Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
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Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
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Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
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4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
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This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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Man, this is a great post. Full on unpopular, no matter how you look at it. Kudos on that! Also, good on you for not making it a rant about other people's preferences.
Any way, that aside, I don't disagree with you, though I think your points are off as to why Thanksgiving food is overrated.
First, a lot of what you're using as a basis for that is down to the specific foods being cooked well. Any of those things that are made from good ingredients and is tbhen well executed are phenomenal. Others have covered that already, and the bit about turkeys being horribly bred, and treated even worse while alive.
So, moving on to why I tend to agree with you.
Thanksgiving food is nostalgia. It isn't about the food at all, it's about having a tradition. This means that you have people making things that they don't practice much in a time crunch, with the real effort going into making it a Thanksgiving meal, rather than a good meal they're able to execute well.
Turkey, as the perfect example. How often do you cook a whole turkey? Once, maybe twice a year for the vast majority. But it can take dozens of tries to get a dish right the first time. And it might take longer to be reliable with it, depending on the complexity of the dish.
Of course Thanksgiving turkey is overrated, people aren't happy with it because it's great, it's the tradition. So they ignore the fact that it's actually a difficult thing to execute well, and that most turkey you can buy is crappy turkey because it isn't important.
About the only thing in your list that isn't harder to get right than the average dish is mashed potatoes. Frankly, if you've only had mashed potatoes that are alright, in your words, chances are that whoever cooked the rest did a mid tier job on those too. Mashed potatoes are freaking bomb when done well, and they aren't hard to do well.
So I'm with you, Thanksgiving food is very overrated, but mainly because they're difficult foods that aren't practiced outside of the holidays. The foods themselves, done well, are amazing.