The Dinosaur Croissant

How about a croissant shaped like a dinosaur? Or Instagram posts from a restaurant that does not exist? Or a flying avocado? A PBJ sandwich shaped into a series of cubes. The froth on a cappuccino shaped like a swan. An exploding pizza. Scrambled eggs that look like Spongebob Squarepants.

I am done with AI food. And you should be as well.

Augmented reality has a problem. You give up on reality itself. You find it harsh and difficult to navigate. You engage in virtual relationships instead of real conversations. Among adults under 40 years old, 25 percent think that AI could replace real-life romantic relationships. OnlyFans has almost 400 million accounts and roughly 20 million are paying members.

Thomas Paine wrote, “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

America is obsessed with cheap while other cultures have had suffering and difficulty bred in the bone. In Sparta, when a boy reached 7 years old he was separated from his family and sent to an agoge, a state-run military training school. Many plains tribes had boys plunge into cold rivers or sleep outside in winter with minimal shelter. In Samurai Japan, kids were forced to walk barefoot in the snow.

One might read over this list and say these were barbaric cultures. We know better today. But they understood something that we’ve forgotten. Suffering is part of life; it may actually be the most important thing. I do not endorse cruelty but I am in favor of dealing with life as it really exists. Life offers joy and pleasure but it also throws plenty of hard lessons our way. Nietzsche wrote, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” And a Jewish proverb offers, “He who has not tasted the bitter does not know what the sweet is.”

Instead of turning food into performance art, cooking can teach
us patience, repetition, community, failure, success, and old-fashioned hard work. And it sends a message about serving others, connecting
with friends and family, and how to fulfill our part of the grand social bargain, contributing time and effort for the good of the whole.

Yeah, I know. This sounds like a grumpy New England misanthrope who hates a good time. (It is true that the first thing I ask myself when I show up at a party is how soon I can leave.) Here’s a test. Who are the three people in your life that you admire the most? I bet that they are people who have suffered and have overcome that suffering. I doubt that your list includes folks who spend hours building in Minecraft.

Hear my plea. Can we please not ruin cooking? Can we spare the kitchen from becoming yet another fantasy world? I do not want an Instagram kitchen. I want a good dose of meal planning, shopping, prep, cooking, serving and cleaning. I want the occasional kitchen disaster as much as I want culinary triumph.

AI needs blowback. Hands off my food! Stop playing in the kitchen. Unplug your computer. Stop typing prompts.

ChatGPT is not your friend, your lover, or anything real. It is ephemeral, it’s made-up, it’s virtual reality, a reality that is a siren call to nowhere.
Food AI? Get lost.