I’ve started making preprepared meals more because of, well, a lot of reasons that I imagine are obvious, and one thing I’ve noticed is a lot of them include these odd ingredients just for the sake of having them. A thing of fried rice out of a package has, like, corn and peas and all kinds of other things that I don’t find in fried rice anywhere else. I’m not sure what to make of this, honestly. Like, I imagine it would be cheaper if it just, you know, didn’t have these things in it. On a similar note, sure, some things I would expect in fried rice -- egg, for example -- might be a bit too expensive for the mass-production market, and maybe corn looks a little like egg if you squint, but still.
I wonder if that messes with the expectations of people who wouldn’t otherwise cook these sorts of foods. “Oh, I’m making fried rice, gotta go get some peas” is a sentence that’s surely been uttered at least once because of these products. But at the same time, it’s not like I’d want to argue too hard about a food’s authenticity, especially with something so easy to make. So while I could lean back in my chair and say something like, “My grandfather made it better,” that way leads to gatekeeping other aspects, and if I’m going to gatekeep anything, food’s not going to be it.
-F
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