Edible, but "No one test it" til an Isekaiee said so?

[LilTV1155]

1. What is up with the Isekai genre putting rice as animal feed and no one else thinking to improve on other types of grains like rye, wheat, oat, and etc. before Isekaiee/ Reincarnate/Transmigrators' discovery?
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2. Food is bread and stews and oily overspiced meats. But in that setting, no one, NO ONE tried to experiment with their own recipes to make tasty or even for medicines?!
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3. You are telling me that in those Isekai/Rebirth/etc. stories that you can't eat or cook Monsters (Land Animals) or Seafoods? But hunted them just for skin, medicines, and useless trophies?
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It feel lazy. Like people are so complacent with their lifestyle until a novelty product is brought in from the outside. That novelty product feel like it been cliche-exploited via taking advantages unconsciously and subconsciously overreliance on that novelty's original source.
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Like people been ok with eating breads. Then someone brought cereal, then sugar, then tea, then cocoa. Those people relied n that person too much for almost everything to improve their own quality of living and lifestyle without doing anything about it themselves first? Do they really have to wait for an outsider or a foreigner to start the ideas first before they copy it over (without experimenting with it themselves)?

 

[Lorelliad]

Well you've got to have something that the world's inhabitants can worship about the guy.

"He's the god of food! He created instant noodles!" (Lmao)

That's the thing that annoys me the most too. Surely there are some experienced "chefs" in that world that actually try to make new foods.

 

[AbyssalSun]

1. What is up with the Isekai genre putting rice as animal feed and no one else thinking to improve on other types of grains like rye, wheat, oat, and etc. before Isekaiee/ Reincarnate/Transmigrators' discovery?
.
2. Food is bread and stews and oily overspiced meats. But in that setting, no one, NO ONE tried to experiment with their own recipes to make tasty or even for medicines?!
.
3. You are telling me that in those Isekai/Rebirth/etc. stories that you can't eat or cook Monsters (Land Animals) or Seafoods? But hunted them just for skin, medicines, and useless trophies?
.
It feel lazy. Like people are so complacent with their lifestyle until a novelty product is brought in from the outside. That novelty product feel like it been cliche-exploited via taking advantages unconsciously and subconsciously overreliance on that novelty's original source.
.
Like people been ok with eating breads. Then someone brought cereal, then sugar, then tea, then cocoa. Those people relied n that person too much for almost everything to improve their own quality of living and lifestyle without doing anything about it themselves first? Do they really have to wait for an outsider or a foreigner to start the ideas first before they copy it over (without experimenting with it themselves)?

Well... About the tea and cocoa thing, isn't that how basically the whole spice/delicacy trade actually happened irl? Cocoa were discovered in the American continent then brought back to Europe then boom, delicious chocolate dessert became widespread.

Can't say much about food from monster or exotic animals though. It might sound sensible to eat monsters meat in isekai, considering how irl a lot of people (Asian, specifically) likes eating all kinds of animals.

Also about "Good tasting" medicines, it took years for our modern medicine to came up with the idea and then made it. I don't think an isekai with possibly medieval level of technology and civilization could even think about it in the first place without outside influence.

 

[LostLibrarian]

While I agree that a lot of things can feel really lazy, it's the easy way to make the MC look awesome. It's the same as "nobody else can find the murderer", "nobody else has that really cool cultivation power", "10 million people played that MMO but only that one user decided to use skill X with Y", etc.

Do they really have to wait for an outsider or a foreigner to start the ideas first before they copy it over (without experimenting with it themselves)?

If I would be cynical, my answer would be: doesn't the modern webnovel-scene prove that people are really fine to do the same thing over and over instead of experimenting by themselves?


Or a bit less cynical: while the level it takes in power-fantasies can be over the top, it still holds true that humans are creatures of habit. And change is one of the biggest subconscious problems for us. We generally are wired to accept a sub-optimal Status Quo instead of initiating change ourselves. While some of it is also due to modern luxury and laziness, it's also a question of "safety over uncertainty".

There's a reason that a lot of timeless stories are about change. The hero's journey is someone leaving the status quo, going into the unknown, bringing change to the world, and taking the new knowledge back to his origin. The person who accepts or even initiated change is the hero as a model for those who struggle...


That said, there is a certain comedy to people going "we are starving but won't eat that one animal because it looks weird" until the MC points out how it is edible... =)

 

[K5Rakitan]

As a parent, I can relate to getting stuck in a pattern of doing what works and not trying new things. In a world without birth control, I imagine everyone scrambling to take care of the kids day in and day out. Progress is slow or performed by the weird celibate people nobody wants to bang.

 

[NotaNuffian]

Invention is the father of necessity and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But if it is broken and no one is fixing it, wtf an extinction is ongoing.

 

[Kenjona]

FYI, if you think about it. Many of the more complicated foods were regional, until trade spread it widely. So it was "rare" to "very uncommon" in the time period most fantasy stories are set (500 to 1500 ce) in outside of its region. Note that noodles became popular in the 13th century which is January 1,1201ce to December 31,1300ce. Towards the end of the era for most fantasy settings.

Then there are things that are relatively complicated to make:

Soy Sauce for instance: Traditional soy sauce is made by soaking soybeans in water and roasting and crushing the wheat. Then the soybeans and wheat are mixed with a culturing mold, most commonly Aspergillus, and left for two to three days to develop.

Pasta, is eggs flour and water; making noodles adds a lot more steps in the process. Orzo is the simplest form of Pasta, looks like rice grain. Does not need to be chopped, formed or stretched and floured to make its shape.

Bread is flour, water, salt, and yeast. Unleavened bread just does not have a rising agent in it, so flour, water and salt so it was "discovered" first.

But sauces which are the mainstay of most Isekai desires:

Some quick googling:
Ketchup has a storied past that dates back to imperial China, where it was made with fish entrails, meat byproducts and soybeans. It wasn't until 1812 that a tomato-based ketchup was invented.
Mayo was invented around 1756. Did not get to japan until 1925; yet many a Japanese Isekai Protagonist go for it ASAP.
The use of tomato sauce with pasta appeared for the first time in 1790 in the Italian cookbook L'Apicio moderno, by Roman chef Francesco Leonardi.
Soy Sauce: It's said that the roots of soy sauce can be traced back to a sauce called “jan” in ancient China. That began from pickling raw materials in salt to preserve them, and there were varieties based on fruit, vegetables, and seaweed etc., on meat and fish, on meat only, and on grains.

 

[LilTV1155]

Yeah, I understand why certain foods didn't show up because of the historical timeframe relation.

But one thing that I didn't really get is, how and where the heck did RICE end up being recognized by the Isekai Locals as legit animal feed for cows, horses, and chickens? It's kind of like oats used as fodders for horses only.

 

[Kenjona]

Yeah, I understand why certain foods didn't show up because of the historical timeframe relation.

But one thing that I didn't really get is, how and where the heck did RICE end up being recognized by the Isekai Locals as legit animal feed for cows, horses, and chickens? It's kind of like oats used as fodders for horses only.

I can actually answer this one, from experience, sort of! Corn is/was used only as animal feed in Italy and a few other countries (Unsure about now, this was a few decades ago), you used to not be able to get corn in the stores, but you could get it in animal feed places in bulk. It was mainly because they did not have the American style of corn, but a very poor and, woot googled a reference! So no longer anecdotal from me :)

From link: Corn on the cob is generally not eaten in Italy, at least not in our area. Corn is strictly considered food for pigs unless it's coarsely ground into polenta, only then is it acceptable to eat. Even that is considered peasant food to some city folk, (I'm talking to you Pesarese.)

Oh How I've Missed Corn on the Cob...The Trials & Tribulations of Eating Corn in Italy

life as expats in Italy for over 12 years at our farm, inn and cooking school in Le Marche.

latavolamarche.blogspot.com

It all gets down to the cuisine of the area and what they perceive to be good foods versus bad foods or at least foods for the "poorest" folk.

I always loved the story how Thomas Jefferson introduced eating the Tomato to the USA; as Tomatoes were thought to be poisonous in the USA as they were a member of the night shade family.

"We can say with certainty that Thomas Jefferson both cultivated and ate tomatoes from 1809 until 1824 and quite possibly grew them as early as 1781. Tomatoes were not as popular in Jefferson's time and were often believed to be poisonous because of their membership in the Nightshade plant family. According to one published report, Jefferson created quite a bit of consternation when he publicly ate a tomato in front of the present Miller-Claytor house in Lynchburg."
Link to the quote: https://www.monticello.org/site/blog-and-community/4-foods-jefferson-helped-popularize-america#:~:text=2.-,Tomatoes,in the Nightshade plant family.

Then there is Lobsters, the state of Maine is known for its Lobsters. However it was a thing in Maine you ONLY ate lobster if you were poor and starving.

How lobster went from prison trash food to delicacy

Not all that long ago, people only ate lobster if it was absolutely necessary. In fact, they thought it was basically inedible.

www.10best.com

I have people I know from Maine and they always told the story of how if you were forced to eat lobster because you could not afford anything else. You secretly buried the evidence as soon as possible so no one in your town knew about how poor your family was.

Oh and I must add, in my travels across the world. There are a lot of foods, that fall into such categories, not just in the USA and Europe.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Even more baffling is how potatoes are always staple food. The upper part of the plant is poisonous and there's actual historical evidence of people going ded due to potato poisoning.

BUUT "we have to leave Rice for MC to be whoreshipped, so let's make the food that makes even less sense to be a staple food in early medieval times the one that's universally accepted. But we have to leave fried potatoes out, even if they fry their meat."

 

[Kenjona]

Even more baffling is how potatoes are always staple food. The upper part of the plant is poisonous and there's actual historical evidence of people going ded due to potato poisoning.

BUUT "we have to leave Rice for MC to be whoreshipped, so let's make the food that makes even less sense to be a staple food in early medieval times the one that's universally accepted. But we have to leave fried potatoes out, even if they fry their meat."

I know this one too. The deep googling due to curiosity I did in the past comes to the fore!
Why did the potatoes became a staple food in Europe?

"The uncertainly of food supply during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, combined with the tendency of above-ground crops to be destroyed by soldiers, encouraged France's allies and enemies to embrace the tuber as well; by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the potato had become a staple food in the diets of ...
Link: https://www.history-magazine.com/potato.html

So it was an easily grown, relatively hardy, root vegetable. That grew in large quantities for a given amount of "seed". You could grow it in poor soil, it did not need as much care and attention as say wheat (or rice for that matter), and acre to acre gave you more food for less processing work.

The only issue I have with rice being "animal" feed compared to the potatoes and other crops it is a relatively harder crop to grow. Even though it gives more food per acre then wheat or barley and requires more water I believe. I believe it is Potatoe>Corn>Rice>Wheat for food yield per acreage.

Mind you with modern technology (reapers, threshers, tillers and harvesters), wheat and corn are more easily grown then potatoes.

 

[SternenklarenRitter]

Rice indeed needs a lot of water, but it also has the benefit of growing decently well in dense, soggy clay. It also grows fine in relatively infertile and depleted areas because of how aggressively it uptakes nutrients like calcium, ammonium, nitrate, potassium and phosphate. However, it also sucks up arsenic, cadmium, and lead. It's not implausible that people who hate rice could live longer, healthier, and more productive lives near mining districts or volcanic provinces with elevated levels of mineral poisons in soil, which might eventually relegate rice to role of livestock fodder.