or measure them? Yeah? So if
Speaker 1: if your weight isn't a measurement, you guys know, if
Speaker 1: you're able to if you're right, if they buy volume
Speaker 1: or weight? Uh. If if in fact, they were following
Speaker 1: it as closely as they possibly could with the ingredients
Speaker 1: that were as close to the same quality as the restaurant,
Speaker 1: there still could be other factors at play, like Lauren
Speaker 1: is saying, that could affect this. Now, if you had
Speaker 1: a robot, it may very well be that the robot
Speaker 1: making the recipe would also come up with something that
Speaker 1: does not taste as good is what they had at
Speaker 1: the restaurant. I would argue, however, the robot would be
Speaker 1: more likely to consistently make it not as good as
Speaker 1: the restaurant, because that's what robots do, right. Robots are
Speaker 1: really good at repeating steps that they have been programmed
Speaker 1: to do, or, in the case of machine learning, taught
Speaker 1: how to do, assuming the starting conditions are the same.
Speaker 1: Another thing that's difficult with cooking, Yes, obviously if you
Speaker 1: are one of the things we pointed out in our
Speaker 1: previous episode. One of the specific robots we talked about
Speaker 1: was Moley. That's the kitchen that has the two arms
Speaker 1: coming down from like the kitchen hood, the oven hood. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. And you pointed out, Joe in that episode
Speaker 1: that something as simple as replacing the extra virgin olive
Speaker 1: oil with arsenic would create an entirely different dinner party
Speaker 1: than the one you had intended, right, because it doesn't
Speaker 1: know what the ingredients it's using are. It's it's spatial programming,
Speaker 1: so it says, okay, X ingredient goes here, x y
Speaker 1: ingredient goes here, So it doesn't actually know that this
Speaker 1: dish contains olive oil, balslamic vinegar or whatever. It knows
Speaker 1: that it contains slot number one and slot number four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: almost every single kitchen robot i've ever seen uses different
Speaker 1: shaped containers to represent an order of operations, right like,
Speaker 1: at this stage of cooking, add whatever is in the
Speaker 1: square yellow container. At this next step, add whatever in
Speaker 1: the cylindrical red container, and that way, the robot knows
Speaker 1: this is the order I follow. But the robot does
Speaker 1: not know what is actually in those containers, what it means,
Speaker 1: or why it's ordered putting them in this order. It
Speaker 1: just learned how to do it in this way, So
Speaker 1: it's essentially aping what someone else is doing. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not learning in the sense of you understanding what
Speaker 1: the process is. So when we humans learn, it's very different,
Speaker 1: right We We first might learn just through route, right,
Speaker 1: but then we start to understand why it's working the
Speaker 1: way it's working. That's the level of understanding that goes
Speaker 1: much deeper than just parroting what someone else has already done.
Speaker 1: So that's already a limitation, but again, at least you
Speaker 1: would get consistency, which is something I can never attest
Speaker 1: like I can never I can never be sure that
Speaker 1: something I'm cooking one time is going to come out
Speaker 1: even remotely similar another time, because most of the stuff
Speaker 1: I cook it's by feel. I'm not doing following specific recipes. Though,
Speaker 1: for those of you listening at home, you want to
Speaker 1: know what's the easiest way to make my cooking more consistent?
Speaker 1: There is one way I can recommend, use a digital thermometer.
Speaker 1: Use a digital thermometer on everything, and you get way
Speaker 1: more consistent. That's true. Yeah, and uh, your oven is
Speaker 1: probably lying to you. The other thing I would point
Speaker 1: out is that while Lusk says, wouldn't this be wonderful?
Speaker 1: You could have a robot chef make you the perfect
Speaker 1: dish every time, part of me thinks, well, that also
Speaker 1: takes out the opportunity to improvise and to tweak and
Speaker 1: to experiment, where you might end up finding that by
Speaker 1: departing from this approach that you love, I mean you
Speaker 1: love the finished dish, you create something even better. Right,
Speaker 1: you take innovation out. Now you would have to incorporate
Speaker 1: something like IBM chef Watson to bring it back in.
Speaker 1: But then who knows what you would end up with? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean this comes up to a distinction I would make. Now,
Speaker 1: some culinary people might uh not like me using the
Speaker 1: terms these this way, but here's what I would say
Speaker 1: that the difference between a cook and a chef. A
Speaker 1: cook knows what to do in the kitchen. A chef
Speaker 1: knows why you do what you do. I would agree
Speaker 1: with that that definition understand so he or she would
Speaker 1: understand all of the science behind why meat should be
Speaker 1: cooked to a certain temperature or on a certain type
Speaker 1: of appliance, or with why a certain flavor goes with
Speaker 1: another flavor right or or at the very least, A
Speaker 1: chef has has room to play due to their profession.
Speaker 1: Uh And and a cook is following orders, probably to
Speaker 1: to to get a thing out to a person to
Speaker 1: a certain degree of quality that has been determined by
Speaker 1: the chef. The chef is the person who creates the dish.
Speaker 1: The cook is the person who replicates the dish. I
Speaker 1: would argue, Um, and in some cases we play chef,
Speaker 1: or we may play cook. But you know, there are
Speaker 1: some people who are very much more in one camp
Speaker 1: than the other. I would argue, I'm more of a
Speaker 1: cook definitely. Um. I've tweaked recipes, but that's about as
Speaker 1: far as I've gone. I've never invented one. So the Telegraph,
Speaker 1: by the way, also references the moley. This this armed kitchen,
Speaker 1: as in a kitchen that has arms, not a kitchen
Speaker 1: that has weapons. In an article about ten ways humans
Speaker 1: are still superior to robots, which is not an endorsement
Speaker 1: in the Moley's abilities, I would argue, Uh, that says
Speaker 1: the robot has really only been shown to master the
Speaker 1: art of making crabbisk, which is specifically what we were
Speaker 1: talking about last Yeah, uh and on Yeah, making crab bisk.
Speaker 1: It's great at making crab bisks. So if you think
Speaker 1: crab bisk is worth paying fifty thousand pounds sterling to
Speaker 1: get a robot that can really make crab misk, have
Speaker 1: we got the robot for you? What's what's that like?
Speaker 1: Like something something like that. Yeah, I didn't do the conversion,
Speaker 1: but you have fifty pounds sterling. Is is quite a
Speaker 1: bit of money. That's very expensive bisk. Those crabs were
Speaker 1: living in the lap of luxury before you plucked about
Speaker 1: the ocean, I assume. But just think about the scenario
Speaker 1: you described at the beginning. You come home tired and
Speaker 1: you don't have the energy to make dinner, But gosh
Speaker 1: darn it, you can have crab bisk again like you
Speaker 1: did every other night. Joe, please let's not talk about
Speaker 1: me having crab. We'll get into that a little later. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so well uh so so so moley is is not
Speaker 1: necessarily at the top of its game yet. Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not out. It's not available for consumer purchases or
Speaker 1: commercial purchase. It's really going to be more a commercial
Speaker 1: thing than a consume more things. But it is. It
Speaker 1: is still targeted for release by That was according to
Speaker 1: the Telegraph article, which was published in December, so not
Speaker 1: that long ago. So unless something is remarkably changed, ye is,
Speaker 1: when the company hopes to release this or unleash it
Speaker 1: upon the world. Uh. And I did want to put
Speaker 1: in here that that this company is not the only
Speaker 1: entity that's in in the robo chef game. Uh. DARPA
Speaker 1: has funded a robotic chef, which is I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've seen DARPA's attempts at making robots capable of opening
Speaker 1: up a door, it's going to fill you with confidence.
Speaker 1: They funded a study out of the University of Maryland.
Speaker 1: It was published in early and researchers in the study
Speaker 1: trained robots to learn how to duplicate actions by watching
Speaker 1: cooking videos on YouTube. Now if they also learned how
Speaker 1: to leave comments that would have been the most destructive
Speaker 1: robot ever made, like forget for It, making war Robots
Speaker 1: a cooking robot that can comment on YouTube, and the
Speaker 1: game was games over. They used these data from eighty
Speaker 1: eight videos involving the manipulation of one or more objects,
Speaker 1: and then UH programmed the robots to train themselves in recognizing, grasping,
Speaker 1: and manipulating a variety of kitchen utensils and objects. Now,
Speaker 1: I hope some of these videos were my drunk kitchen
Speaker 1: with Hannah Heart rightly. Also also Death Metal Vegan kitchen
Speaker 1: experience where they just throw the the the like the
Speaker 1: head of lettuce against the wall and then hit it
Speaker 1: with an ax And I don't know I've ever seen
Speaker 1: him do that, but it is a thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't believe so, but I didn't I didn't have access
Speaker 1: to the full sample set, so I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: positive it's a possibility. Well, I'm sorry. Please continue. When
Speaker 1: when the robots were then tested on their ability to
Speaker 1: replicate the actions from the videos that they were from
Speaker 1: from other videos they were seeing for the first time, um,
Speaker 1: the robots correctly recognized sev of the objects they were
Speaker 1: dealing with They performed the correct grasps cent of the time,
Speaker 1: and they guessed what action would need to be applied
Speaker 1: to the to the two up to the object or
Speaker 1: objects at hand of the time. So not not bad,
Speaker 1: not bad robots, well, especially when you consider like the
Speaker 1: wide variety that typical kitchen utensils can take shape and form.
Speaker 1: I mean, even something as simple as a ladle can
Speaker 1: look very different from one designer to another, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: that means more challenges for for object recognition on the
Speaker 1: computer side of things. Oh yeah, and they pulled it
Speaker 1: off thanks to a convolutional neural network, which is the
Speaker 1: same thing that Google's Deep Dream is using. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it it tosses ideas around and it's in its own head,
Speaker 1: its own robo uh computer head um and extrapolates on
Speaker 1: the patterns that it finds there before spitting out a
Speaker 1: response to it's seeing. And so so that plus like
Speaker 1: a really highly specific taxonomy of grasp types and motions
Speaker 1: were what drove this to to pretty decent success. So
Speaker 1: that way it would know things like with the ladle,
Speaker 1: you're dipping as opposed to stirring or whisking that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, because obviously a whisking robot with a
Speaker 1: ladle would be hilarious but not terribly effective at making
Speaker 1: whatever it was you were hoping that. I certainly wouldn't
Speaker 1: get your crab bisk. No, you might get you crab
Speaker 1: bisk on the ceiling. That might be about as good
Speaker 1: as you get. I just thought of another great video.
Speaker 1: They should have shown these robots what it should be,
Speaker 1: the Harvey Corman as Julia Child's Alien baking video and
Speaker 1: Star Wars special Whiskster whiske Sirs. I have no idea
Speaker 1: what you guys are talking about, but I'm delighted. I mean,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. As we're going to huddle around
Speaker 1: and watch a video when this is over, Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: just let's mark out an hour and a half of
Speaker 1: our lives will get back and and okay. So DARPA
Speaker 1: is probably not interested in robot chefs. I just wanted
Speaker 1: I wanted to put in here um. But but a
Speaker 1: representative of DARPA indicated that this technology could have applications
Speaker 1: and I quote in areas such as military repair and logistics.
Speaker 1: Military repair, I understand logistics that terrifies me, but you know, hey,
Speaker 1: go go DARPA. I'm glad that you're funding robotically. I
Speaker 1: can't win along without breaking a few eggs. I can
Speaker 1: see legit. Okay, So I mean one of the ways
Speaker 1: we see DARPA logistics in robotics is in just carrying
Speaker 1: things like the DARPA four legged you know, the DARPA
Speaker 1: dogs and stuff like that. They move over difficult terrain
Speaker 1: dynamics big dogs exactly. Yeah, So all right, see it well?
Speaker 1: And and I like the idea that with this and
Speaker 1: the Grand Challenge, which you know also I made a
Speaker 1: joke at the beginning about DARPA trying to open a door.
Speaker 1: To be fair, what DARBA does is it funds the program.
Speaker 1: Other people try and make robots to open doors to
Speaker 1: hilarious results. But I like the idea that eventually DARMA
Speaker 1: is going to have a robot that will come to
Speaker 1: your house, open the door, break into your home, and
Speaker 1: then make you dinner. That's the future I want to
Speaker 1: live in. Like it's terrified but also kind of comforting.
Speaker 1: So it does one random house each night. It's like
Speaker 1: tonight might be the night. Right, you hear some pounding
Speaker 1: on the front door, You're like, is it is it
Speaker 1: tonight it's robot claw. We get cram, so canceled that
Speaker 1: pizza order. That's right, right man. I want to live
Speaker 1: in that future so so less ambitious than these robots
Speaker 1: that would be capable of of learning from chefs and
Speaker 1: being able to replicate a chef's motions and processes so
Speaker 1: that you could create amazing dishes. Are some other robots
Speaker 1: that are being incorporated into workplaces. In fact, there's one
Speaker 1: that's been around for a few years. I think the
Speaker 1: last the first video I ever saw that was from
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve h um And it's one that's been
Speaker 1: used in in kitchens in China and also Los Angeles
Speaker 1: now has one apparently. Um So there's a gain in
Speaker 1: a shoe room. Kwan who owns restaurants in Beijing, China,
Speaker 1: and created a robot to cut noodles. And the way
Speaker 1: that it cuts noodles it holds this big essentially like
Speaker 1: almost like a log of dough, and then it has
Speaker 1: a knife in one arm one hand that just kind
Speaker 1: of makes a windshield wiper motion as the other arms
Speaker 1: slowly rotates the log so that it just cuts strips
Speaker 1: off of it, and the strips become these long flat noodles,
Speaker 1: and it can do different style noodles, but that was
Speaker 1: the one that was on display in the video, and
Speaker 1: according to the inventor, it can go about twice as
Speaker 1: fast as your typical human can go, and said that
Speaker 1: in a way, the robot actually became a necessity. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that, uh, he was trying to replace human employees.
Speaker 1: It was that he was having it. He was seeing
Speaker 1: that was coming more difficult to find young people who
Speaker 1: wanted to work in restaurants cutting noodles because the job
Speaker 1: is monotonous, it's repetitive. It's the sort of stuff about
Speaker 1: the interesting part of working in the kitchen, right, And
Speaker 1: also it's it's what we hear when we hear roboticists
Speaker 1: talk about why we want automation to take over jobs
Speaker 1: that are dirty, dull and dangerous. Right. This is possibly
Speaker 1: dangerous because you're using a knife, but more so it's dull.
Speaker 1: And if it's still then you can get give you
Speaker 1: dangerous anyway. Sure, Well, in and repetitive motions, injuries are
Speaker 1: absolutely a thing in that kind of industry. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could have like essentially the equivalent of tennis elbow, but
Speaker 1: you've got it because you're you're just doing the same
Speaker 1: motion throughout the whole day. The robot can keep doing
Speaker 1: it until it needs maintenance. Right, it's not going to
Speaker 1: feel pain. Sure, they did not program it to do so.
Speaker 1: And of course that automated preparation of certain food stuff
Speaker 1: sizes and portions and stuff like that is nothing new
Speaker 1: inherently because you see out of the industrial level. But now,
Speaker 1: I guess what's interesting here is that this is this
Speaker 1: is at the end of the consumer chain, pretty r
Speaker 1: in a restaurant where you are making homemade noodles within
Speaker 1: the restaurant. So it's not like you've ordered the noodles
Speaker 1: that were produced in some factory that had a huge
Speaker 1: automated assembly line that created the noodles. You're actually making
Speaker 1: the dough in house, and then you are cutting the
Speaker 1: noodles in house with this robot. He also designed it
Speaker 1: to have kind of this humanoid shape and it has
Speaker 1: sort of a retro robot look to it, like it
Speaker 1: makes me think of classic Japanese animation um uh and uh.
Speaker 1: It has this uh, this you know, very stylistic approach
Speaker 1: that is completely unnecessary. Really when you get down to it,
Speaker 1: it's it's two arms warm that holds the wad of
Speaker 1: dough the or the log of dough, and the other
Speaker 1: arm that holds the knife that does this windshield wiper motion.
Speaker 1: But he's created it where it's got a torso in
Speaker 1: the head and eyes, so it becomes almost like a show.
Speaker 1: So it becomes a part of the inner tee mit factor,
Speaker 1: the attraction of going to a restaurant. And thus one
Speaker 1: could argue it adds value, not just because it's doing
Speaker 1: a job that people either don't want to do or
Speaker 1: it's not really great for people to do all day
Speaker 1: every day. Uh. And it's in itself a curiosity that
Speaker 1: draws people in and thus drives business for the restaurant. Uh,
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. I like that idea that
Speaker 1: it's not just an automation response to a problem, but
Speaker 1: also a creative way to um engage people's curiosity. Granted,
Speaker 1: just gonna put this out there. If you see a
Speaker 1: robot flashing a knife around, don't get too close. Dude
Speaker 1: will cut you right. Yeah, exactly, like like like the
Speaker 1: Futurama robots that all have just a single purpose clamps um.
Speaker 1: But then you you had mentioned the idea of you
Speaker 1: know this, this is sort of like the the last
Speaker 1: step between consumer and and dish. Yeah, I mean, i'd
Speaker 1: imagine there's still lots of ways that are left to
Speaker 1: innovate in in automation of food production earlier in the chain. Absolutely, yeah, there,
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking about industrial size operations. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and those, I mean, the machines that are already producing
Speaker 1: a lot of our our prepackaged foods are are things
Speaker 1: of wonder and beauty is Joe about once a week
Speaker 1: shows me a video of which one is your favorite one?
Speaker 1: It's the baby Core Delicious Baby Core, Delicious baby Corn.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if you've never so earlier. I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: didn't respond to your email, Lauren. It came at a
Speaker 1: busy time. I think Lauren sent me an email to
Speaker 1: a video done on slate dot com. Was it where
Speaker 1: they were or maybe it was an article anyway, it
Speaker 1: was something on Slate talking about the how wonderful it
Speaker 1: is to just watch industry specific uh AD videos marketing pieces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: marketing videos for industrial food harvesting and preparation technology. Because
Speaker 1: they'll have like robots that get a bunch of Brussels
Speaker 1: sprouts and sort them by size, and it's got this
Speaker 1: dreamy music underneath it. It sorts the Brussels sprouts one
Speaker 1: at a time. And I was thinking of like the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, like blink blink, blinking, blinking, blink blink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some like that too, But my favorite one I've
Speaker 1: ever found is the video for the industrial process for
Speaker 1: the production of jars of delicious baby corn. And it's
Speaker 1: not just baby corn, it's delicious baby They specified delicious
Speaker 1: baby corn. You should look it up if you get
Speaker 1: a chance. I will definitely. I am almost certain you've
Speaker 1: shown this to me at some point. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: so we're stay seeing more innovation in that area as well,
Speaker 1: and in fact, one of them we haven't really seen yet.
Speaker 1: It's going to be unveiled later on. We're recording this
Speaker 1: March thirty one, two thousand and sixteen. And uh, there's
Speaker 1: a robot that's um was creative of a partnership between
Speaker 1: Universe DA of Lincoln and a company called O A
Speaker 1: l which specifically uses steam infusion to cook foods, to
Speaker 1: create a new robotic cooking platform called the Automated Processing
Speaker 1: Robotic Ingredient Loading Robotic Chef System or APRIL and April
Speaker 1: will be unveiled in April two thou sixteen, so we
Speaker 1: haven't seen it yet. We we know little bits and pieces,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it's been kept under wraps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were. We are recording this, by the way, on
Speaker 1: March thirty one, So as forward thinking as we are,
Speaker 1: we can't see what happens in April yet, although I
Speaker 1: have a feeling tomorrow is going. Tomorrow as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast is going to be a doozy um.
Speaker 1: So the robot isn't meant to replace a chef in
Speaker 1: a typical kitchen. It's a much larger operation than that.
Speaker 1: It's meant to automate large scale food manufacturing, and according
Speaker 1: to O A. L. Alice is all about quote recipeing
Speaker 1: management and recipe control of liquid food products end quote.
Speaker 1: So you tell about making lots and lots of stuff
Speaker 1: with liquid ingredients, Obviously you want precision, You want consistency
Speaker 1: for for matters of taste, for safety, for quality control.
Speaker 1: All of this is incredibly important and and not necessarily
Speaker 1: easy to do on huge scales. Yeah, I'd say here's
Speaker 1: a good example, prepackaged chicken stock or vegetables stock. You know,
Speaker 1: the stock that you'd used to make a soup with
Speaker 1: or deglaze a pan with. This is an essential part
Speaker 1: of a kitchen. You use it for all kinds of stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: And most chefs will tell you the stuff you can
Speaker 1: get at the grocery store varies wildly in quality. But
Speaker 1: even the best stuff you can get at the store
Speaker 1: is just never going to be as good as a
Speaker 1: stock you make yourself. Uh so uh so. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, who has time to make stock? I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of times people you just don't do
Speaker 1: that years. Yeah. I mean also, yeah, like like who
Speaker 1: who these days just has chicken bones lying around that
Speaker 1: They're like, all these chicken bones are just piling up.
Speaker 1: What am I going to do with them? They're not
Speaker 1: And I have so many root vegetables and I have
Speaker 1: three hours yeah yeah, So it's very very convenient to
Speaker 1: have a prepackaged container of vegetable stock or chicken stock
Speaker 1: or whatever that that you can use in your recipes. So, uh,
Speaker 1: improvements on this at the industrial scale I can see
Speaker 1: making a big difference for home cooks, well, especially if
Speaker 1: you know, again, I keep coming back to consistency, but
Speaker 1: it's incredibly important because I'm sure you guys have had
Speaker 1: the experience of ordering some form of food product that
Speaker 1: you have had before, but the experience has been totally different,
Speaker 1: and like the flavor might be different, the texture might
Speaker 1: be different depending on what kind of food it is,
Speaker 1: even though it's coming from the same company, because we're
Speaker 1: working with lots of ingredients that have variety to them, right,
Speaker 1: there's a variety of all sorts of stuff that can
Speaker 1: come into play, so and and that can be delightful,
Speaker 1: but but on a on a very small personal level.
Speaker 1: But more often, the consumer experience that we have been
Speaker 1: sort of trained into, and furthermore, the the the brand
Speaker 1: experience that most companies are looking to put forth is
Speaker 1: one of absolute terrifying conformity. Well, it's it's because you
Speaker 1: have an expectation and if that expectation, sometimes if that
Speaker 1: expectation isn't met, it's all right, because whatever you get
Speaker 1: is still get still good. Sometimes sometimes not. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: here's a question, I bet a lot of you have
Speaker 1: had this experience. You you're not somebody who normally eats
Speaker 1: at McDonald's very much, but if you're on a road
Speaker 1: trip in an unfamiliar place and you don't know what's
Speaker 1: around there, you might stop and needed a McDonald's or
Speaker 1: some other chain because of the expect you say, I
Speaker 1: basically know what I'm going to be able to get.
Speaker 1: It might not be something I'm very excited about, but
Speaker 1: it's not I'm not going to get something that's wildly
Speaker 1: negatively surprising. I find I find that the uh that
Speaker 1: I'm far more likely to do that if I have
Speaker 1: traveled a long way so I'm tired, Uh that we
Speaker 1: have already checked into a hotel, so the promise of
Speaker 1: bed is close by. Yeah, and if my Internet connection
Speaker 1: is such that I can't use a recommendation engine to
Speaker 1: find out where is a good place to eat, I'm like,
Speaker 1: let's just go to Chili's, or let's just go to
Speaker 1: uh that fast food restaurant, or let's just go to
Speaker 1: you know, something along those lines, because I know what
Speaker 1: I'm going to get. Yeah, it's not going to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. It's not gonna be great, but you at
Speaker 1: least know there's something on the menu you can order
Speaker 1: and you pretty much know what it's going to be. Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the server is going to be wearing a certain
Speaker 1: number of pieces of flair, right, Yeah, the flair is
Speaker 1: important So let's let's talk about knowing there's something on
Speaker 1: the menu that you can order and how sometimes that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's a misleading. Well, I wanted to be able, so
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up something that's related to a
Speaker 1: personal story that I'm sure Jonathan can relate to us
Speaker 1: in a moment. Uh So, my question is a little
Speaker 1: bit different than having a robotic chef, but it's still
Speaker 1: a way of introducing automation into the dining process in
Speaker 1: a way that can help it improve people's experience maybe
Speaker 1: when they go out to a restaurant or something. And
Speaker 1: that is what if you could have an automated system
Speaker 1: for detecting food allergens hidden in your meal, that would
Speaker 1: be good. It would because sometimes allergens president food are obvious.
Speaker 1: So you might know that you're allergic to tree nuts,
Speaker 1: and then your salad arrives at your table and you
Speaker 1: see that it has hazel nuts on it and it
Speaker 1: wasn't mentioned. You just didn't mention, didn't say hazel nuts.
Speaker 1: But you know what hazel nuts look like. You know
Speaker 1: you can't eat them because you can see them there.
Speaker 1: So you play it safe and you skip this course,
Speaker 1: or you pick them off if you're feeling brave, don't.
Speaker 1: Don't feel brave, people don't not with anaphylactic allergy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what about when food allergens are completely hidden in
Speaker 1: your meal? This can happen all the time. The thing
Speaker 1: that could nearly kill you could be alsified invisibly into
Speaker 1: a sauce. I call these right, Or it could simply
Speaker 1: exist in trace amounts due to cross contamination with cooking equipment,
Speaker 1: like any sort of cutting board or knife that's been
Speaker 1: used for one type of thing that you might have
Speaker 1: an allergy to and then used for something else. Yeah, prep,
Speaker 1: prep gloves. Even just even just a spill in the
Speaker 1: kitchen if you have a very serious allergy, can be
Speaker 1: life threatening. Right, So I imagine what if you could
Speaker 1: have a device that you could just sort of hold
Speaker 1: over your meal, or if it's a certain type of food,
Speaker 1: that you could put a little bit of the food
Speaker 1: into it and it could tell you like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: this does contain you know, lobster, or it does not
Speaker 1: contain X number of parts per million of lobster. Well,
Speaker 1: people are actually working on devices like this. So one
Speaker 1: example I came across in the journal lab on a chip.
Speaker 1: Good journal name a group of researchers described a device
Speaker 1: they were referring to as quote, a personalized food allergen
Speaker 1: testing platform, and the little personal name they came up
Speaker 1: with for it was iube. And what this would be
Speaker 1: is it's like a small device that connects to your
Speaker 1: cell phone and then analyzes food for specific allergens. And
Speaker 1: it works by carrying out what they called color a
Speaker 1: metric assays in tiny little test tubes and these are
Speaker 1: attached to the device, and it uses your cell phones
Speaker 1: built in camera and an app on your phone designed
Speaker 1: to detect allergen contaminants by light. So it has a
Speaker 1: little led that illuminates what's in the test tubes. Your
Speaker 1: camera looks and sees if it has any of these
Speaker 1: allergens in it, and it can tell you. So device
Speaker 1: is made to detect allergens and food already exists, but
Speaker 1: they can be you know, expensive or bulky kind of big.
Speaker 1: And the creators noted that this device is only about
Speaker 1: forty grams in addition to your smartphone, which seems to
Speaker 1: be the appeal. But the problem is it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: exactly like a tool of perfect convenience just yet. According
Speaker 1: to a U C. L a news release on the
Speaker 1: device from December when the research was coming through on it.
Speaker 1: To test a food sample, here's what you gotta do.
Speaker 1: You gotta grind it up. You gotta mix it with
Speaker 1: hot water and an extraction solvent, and then put it
Speaker 1: into the tiny test tube. And then you gotta let
Speaker 1: it sit for a few minutes, and then you mix
Speaker 1: it with a series of other reactive chemicals, bringing this
Speaker 1: stage of the test to about twenty minutes. And then
Speaker 1: you can use your phone camera to examine the preparation.
Speaker 1: And then the pictures are analyzed by the app on
Speaker 1: your phone and it can tell you, based on the
Speaker 1: color analysis, not just whether a certain contaminant is in
Speaker 1: the food, but how much is there. So that's handy.
Speaker 1: Uh so in in parts per million, maybe you know
Speaker 1: that one part per million of hazel nuts isn't enough
Speaker 1: to set you off. So in other words, you could
Speaker 1: you could the waiter comes up the so and you
Speaker 1: can say, well, the good news is there are no
Speaker 1: detectable allergens in this food, so i'm it's safety. The
Speaker 1: bad news is it's done right. You've been It's just
Speaker 1: taken you forever to do this. So that's obviously a
Speaker 1: problem with the technology as it exists at this stage.
Speaker 1: Now this was back in I haven't seen any more
Speaker 1: recent news on this device, but maybe it's convenience or
Speaker 1: usability factor has been improved or is currently being improved.
Speaker 1: But in principle, a future generation of a device like this, maybe,
Speaker 1: if not necessarily, this device could be very useful to
Speaker 1: people who have severe food allergies. And Jonathan, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you could tell us how it might have been useful
Speaker 1: to you personally this week. Yeah, so on Sunday, last Sunday,
Speaker 1: we're recording this. Uh, March thirty one. So on March
Speaker 1: twenty seven, I had a severe allergic reaction. UM went
Speaker 1: into anaphylaxis, which is a systemic allergic response throughout the body,
Speaker 1: marked in my case with terrible itching, swelling, uh and
Speaker 1: eventually shallowness of breath and other and symptoms that required
Speaker 1: a trip to the hospital, the emergency room where I
Speaker 1: was treated for anaphylaxis. And uh, it was unpleasant. It
Speaker 1: was a I've had it before, but I had not
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, UM had it with any of the
Speaker 1: stuff that I had I was eating that night. Now
Speaker 1: I was at a seafood restaurant, and in one previous case,
Speaker 1: seventeen years ago, I reacted to what we assume was lobster. Uh.
Speaker 1: Every time you have an allergic reaction, obviously you know
Speaker 1: you can, you might have a guess at what it
Speaker 1: was that would set you off, but you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know unless you go to an allergist, and even then
Speaker 1: it's not sure that you're going to get the answer. Um.
Speaker 1: But I didn't go to an allergist. I just had
Speaker 1: never had lobster other than some lobster bisk before, so
Speaker 1: that was probably enough to prime my system. The first
Speaker 1: time you encounter an allergen, you typically don't have a
Speaker 1: massive reaction to it. You have enough that you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't do that again. The second time you do it,
Speaker 1: that's when you get That's when your your proteins kick
Speaker 1: into gear and start releasing histamine and you start swelling
Speaker 1: and having a demon and all these other nasty problems.
Speaker 1: Uh So lobster seventeen years ago sent me off. I
Speaker 1: did not have lobster. I had some coconut shrimp and
Speaker 1: I had some um, some tuna. And now it's possible
Speaker 1: that perhaps the cooking surfaces that were being used for
Speaker 1: one or both dishes had contact with lobster, and that
Speaker 1: in fact, it was some cross contamination I was dealing with.
Speaker 1: It's also possible that there was a a mutation essentially
Speaker 1: of what I'm allergic to, Not so much mutation as
Speaker 1: just an expansion, which can Yeah, you might develop a
Speaker 1: severe allergic reaction to say a honey bee sting, but
Speaker 1: other bees, if they stung you, you might not react to.
Speaker 1: Then one day that allergy may also include those other
Speaker 1: beast things, and you might be just as allergic to
Speaker 1: them as you would be to honey bees. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can just continue to develop those throughout the rest
Speaker 1: of your natural life, so or you might not. But
Speaker 1: as horrifying as that experience sounds, I'm very sorry you
Speaker 1: had to go through that, Jonathan. One of one of
Speaker 1: the relevant facts about it is you're you're not sure
Speaker 1: exactly what sets you off. Absolutely you have no clue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you don't know if it's maybe now you are
Speaker 1: you have this new allergy to shrimp that you didn't
Speaker 1: really have before, Or it could be that there you
Speaker 1: were right initially, lobster is the problem, and there could
Speaker 1: have been cross contamination in the kitchen, or there could
Speaker 1: have been some small element of lobster in something you
Speaker 1: ate without you realize, but there was a lobster broth
Speaker 1: in the in the shrimp batter or something like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be any of those things, and um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, without going to an allergist in releasing down
Speaker 1: and going through the test to at least try and
Speaker 1: eliminate possibilities, or going back to the to the restaurant
Speaker 1: and being like, so, tell me about your lobster, Like,
Speaker 1: tell me about the lobster used in your kitchen on
Speaker 1: Easter Sunday. The safest thing to do, obviously is just
Speaker 1: to avoid shellfish rather than to play roulette and see
Speaker 1: if in fact I could ingest it and not have
Speaker 1: that reaction. But so, how can one in these are
Speaker 1: modern times just avoid an ingredient entirely? Well, so you
Speaker 1: can go to a restaurant and say I've got an allergy,
Speaker 1: which you know, restaurants don't always love to hear. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you have an allergy, you have an allergy.
Speaker 1: And I've got a thing to say about that in
Speaker 1: a moment. But I don't know if you've ever had
Speaker 1: the experience of you go to go to a restaurant,
Speaker 1: or maybe you have had this experience of being this person.
Speaker 1: Go to a restaurant with somebody who has multiple food allergies.
Speaker 1: They have lots of allergies or intolerances or something that
Speaker 1: that they cannot eat, and you know, this can be
Speaker 1: embarrassing for them and it's uh, you know, it can
Speaker 1: make it difficult to go out to eat. So you
Speaker 1: have to let the server know, and then the servers
Speaker 1: to write down all the things you're ergic too, and
Speaker 1: then go check with the kitchen to see if any
Speaker 1: of those things are in the dish you ordered, and
Speaker 1: then at least one of them inevitably is, and then
Speaker 1: the server has to come back and ask you if
Speaker 1: you'd like to order something else, or if you'd like
Speaker 1: to have the kitchen leave the ingredients out the ones
Speaker 1: that you're allergic to, which sometimes annoys the kitchen because
Speaker 1: you know, chefs prepare things a certain way. They have
Speaker 1: a sort of spirit of the dish. They don't really
Speaker 1: like to change it if they don't have Well, there's
Speaker 1: also a process that they've set up that is usually
Speaker 1: it's usually ideal for whatever dish they're making. And so
Speaker 1: when you have to purposefully skip a step or or
Speaker 1: something on those lines that throws off the flow as well.
Speaker 1: So I have a proposal actually for a way of
Speaker 1: making this simpler, and I haven't I looked for an
Speaker 1: example of this on the internet and couldn't find anything
Speaker 1: like it acceptance sort of analog version of it. And
Speaker 1: this would be a food allergy smart card. So if
Speaker 1: you're a person who has multiple food allergies, you can
Speaker 1: simply have all of your allergens coated on do a
Speaker 1: card that the server can scan with with their smartphone. Um.
Speaker 1: And this could guide your meal selection, highlighting all the
Speaker 1: menu items that you can eat as is with normal preparation,
Speaker 1: and letting the kitchen know what to leave out of
Speaker 1: your dissue if you do decide to order from the
Speaker 1: danger zone of the menu. UM And I think this
Speaker 1: this is an idea that sort of makes sense. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this would make my life personally just a lot better
Speaker 1: and and it would furthermore cut down on a very
Speaker 1: real problem that kitchens are facing these days, which is
Speaker 1: this verbal communication issue of like anaphylactic allergies versus intolerances
Speaker 1: and preferences. Because a lot of us who have the
Speaker 1: latter have learned that telling a server the truth, I
Speaker 1: have an intolerance to this. I I prefer to never
Speaker 1: have parsley on my plate. That kind of thing. Um
Speaker 1: nets you getting the thing on your plate that you're
Speaker 1: trying to avoid because the kitchen was busy and they forgot,
Speaker 1: or the server was busy and they forgot, or or
Speaker 1: any number of issues of miscu occasion are happening. Um.
Speaker 1: But allergy. Allergy is like a magic word. You say
Speaker 1: allergy in a restaurant, you know they don't want anyone
Speaker 1: dying in their house. So what happens when you say
Speaker 1: the word allergy to a server, if it's a if
Speaker 1: it's a good restaurant, it will grind their kitchen to
Speaker 1: a halt. Uh. They'll switch out their cutting boards, their
Speaker 1: cooking surfaces, their implements, their gloves. It sucks. Uh. If
Speaker 1: they don't have repeats of those things on hand, it
Speaker 1: means that they have to sterilize things before they can
Speaker 1: cook your dinner. Um. And so having a system that
Speaker 1: can tell the kitchen the difference between a customer who
Speaker 1: will be sick all night if there's a teaspoon of
Speaker 1: wheat flour thickening their soup versus a customer who's trying
Speaker 1: to follow follow a paleo diet and and genuinely won't
Speaker 1: mind would be so rad for everyone involved. This is
Speaker 1: particularly relevant today when you have a hyper awareness of
Speaker 1: people about gluten and people who who frame themselves as
Speaker 1: having a uh an allergy to gluten, when in reality
Speaker 1: that tends to be fairly rare. And uh it's something
Speaker 1: that restaurants encounter all the time. That I I mean that
Speaker 1: you see a lot of restaurants proactively having gluten free
Speaker 1: options on the menu. Uh, not because this is so prevalent,
Speaker 1: like the actual condition is so prevalent in the population,
Speaker 1: but rather that so many people have kind of have
Speaker 1: have glommed onto this idea that somehow gluten is directly
Speaker 1: contributing to an unhealthy lifestyle or has some or has
Speaker 1: some other effect on their health that probably isn't actually happening, well,
Speaker 1: you know, or you know, if if they if they
Speaker 1: really wanted out of there, then they really wanted out
Speaker 1: of there, and and that's a fair thing too, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just a different processing for for
Speaker 1: you know, like just don't put flour in that one
Speaker 1: or uh, or order something else or you know, whatever
Speaker 1: it is that it is. Uh, I've I have I
Speaker 1: have a deep intolerance to bell pets of all things.
Speaker 1: And if something is if my burger is cooked on
Speaker 1: the same surface that a bell pepper just was, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be sick for the rest of the night. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants it. Uh. And but but when I say, hey,
Speaker 1: no bell peppers, sometimes the kitchen interprets that as like, well,
Speaker 1: pimentos are probably fine, and it's just like, no, you guys,
Speaker 1: all I want to do is not be sick for
Speaker 1: the rest of the night. I mean, it's just that's
Speaker 1: just the thing is that And when you look at
Speaker 1: it on the kitchen side, you understand like this approach
Speaker 1: where you have some method of verifying, like, look, these
Speaker 1: things really do have a legitimate negative impact on my
Speaker 1: health one way or another. Um. It just it would
Speaker 1: simplify that that transaction so much and remove the awkwardness
Speaker 1: that people do feel. I mean, you don't want to
Speaker 1: be the person sitting at the table going like I
Speaker 1: can't eat anything on this menu. And I've been that guy,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, not not just because of allergies, but
Speaker 1: for instance, I don't eat mammals. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of specially trendy restaurants I'll go to, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to either ask for something to be
Speaker 1: prepared in a way that it wasn't intended to be
Speaker 1: because it's all got ox broth or you know, pork
Speaker 1: belly or whatever in it. Um, or I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: have to like I'll have like the house salad, just
Speaker 1: don't put any bacon on it, please, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I've been that person too, and of course
Speaker 1: now I'm the person who I doubt I'll be going
Speaker 1: to any like well, I mean, I'll go to some
Speaker 1: seafood restaurants, but I obviously I'm not gonna I'll stay
Speaker 1: away from all the shellfish. Like if it's a shellfish
Speaker 1: themed restaurant it's all shrimp and grits or something. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I love shrimp and grits, but I love breathing more.
Speaker 1: Breathing has one out over the the uh that battle
Speaker 1: breathing versus shrimp breathing winds. Ah. Yeah, so great idea that, Joe.
Speaker 1: I think that would be a really smart way of
Speaker 1: handling this, particularly to just ease that that that communication,
Speaker 1: which is obviously very important and also can get super awkward.
Speaker 1: So I'm fully in favor of it, particularly as someone
Speaker 1: who does not want to go through that process again.
Speaker 1: Now thinking about it from the other side, I imagine
Speaker 1: something like this could probably also be abused in exactly
Speaker 1: the manner you say. Well, people just say they've got
Speaker 1: an allergy to like thirty five different ingredients they don't
Speaker 1: really like, in which case you'd be like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know why you came here, I can't help you. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: hopefully people, Hopefully that kind of impersonal method of communication
Speaker 1: would help people be more honest, knowing that they would
Speaker 1: get the service that they're expecting, because I think that
Speaker 1: the dishonesty stems from being afraid that you're going to
Speaker 1: get the thing that you don't want. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know, I think I think most people
Speaker 1: in general are pretty good about not abusing those systems.
Speaker 1: I really do. UM, I mean, I really ever mess
Speaker 1: with no one whatever messed with the system. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that no one would ever mess with the system.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that I realized that, of course, waite
Speaker 1: staff and and cooking staff encounter way more people you know,
Speaker 1: every single night, So to them, they may have a
Speaker 1: different perspective of how many people are really just quote
Speaker 1: unquote problem cases. But I would imagine that the over
Speaker 1: the general population of people who would make these requests,
Speaker 1: it's generally a smaller number than what like we probably
Speaker 1: think it's smaller cooks cooking, UH staff probably thinks it's larger. Well. Yes. Also,
Speaker 1: speaking as the daughter of a chef, I can tell
Speaker 1: you that the temperament of many chefs would would lead
Speaker 1: to uh perhaps a large amount of disturbance over this
Speaker 1: kind of issue. I often one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I avoid going to trendy restaurants UH is one I'm
Speaker 1: so totally not cool. But to it's it's because I
Speaker 1: respect the work that goes into creating a dish, and
Speaker 1: I understand, like if I look at a menu and
Speaker 1: I see that beef and pork and other mammals are
Speaker 1: just they play a massive part, and like almost every dish,
Speaker 1: I just say that looks amazing. It's not for me
Speaker 1: because I would prefer to experience a dish the way
Speaker 1: a chef had envisioned it. Um. So I I also
Speaker 1: take that as as a way of looking at Sometimes
Speaker 1: you just have to accept their things that are not
Speaker 1: meant for you and that's okay. Shrimp is not meant
Speaker 1: for me, and that's not okay. But that's another story.
Speaker 1: So let's wrap this up. Guys. It was fun kind
Speaker 1: of having this conversation too, I mean, more of a
Speaker 1: philosophical discussion than our previous Borg Chef episode was, but
Speaker 1: it was really on my mind, uh once I was
Speaker 1: capable of coherent thought again. So guys, if you would
Speaker 1: like to reach out and give us suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episode of ideas, send us an email. The address is
Speaker 1: f W thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop us a line on Twitter. Our handle
Speaker 1: there is fw thinking. Of course, you can leave us
Speaker 1: a note on Facebook search f W Thinking in the
Speaker 1: search bar. Our profile should pop right up. You can
Speaker 1: leave us a message there and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this topic in
Speaker 1: the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot com, brought
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