“The number of people who gaslight themselves into thinking things taste good that do not is really high.”

My Food Job Rocks! · Alternative Proteins · November 2026

Context

The host said leadership teams at plant-based startups often convince themselves their product tastes better than it does. Andrew agrees, drawing on teaching taste and flavor in a university cooking class.

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Transcript

My Food Job Rocks! Around 23:52 into the episode

Andrew Chan

…agriculture is still a broken business. We can talk about that separately too. But when you look at just like the dollar cost, what you have to get down to from a science and tech side, combined with the flavor, the texture, all of the above, it's just very difficult to make a competitive product.

Adam Yee

…about taste is being in these rooms, in these like plant-based company rooms, like I think the leadership. Team and like the scientists get into this weird loop that they're eventually convinced that whatever they're serving is tastes better than they think. Yes, absolutely. So I hated it. Yeah.

Andrew Chan

No, I mean, so we used to coach tastes and flavors at Caltech, right? That's the first unit you do, the Caltech cooking classes. You would teach about tastes and flavors. And the number of people who gaslight themselves into thinking things taste good that do not is really high. Now, unfortunately, and why I've struggled as a food investor, I do better. So I will tell you, I have one investment in alcohol that's done really well so far. Where I struggle with food is I have weird taste in food. I eat a lot of weird food. I was really into it. Tell me, tell me.

Adam Yee

Oh my god. I

Andrew Chan

was really into Soylent. I'm a huge Soylent fan. I'm a huge Soylent supporter. Do you know

Adam Yee

the C, the founder of that company did that media firm that got caught up on the bottom? Yeah, I ate a TVPN. I did not know this. I did not know this at all. I was like, what the heck? He

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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