8 ms·

Putting quinoa in everything and assuming the addressable market had more disposable income seems like one of the signs of the last bubble.

Spivak 4y ago
Why are people so weird about food? What about quinoa made it associated with rich yuppies? If you didn’t already know you would probably assume the main consumers would be dudes who want their chicken and carb to have even more protein.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  Food choice being a proxy and signal for class/culture is nothing new. You’d be hard pressed to find a cultural tradition that doesn’t speak to it. While everyone needs sustenance, there are often several adequate choices about how to get it and making those choices become a way of communicating to others. And communicating is an defining and seemingly valuable part of being human. It’s not really weird and it’s not going anywhere.
  - kazinator 4y ago
    Consumption of quinoa doesn't demonstrate your food choice as much as that you follow quaint trends.
    - sammalloy 4y ago
      I share the same concerns about quinoa as OP. My guess is that it has to be made and served fresh, and these stores have it sitting on shelves for days at a time and it tastes funny after a while.
- chordalkeyboard 4y ago
  > What about quinoa made it associated with rich yuppies? poor people use wheat etc.
  - baq 4y ago
    Oh the irony. Rye was poor people’s cereal back then, wheat was for the rich.
    - urfullofsht 4y ago
      [dead]
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Lobster was once for prisoners and slaves or a poor mans food, while nowadays it's almost exactly the opposite. It'll be hard to find a prisoner or slave that gets to eat lobster.
      - philwelch 4y ago
        That’s mostly because they didn’t really know how to prepare it back then.
        giaour 4y ago
        Oysters were poor people food in the same era, and like now, many people ate them raw. It has less to do with culinary trends and much more to do with the relative productivity of the lobster fishery. (In recent years, the lobster fishery has been really productive, but prices have been pretty sticky[0].) Mark Kurlansky's The Big Oyster has some great primary source research on the social status of eating shellfish through the years. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/us/in-maine-fishermen-struggle-with-glut-of-lobsters.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/us/in-maine-fishermen-str...
        philwelch 4y ago
        At the time when lobsters were fed to prisoners, they hadn’t yet figured out the boiling-them-alive trick, which is supposedly how you get lobster to taste good. I don’t know anything about oysters though.
- passwordqwe 4y ago
  There's reports of prisoners complaining about the torture of being fed salmon all the time, because it used to be common food. People signal their class and status through everything, also through food.
  - specialist 4y ago
    The lumber camp installation inside the Nordic Hertitage Museum (Seattle) shows a sample employee contract: Salmon will not be served more than 3 times per week. At the time, salmon was the cheapest, most abundant source of protein. Poor people's food. IIRC, lobster in New England was about the same.
  - novok 4y ago
    Salmon not prepared, handled or stored properly or not served fresh can taste pretty bad and smell pretty bad compared to other meats. Seafood in general goes bad fast compared to beef or pork for example.
  - cstejerean 4y ago
    I used Blue Apron for a while and got an unreasonable amount of salmon for some reason. It's been almost 6 years and I can still barely eat salmon after that. So I can definitely understand where the prisoners were coming from on this one.
    - yukinon 4y ago
      This comment is confusing to me, because Blue Apron lets you select your own meals. Why would you continue to select salmon if you had it too often?
      - cstejerean 4y ago
        Things might have changed since then, but from what I recall while we had some options on what to pick, for example I could eliminate red meat entirely, there was no option to get meat and not get salmon. So pretty much every week at least one of the meals was salmon.
- asveikau 4y ago
  Quinoa specifically: it's foreign sounding, so people were unfamiliar with it, and it was touted for being more nutritious than things like rice. So, novelty and cool factor, plus appeal to those looking for healthy options; some overlap with the faddish nature of trends in healthy eating.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  Because nobody really ate it in the US and then it was everywhere it was a fad among rich yuppies. Yeah peasants ate it in South America (there were even newspaper editorials chastising yuppies for denying poor people their quinoa supply by eating it for frivolous reasons) but so what?
- rsynnott 4y ago
  It become quite expensive for a few years, as it became popular at a greater rate than production increased. Bulk price seems to be down again now, though.

Spivak 4y ago

Why are people so weird about food? What about quinoa made it associated with rich yuppies? If you didn’t already know you would probably assume the main consumers would be dudes who want their chicken and carb to have even more protein.

swatcoder 4y ago
Food choice being a proxy and signal for class/culture is nothing new. You’d be hard pressed to find a cultural tradition that doesn’t speak to it. While everyone needs sustenance, there are often several adequate choices about how to get it and making those choices become a way of communicating to others. And communicating is an defining and seemingly valuable part of being human. It’s not really weird and it’s not going anywhere.
- kazinator 4y ago
  Consumption of quinoa doesn't demonstrate your food choice as much as that you follow quaint trends.
  - sammalloy 4y ago
    I share the same concerns about quinoa as OP. My guess is that it has to be made and served fresh, and these stores have it sitting on shelves for days at a time and it tastes funny after a while.
chordalkeyboard 4y ago
> What about quinoa made it associated with rich yuppies? poor people use wheat etc.
- baq 4y ago
  Oh the irony. Rye was poor people’s cereal back then, wheat was for the rich.
  - urfullofsht 4y ago
    [dead]
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Lobster was once for prisoners and slaves or a poor mans food, while nowadays it's almost exactly the opposite. It'll be hard to find a prisoner or slave that gets to eat lobster.
    - philwelch 4y ago
      That’s mostly because they didn’t really know how to prepare it back then.
      - giaour 4y ago
        Oysters were poor people food in the same era, and like now, many people ate them raw. It has less to do with culinary trends and much more to do with the relative productivity of the lobster fishery. (In recent years, the lobster fishery has been really productive, but prices have been pretty sticky[0].) Mark Kurlansky's The Big Oyster has some great primary source research on the social status of eating shellfish through the years. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/us/in-maine-fishermen-struggle-with-glut-of-lobsters.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/us/in-maine-fishermen-str...
        philwelch 4y ago
        At the time when lobsters were fed to prisoners, they hadn’t yet figured out the boiling-them-alive trick, which is supposedly how you get lobster to taste good. I don’t know anything about oysters though.
passwordqwe 4y ago
There's reports of prisoners complaining about the torture of being fed salmon all the time, because it used to be common food. People signal their class and status through everything, also through food.
- specialist 4y ago
  The lumber camp installation inside the Nordic Hertitage Museum (Seattle) shows a sample employee contract: Salmon will not be served more than 3 times per week. At the time, salmon was the cheapest, most abundant source of protein. Poor people's food. IIRC, lobster in New England was about the same.
- novok 4y ago
  Salmon not prepared, handled or stored properly or not served fresh can taste pretty bad and smell pretty bad compared to other meats. Seafood in general goes bad fast compared to beef or pork for example.
- cstejerean 4y ago
  I used Blue Apron for a while and got an unreasonable amount of salmon for some reason. It's been almost 6 years and I can still barely eat salmon after that. So I can definitely understand where the prisoners were coming from on this one.
  - yukinon 4y ago
    This comment is confusing to me, because Blue Apron lets you select your own meals. Why would you continue to select salmon if you had it too often?
    - cstejerean 4y ago
      Things might have changed since then, but from what I recall while we had some options on what to pick, for example I could eliminate red meat entirely, there was no option to get meat and not get salmon. So pretty much every week at least one of the meals was salmon.
asveikau 4y ago
Quinoa specifically: it's foreign sounding, so people were unfamiliar with it, and it was touted for being more nutritious than things like rice. So, novelty and cool factor, plus appeal to those looking for healthy options; some overlap with the faddish nature of trends in healthy eating.
emodendroket 4y ago
Because nobody really ate it in the US and then it was everywhere it was a fad among rich yuppies. Yeah peasants ate it in South America (there were even newspaper editorials chastising yuppies for denying poor people their quinoa supply by eating it for frivolous reasons) but so what?
rsynnott 4y ago
It become quite expensive for a few years, as it became popular at a greater rate than production increased. Bulk price seems to be down again now, though.