>In 1985, the Canadian government tried to stop Jamaican bakeries and restaurants from using the term "beef patty."
>At the time, Canada's Meat Inspection Act classified a beef patty as what goes in a hamburger. It could contain only meat and seasoning and it couldn't be encased in dough or a crust. Therefore, a Jamaican patty — widely known as a flaky pastry with a spiced beef filling — didn't meet the criteria.
That actually vaguely seems reasonable? Especially in contexts where there's only text to go by (eg. on a menu), people might actually be confused.
I quite appreciate the taxpayer funded regulation of technical terms - I like being able to buy ice cream at the store and know if it's "ice cream" or "frozen dessert". Or "cream cheese" vs "cream cheese product". Or many other similar things.
The Jamaican patty and fish sauce ones are problematic, but also happened 25-40 years ago.
Don't you think it would cause more confusion if people expecting to buy a Jamaican beef patty instead have to buy a "Jamaican beef-inside-pastry product" ?
Do you have an encyclopedic knowledge of which professions are regulated and which aren't? If not, should we get rid of professional licensing?
>Don't you think it would cause more confusion if people expecting to buy a Jamaican beef patty instead have to buy a "Jamaican beef-inside-pastry product" ?
This feels like a strawman given that they settled on "Jamaican patty", which is reasonably brief and certainly less confusing than the original term of just "beef patty".
The solution is to ensure all common terms people expect in a daily shopping are covered. Thus why "beef patty" was covered. Sounds like you agree with the government on this one. Not covering it would make it confusing for people who would then need to keep track of which common terms are covered and which are not. Its a bit silly at times but as you noted yourself the alternative is even worse.
>I grew up in another country where Jamaican patties were popular [...]
Have you considered the possibility that Jamaican patties aren't universally popular and the fact that the two of you came from cities with a significant Jamaican diaspora doesn't invalidate the experience of the person who probably came from a city that didn't?
I sat there looking dumb and the waiter thought (like everyone here) that I was some idiot who didn't know what a burger was. Now I'm not suggesting they need to regulate what "mushroom burger" means across the locality too, but I couldn't have been the first one to get caught off-guard by this, and the whole incident never needed to happen either. At least in an airport where people from all over stop by, I seriously wouldn't think that only a racist or anti-meatatarian/anti-vegetarian dictatorship would impose some common-sense rules to prevent confusion or food/time wastage arising from cuisine-"unculturedness".
Note that there is often a rather restricted choice for vegetarian or vegan food (unless you pick your place carefully).
It’s not that I can’t understand that the other exists, but my brain is wired to think of mushroom as a topping/adjective and burger as the noun.
Which I point out here because there are people saying "just check the ingredients" and, no, this clearly happened despite that.
And which I also point out because the same people arguing "just check the ingredients" would get mad (possibly even more so) if you actually agree and decide to require reliable ingredient lists.
P.S. The top result I see for "what is a mushroom burger" on Google is meatless: https://www.recipetineats.com/swiss-mushroom-burger/
Now if you asked for a mushroom veggie burger, that would be different.
Heck, the top result I get for "what is a mushroom burger" on Google right now is a meatless one: https://www.recipetineats.com/swiss-mushroom-burger/
And the top AI result is similarly about another non-veg restaurant's meatless burger.
I'm talking about restaurants, not SEO'd slop recipe sites on google.
> You see both within five minute walks of each other.
Provide an example, then.
Here are some real-world examples:
Red Robin's "Sauteed 'Shroom" burger: https://www.redrobin.com/menu/burgers/sauteed-shroom
Chili's mushroom swiss burger: https://www.chilis.com/menu/big-mouth-burgers/mushroom-swiss... - notice how this one doesn't say anything about a meat patty, except for the picture. That's because without some kind of qualifer, by default "burger" means a sandwich with a beef patty, everywhere in the US.
Buffalo Wild Wings mushroom swiss burger: https://www.buffalowildwings.com/menu/categories/burgers/mus... - also no mention of beef.
Those are chain restaurants which can be found throughout the US, so you can't claim this is something regional. I defy you to find a single counterexample at a restaurant like this. Certainly, this is going to be what you get at any airport restaurant.
Here's an example of how vegeterian mushroom burgers are typically listed, at https://www.barhygge.com/menus : "Mushroom-Barley Veggie Burger". Notice the "veggie". That's what will typically be specified unless you're at a vegan or vegetarian place where it's assumed.
Reveal what? The country of the airport and my travel was irrelevant. You wanted to talk about the US and I talked about the US.
> Could it be because you knew you were wrong, ahead of time?
Wow, you totally caught me.
> notice how this one doesn't say anything about a meat patty, except for the picture.
Except the picture? Why the heck would I ignore the picture? Do you understand the fundamental issue here, or do you think it was that I was too stupid to look for a picture when I looked at the menu at the airport?
Since it's so difficult to comprehend: the whole problem is over whether information is communicated adequately enough that people can confidently understand what they're buying. The format of said communication, whether typewritten on a menu, imaged digitally, drawn by hand, handwritten on papyrus, engraved into a rock, or verbal from the waiter... is so clearly not the point.
> also no mention of beef.
It's literally in the photo. You seem to be really struggling to find examples where this information is actually missing. I wonder why.
> Provide an example, then.
Have you heard of Shake Shack? https://www.google.com/search?q=give+me+an+example+of+a+mush...
I don't know if you're not seeing the obvious or deliberately ignoring it, but the rather-salient differences between those are that (a) "cheesesteak" being one word rather than two tells you it might be a different thing, and (b) "cheesesteak" (or even "cheese steak" by itself) do not carry a single universal meaning different from the rest. You know, unlike "beef patty", where even Googling it now doesn't show Jamaica in the top result.
If you want something to compare against, this is like banning people businesses from calling soymilk just "milk". Nobody minds if you sell soymilk or Jamaican beef patties. They're just asking you not to actively hijack terms that carry significantly different meaning to millions/billions of other people. It's not that hard and it's not some sort of totalitarian flex to have rules like this. With HN being what it is, they'd probably call banning that anti-veganism.
Big Dairy got to you, huh.
There’s nothing wrong with referring to other kinds of milk as milk. If anything, cow’s milk should be clearly labeled as such, if we’re following the approach of identifying ingredients properly.
Or when they ask for meat, do you also show them the meat of the latest math problem you were working on?
Just because it's in the dictionary that doesn't mean you get to ignore what most people mean by it in context.
As per the actual 1828 Noah Webster's dictionary, which you can find here https://archive.org/details/noah-websters-1828-dictionary-el..., on page 7828, the definition of "Milk" is:
MILK, n. 1. A white fluid or liquor, secreted by certain glands in female animals, and drawn from the breasts for the nourishment of their young.NWAD MILK.2 2. The white juice of certain plants.NWAD MILK.3 3. Emulsion made by bruising seeds.NWAD MILK.4
And, just in case the commonality of milk being milk from a cow, see also the other shorthand definitions noted on pages 987 and 988 of the table of contents.
MILKEN, a. Consisting of milk. [Not used.] MILKER, n. One that milks. MILK-FEVER, n. A fever which accompanies the first flowing of milk in females after childbirth. MILK-HEDGE, n. A shrub growing on the Coromandel coast, containing a milky juice. MILKINESS, n. Qualities like those of milk; softness. MILK-LIVERED, a. Cowardly; timorous. MILKMAID, n. A woman that milks or is employed in the dairy. MILKMAN, n. A man that sells milk or carries milk to market. MILKPAIL, n. A pail which receives the milk drawn from cows. MILKPAN, n. A pan in which milk is set. MILKPORRIDGE, MILKPOTTAGE, n. A species of food composed of milk or milk and water, boiled with meal or flour. MILKSCORE, n. An account of milk sold or purchased in small quantities, scored or marked. MILKSOP, n. A soft, effeminate, feeble-minded man. MILK-THISTLE, n. A plant of the genus Carduus. MILKTOOTH, n. The fore tooth of a foal, which is cast within two or three years. MILK-TREFOIL, n. A plant, the cytisus. MILK-VETCH, n. A plant of the genus Astragalus. MILK-WORT, n. A plant of the genus Euphorbia; spurge. MILK-WEED, n. A plant, the Asclepias Syriaca. MILKWHITE, a. White as milk. MILKWOMAN, n. A woman that sells milk. MILKY, a. Made of milk.
Specifically note the commonality of milk dash thing when it refers to plants. Not that it's particularly relevant, aside from the actual commonly used definition of milk already provides an example of milk being commonly understood as milk. As an additional example, look to the definition of mentioning almond milk on page 2134. Specifically note that it says milk of almonds, and not just milk.
AMYGDALATE, a. [L. amygdalus, an almond.] Made of almonds. AMYGDALATE, n. An emulsion made of almonds; milk of almonds.
As you can see, I care way to much about milk.
Common sense did, not Big Dairy.
> There’s nothing wrong with referring to other kinds of milk as milk.
There very much is. For most people, if they go to a shop and ask for milk and get handed goat milk, they will get annoyed. Similarly if they ask for eggs and get handed duck eggs or quail eggs. I don't know why common sense is so lacking on this forum but this is not my opinion, this is a fact.
But yeah, if someone disagrees with you they're just Big Dairy shill. There's no other way a rational person could disagree with another.
If a problem isn't yours that doesn't mean it's fake.
You can simply not waste your time on it, that's not other people's problem. Why should they even care that you're wasting your time? When you clearly don't care about them wasting time or money due to this stuff, you should expect zero sympathy for your own time wastage on the subject. You need to show sympathy before you receive it.
a well understood and unified spoken language is the keystone to a lot of human endeavor; even if the goal is a region without language barriers the bootstrap process towards that goal is accelerated by a common tongue.
But I have serious issues with the term "sweetbreads".
The law says the "patty" has to be nothing but meat and seasoning so that nobody can sell a "beef patty" that looks like a normal patty but actually is 10% sawdust (or more plausibly, some gross but very cheap filler product).
In a well-functioning government, this kind of thing could be worked out - the regulators would realize their rules were too far-reaching and culturally myopic, and that this is clearly not an attempt to sneak adulterated mystery meat past them. They could alter the regulation, like allowing the term "Jamaican Beef Patty" to be used, and that prefix removes the 'no encasement' regulation and allows whatever other common safe ingredients.
But of course, most governments don't function that well. The bureaucrats get deeply invested in enforcing their rules and no one with the authority to change the regulation can even hear the cries of those impacted, let alone change them.
This is like saying "never in a million years would I think 'butter chicken' is a red, spicy Indian curry instead of chicken roasted in butter".
I don’t even agree that the use of the term “beef patty” should be regulated just so you don’t confuse a dumb tourist lol. Getting something you didn’t expect is part of travelling. But YOUR comment is too condescending and hypocritical to NOT draw attention to, and it’s a type of hypocrisy that’s endemic to North America. You tell someone from the US that you don’t know Spanish or some aspect of Mexican culture or something like that and if they’re snooty enough they’ll call you an uncultured trailer park hick or something. Put another 1,000–2,000 km of distance to the cultural reference you’re making and you’ll get blank stares.
I live in a country that’s far further from the Caribbean, where it makes up an insignificant part of our vast multicultural landscape. Don’t act like I’m “uncultured” due to something that you’re much more likely to know about due to your geographic proximity.
2. Patties are popular within Jamaican cuisine.
It's not something very niche. I think my comment was perfectly fair. It's like not knowing what empanadas, samosas, shumai, or takoyaki are (and yes, one would be uncultured for not knowing any of these too). It betrays something about the cosmopolitan-ness of your life experiences.
It's not even about geography. I'm pretty sure a good proportion of even Torontonians don't know about the Jamaican patty, and I'd call them uncultured too.
There's nothing wrong about being uncultured, it's not the end of the world. You can even work to improve it.
In fact the only way I know about their existence is through watching news reports of what happened in Canada in 1985.
How familiar are you with food from the Amazon basin region? I wouldn't consider you uncultured for not knowing much about it, but orders of magnitude more people eat food from the Amazon basin than Jamaican food.
Since you know about it, the label doesn't apply to you, regardless of how.
"The average North American probably only knows about Ackee and Saltfish, and Curry Goat!"
"And Oxtail Stew, of course."
"Of course!"
Does one need to know a variety of dishes from each of the 193 UN-recognized states' cuisines to not be uncultured? If not, which ones are OK to be ignorant of? Clearly Jamaica's a must-have, but I'd like the full list so I can remediate the issue at once.
No, but you should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least. That's only about 50-75 dishes; many individual restaurants have bigger menus than that.
>Ackee and Saltfish, and Curry Goat! And Oxtail Stew,
Yes... I would expect one to know these. At least that oxtail stew is a popular Jamaican delicacy.
Man, I so don't care about food. I pay attention to it enough that it doesn't hurt me and gives me the nutrients I need.
193? Top five? 10-15? 50-75? I could not care less to have a standard regarding knowledge about cuisines.
I get what food I can from the options I have available to me and use the words on the menu or out of the staff's mouth.
Edit: stick to the point
That’s quite the claim.
Leaving aside how ridiculous these numbers you pulled out of nowhere are, what godsent culturedness list are you using that is somehow so common knowledge and that yet the rest of us uncultured boneheads somehow missed the memo for? Even searching this now, and no disrespect whatsoever to Jamaica, I neither see "Jamaica" nor even "patty" listed in the top search result for the 100 top cuisines in the world [1]. For reference, they have Russian, Dutch, English, etc. listed, which (again, no disrespect intended) are the ones you often hear people complain/joke about as being bland.
Everyone's perspective is from their local area, so please don't expect everyone globally to know about your local food, no matter how broadly you think it's known.
P.S. When I search "what is a beef patty" on Google it quotes and links me to Wikipedia [1] which says absolutely nothing about Jamaica. Perhaps consider enlightening Wikipedia if you'd like to make the world a more cultured place.
But with cheese and in coco bread are both common, yeah. Most old school Italian pizza places in Manhattan/Queens carry them in my experience. (e.g., Sacco Pizza on 54th & 9th)
I support the idea of truth in advertising laws but I think they should be limited to factual claims. Courts shouldn't entertain lawsuits over such silly things either.
I don't know if that's just an attempt at humour, but it doesn't feel like it, so I'll correct you: that's factually incorrect, you can buy them commonly.
https://www.realcanadiansuperstore.ca/en/swedish-beef-meatba...
https://www.compliments.ca/en/products/meatballs-swedish-680...
Even actual yoghurt can't say yoghurt. It has to say mild yoghurt, on some technicality.
Just make sure I don’t run the risk of exposing my sophisticated Italian descended taste buds to some trash soy-based simulacra product due to deceptive packaging and I really don’t care if they call it cheese, milk or whatever.