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> keeps you from cooking with rotten food If only we had some kind of olfactory or optical equipment stuck on the front of our faces that could help determine

> keeps you from cooking with rotten food If only we had some kind of olfactory or optical equipment stuck on the front of our faces that could help determine the rottenness or mouldiness of food. Failing that, perhaps producers of packaged food could use some kind of common standard system to inform consumers of the date by which the food should be used by, or before which it might be at its best.

na85 9y ago
Your point is valid, but recently here in Canada there was a recall on contaminated flour. Can't remember if it was anthrax or E Coli. Your eyes/nose won't pick up bacteria in the flour.
- FICO 9y ago
  Sure, food recalls happen all the time. However, they are selling as a subscription service- they know what packets they shipped you. If there's a recall they should email you, snail mail you, and automatically issue you a refund on your credit card. WiFi is beyond overkill.
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    I'll say this -- and I'm in the "this is a stupid fucking product" camp -- but I think sending updates to your appliances to keep you from using bad food is actually the right way to go. I barely read half my mail, snail or electronic. The chances I'm going to see and read and act on a "your food is bad!!!" email (assuming it doesn't get eaten by some filter) before I eat the food in question is low, low low. Some device getting the message and physically stopping me is really the only way to be sure.
    - spaceribs 9y ago
      "Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry." Kidding aside, this is too simple of a problem to solve. Serious contamination isn't a part of 1st world daily life, because we have excellent news and regulations (so far). Rotten food is easy to detect, and even some of the stuff we consider rotten would probably not make us sick. It's all a shiny coat of wax on a non-problem, just like bottled water and gingivitis.
      - saalweachter 9y ago
        Food contamination is a low-probability problem, sure, but it is hardly a minor one. It kills people.
    - LnxPrgr3 9y ago
      They could even do this without preventing the machine from squeezing improperly-ordained-by-DRM bags. "If we recognize the bag, and it's recalled, we'll stop you—or at least yell at you. If you use someone else's bag you're on your own, but we won't stop you." Surely they were capable of having this thought. That they didn't or chose to ignore it hints at ulterior motives—most obvious is overcharging for the bags, since not buying them makes you the proud owner of a $400 paperweight. But a prediction: almost everyone who attempts to block consumers from consuming bad food with technology will do it to overcharge for the food. Safety will be the excuse, not the purpose.
      - saalweachter 9y ago
        Oh yeah, it's a shitty move to use that as your excuse. If your goal is reducing food poisoning through TECHNOLOGY! and CONNECTIVITY! to better inform consumers if their food has been recalled, you'd be better off developing food packaging that could eg change color when the food is recalled - a big giant red skull and crossbones appearing on my food packages would probably keep me from accidentally eating bad food. That would both be a challenging engineering project (since it'd have to be cheap, food-safe, and ideally biodegradable), and work for a far wider range of foods and ingredients.
- TimTheTinker 9y ago
  > Can't remember if it was anthrax or E Coli. You'd remember if it was anthrax.
  - na85 9y ago
    Ok.
nickparker 9y ago
Fair criticisms, but I maintain we're going to end up tracking our food eventually. It's just going to get cheaper, and there are real upsides IMO. Wrote this because I got in a similar conversation on twitter: https://medium.com/@nickparkerprint/in-defense-of-juicero-and-other-really-dumb-food-startups-29a5a754eb1a https://medium.com/@nickparkerprint/in-defense-of-juicero-an...
- gehwartzen 9y ago
  The thing is that all you need is a sticker on each piece of food with a unique QR code or an rfid tag containing all the expiration, source, and lot numbers. The consumer can just scan everything and get any necessary info about expiration dates and recalls if they want. Nothing very complex there and certainly doesn't require any fancy kitchen gadgets just a industry agreed on labeling standard.
- adrianN 9y ago
  About half the food I buy is not in a package. I wouldn't want every carrot and every loaf of bread to come with an RFID sticker.
- frobozz 9y ago
  Possibly, and i certainly agree that there's benefit in a recipe suggestion tool that is linked to your inventory. It's also a good idea to have something tell you what's coming up to use-by, to reduce waste. However, that tracking belongs at the kitchen door using a common industry standard format, and the ability to manually enter inventory items. If you need a different appliance to prepare food from each vendor, then you won't be able to make Alphabet spaghetti with Amazon beef and Apple tomatoes; you can't pop to the local shop to get some milk; you can't go into your garden to pick some carrots; you can't go to a specialist vendor to get a particular spice mix or exotic vegetable; you can't buy your favourite varieties from a local grower. I can't picture giving up on those advantages just so that Mr. Bezos can tell me what to eat.
tomcam 9y ago
I am now going to shut down all future attempts at dry humor because they will never, ever match or surpass this comment. I'm going to take my sense of humor out back and shoot it for never giving me this kind of service.
lbatx 9y ago
This is, of course, a brilliant comment. Well stated. The only thing I can add is perhaps a corollary to this, which is "nothing causes a business to fail more than solving a non-existent problem" which is what Juicero did.

na85 9y ago

Your point is valid, but recently here in Canada there was a recall on contaminated flour. Can't remember if it was anthrax or E Coli. Your eyes/nose won't pick up bacteria in the flour.

FICO 9y ago
Sure, food recalls happen all the time. However, they are selling as a subscription service- they know what packets they shipped you. If there's a recall they should email you, snail mail you, and automatically issue you a refund on your credit card. WiFi is beyond overkill.
- saalweachter 9y ago
  I'll say this -- and I'm in the "this is a stupid fucking product" camp -- but I think sending updates to your appliances to keep you from using bad food is actually the right way to go. I barely read half my mail, snail or electronic. The chances I'm going to see and read and act on a "your food is bad!!!" email (assuming it doesn't get eaten by some filter) before I eat the food in question is low, low low. Some device getting the message and physically stopping me is really the only way to be sure.
  - spaceribs 9y ago
    "Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry." Kidding aside, this is too simple of a problem to solve. Serious contamination isn't a part of 1st world daily life, because we have excellent news and regulations (so far). Rotten food is easy to detect, and even some of the stuff we consider rotten would probably not make us sick. It's all a shiny coat of wax on a non-problem, just like bottled water and gingivitis.
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      Food contamination is a low-probability problem, sure, but it is hardly a minor one. It kills people.
  - LnxPrgr3 9y ago
    They could even do this without preventing the machine from squeezing improperly-ordained-by-DRM bags. "If we recognize the bag, and it's recalled, we'll stop you—or at least yell at you. If you use someone else's bag you're on your own, but we won't stop you." Surely they were capable of having this thought. That they didn't or chose to ignore it hints at ulterior motives—most obvious is overcharging for the bags, since not buying them makes you the proud owner of a $400 paperweight. But a prediction: almost everyone who attempts to block consumers from consuming bad food with technology will do it to overcharge for the food. Safety will be the excuse, not the purpose.
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      Oh yeah, it's a shitty move to use that as your excuse. If your goal is reducing food poisoning through TECHNOLOGY! and CONNECTIVITY! to better inform consumers if their food has been recalled, you'd be better off developing food packaging that could eg change color when the food is recalled - a big giant red skull and crossbones appearing on my food packages would probably keep me from accidentally eating bad food. That would both be a challenging engineering project (since it'd have to be cheap, food-safe, and ideally biodegradable), and work for a far wider range of foods and ingredients.
TimTheTinker 9y ago
> Can't remember if it was anthrax or E Coli. You'd remember if it was anthrax.
- na85 9y ago
  Ok.

nickparker 9y ago

Fair criticisms, but I maintain we're going to end up tracking our food eventually. It's just going to get cheaper, and there are real upsides IMO. Wrote this because I got in a similar conversation on twitter: https://medium.com/@nickparkerprint/in-defense-of-juicero-and-other-really-dumb-food-startups-29a5a754eb1a https://medium.com/@nickparkerprint/in-defense-of-juicero-an...

gehwartzen 9y ago
The thing is that all you need is a sticker on each piece of food with a unique QR code or an rfid tag containing all the expiration, source, and lot numbers. The consumer can just scan everything and get any necessary info about expiration dates and recalls if they want. Nothing very complex there and certainly doesn't require any fancy kitchen gadgets just a industry agreed on labeling standard.
adrianN 9y ago
About half the food I buy is not in a package. I wouldn't want every carrot and every loaf of bread to come with an RFID sticker.
frobozz 9y ago
Possibly, and i certainly agree that there's benefit in a recipe suggestion tool that is linked to your inventory. It's also a good idea to have something tell you what's coming up to use-by, to reduce waste. However, that tracking belongs at the kitchen door using a common industry standard format, and the ability to manually enter inventory items. If you need a different appliance to prepare food from each vendor, then you won't be able to make Alphabet spaghetti with Amazon beef and Apple tomatoes; you can't pop to the local shop to get some milk; you can't go into your garden to pick some carrots; you can't go to a specialist vendor to get a particular spice mix or exotic vegetable; you can't buy your favourite varieties from a local grower. I can't picture giving up on those advantages just so that Mr. Bezos can tell me what to eat.

tomcam 9y ago

I am now going to shut down all future attempts at dry humor because they will never, ever match or surpass this comment. I'm going to take my sense of humor out back and shoot it for never giving me this kind of service.

lbatx 9y ago

This is, of course, a brilliant comment. Well stated. The only thing I can add is perhaps a corollary to this, which is "nothing causes a business to fail more than solving a non-existent problem" which is what Juicero did.