Those are our reasons, sure, but what they’re talking about is the inauthenticity.
We live in a universe of many, many choices. There are approximately a gazillion delicious drinkables that contain neither caffeine nor alcohol. There are at least as many ways to cook vegetables as vegetables into tasty meals. And all of these are what they are.
Why, they would ask, do you not simply enjoy something that can be enjoyed for what it is, rather than going to the trouble of making shitty denatured or never-natured versions of other things in the form of coffee that is not coffee, beer that is no longer beer, and unmeat that’s about as convincing as Schwarzenegger in a tutu? You’re only hurting yourself by this bizarre pretense that white water is cream.
(Don’t even get 'em started on all our wood that is not wood. Seriously, people. If you can’t afford actual goddamn wood, learn to enjoy plastic already. This ain’t fooling anyone.)
Coffee is kind of in a weird boat, in that it’s particular complex bitter flavour profile doesn’t really have any ready “hot drink” substitutes, or at least not ones that won’t react oddly with milk. At least with tea (and especially with green tea, a bit less so with black tea) there are a lot of tisanes that hit many of the same flavour-notes. Since the flavour parts and the stimulant parts are different chemical compounds, to me that one isn’t inauthentic, it’s refining the plant to focus on different outcomes. However, that might be a side effect of me doing too much organic chemistry, and also I could see eldrae giving that product an entirely different name itself. Sort of like how cocoa husk and chocolate are taking the same plant and refining it in different ways for different results, but still resulting in comparable flavours.
(I’m medically forbidden from having too much caffeine, but luckily I’ve never been a big fan of coffee. Although I do have about a dozen different teas and tisanes in my tea-cupboard. And, you know, I have a tea cupboard.)
Maybe it’s just my nose, but in a blind tasting - even the ones when I’m awake and therefore would find it hardest to pick out the stimulant effect - I can almost always pick out the decaf. Maybe something they do in the decaffeination process screws up the flavor profile elsewhere?
(It’s not just less bitter, as you’d expect from just taking out the bitter caffeine; the profile’s actively off, like old oxidized oils or a poorly done dark roast.)
My organic chemistry isn’t nearly good enough to identify what in the common decaffeination processes might be doing it, though, or if maybe decaf makers always start with the crappy batches on the grounds that the coffee purists won’t be drinking it anyway. But empirically speaking, it all tastes like bad coffee to me.
As a side note, I have learned of the existence - in the course of looking up decaffeination processes - of Coffea charrieriana, a Coffea species that naturally contains no caffeine; a defective gene means it accumulates theobromine without converting it to caffeine. I gather there are some experiments going on wrt hybridising it with regular Coffea species to produce naturally low-caffeine/caffeine-free coffee, which could be interesting.
I’m leaning a bit towards “starting with low quality coffee”, but I also have a hunch that the organic solvent vs water methods could make a noticeable difference. Direct organic solvent extraction could definitely affect some of the aromatics in the beans, and that also looks like the quickest and most straightforward (and therefore cheapest) method, which wouldn’t pair well with lower quality input.
Specifically in the case of vegan meats, here that started as a function of allowing converts to still have the tastes and textures they craved without the ethical concerns. That idea may still fly with the Eldrae, though you either need to go to a Buddhist Vegan restaurant or get the appropriate cookbooks and learn how to do it yourself to get the proper experience.
Much of the commercial stuff, though, is about convincing carnivores to stop eating meat when said carnivores do not have the ethical hangups that cause people to go vegan. And yes, that stuff is horribly inauthentic, mostly about as appetizing as an eraser.
Eh, you’re dealing with the people who would consider much of our furniture and worktops an offense against reason and good taste on the grounds that slapping some veneer on top of particleboard doesn’t magically transmute it into fuckin’ wood, belike. Word to the Fraud Division.
Really not fans of things that look like things but aren’t things.
On another and completely unrelated note:
Scene: two ASSHOLES stand over a fallen DELIVERY SPIDER
“It can’t hurt us, idiot! Gimme the pry ba-”
CLARIFICATION: THE FIRST LAW OF ROBOTICS STATES THAT A ROBOT MAY NOT HARM A SOPHONT BEING… UNLESS THAT SOPHONT BEING IS 100% A DICK.
“Er…”
sound of unfolding legs drowned out by the crackle of electricity
NEW MISSION PRIORITY: ALGETIC DIDAXIS.
PROBABILITY OF MISSION HINDRANCE: ZERO PERCENT.
“Fuck!”
a few loud and extremely embarrassing moments later
DELIVERY COMPLETE: ONE CAN OF WHUP-ASS.
RESUMING PREVIOUS OPERATIONS.
CONSIDER THE FRIENDLY SNACK-RUNNER FOR ALL YOUR AT-HOME DINING NEEDS.
HAVE A NICE DAY.
“Well, you can say this about having the Imperials around.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re getting to see what happens when evolution in action is being fully enforced.”
“Ah.”
This is a really interesting thing of human psychology-I see it a lot in Asian cultures, but also in Western ones-where if you can create a good facade, you’re clearly good. It’s one of the big reasons why you see a lot of knock-off products being sold in your local Chinatown, etc, etc, etc-if you have the status item, you’re clearly of higher status. (It’s how far too much of marketing works for people, combined with FOMO and short-circuiting higher logical portions of the brain.)
And it doesn’t help that most people do figure it out and that makes them angry, one way or another.
“When Michael Bay is considered calm and restrained, that’s saying something.”
I’m also wondering what would happen if you offered to have someone like, oh, Christopher Nolan, to do a kaeth war movie in 70MM IMAX, complete with massive practical effects? Besides the budget for medical care being triple that of a normal film, of course.
While we cannot ensure compliance with markings such as arrows or “This End Up”, properly placing the shipping label increases your chance for the preferred orientation.
“I am sorry, but your disclaimers said the quiet part about your competence out loud.”
I’m sure that the more advanced technologies of the Empire could lead to several more “pls help; we seem to have misplaced our stealth plane” incidents for everyone to giggle at.
“Stellar Express is eating into our market share. How in the hell are they doing that?!?”
“Customer service, care for the packages, training their employees, investing in their company to improve shipping quality, and generally better management.”
“So, how do we beat them without spending money on anything that will cut into our yearly bonuses?”
The best part about YGBM hacks is that when you paint the stealth aircraft with the Out-of-Mind visual textures, you get to spend a lot of time giggling at the people carefully walking around the very obviously and plainly visible object which they will then go on to flatly deny is even there.
They just didn’t feel like walking in a straight line today, that’s all.