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Ask someone for help to resolve an issue and more often than not they will tell you that YouTube is your friend.
It can sort out all sorts of technical things and show you how to fix or assemble gadgets and devices. Google it, they say.
Coming right up…
Today’s challenges are solved by online services, especially AI. You have medical issues? You want to write prize-winning prose or poetry? You want recipes? Fitness advice? Companionship? Every conceivable desire can be met.
It has created a phenomenal dependency that is practically recalibrating us into simpletons.
A category of worker now occupies the most privileged of jobs—I’m talking about people regarded as influencers, the mind benders of our time.
They never seem to stop posting. Every other day, something is being branded a superfood. What is a superfood? Certainly, there are foods that have positive impacts on our systems, but the effect of touting them as superfoods to be included daily in your diet is that folks go overboard.
People go to such extremes that eating is no longer a pleasurable experience. Why should you feel that every day you must down chia and flax seeds, quinoa and oats, and moringa and pink salmon? Marketers have us flogging ourselves with their bizarre promises and threats.
Here’s the way to not get cancer. Here’s what causes cancer. Here’s how to make your skin glow. Here’s the things that make you sick.
It’s alarming the way people succumb to these carrots and sticks. Behind every gambit that proclaims the benefit of one thing, is some corporation manufacturing it and paying people to make it attractive.
In a place like Trinidad, why would you go and buy expensive bottles of turmeric or garlic pills? I’m not saying there aren’t health benefits, but there are ways to incorporate them into your meals.
All influencers have to do is use magic phrases: “studies show” or “research has revealed”, and of course, declarations like: “here’s the amazing science nobody wants you to know.”
Because people have disconnected from the past relationships with food, they don’t have any practical way to gauge the accuracy of absurd statements.
Healthy eating is not about drilling yourself full of supplements and super foods. It is about finding balance in your intake and practising moderation.
As someone who had eschewed processed foods and powdered flavourings in my cooking because I just don’t like the taste, I have moved comfortably to a space where I don’t feel like I am missing anything.
My approach to cooking and eating is visualising a combination of protein, vegetable, starch, and so on. It really doesn’t matter which meal they are servicing.
(via Moruga Hill Rice.)
My idea of breakfast has nothing to do with abiding by prescribed combinations. I can go with anything, especially stuff that is already in my kitchen.
I attribute my behaviour to a perverse streak. I prefer to do my thing. I look at a fair number of cooking shows (and cricket) on YouTube. I have learned a lot from them, mostly about different cuisines. I enjoy that because I can take away ideas for my perpetual experiments.
I don’t fall for the glitter—the prettified plates that make you drool. It has a lot to do with years of experience, trials, failures, and a basic understanding of what works.
A recent discovery was this chic Indo-Brit woman purporting to make the best ever dishes of Indian cuisine. Her kitchen was immaculate. She had an overhead cupboard filled to capacity with identical opulent spice jars.
After watching a couple of her dishes, I had had enough. This glamour girl obviously knew little about the cuisine she said she had mastered.
I am not against modifying dishes, I do it all the time, but she didn’t seem to grasp basic techniques, and that put me off, especially as her explanations for why something was done a certain way were technically inaccurate.
And that’s why I think a lot of people who learn to cook from the Internet are missing out on a lot of the science behind food preparation, and are also very gullible.
It is a most beguiling thing to fancy yourself a chef, and you can go out and buy all kinds of fancy, costly ingredients without understanding how to use them.
It comes down to a fallacy that you can excel at something without doing the work required. There’s really no substitute for learning techniques and for understanding why things interact the way they do.
Many traditional cooks who learned from their ancestors can make beautiful dishes, but they cannot explain why they do what they do. It’s the way we are taught by rote. And why we cannot adapt.
AI can be helpful, but it is not a substitute for learning.
And before I sign off, there’s something I’ve wanted to share because I see all kinds of complicated tips for how to peel boiled eggs.
My niece showed me this which she said a Spanish friend had taught her. Just take a teaspoon to the cooled eggs. Crack them a little (I rattle them around in the pan) and insert the spoon, and shells will come away so easily, you’ll want to boil them by the dozen.
This is not an attempt to influence anyone! It was passed along in the old-fashioned way, without the presence of the ubiquitous Internet and it really works.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
