As we return from our winter hiatus with our first posts of the decade, this week The Junkyard gets into the retrospective spirit.  We asked five friends of the blog – Peter Langland-Hassan, Margherita Arcangeli, Shen-yi Liao, Aaron Meskin, and Bence Nanay – to reflect on the previous decade and give us a “Top Five” list relating to imagination.  There were no other requirements – we thought we’d give them free rein to come up with whatever they wanted, and we hope you’ll agree that it’s an interesting set of ruminations.  We’ll be running one of these lists each day this week.  Next week, we’ll resume our regular weekly postings.

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A post by Shen-yi Liao.

The exercise of imagination is central to human experience. Imagination lets us reconceive and recombine the old to create something new. Often, we do not imagine alone; rather, we imagine in collaboration with others and under the constraints of our environments.

As we continue to adapt to ever-changing social and material realities, it is not surprising that some of the most interesting exercises of imagination can be found in the products that some of us consume. Of course, since imaginativeness is not itself good or bad, one should not confuse the most imaginative creations with the best ones.

All that said, here are my top five imaginative edible concoctions of the decade.

Boba Pizza

My home country of Taiwan is not only known for its socially progressive liberal democracy, but also for its amazing food! In particular, one of its claims to fame is the invention of “boba”, the sweetened tapioca balls that go in bubble tea. Boba was invented in the 1980s and bubble tea has pretty much conquered the earth since then. But in the last decade new imaginative uses of boba have been found—the most imaginative of which must be boba pizza, which is exactly what it sounds like, plus mozzarella and mochi too.

Soylent

By now, the story of soylent has acquired mythical status. An engineer decided that traditional food is too costly in terms of money and time, and imagines a radical alternative: a supply of basic nutrients made out of oil, water, and various powders. Then the recipe was open-sourced, which fostered a community of imaginers and experimenters. Then the product was commercialized and popularized. Nothing exemplifies the best and the worst of the Silicon Valley mindset that has permeated our lives in the last decade than the protagonist of this parable.

Aquafaba

There has been leftover water for as long as there has been canned chickpeas. But it was only until the last decade that the liquid was given a nice name, “aquafaba”, and a new function as an egg white replacement. From meringue to mayonnaise, an online community has collectively and collaboratively imagined new uses for this old product.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in awareness of food sensitivities. There will always be detractors that see it as yet another sign of the coddled palate. But I prefer to see it as the start of recognizing the diverse bodies in this world. In the process, cauliflower—perhaps more than any other ingredient—has been given new roles to play, including that of pizza crust. Despite being modest in their ambitions, perhaps these small interventions into the material world will allow for new imaginings.

Impossible Burger

Every edible concoction on the list so far has been vegetarian, and that is not an accident. The last decade has also witnessed a rise in meat alternatives. Even for meat cravers, the environmental costs of meat consumption have become impossible to ignore. In this case, the constraints of our habitat has guided re-imaginings of familiar products that use less costly ingredients to produce the same taste and feel, more or less. Made with plant hemoglobin, impossible burger is, arguably, the best of the bunch—at least as measured by appeal to meat cravers.

Shen-yi Liao is Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Puget Sound. He is interested in the imagination, but also in too many other things.