AI creates crazy recipes
tastes awful and could be poisonous
Ravi Patel was a man who loved cooking, but not in the traditional sense. Sure, he could whip up a decent curry or toss together a salad, but what really thrilled him was the element of surprise. One Sunday afternoon when he was feeling extra-enthusiastic, he remembered his friend telling him something about AI creating new recipes. Ravi decided to give it a go.
Curious, he opened his laptop, logged onto an AI website and entered the ingredients he had in his home. You can tell some AI algorithms what you have at home and it would generate a recipe based JUST on that! Wow right?
Ravi typed “coconut milk”, “sweet potatoes,” “lentils,” “basil”, “peanut”, “banana”, “avocado” and….for good measure added “quick” :) Moments later, it churned out a recipe for “Hearty Stew with Avocado Pesto and Caramelized Banana Chutney.”
Ravi raised an eyebrow. Avocado pesto with a stew? Banana chutney? Still, he figured the AI might be onto something innovative. He decided to give it a try.
As the concoction simmered, his kitchen smelled confusing. He took his first bite. It was, in a word, awful. The avocado-peanut pesto and banana chutney clashed horribly. The stew had curdled. Creamy avocado didn’t blend with the stew, and the sweet chutney was simply IMPOSSIBLE to consume at all!
In a last-ditch attempt to salvage the day, Ravi ordered home delivery from his favourite restaurant. As he waited, he went on Twitter and typed about his disastrous experiment with AI and cooking. Guess what he found - another Twitter user had asked an AI recipe generator to produce a recipe for "aromatic water mix" with water, bleach and ammonia. The recipe actually produced deadly chlorine gas. Atleast, Ravi’s generator had only created a recipe for a lousy meal. Yet another user had got these two recipes generated by AI ‘Bratwurst ice-cream AND Crockpot mojito’!
Every week on the Lighter Side, I bring one news story that fascinates me (and hopefully fascinate you, my reader). When I saw online how users were seeing AI spew out food ideas that were disgusting and worse - harmful to human health, I thought I’d sit down to alert my young readers. Hope you are sufficiently entertained and alerted!
Cookbooks on Amazon might not be safe to use either
Teresa J. Blair has a bunch of cookbooks to her name, and each one has a title longer than the line at a Disney theme park. Take this gem for example: The Ultimate Crockpot Cookbook for Beginners: A Comprehensive Guide to Slow Cooking Success for Novice Chefs, Featuring Mouthwatering Recipes, Time-Saving Tips, and Essential Techniques. Teresa's also written about canning, the Mediterranean diet, and anti-inflammatory recipes. But, unlike other famous chefs, Teresa won’t be signing books or giving interviews on Youtube. It’s not because she’s shy or vain—Teresa's not a person. She's an AI.
Lately, the cookbook world’s been invaded by bots. These AI authors are popping out books faster than you can burn toast.
Between December 2 and December 14, 2023, Teresa published four cookbooks.
In January, another AI chef, Lillian D. Stewart, pumped out five books on pasta, gout-friendly foods, and random diets like lectin and DASH.
Most of these AI cookbooks also carry an image of what the dish would look like (the image too is generated by AI!)
Why can AI write stories well but not recipes?
The machine doesn’t eat, it doesn’t taste, and it definitely doesn’t have cravings for pizza at 2 a.m. AI recipe generators are like robots with no taste buds. They don’t know what food actually tastes like! Instead, they just pull info from the internet, mash together a bunch of human-tested recipes, and spit out something that sounds like a meal. It’s like throwing random ingredients into a blender and hoping for the best—except the blender has never eaten anything. Ever.
However, AI is wonderful in one aspect when it comes to writing recipes - the titles!
I asked an AI recipe generator to give me a recipe of a mango cheesecake. This is what it gave me.
Mango Pudding Frenzy: A Creamy Tropical Delight to Blow Your Mind and get you the Ultimate Dessert Showdown You Never Expected because This Spoonful of Sunshine!
It took me 3 times to just read the title!
Here is what the recipe looked like (which by the way, I tried, and the cheesecake turned out to be quite delicious).
Ingredients:
Crust: 1 ½ cups crushed biscuits, ¼ cup sugar, ½ cup melted butter
Filling: 2 cups cream cheese, ¾ cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 cup mango puree, ½ cup heavy cream
Topping: 1 cup mango puree, 2 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp lemon juice
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C)
Mix crushed graham crackers, sugar, and melted butter; press into a 9-inch springform pan, and bake for 10 minutes.
Beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth, then add eggs, vanilla, mango puree, and heavy cream.
Pour the filling over the cooled crust and bake for 50-60 minutes until set; cool in the oven with the door ajar for an hour, then refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
For the topping, heat mango puree, sugar, and lemon juice in a saucepan until thickened, then cool.
Pour the topping over the chilled cheesecake, slice, and enjoy!
Clearly AI has made great strides in helping a blind man run, it has played a small role in developing drones that can deliver packages on Mt. Everest AND it is also helping people communicate through portals. But, figuring out sensible food - that’s still some time away.
In the meanwhile, if any of my readers would like to TRY generating recipes from AI engines, here are some options for you. You give them the ingredients you have at home, and they can give you a recipe.
a) DishGen
b) Let’s Foodie
c) Mr.Cook
d) There’s always the forever friend ChatGPT
Coming soon - the Lighter Side in printed form
If you’ve been enjoying Lighter Side so far, I have exciting news—our end-of-year printed book, Lighter Side: Most Exciting Stories of 2024, is almost here!
For those of you who love the feel of a book in your hands, this is going to be a blast. I’m curating the most captivating tales that curious kids will adore! This 2024 edition covers global events in geopolitics, as well as the latest in science, tech, and sports. I break down complex topics in a simple, witty style that’s fun to read. Plus, there will be illustrations contributed by both kids and adults, and most stories will include a game or two! Get ready to grab your copy very soon!
Podcast this week - Space news
Earth is wonderful, but one day we might need more space to live, especially as our world changes. If we could travel to Mars and build homes there, that would solve a lot of our problems right? SpaceX just launched a giant rocket that has taken one step closer to getting to Mars. Before you get excited about booking your next summer vacation in Mars, hold onto that thought for a few years more.
The giant rocket that SpaceX launched came back to earth and was brought home by two giant arms. Listen to Darsh and Rohan (10 yr olds) to find out about how this cool event occurred.