>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.
Any confusion can easily be resolved by asking the person offering to sell you one what it is. I do not need terminological rules between me and fast food vendors; if I buy a 'muffin hot dog parfait' and it turns out not to be the tasty dish I was expecting, I may complain about it but I have the choice to just not go there again.
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.
In Germany if they applied the laws consistently it would actually be illegal to call it a hot dog if it wasn't dog. Supermarket had to rename "chilli beans" to "kidney beans in chilli sauce" because there's no bean species called a chilli bean
When rules like this lead to complaints about "veggie burgers", part of me wants to counter that hamburgers neither contain ham nor burgers (etymology: the food is named after the German city of Hamburg, origin of city name lost to time but literal translation of original name compatible with "Castle (Burg) belonging to person called Hamma").
Having grown up in Toronto, unqualified "beef patty" means the Jamaican snack. It is extremely common junk food I would buy at a convenience store on my way home from school.
I grew up in another country where Jamaican patties were popular and ordering a 'beef patty' would never get you a burger patty unless you were in a burger joint. Same as in Toronto; asking for patty (or beef patty) will 99% of the time get you a Jamaican patty.
>>Not being from Toronto, never in a million years would I even think of that as a visitor.
>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?
All of that may be true and yet it seems overly prescriptive for a state authority to determine the name of food. After all, a cheesesteak is not a steak but a sandwich. Regional variations on names are quite reasonable. On the other hand, Canadians are a prescriptive culture. In Montreal, for instance, they are very strict about street signs and so on. Perhaps it is just how things are done by that people.
> After all, a cheesesteak is not a steak but a sandwich.
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.
or, just let people call things what they want, and focus on real problems instead. Even this comment as I’m typing feels like too much time committed to the subject.
I don't think these kind of language struggles are as minor as you paint them, especially around regulation and law-making.
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.
> or, just let people call things what they want, and focus on real problems instead. Even this comment as I’m typing feels like too much time committed to the subject.
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.
> If you want something to compare against, this is like banning people businesses from calling soymilk just "milk".
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.
> 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.
This is not the definition supporting the statement that cow milk and almond milk are both kinds of milk. Implicitely relying on different definitions inside a single statement is an example of equivocation.
If you are going to quote a dictionary, please first ensure you are quoting it properly and without misrepresenting the contents and b) that in cases wherein a definition has multiple potential meanings it lists the different uses from common to uncommon.
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.
I’m from New Haven and if you went into a place and asked for a beef patty you would get a Jamaican beef patty, not a burger. It may not be everywhere, but pretty much every city I’ve lived in that is the case
Anecdote: I asked for the "mushroom burger" on their menu at an airport years ago -- I didn't want meat and it had nothing indicting meat in the listed ingredients that I checked -- and they brought me a hamburger beef patty with mushrooms on top. Imagine both of our surprises when they brought me the plate and I was like uhm I think that's another table's order? Well it turns out, at least to that restaurant (idk about the rest of the locality), that was considered a mushroom burger. Elsewhere in the same country (and even Googling it now), a mushroom burger means a vegetarian burger with a portobello mushroom or such as the "patty". Like how a salmon burger means the patty is made of salmon, or a veggie burger means the patty is made of veggies.
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".
If I ordered a mushroom burger (especially as my preferred “mushroom and Swiss burger”), I’d be surprised if it came without the beef patty (the burger part).
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.
I've seen the meat version plenty of times too, it's not like I couldn't understand that either. That was the entire reason I checked the ingredients, which had never failed me until then. Restaurants normally list something about the meat if it's there... but not always.
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.
I once ordered a vegetarian burger in some kind of trivia bar of a big american city. It came with bacon... When I asked they said: "but nobody ever complained about having bacon in it". there are alternate realities out there. Even in the deepest small town I had never seen that.
Perhaps you should visit more of the US, or visit different types of restaurants? Neither meaning is as dominant as you make it sound. You see both within five minute walks of each other.
Haha I guess we discovered the mysterious country you were referring to when you said, "Elsewhere in the same country." I wonder why you didn't want to reveal it? Could it be because you knew you were wrong, ahead of time?
I'm talking about restaurants, not SEO'd slop recipe sites on google.
> You see both within five minute walks of each other.
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.
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.
> Haha I guess we discovered the mysterious country you were referring to when you said, "Elsewhere in the same country." I wonder why you didn't want to reveal it?
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.
I think that type of law is usually supposed to protect against, not a surprised restaurant patron (because that's the kind of thing that would fix itself anyway, the customer would send it back and/or not go back) but subtle adulteration of food.
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.
That's not too remote of a possibility given that street foods like currywurst exist, and sausages are theoretically supposed to be sold encased in bread (ie. hot dog) similar to beef patties.
Many people on keto diets do exactly this, as they won't eat bread. I've dined with multiple people who have gone into a restaurant and ordered a beef patty. And until today, I'd never even heard of the Jamaican thingy, which would not be keto-friendly btw.
Usually, when I travel, it helps me to better understand and respect that other people may have different perspectives or experiences than me. This is probably the first time I'm seeing someone so cultured achieve the exact opposite, so thanks for familiarizing me with that.
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.
I lived in São Paulo. A giant metropolis that is home for countless international diasporas. I’ve eaten in Vietnamese, Sirian, Thailandese, Russia, Polish restaurants, never ever found a Jamaican one.
Sorry, you’re just uncultured if you don’t understand that understandings of different “foreign” cultures differ from place to place.
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.
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.
If we're going by anecdotes, let's add mine: I've lived in 4 continents, about 15 countries, I speak 6 languages, I hold a few citizenships, I consider myself fairly cultured and not only I've never eaten a Jamaican meat patty but I've also never seen one for sale.
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.
"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.
>Does one need to know a variety of dishes from each of the 193 UN-recognized states' cuisines to not be uncultured?
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.
I'm from Australia where we really don't have any 'national dishes', so we just eat a wide variety of everyone else's dishes. I've never heard of ackee, saltfish, oxtail stew, or Jamaican beef patties. Does that make me uncultured? I'd argue not. Do you know what a schnitty is? Or a sausage sambo? Everyone here does, but I certainly don't expect the rest of the world to know about them because 'of course' they're everywhere and significant.
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.
> You should know the top 5 dishes of the 10-15 most popular cuisines of the world, at least.
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.
> 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.
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.
I think you're vastly overestimating the popularity of Jamaican cuisine. I've never in my life seen a Jamaican restaurant. I've had Jamaican food at a Jamaican friend's house, it was pretty good, but I'd never heard about their beef patties until literally today just reading about them on here. If you live in a part of the world where it's more prominent, good for you, but not everybody does.
Going to school in Jamaica, Queens (ironic, I know) I would get a beef patty from a deli/bodega on a roll with cheese or on cocoa bread (said to be the only way to eat it by random dude hanging out in store who called my cheese order blasphemy) Another specialty is pizza shops carry them and you can get one split open, covered in mozzarella and topped with pepperoni. You'd never think you'd get them in an Italian eatery but there you have it, beef patties. I still get fresh Tower Aisle beef patties from the local C-Town deli from time to time.
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)
Wisconsin ("America's dairyland" according to the motto, although other states produce more these days) tries occasionally to introduce bills to prevent non-dairy beverages labeling themselves "milk" in the state on the grounds that it's misleading. I always wonder if they succeed, will peanut butter be next on their radar?
As a result of this, half the stuff in a German supermarket doesn't say what it is on the packaging, just the brand name. So soy yoghurt doesn't say soy yoghurt, it says Alpro and you just have to guess or interpret the fine print to know that it's soy yoghurt.
Even actual yoghurt can't say yoghurt. It has to say mild yoghurt, on some technicality.
That sounds like industry lobbying got the better of them, we have similar fights going on here around calling things plant "milk" or "butter" and the rest. What a shame, I can't imagine it's a lot of fun having to forensically examine every item on the shelf.
Here in America it’s the same - the people selling the fake stuff (sorry, “plant based stuff”) get around it by using fanciful spellings, that’s why we have “Cheez” and “OatMylk” and stuff. Also a VERY popular one: “Crème” - sounds fancy and French!! McDonalds offers a “Strawberries & Crème Pie.”
As long as people’s preferences are respected and they are not misled buying a plant-based product when they wanted an animal-based one and vice versa I find this kind of name reservation a misguided approach.
We always had peanut butter for example, almond milk was always almond milk.
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.
The problem is, if you open the doors to the good-faith vegan kind of stuff that isn't trying to lie, you also open the doors to a product called "Milk" which, only if you read the fine print on the label, is made of one part milk, two parts water, and 2 parts seed oils and "flavorings". Sold to unsuspecting people at a discount.
The dairy industry was upset about alternative milks and said it has to be from the mammary gland of a mammal to which one alternative milk advocate responds, what do you call the liquid that spills out when you cut a coconut in half?
Indeed you’re right, would have to simmer the flesh and strain for the milk, makes me think I’m misremembering or maybe the pro-alternative milk guy was skipping over that part to make a point… thanks :)
> it is impossible in canada to sell swedish meatballs - cant have the onion or breadcrumbs
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.
It’s not that it’s unreasonable to think the word “patty” is ambiguous —it’s that it’s unreasonable to spend tax dollars on saving people from that ambiguity
> it’s unreasonable to spend tax dollars on saving people from that ambiguity
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.
In Ontario, "Frozen Treat" and "Ice Cream", "Orange Juice" and "Orange Drink" are on shelves often right beside eachother with nearly identical packaging. I only noticed the latter when I saw one was significantly cheaper, at first thought it was pulp/no pulp.
Do you have an encyclopedic knowledge of which terms are regulated and which ones aren't?
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 terms are regulated and which ones aren't?
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".
> Do you have an encyclopedic knowledge of which terms are regulated and which ones aren't?
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.
>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.