[teekert]

Idk to me this sounds like: I hate washing myself or I hate going to the bathroom. Maybe it’s a cultural thing but adults just need to be able to cook in my society. No place for hefty emotions. Just a fact of life.

It might be nice to live in a society where not cooking is possible. Probably less healthy though, you have different incentives than people making your food. (Taste [salt levels] and “adictiveness” vs healthy and nutritious).

Cooking is a skill, it takes practices and you have to develop some dexterity. But I usually enjoy it now.

I have to admit I never really cooked extensively for 1 person. I imagine I’d use the freezer a lot for lasagnas and sauces etc.

Check out “Nat’s what I reckon”.

[jdietrich]

>Maybe it’s a cultural thing but adults just need to be able to cook in my society. No place for hefty emotions. Just a fact of life.

I have an impaired sense of smell, as do 20% of the adult population. Most foods are utterly bland or actively repulsive to me. Sweet tastes are mildly pleasant, but otherwise I do not enjoy eating, I just do it to avoid hunger. I maintain a BMI of 19, but only because I actively monitor my food intake to avoid becoming clinically underweight.

Cooking is a chore that I will perform in the most perfunctory way possible in order to keep myself alive, but it is also something I will avoid wherever possible. Any effort I might put into making a delicious meal is wasted on me, because I don't have the sensory apparatus to perceive deliciousness.

From my perspective, the world seems almost pathologically obsessed with food. People often struggle to understand my complete indifference to food ("surely there must be some foods you enjoy"), but I struggle to understand how vast numbers of people eat so much that they become disabled and die prematurely. I can only make sense of it through the lens of addiction, which would raise all sorts of questions about the way in which we think talk about food versus other addictive substances.

My experience is obviously atypical (although not as uncommon as you might imagine), but I can't help thinking that the rest of you would be better off if you took a slightly more functional and utilitarian approach to eating. Obviously you can't just all pretend that you don't enjoy eating, but maybe you could all spend a bit less time talking and thinking about food?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15064632/

[wkat4242]

I don't agree. I lived in Thailand where it's common to just buy a plastic bag of food from a street vendor. Most houses apparently don't even have full kitchens.

[redwall_hp]

People in ancient Pompeii didn't either. They bought bread from bakers, or paid for time in public ovens, and bought premade food from pubs or other vendors. Preserved homes very clearly did not typically have the means to prepare food.

It's a statement kind of like insisting that everyone should know how to farm or do animal husbandry, when those were specialist jobs (sometimes serfs' jobs...) since time immemorial. Humans built cities millennia ago and lived in semi-specialized social groups before that.

The outmoded self-sufficiency obsession is very culturally American, due to its relatively recent status as a more or less agrarian colony.

[teekert]

Yeah I loved that about Thailand, I’d eat small things all day from street vendors. Good stuff.