It’s like 20% empty shells! WTF! So I look under the bag hoping to find the holy grail of de-shelled pistachio heaven… But nothing!

This is Pistaccio Gate out in the open. Now I have to look over my shoulders.

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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    21 hours ago

    So… consider that if they scoop them one bag at a time from a large container nobody is adding extra shells, some of the nuts fall to the bottom of the container.

    That means some bags at the end of each batch will be lucky and others (like this one) won’t. The math is probably something along the lines of “how can I optimize the cooking and prep process to keep at least XXX percent of nuts in the shells?” and not “How can I guarantee each bag has statistically equal nuts and shells” or “Mwahahaha how can I source empty shells to fill 20% of all bags!”

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      You are seriously underestimating the industrial factory technology at scale to do quality control when processing food. If they wanted, they could literally remove individual ants from the flow of 5 ton sacks of coffee beans, in a sustainable way. They literally have lasers and sensors to find undesirable product and knock it out of high speed belt flows of fruits and vegetables with micro targeted jets of air and things like that.

      You’re mistake is is that you are thinking of how YOU would sort these yourself, that’s part of our problem as humans, we have a bit of a narcissistic bias. Similar to trump people that think, " he’s doing well enough… I’d do a but better probably, but he’s doing okay" they are comparing to themselves as baseline, when they aren’t even near qualified either.

      • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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        5 hours ago

        While that is true that factories CAN be extremely detailed in their process, everything is driven by cost efficiency. If it is more efficient to process a large batch instead of a small one, what happens in this thread is what you get. There is no reason to say “oh they could remove those shells!” because it’s only a thing worth doing if it’s cost effective.

        So I guess yes you’re right it’s fixable but only if it’s a problem people care about. I think it’s fundamentally crazier to think you can figure what is profitable for pistachios from a thread by some rando better than the company that makes them.

        Maybe it’s a conspiracy, probably it’s process optimization.