Thread by @grapesmoker

welcome new followers. allow me to alienate all of you by suggesting that foods should be classified along a two-dimensional diagram whose axes are topological order and number of ingredients

the basic idea is that foods have to primary axes along which their composition matters. one axis is the topology: how many inside/outside transitions are there? in other words, a standard sandwich is constituted by a transition between three layers

what constitutes a "layer" is obviously subjective but I suggest a substance compositionally dissimilar from the rest of the food that serves a structural function is a good heuristic

in the case of the standard sandwich we see that there are two bread layers and some indeterminate number of ingredient layers. here the second axis comes into play: we need to know that number, as it represents a kind of entropic index of the food

is a hotdog a sandwich? this question is more complex than you might think. the actual dog itself has two layers topologically (casing and stuffing) while the hotdog considered as a whole has three. we take the stuffing to have entropic index 1 for simplicity, though

of course we may generalize to any homogeneous mixture of ground meats. the other thing that matters is whether outer layers are closed or not. casing is obviously closed; bun is obviously open

hot dogs (assuming plain beef) are therefore topologically equivalent to open-faced sandwiches in which the interior of the sandwich is itself a homogeneous food encased in a layer, such as for example breaded chicken

the beauty of this system is that it enables us to extend it to any sort of food so instead of asking pointless questions like whether hot dogs are sandwiches, we can precisely formulate the question of what sort of structure conveniently defines food equivalence classes

for those of you who are still here, i also think the dark souls games are pretty bad