'Inauthentic' cuisine worse than the Holocaust, say Oberlin College students

[dismal]

Beef in a Hindu dish is pretty damn insensitive.
Calling fried chicken sushi is ridiculous but not offensive.
I make vegan chili with three, count um, three different kinds of beans. This might offend some and may even get me beat up, but it's still chili because I say so.

Try not thinking of it as a "Hindu dish".

I doubt it practices the religion very seriously. What with the beef.

 

[Jaecp]

If you're saying these students whinging about inauthenticity don't have a real gripe, I agree.

I think his point was that the club of people who don't have a real gripe is bigger than you imagine.

People like Metaphor, you mean?

 

[thebeave]

If you're saying these students whinging about inauthenticity don't have a real gripe, I agree.

I think his point was that the club of people who don't have a real gripe is bigger than you imagine.

The problem today is that all it takes is one person to get offended and gripe and then the whole thing gets shutdown. There is a recent issue in a kindergarten in my area, where the kids have been going to visit "Santa" on a school field trip for many years. Its a tradition in the school. But a Jewish mother complained this year (Santa is not part of her religious/cultural background) and made a big fuss out of it, and the whole event has been cancelled. Probably it will never happen again. Not sure I agree that visiting Santa on school time is such an important thing in the first place, but the point remains.

 

[jonatha]

Sloppy joes on Wednesdays.

Us too.

Wonder what it was about Wednesdays...

 

[Metaphor]

Actually it does. The same way you can't advertise that your restaurant is serving beef stew and then give your customers horse meat.

Beef is unambiguously the meat of a cow. What is a 'banh mi'? Here is the student's quote:

Disgusted that a Vietnamese sandwich was being served with coleslaw instead of pickled vegetables, student Diep Nguyn said: “It was ridiculous… how could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”

Now, I'm sure Nguyn's fee fees were rancorously hurt, but this is the very first paragraph from wikipedia describing the sandwich:

The Vietnamese sandwich, sometimes called a "bánh mì sandwich", is a product of French colonialism in Indochina, combining ingredients from the French (baguettes, pâté, jalapeño, and mayonnaise) with native Vietnamese ingredients, such as cilantro, cucumber, and pickled carrots and daikon.

So, who is Nguyn to claim what they did was inauthentic? And does Nguyn actually think that the 'classic' version of banh mi (described in the next paragraph on wikipedia) is what people understand to be banh mi, even though the French colonial one appears to be the standard and more popular?

The fact that you have to overreach with your analogies -- e.g. marketing beef as horse, two unambiguous claims, shows the tenuous nature of the complaints.

If they are being told that something is authentic and it isn't, then yes, the public is being misled. If I sell diamonds and promise them to be authentic diamonds but upon appraisal it is discovered that I sold cut glass, that is known a fraud in these United States. Maybe that is not the case legally down under. I don't know.

I'll tell you what: let's ask 100 people in the United States if getting mayonnaise on a banh mi is criminally false advertising.

if they said theirs was raw fish and then sold breaded fried chicken, that is a problem.

No, the sushi was an example I used to illustrate that what some narrow group of people believe to be 'authentic' is not what the market understands the term to be.

It seems like it was marketed as 'sushi' to the students, but had cooked fish. I do not expect raw fish in sushi and neither does the public.

Complaints like these do not go against the market, but are part of the market. It is called customer feed back and is a big part of insuring customer satisfaction.

Complaining to the food company, sure. Standing outside the food hall and trying to persuade the public (the banh mi has mayonnaise!! don't go in there!), sure. I still don't know what the 'meetings' with the school are going to be about or what the commercial relationship between the parties is.

But honestly, anyone who read this and didn't wonder if it was a parody has become enured to student special snowflake sillybuggers.

 

[ideologyhunter]

How about a pulled dog sandwich, the Sloppy Cho? Would that settle the dust?

 

[Metaphor]

Breaded and fried? Yeesh. That's about as far from sushi as I can imagine.

Then you have dreadful poverty of imagination.

That isn't about "purists" being annoyed. This is simply not sushi.

It is sushi. Millions of rolls with all kinds of fillings (chicken, beef, vegetables, tofu, fish) are sold in Australia. The ingredients are wrapped in rice and seaweed. Everyone understands the dish to be sushi.

A purist might be annoyed that the kind of rice used isn't proper (maybe it lacks the right kind of vinegar, or it's imitation wasabi or something), but this is not what you're describing. You're describing something that has almost no connection to the dish itself being advertised as the dish outside of sharing some base ingredients. It'd be like if I advertised pizza, but what you got what a pepperoni, tomato and mozzarella sandwich. Tasty, to be sure, but could you fault an Italian student saying it's not pizza?

Nobody in Australia would understand a sandwich to be a pizza. Millions would understand that ingredients wrapped in rice and seaweed is sushi. You can cry tears over the loss of what you believe to be the 'real' meaning, but words evolve to mean what the majority want them to mean.

The big question for you is why does the school, or Australia in general, need to call this fried chicken dish sushi when it isn't?

The big question is, who are you to claim it isn't sushi?

Oh, and as a point, whether these people are "perpetually offended loons" is completely irrelevant. Do their claims have merit. That is the problem. That you felt the need to Godwin yourself in the OP (and, well, LIE in the title) is a strong indicator that you've got nothing

Holy shit, I did not lie. Satire is not lying. To lie is to present a counterfactual as truth with the intent to deceive others. I was mocking the students, not lying. Oy vey.

Oh, and as it turns out the school was also making traditional Indian dish, tandoori, with beef. Something that is kind of a no no when the food tradition it comes from venerates cows which, as an atheist I don't care about, but it shows that the school just doesn't give a shit about doing things halfway close to correct when you're making Indian dishes with fucking beef in it.

Shall I arrest the Indian takeaway owner and the workers near my work who sells beef vindaloo? Or maybe we can not bother with Australian police, maybe let's assemble some religious police and scare him a little.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I think his point was that the club of people who don't have a real gripe is bigger than you imagine.

The problem today is that all it takes is one person to get offended and gripe and then the whole thing gets shutdown. There is a recent issue in a kindergarten in my area, where the kids have been going to visit "Santa" on a school field trip for many years. Its a tradition in the school. But a Jewish mother complained this year (Santa is not part of her religious/cultural background) and made a big fuss out of it, and the whole event has been cancelled. Probably it will never happen again. Not sure I agree that visiting Santa on school time is such an important thing in the first place, but the point remains.

So this mom called or visited the school, complained about visiting Santa, and the school said, "That's that. No more Santa for you."

Nothing else was involved. No separation of church and state was evoked. No lawyers were call for advice. Nothing. just one complaint and the school cancelled Santa?

 

[laughing dog]

The big question is, who are you to claim it isn't sushi?

One could easily ask "Who are you to claim it is sushi?". Yes, the meaning of words evolve over time. While a term is "evolving", those people who understand the term in the traditional sense will be misled. While that is inevitable, that doesn't make it good practice. And it makes understandable that those who do understand the term in the traditional sense complain. If I wished and expected to eat bait (i.e. sushi) but was served something else, I would complain. It is not a big deal. It is not a big deal to either correctly label the servings. It is not a big deal not to do so. Since these students are only dealing with the food service at Oberlin College, one wonders why any sane person in the world would give a rat's ass.

 

[Jaecp]

Breaded and fried? Yeesh. That's about as far from sushi as I can imagine.

Then you have dreadful poverty of imagination.

Ooh, you've got jokes. Now if only you had arguments.

That isn't about "purists" being annoyed. This is simply not sushi.

It is sushi. Millions of rolls with all kinds of fillings (chicken, beef, vegetables, tofu, fish) are sold in Australia. The ingredients are wrapped in rice and seaweed. Everyone understands the dish to be sushi.

And I can call a piece of flint Filet Mignon

A purist might be annoyed that the kind of rice used isn't proper (maybe it lacks the right kind of vinegar, or it's imitation wasabi or something), but this is not what you're describing. You're describing something that has almost no connection to the dish itself being advertised as the dish outside of sharing some base ingredients. It'd be like if I advertised pizza, but what you got what a pepperoni, tomato and mozzarella sandwich. Tasty, to be sure, but could you fault an Italian student saying it's not pizza?

Nobody in Australia would understand a sandwich to be a pizza. Millions would understand that ingredients wrapped in rice and seaweed is sushi. You can cry tears over the loss of what you believe to be the 'real' meaning, but words evolve to mean what the majority want them to mean.

Have you forgotten that the food was advertised as authentic? Your faux-sushi's regional acceptance is irrelevant.

The big question for you is why does the school, or Australia in general, need to call this fried chicken dish sushi when it isn't?

The big question is, who are you to claim it isn't sushi?

Someone who knows what actual sushi is? This isn't difficult.

Oh, and as a point, whether these people are "perpetually offended loons" is completely irrelevant. Do their claims have merit. That is the problem. That you felt the need to Godwin yourself in the OP (and, well, LIE in the title) is a strong indicator that you've got nothing

Holy shit, I did not lie. Satire is not lying. To lie is to present a counterfactual as truth with the intent to deceive others. I was mocking the students, not lying. Oy vey.

No, you lied. That you did it to mock is irrelevant. The title of your post contains no satire. Even if you were to argue that your OP is, in some way, satirical, the Title of "'Inauthentic' cuisine worse than the Holocaust, say Oberlin College students" is a flat out lie. What your post's title most closely resembles is click bait. Claiming bald faced lies to be satire is petty.

Your title doesn't even pass the Onion test, mostly for Godwin purposes, because it's crass and, more importantly, vaguely believable. Plenty of idiots invoke the Holocaust for stupid reasons. Here you pretended someone else invoked the single greatest tragedy of the last century to... complain about college students. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Oh, and as it turns out the school was also making traditional Indian dish, tandoori, with beef. Something that is kind of a no no when the food tradition it comes from venerates cows which, as an atheist I don't care about, but it shows that the school just doesn't give a shit about doing things halfway close to correct when you're making Indian dishes with fucking beef in it.

Shall I arrest the Indian takeaway owner and the workers near my work who sells beef vindaloo? Or maybe we can not bother with Australian police, maybe let's assemble some religious police and scare him a little.

Is it advertised as authentic as the school in question is? Are you sick of debating the topic you brought up, Metaphor? Who said anything about arrest? Who said anything about Australia? You made an OP about a specific case and if you can't argue about that case then you've got no case.

 

[Jaecp]

Breaded and fried? Yeesh. That's about as far from sushi as I can imagine.

Then you have dreadful poverty of imagination.

Ooh, you've got jokes. Now if only you had arguments.

That isn't about "purists" being annoyed. This is simply not sushi.

It is sushi. Millions of rolls with all kinds of fillings (chicken, beef, vegetables, tofu, fish) are sold in Australia. The ingredients are wrapped in rice and seaweed. Everyone understands the dish to be sushi.

And I can call a piece of flint Filet Mignon

A purist might be annoyed that the kind of rice used isn't proper (maybe it lacks the right kind of vinegar, or it's imitation wasabi or something), but this is not what you're describing. You're describing something that has almost no connection to the dish itself being advertised as the dish outside of sharing some base ingredients. It'd be like if I advertised pizza, but what you got what a pepperoni, tomato and mozzarella sandwich. Tasty, to be sure, but could you fault an Italian student saying it's not pizza?

Nobody in Australia would understand a sandwich to be a pizza. Millions would understand that ingredients wrapped in rice and seaweed is sushi. You can cry tears over the loss of what you believe to be the 'real' meaning, but words evolve to mean what the majority want them to mean.

Have you forgotten that the food was advertised as authentic? Your faux-sushi's regional acceptance is irrelevant.

The big question for you is why does the school, or Australia in general, need to call this fried chicken dish sushi when it isn't?

The big question is, who are you to claim it isn't sushi?

Someone who knows what actual sushi is? This isn't difficult.

Oh, and as a point, whether these people are "perpetually offended loons" is completely irrelevant. Do their claims have merit. That is the problem. That you felt the need to Godwin yourself in the OP (and, well, LIE in the title) is a strong indicator that you've got nothing

Holy shit, I did not lie. Satire is not lying. To lie is to present a counterfactual as truth with the intent to deceive others. I was mocking the students, not lying. Oy vey.

No, you lied. That you did it to mock is irrelevant. The title of your post contains no satire. Even if you were to argue that your OP is, in some way, satirical, the Title of "'Inauthentic' cuisine worse than the Holocaust, say Oberlin College students" is a flat out lie. What your post's title most closely resembles is click bait. Claiming bald faced lies to be satire is petty.

Your title doesn't even pass the Onion test, mostly for Godwin purposes, because it's crass and, more importantly, vaguely believable. Plenty of idiots invoke the Holocaust for stupid reasons. Here you pretended someone else invoked the single greatest tragedy of the last century to... complain about college students. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Oh, and as it turns out the school was also making traditional Indian dish, tandoori, with beef. Something that is kind of a no no when the food tradition it comes from venerates cows which, as an atheist I don't care about, but it shows that the school just doesn't give a shit about doing things halfway close to correct when you're making Indian dishes with fucking beef in it.

Shall I arrest the Indian takeaway owner and the workers near my work who sells beef vindaloo? Or maybe we can not bother with Australian police, maybe let's assemble some religious police and scare him a little.

Is it advertised as authentic as the school in question is? Are you sick of debating the topic you brought up, Metaphor? Who said anything about arrest? Who said anything about Australia? You made an OP about a specific case and if you can't argue about that case then you've got no case.

- - - Updated - - -

one wonders why any sane person in the world would give a rat's ass.

We're on page 5 of evidence to the contrary

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Beef is unambiguously the meat of a cow. What is a 'banh mi'? Here is the student's quote:

Disgusted that a Vietnamese sandwich was being served with coleslaw instead of pickled vegetables, student Diep Nguyn said: “It was ridiculous… how could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?”

Now, I'm sure Nguyn's fee fees were rancorously hurt, but this is the very first paragraph from wikipedia describing the sandwich:

The Vietnamese sandwich, sometimes called a "bánh mì sandwich", is a product of French colonialism in Indochina, combining ingredients from the French (baguettes, pâté, jalapeño, and mayonnaise) with native Vietnamese ingredients, such as cilantro, cucumber, and pickled carrots and daikon.

Food critics make these same sorts of claims all the time. And millions of people read and believe these critiques. No gets mad at these critics for doing critiques. Now from what I have read about these sanwiches, what a person believes to be the TRUE "bánh mì sandwich" would depend on from what region of Vietnam s/he is getting the recipe. I am sure to student, the way the sandwich is made in his house and among his family and friends is the way it should be made. This is nothing new and Nguyn has as much right as the NYT food critic to say that his way of serving the sandwich is THE way to serve to sandwich. If someone disagrees, then let them debate it out. If the other side doesn't feel it important enough to fight about, the Nguyn wins.

So, who is Nguyn to claim what they did was inauthentic?

I just told you.

And does Nguyn actually think that the 'classic' version of banh mi (described in the next paragraph on wikipedia) is what people understand to be banh mi, even though the French colonial one appears to be the standard and more popular?

The sandwich appears to be a mingling of French and Vietnamese cuisines. pointing that out should be enough to keep the sandwich as is on campus, providing someone cares enough to do that.

The fact that you have to overreach with your analogies -- e.g. marketing beef as horse, two unambiguous claims, shows the tenuous nature of the complaints.

The analogies are not an over reach. They are heavy handed because that appears to be what is needed for some people to understand them.

If they are being told that something is authentic and it isn't, then yes, the public is being misled. If I sell diamonds and promise them to be authentic diamonds but upon appraisal it is discovered that I sold cut glass, that is known a fraud in these United States. Maybe that is not the case legally down under. I don't know.

I'll tell you what: let's ask 100 people in the United States if getting mayonnaise on a banh mi is criminally false advertising.

FLAG ON THE PLAY!! Since this is a French-Vietnamese dish and we are looking for authenticity, should we not be asking the French and Vietnamese people about said authenticity?

if they said theirs was raw fish and then sold breaded fried chicken, that is a problem.

No, the sushi was an example I used to illustrate that what some narrow group of people believe to be 'authentic' is not what the market understands the term to be.

Markets are creations of laws. If there are labelling laws that say what sushi is and people are passing as sushi a dish that is something other than what the law says, then that ain't sushi by the rules of that market.

It seems like it was marketed as 'sushi' to the students, but had cooked fish. I do not expect raw fish in sushi and neither does the public.

There is a popular joke in the american south. "We've had sushi for a long lime here in the south, we just don't call it sushi. We call it bait." I believe most people in the US understand sushi to be a dish based around raw fish. Now what y'all down there where the hurricanes rotate wrong way call sushi may be something different.

Complaints like these do not go against the market, but are part of the market. It is called customer feed back and is a big part of insuring customer satisfaction.

Complaining to the food company, sure. Standing outside the food hall and trying to persuade the public (the banh mi has mayonnaise!! don't go in there!), sure. I still don't know what the 'meetings' with the school are going to be about or what the commercial relationship between the parties is.

Well that needs to be asked of the school

But honestly, anyone who read this and didn't wonder if it was a parody has become enured to student special snowflake sillybuggers.

I find everybody is a special snowflake about one thing or another.

One thing that will my flurries in a blizzard is what constitutes North Carolina Barbecue. Philistines and Mountebanks will tell you that swill they serve you in the western part of the state is NC barbecue, but they lie to you sir. We here in the east will not serve you swine dipped in ketchup but instead treat you to a superbly slow roasted tender gently pulled pork seasoned with a peppered vinaigrette that upon tasting it will make you wanna slap your momma.

 

[Metaphor]

The big question is, who are you to claim it isn't sushi?

One could easily ask "Who are you to claim it is sushi?". Yes, the meaning of words evolve over time. While a term is "evolving", those people who understand the term in the traditional sense will be misled. While that is inevitable, that doesn't make it good practice.

If something is inevitable, whether it is 'good practice' or not does not make sense as a question.

In Australia, if the minority of people who want 'sushi' to have a narrower meaning than it does were to get their way, millions would have to find a way to describe what they want differently and less efficiently, like 'rice and seaweed wrapped chicken'. This helps nobody and actively harms people so that some special snowflake's sensibilities aren't molested. (Though I bet those same special snowflakes would probably object to rice and seaweed wrapped chicken, too).

And it makes understandable that those who do understand the term in the traditional sense complain. If I wished and expected to eat bait (i.e. sushi) but was served something else, I would complain. It is not a big deal. It is not a big deal to either correctly label the servings. It is not a big deal not to do so. Since these students are only dealing with the food service at Oberlin College, one wonders why any sane person in the world would give a rat's ass.

Because their behaviour is just another in a long line of indicators that people have strange and deranged ideas about appropriation, 'authenticity', freedom of thought and freedom of speech.

 

[Metaphor]

Ooh, you've got jokes. Now if only you had arguments.

I assure you, I am not joking. If you think 'nothing could be further', you have a serious poverty of imagination.

And I can call a piece of flint Filet Mignon

You could, if it were widely accepted that 'flint' is 'filet mignon'.

Have you forgotten that the food was advertised as authentic?

When? Where in the story does it say it was advertised as 'authentic', and who is going to be the judge of the authenticity?

Your faux-sushi's regional acceptance is irrelevant.

Haha, 'regional'. I bet there are a dozen Japanese-origin dishes with regional variations and each region will claim theirs is the authentic one.

Someone who knows what actual sushi is? This isn't difficult.

And so if you saw chicken wrapped in rice and seaweed, would you order it and then, upon discovering it was exactly what you ordered, would you cry a river of tears?

No, you lied.

No, I did not. Read an introductory philosophy textbook.

That you did it to mock is irrelevant.

The reason for uttering a counterfactual statement is entirely and centrally relevant to whether the statement is a lie. A lie must involve a deliberate intention to deceive. Other kinds of counterfactual statements that are not lies include being mistaken, satire, and storytelling.

You are wrong to accuse me of lying and now you're being deliberately obstreperous.

The title of your post contains no satire. Even if you were to argue that your OP is, in some way, satirical, the Title of "'Inauthentic' cuisine worse than the Holocaust, say Oberlin College students" is a flat out lie. What your post's title most closely resembles is click bait. Claiming bald faced lies to be satire is petty.

You do not know what satire is, and if my headline resembled something that students could well have said, it makes my headline even the more appropriate.

Your literary grasp is limited and I'm no longer going to debate the point. I'll let the readers of the thread judge whether I lied or not. (Note that people believing my satire to be literally true is not evidence of a lie, nor is the fact that it is a counterfactual statement in contention).

Your title doesn't even pass the Onion test, mostly for Godwin purposes, because it's crass and, more importantly, vaguely believable. Plenty of idiots invoke the Holocaust for stupid reasons. Here you pretended someone else invoked the single greatest tragedy of the last century to... complain about college students. What the fuck is wrong with you?

The thing that is wrong with me is that I pitch my material at an intelligent audience instead of, say, at your level.

Is it advertised as authentic as the school in question is? Are you sick of debating the topic you brought up, Metaphor? Who said anything about arrest? Who said anything about Australia? You made an OP about a specific case and if you can't argue about that case then you've got no case.

Where do you get the idea that the school advertised it as 'authentic', and where do you get the idea that it is inauthentic to use beef in an Indian origin dish, and where do you get the idea that no dish could possibly be advertised as 'authentic' and not rub somebody the wrong way, since everyone's idea of authentic is different?

 

[Metaphor]

Food critics make these same sorts of claims all the time.

Food critics are only slightly less worse than wine critics in their pretentious nonsense.

And millions of people read and believe these critiques. No gets mad at these critics for doing critiques. Now from what I have read about these sanwiches, what a person believes to be the TRUE "bánh mì sandwich" would depend on from what region of Vietnam s/he is getting the recipe. I am sure to student, the way the sandwich is made in his house and among his family and friends is the way it should be made. This is nothing new and Nguyn has as much right as the NYT food critic to say that his way of serving the sandwich is THE way to serve to sandwich. If someone disagrees, then let them debate it out. If the other side doesn't feel it important enough to fight about, the Nguyn wins.

That's entirely the point. His expectations were violated but his expectations were unreasonable.

FLAG ON THE PLAY!! Since this is a French-Vietnamese dish and we are looking for authenticity, should we not be asking the French and Vietnamese people about said authenticity?

No. Why? Why would their opinion matter more than anyone else's? Do you think their would be concordance about 'authenticity'? But I notice you've changed my scenario. I'm not asking people to judge 'authenticity' (because 'authenticity' is a nebulous and stupid concept that needs to be die a death), but whether they'd be misled.

If the general public would be reasonably upset that the banh mi they ordered had coleslaw in it because it is their understanding that it shouldn't have it, then that's a good reason to either specify the ingredients or stop calling it banh mi. But whether coleslaw is an 'authentic' ingredient is neither a question that can be answered nor a question worth answering.

One thing that will my flurries in a blizzard is what constitutes North Carolina Barbecue. Philistines and Mountebanks will tell you that swill they serve you in the western part of the state is NC barbecue, but they lie to you sir. We here in the east will not serve you swine dipped in ketchup but instead treat you to a superbly slow roasted tender gently pulled pork seasoned with a peppered vinaigrette that upon tasting it will make you wanna slap your momma.

Them's fightin' words.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Food critics are only slightly less worse than wine critics in their pretentious nonsense.

So according to you there's no "right way" that any kind of food should be prepared? If a service is advertising food that is perceived to be quality food, for instance, sushi, surely undercooked rice would be an issue?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Food critics are only slightly less worse than wine critics in their pretentious nonsense.

And millions of people read and believe these critiques. No gets mad at these critics for doing critiques. Now from what I have read about these sanwiches, what a person believes to be the TRUE "bánh mì sandwich" would depend on from what region of Vietnam s/he is getting the recipe. I am sure to student, the way the sandwich is made in his house and among his family and friends is the way it should be made. This is nothing new and Nguyn has as much right as the NYT food critic to say that his way of serving the sandwich is THE way to serve to sandwich. If someone disagrees, then let them debate it out. If the other side doesn't feel it important enough to fight about, the Nguyn wins.

That's entirely the point. His expectations were violated but his expectations were unreasonable.

FLAG ON THE PLAY!! Since this is a French-Vietnamese dish and we are looking for authenticity, should we not be asking the French and Vietnamese people about said authenticity?

No. Why? Why would their opinion matter more than anyone else's?

Because the question is this french-vietnamese dish is actually a french-veitnamese dish? The general american public won't know this. The french-vietnamese public may not know either but since it is their food, they have a better since of what it should be. The american public will know what they LIKE and they are absolutely legitimate in what they like.

Do you think their would be concordance about 'authenticity'? But I notice you've changed my scenario. I'm not asking people to judge 'authenticity' (because 'authenticity' is a nebulous and stupid concept that needs to be die a death), but whether they'd be misled.

If they are led to believe this is a dish they would get in Vietnam and it isn't a dish they wouldn't get in Vietnam, then they have been misled

If the general public would be reasonably upset that the banh mi they ordered had coleslaw in it because it is their understanding that it shouldn't have it, then that's a good reason to either specify the ingredients or stop calling it banh mi. But whether coleslaw is an 'authentic' ingredient is neither a question that can be answered nor a question worth answering.

One thing that will my flurries in a blizzard is what constitutes North Carolina Barbecue. Philistines and Mountebanks will tell you that swill they serve you in the western part of the state is NC barbecue, but they lie to you sir. We here in the east will not serve you swine dipped in ketchup but instead treat you to a superbly slow roasted tender gently pulled pork seasoned with a peppered vinaigrette that upon tasting it will make you wanna slap your momma.

Them's fightin' words.

Now the answer to this problem is to call the sandwich Vietnamese Fusion, quadruple the price, and serve it in a cafe with no furniture. There will be a line around the corner.

 

[laughing dog]

One could easily ask "Who are you to claim it is sushi?". Yes, the meaning of words evolve over time. While a term is "evolving", those people who understand the term in the traditional sense will be misled. While that is inevitable, that doesn't make it good practice.

If something is inevitable, whether it is 'good practice' or not does not make sense as a question.

Nope. It is inevitable that we die, but it is not good practice to necessarily hasten to our death.

In Australia, if the minority of people who want 'sushi' to have a narrower meaning than it does were to get their way, millions would have to find a way to describe what they want differently and less efficiently, like 'rice and seaweed wrapped chicken'. This helps nobody and actively harms people so that some special snowflake's sensibilities aren't molested.

Of course it helps people. It helps the minority and a more accurate description helps everyone. Not that it really matters, since your OP is about Oberlin students complaining about their food service. Oberlin is in Ohio, USA not Australia.

Because their behaviour is just another in a long line of indicators that people have strange and deranged ideas about appropriation, 'authenticity', freedom of thought and freedom of speech.

You do realize your OP also falls under that description for freedom of thought and freedom of speech and "authenticity".

 

[Jaecp]

I assure you, I am not joking. If you think 'nothing could be further', you have a serious poverty of imagination.

Your failure at humor is well understood at this point and, again, you're doing that misrepresentation/lying/"satire" thing again if you're going to act as though 'nothing could be further' is reflective of what I said

And I can call a piece of flint Filet Mignon

You could, if it were widely accepted that 'flint' is 'filet mignon'.

Widely accepted, eh? Your fried chicken wrapped in rice and seaweed then certainly does not pass muster

Have you forgotten that the food was advertised as authentic?

When? Where in the story does it say it was advertised as 'authentic', and who is going to be the judge of the authenticity?

The people of that culture and food tradition, obviously. As numerous people have told you.

Your faux-sushi's regional acceptance is irrelevant.

Haha, 'regional'. I bet there are a dozen Japanese-origin dishes with regional variations and each region will claim theirs is the authentic one.

Yes, regional. Australia has all of 23 million people in it. While people in your neck of the woods might have a quirky idea of what Sushi means, the culture that is going to dominate it's usage is that of Japan (with six times your population) not to mention places like the US where authentic Sushi is so common that numerous people on the first page of this thread were outright confused as to why you thought this was something worth getting mad over because of the obvious merit of the students claims.

Regional variations within a culture, like if an Osakan miso had a different garnish than Tokyo miso, is irrelevant. Maybe you'd know that if Australia had much in the way of food culture, but from what my friend in Brisbane told me last year the only Australia creations she can think of are a handful of desserts.

Someone who knows what actual sushi is? This isn't difficult.

And so if you saw chicken wrapped in rice and seaweed, would you order it and then, upon discovering it was exactly what you ordered, would you cry a river of tears?

*yawn* please try harder, this is sad

No, you lied.

No, I did not. Read an introductory philosophy textbook.

I have, you lied.

That you did it to mock is irrelevant.

The reason for uttering a counterfactual statement is entirely and centrally relevant to whether the statement is a lie. A lie must involve a deliberate intention to deceive. Other kinds of counterfactual statements that are not lies include being mistaken, satire, and storytelling.

You are wrong to accuse me of lying and now you're being deliberately obstreperous.

You had a deliberate intention to deceive! And an incentive! An honest title for the thread would be less likely to get people to read the OP looking for those gosh darned students making ridiculous comparisons to the holocaust.

Except, wait, that thing you lured people in with didn't fucking happen

Ergo, you lied. Claiming that it was satire is not a get out of jail free card. You have to demonstrate it

The title of your post contains no satire. Even if you were to argue that your OP is, in some way, satirical, the Title of "'Inauthentic' cuisine worse than the Holocaust, say Oberlin College students" is a flat out lie. What your post's title most closely resembles is click bait. Claiming bald faced lies to be satire is petty.

You do not know what satire is, and if my headline resembled something that students could well have said, it makes my headline even the more appropriate.

I'm well aware of what satire is. Maybe consider watching some clips of Colbert on youtube because you have failed at your intended goal.

Your literary grasp is limited and I'm no longer going to debate the point. I'll let the readers of the thread judge whether I lied or not. (Note that people believing my satire to be literally true is not evidence of a lie, nor is the fact that it is a counterfactual statement in contention).

You've generally been pretty bad at "debating" anything so far, so feel free to condense this into something manageable.

Your title doesn't even pass the Onion test, mostly for Godwin purposes, because it's crass and, more importantly, vaguely believable. Plenty of idiots invoke the Holocaust for stupid reasons. Here you pretended someone else invoked the single greatest tragedy of the last century to... complain about college students. What the fuck is wrong with you?

The thing that is wrong with me is that I pitch my material at an intelligent audience instead of, say, at your level.

No, the problem is that you used a tragedy to beat a dead horse about "whiny college kids" (except that they have a legit point"

Do you seriously not see how fucked it is to just make up something like what you did? Like, nice job trying to insult my intelligence instead of answering the point, but do you really expect that to reflect better on you?

Is it advertised as authentic as the school in question is? Are you sick of debating the topic you brought up, Metaphor? Who said anything about arrest? Who said anything about Australia? You made an OP about a specific case and if you can't argue about that case then you've got no case.

Where do you get the idea that the school advertised it as 'authentic', and where do you get the idea that it is inauthentic to use beef in an Indian origin dish, and where do you get the idea that no dish could possibly be advertised as 'authentic' and not rub somebody the wrong way, since everyone's idea of authentic is different?

Where do I? Beef? Indian food? Are you for real? Do you seriously know nothing about Hinduism?

And, again, you are misrepresenting me. You have a rather obvious problem with presenting things even approaching realistically. The bolded section above is ridiculous

 

[Metaphor]

Food critics are only slightly less worse than wine critics in their pretentious nonsense.

So according to you there's no "right way" that any kind of food should be prepared? If a service is advertising food that is perceived to be quality food, for instance, sushi, surely undercooked rice would be an issue?

No, what I'm saying is that undercooked rice might make it a bad meal, but it doesn't make it 'not sushi'.

But what I will definitely say is:

i) There's no 'authentic' way to prepare a dish, because people will disagree about what's authentic, including 'experts'
ii) Even if there were an 'authentic' way, there is no reason at all to believe that way is the most desirable way to prepare a dish, unless for some reason you value 'authenticity' above your own tastes
iii) Whether you valued 'authenticity' or not, it's a considerable distance between that and calling what you consider 'inauthentic' false advertising, 'appropriation', or other such nonsense
iv) If you think you have any moral claim to the naming or ingredients or preparation style of a dish because one of your ancestors may or may not have helped invent it, you are so full of shit your eyes should be brown.