Tofu-maker Yamami sees shares surge after automating ancient craft | Hacker News Reader

Tofu-maker Yamami sees shares surge after automating ancient craft

japantimes.co.jp

56 pointsmikhael13 comments

For everyone else wondering what a fully automatic tofu line looks like, I found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJomLW3QMDI (CGI)

So they put the tofu into plastic containers and then heat it up to pasteurize?

Hope the customers like eating micro plastics and PFAS...

In Tokyo, the majority of people go to the "kombini" (convenience store) for lunch, buy food in plastic and styrofoam containers, then heat them in the microwave.

This is "normal" for Japanese. They won't be bothered by it. Unfortunately basically every tourist will be eating this stuff now.

Do you have a reason to expect significant levels of microplastics and PFAS to be introduced due to pasteurization in the container?

For what it's worth, the tofu packaging I have in front of me, which looks like all of the other tofu packaging I've seen, is made of polypropylene (not sure about the film covering), which is made of carbon and hydrogen, so I'm not sure where the PFAS would come from.

Another thing to consider is whether the customers like eating (some potentially negligible amount of) microlplastics and (probably ~ zero) PFAS more than they like eating unpasteurized tofu since that seems likely to be the only economical alternative.

With respect to microplastics and nanoplastics, this study explored the mobilization of plastics when heating up foods in plastic containers (a few months ago) [0].

I was also surprised to see the pasteurization occur in the plastic container and after researching this a bit, it seems like it is the industry standard. I guess a good thesis topic would be seeing if there was a difference in micro/nanoplastics present in pasteurized vs unpasteurized tofu.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37624070

It's strange that the narrator's grammar is terrible but pronunciation is excellent.

Native speaker narrators are often hired to read exactly what is written in a script written by non-native speakers and read it they do.

You see it a lot with this kind of video on youtube.

I imagine this exchange:

"Hey, I was practicing the English script and I found a few places the wording could be improved."

"Oh hell no, it was like pulling teeth just to get what we've already got, the smallest change will cause weeks of delay and it may even end up worse. Just go with what's written, most of the audience won't care that much anyway."

Yeah; the language was almost fine, but every few seconds my brain went "uhhh... what?" I almost couldn't tell you what was wrong, but it was clearly wrong.

Yeah, even if we accept "creepy robotic recitation" as an unavoidable overarching style, there are errors like:

> Automatic vacuum-type with quantative [quantitative] soybean deliver [delivery].

> Water level control - It can control the soaking time and auto-washing remove [removes] impurities.

> Quantative [Quantitative] soybean and water feeding can stable [stabilize] soymilk concentration control.

Quantitive is actually a word: https://grammarist.com/usage/quantitative-quantitive/

In this context (international sales of heavy machinery), I'd argue "quantative" is a mistake even if it were "legitimate but rare".

That said, I think there's still a strong case it's an ancient-mistake in general. Not only is it missing from some spell-checkers, but it appears so extraordinarily rarely [0] compared to "quantitative" that it's hard to see it as a synonym rather than a typo.

[0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=quantitative%2...

> we want to make people eat tofu not because it is healthy but because it is tasty

That’s an incredibly sad statement, especially for something that has been produced and eaten for a thousand years. This is how you end up with industrialized garbage snacks.

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