All of George Stiffman's Comments + Replies

Thank you. Now I'm curious how New Zealand compares to the US stuff!

Thanks Jeff! 

That's fine with me - just removed that wording. Thanks for the suggestion.

Jealous of your housing! Let me know how folks like the recipes :)

Thanks for supporting! I'm not sure if Amazon has dropped the price yet... hopefully they should today or tomorrow.

That's interesting. I wonder how Singapore compares to China for tofu? 

My impression is that Singaporean food overlaps most with Southeastern (Fujian and Cantonese) Chinese cooking, but those two cuisines use fewer varieties than other regions of China. Granted, I've never been, so this could be very wrong! Does anyone have a better sense?

Thanks Jessica! I'm so with you on the Chinese alt protein scene... would love to see more folks promoting these foods abroad!

Ooh, thanks for catching the international e-book pricing - just messaged Amazon and they'll correct that today or tomorrow.

I think this is a pretty open question. I'm more skeptical of plant-based meats than a lot of folks, largely because I think "narratives" matter more than "taste" for food selection. Narratives scale, whereas taste is extremely individualized. But dominant food narratives in China (and in the US!) ascribe a lot more value to things like local, natural, farm-to-table, cultural than the things that PBM are good at.

3
quinn
6mo
Huh. When I was in singapore I felt like I was getting a deeper view of chinese cuisine than any knowledge I had acquired in the states, but I still didn't get into like game-changingly new ways of viewing tofu in particular. 

oh no! Thanks for the catch. Will try to fix that right now

Eli, I'm sorry I just saw your message! This program sounds really interesting. I missed the signup deadline but will shoot them a message. Thanks for the recommendation!

Yum, thanks for sharing that link! Cool to hear that there's exciting tofu happening in Kenya. And absolutely, I think you're right - making tofu hip doesn't necessarily mean it will spread. That said, it's hard to imagine the tofu market growing without it becoming a more desirable food, and that seems easiest via restaurants for now. A lot of work to still be done!

Huh I guess I haven't chatted with (or know) enough influencers, but I'm familiar with some that do try products for free, and sometimes post about them. Maybe that's the exception though?

1
ChristianKleineidam
1y
Just because someone tried products for free and then posted about them doesn't mean that they haven't been paid to post about them.  When I say that I know the German youtuber, I'm meaning that I privately talked with him about how that industry works.  The people who make the most money in that industry do it through paid product placement.

Turns out my last comment was wrong! Mary's Test Kitchen (https://www.instagram.com/marystestkitchen/) has found that by removing the starch from other legumes, you can make soy-like tofu out of them. Haven't tried yet but looks legit!

Sounds delish! How do you usually prepare your yuba sandwiches?

Too cool - I'd love to hear your favorite ways to eat it :)

And thank you for offering! Just sent you a message

Oh amazing! Thanks so much for the suggestion - I'll definitely reach out to Jenny :)

Interesting idea! Funny enough, black bean tofu is actually made with black soybeans, not black beans. The standard beans don't curdle the same way - too much starch content - so they can only form starch not protein gels. Would be cool to see more of them, though, and be able to better personalize towards different restaurants

Appreciate the signal boost on point 3!

Thanks Desampo! The tofu production process is pretty specialized, so I don't think there's much equipment overlap with other food categories. Could be missing something though!

To flesh this out more, my thinking is something like, WWOTF PR team probably has a theory of impact, which might dwarf the impact of the other ones, and it seems suboptimal if groups are focusing on the wrong one. Maybe their primary theory of impact is shifting the longtermism/AI overton window (attracting as many hits/eyeballs as possible, mass outreach), or maybe it’s attracting allies in positions of power, or maybe it’s inspiring more readers to pursue longtermist careers. Or maybe it’s something else. Getting more of our members to read the book see... (read more)

But it’s also possible that creating these isn’t in a student's comparative advantage, especially if they aren’t already that knowledgeable about the skills they want to teach.

Right, this is what I suspect. It's naturally more efficient to expand a pre-existing program than create a new one from scratch, especially in highly technical fields.

Do you have more details on what you’re envisioning here? What sorts of workshops do you think would be most useful? 

I don't have a great inside view on this, but the sorts of workshops Sydney has been running see... (read more)

So I don't think people should feel discouraged just from their low offer rate very much. 

To clarify, is your main point here that that AI safety orgs could absorb a lot more talent, if folks were more qualified? If so, that's also my understanding. I doubt, however, that general university groups would be the optimal way to build qualified and motivated applicants, because student clubs inherently spend a lot of time on non-development focused activities. It seems like outsourcing the recruitment pipeline to, say, Cambridge's AGI Safety Fundamentals ... (read more)

2
mic
2y
Yup I think it would be helpful if more people seriously advertised the AGI Safety Fundamentals program or recommended the GCP Guides program (once that builds capacity to take on more people), if they don’t have time to run those programs locally or have more valuable things to do. Something else I would add to the pipeline is having students learn more about machine learning through courses, MOOCs, bootcamps, or research opportunities. People are more likely to get engaged by things that are local and in-person, but I think this gap between in-person vs virtual outsourced engagement can be minimized somewhat if you write the right marketing and still have some in-person activities, like weekly group lunches/dinners. I’d be excited to see cross-university skill-building workshops. Do you have more details on what you’re envisioning here? What sorts of workshops do you think would be most useful? But it’s also possible that creating these isn’t in a student's comparative advantage, especially if they aren’t already that knowledgeable about the skills they want to teach.

Suji is incredible! We've been calling it "Shanghai tofu" in our book, since vegetarian chicken can sometimes be misinterpreted as a mock meat. 

Funny enough, if you freeze and thaw it a couple times, the crumb becomes very bread-like. Stew it in a creamy, sweet sauce, refrigerate it overnight, and it will have an almost "tres leches cake" consistency. Such a cool ingredient!

2
Xing Shi Cai
2y
Thanks for the tips. My mum happened to have left a bit of Suji in my freezer. I will give it a try.

Thanks Joel. And absolutely, I'd love to chat and hear your China story!

Thanks for sharing your concerns here and taking time to write this all out. I agree that framing these ingredients in a sensitive way is really important.

I would second having Chinese people on your staff, as well as looking into ways your project can benefit the rural villages whose people developed the tofu.

I'm definitely looking for other allies and partners!! If you know anyone, I'd love to connect :)

I've heard a general rule to avoid implicitly playing into these stereotypes is to ask yourself whether the ethnic descriptor is necessary to get the poi

... (read more)
3
ethai
2y
Ha, I never check my forum notifications - a belated thank you for responding and engaging with this, it's clear that you've already really thought through a lot of the potential harms folks are bringing up which is much appreciated. I definitely see the reasons why each word individually makes sense, but I do also wonder if there's a better synonym for rare. The only thing I'd push back on is: I think this is 100% true, and also the reason why Chinese-Americans find it off-putting. A lot of what second-gen folks like myself would call "cultural appropriation", immigrants with stronger ties to their home country would say makes them proud to see their culture represented in American [media/culture/etc].  So I suppose I should clarify that I'm speaking from the POV of Asian-Americans, who might find it more distasteful (pun intended). Whereas native Chinese people and non-Asian Americans will probably resonate w/ the framing for all the reasons you share. No need to respond to this one month later, just wanted to ~ close the loop ~ 

Have you considered that by increasing the variety, availability and tastiness of tofus, you could be extending the amount of time a current vegetarian/vegan remains committed? I think that as a movement we tend to focus on new converts, and neglect maintaining those who currently avoid animal products, especially in light of evidence that many vegetarian/vegans eventually revert to eating meat

This is a great point, Bryan!  I wonder how a "support vegetarians" angle would compare to a "help meat eaters reduce" branding. More broadly, it seems l... (read more)

I'd be interested to hear more about the tofus you have in mind.

There are quite a few "great fit" varieties. The ones that seem easiest to import and have the clearest uses cases are probably:

  1. Shanghai tofu (上海素鸡 shanghaisuji) - ultra high in protein, rich/eggy/custardy flavor, somewhat bready structure when frozen, very distinct strengths. Left whole, we've turned it into unique sorts of cakes, dumplings, "crostinis", protein crumbles, etc. 
  2. Spongy tofu (千页豆腐 qianyedoufu) - a fishcake-like tofu, pre-seasoned, delicious blended or left whole as a main,
... (read more)

Thanks for your pointers, Nate! I'm also curious - what sorts of tofus have you tried?

I'm with you on the challenge of building a new market from the ground up. That said, on the supply side, I'd expect importing palettes of rare tofus would be a lot easier than, say, building a production site or finding suitable co-packers for a new plant-based meat company. Especially since a lot of these tofus are already imported, just on a small scale, but from producers that have a lot of capacity. (It also helps that they can all be frozen, unlike simple tofus.)

Tha... (read more)

These are good points. It's crazy how the faces of western veganism have been predominantly white, despite the fact that most veg culture originated outside of Europe. Very much with you on "celebrating" rather than "discovering," and being clear about cultural roots.

Appreciate your feedback!

5
Charles He
2y
I don't agree with this comment chain. Setting aside externalities to EA, we shouldn't add dependencies that restrict decisions of effective founders.  I don't find the content in the top convincing enough to pin future leaders to what I see as one perspective or worldview.    This seems especially valuable if we are supporting "hits based" projects like this one. Imagine if somehow this got headlines like: * "Brilliant American steals secret recipes that the Chinese have hidden!" * "New popular tofu is stirring up controversy. Hear what the founder has to say!" These might actually be brilliant ways to market this to Americans. Or maybe this might be really terrible and not the style of the leader at all.  But we should let the leader decide.

Thanks Cameron, I appreciate the support!

Fair enough! I definitely stated that point too strongly, more of a "if you just order tofu for guests, without much meat/seafood, it could come across as rude." Thanks for the pointer! 

And glad to meet another tofu lover :)

This is a fair question! I should have added more explanation to the post. 

TLDR: tofu is like chicken. Just as you would never cook chicken feet like chicken breast, so too do different tofus have vastly different uses, forms, and production methods. In particular, a few varieties that are "rare" or uncommon on China (and mostly absent elsewhere) seem particularly well suited to western cooking styles. I think of these like "chicken breasts," whereas common tofus have about as much western appeal as "chicken feet." 

If you're curious, I can shoot ... (read more)

This is a good point - branding is so key. Creating contrast between normal and rare tofus could turn out to be a really powerful marketing tool, or make us sad and un-credible. 

Very cool that you've spent time in Hunan. I'd love to visit someday. And absolutely, it blows my mind how people talk about western veganish cities - it's a thousand times easier in China

4[anonymous]2y
I think Cornelius and Lumpyproletariat make good points, but as evelynciara points out in another comment, it's also important to make sure you don't do anything that's seen as cultural appropriation-y. There's one world where marketing rare Chinese tofu as something other than tofu could lead to accusations of white-washing and bad PR overall*. That being said, I could imagine that branding it with some other names used for the specific tofus in China could work, since it wouldn't be white-washing (I think?) and it wouldn't carry the negative connotation of tofu. I know these are all conflicting comments, so my advice is just to be thoughtful about the various considerations before committing to a name :).  *Particularly since veganism is sadly (anecdotally) perceived as being super white, even though that's not true in America at least (BBC).
1
Jeremy
2y
This thought crossed my mind as well. On the flip side, there is also already a market for tofu, supermarkets know where to put it and consumers know what it is. Though some hate it, some also like it and might be more easily enticed to try a new kind of it, than something completely unfamiliar. On the other hand, if most of the benefit is in replacing meat, it certainly seems like appearing to people who don’t like current forms of tofu would be valuable. Maybe there is some way to do both?

Huh if only we had a "Samuel Adams tofu" to go with the beer! Tofu's history in the States is pretty recent, but there may be something juicy there.

Personally, I would love to have more kinds of tofu to try. I agree with Jeremy that getting these exotic tofus in front of some food industry experts to get their feedback would probably be a good idea.  

Absolutely with you this!

 Thanks for all your pointers!

I wasn't able to find a reliable survey with some cursory googling, but from personal experience and what I did see (for instance, this) it seems like getting a majority of meals from eating out is rare. 

You're definitely right here. Food expenditures at and away from home are pretty split, but given that the cost of eating out is higher, people eat more meals at home. The reason I think it might make sense to focus first on food service is less about end strategy and more about the sequence. Since chefs can better c... (read more)

Interesting points on soybean meal vs soybean oil consumption.

I'm less concerned about the fish sauce question since we'd be promoting rare tofus within western cooking. (And most of Asia, especially the regions that use a lot of fish sauce, don't use these specific tofu varieties.) 

 

Thanks for the pointers!

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the rec - I've chatted with a few folks from GFI. We'll try to engage with them more as we move forward.

That's a great point about modeling concrete scenarios (like types/numbers of distribution points), rather than just assuming some percentage of market growth. I'll try fleshing that out a bit. The reason I'm bullish on potential market size is that most common tofus have abysmal product-market fit outside the Asian American community, whereas rare tofus (at least in our research) seem to fare much better. If that pattern holds, and we can find high leverage marketing methods, it would seem  strange if rare tofus don't eventually eclipse the former. L... (read more)