Shadowing Practice: AI Food Slop is Here - Learn English Speaking with Video

Wonder is the ghost kitchen tech startup taking the humanity out of food.

The CEO and the company itself are all in on AI, and the whole premise here is that you can order up to 500 meal options from a single restaurant.

But the catch is, they all suck.

The sheer amount of advertising and paid content

that this company has been putting out into the world should be your first red flag here.

But it doesn't take too much digging to understand just how truly terrible of an idea this really is, and why I'm begging for its downfall.

The food almost always looks terrible in these videos that people are being paid to promote, and even the most favorable reviews are pretty bad.

And on top of all this, you would have to pay a premium to get this bad service.

It is genuinely kind of a bummer for me to know that not only does this thing exist,

but some people are actually going out of their way to try it and consume it on like a somewhat regular basis.

So I wanted to make this video as sort of a PSA to all people on earth to not f*ing eat here.

Because I promise, once you understand how it is possible for this atrocity to even exist, you'll be plotting its demise with me.

Today's video is sponsored by Climatize.

So wonder is a flashpoint that's going on in the world of And a lot of creators have talked about this already.

We may be kind of late to the game in that sense, but not enough people are mad about this.

And not enough people have seen this moment from the Wonder CEO.

The thing I'm most excited about is Wonder Create, because anyone in the world will be able to plug into this automation

and create their own restaurant and scale it across all Wonder locations for 10 bucks a month.

We're going to plug, anyone can plug into this automation

and you can create your own website and distribute it across all these platforms for 10 bucks a month.

Great.

That's so great.

But wait, here's my favorite part coming up here.

So think about Shopify and steroids.

You don't have to do anything.

You basically- Who is the person that wants to do this and why does the end consumer want this?

Okay.

So who wants to do this?

First of all, Wonder Create is just an AI prompt.

You just type, build me a fast casual Mexican restaurant for Gen Z for people

that love AI will build the entire restaurant using our automation and ingredient library.

Brand it, name it, you own the restaurant, you own the name, all the descriptions, pictures, pricing, nutrition information.

You could do it in two minutes.

If you like what you see, you could ask AI to change it.

But if you like it, you could publish it.

It now goes live.

You could push it out on DoorDash, Uber, and Grubhub as well.

That is genuinely like one of the most disassociated, completely out of touch pieces of commentary I've ever watched.

I mean, that is crazy.

At one point, like he just, he asks him, who wants this?

And the guy is just like, this is an AI prompt that allows you to make an AI restaurant.

And you can just spam the whole world with your shitty restaurant idea.

He is unironically talking about making AI slop food like it's a good thing.

Like somehow we live in a world where someone making a bought ghost kitchen for cyclists who like Mexican food

with the same generic ingredients from every other restaurant on the stupid platform, mindlessly being pushed out to unknown customers through delivery apps,

is going to get you a good taco.

Like, I think he forgets that people don't order food because they just need food and there's, like, no other option.

They do it because they like eating food.

You f*ing robot.

The great thing about drone is you can deliver it to a boat.

You can deliver it to a field, campsite.

You could be camping and just have your, you know, burger dropped in for lunch, you know, your cookies and burgers.

Shouldn't you be grilling the burger?

Is that the point of camping?

He's maybe one of my least favorite CEOs now.

He's moved up the rank of least favorite CEOs in my mind.

Now, as disturbing as the concept of AI food slop is,

it's really only one more layer of stupid on top of the whole industrialized food system that has made this moment possible.

To understand this whole weird thing, you have to understand how we got here, starting with the ingredients of the food itself.

More Perfect Union made a really great video about the Cisco food monopoly

that is currently responsible for the majority of the food that you eat from restaurants.

It's a great watch if you haven't seen it.

But to loosely summarize what they talk about in that video, Cisco is a food distributor who now effectively manages the ingredients

for the vast majority of restaurants in the United States and Canada.

They leverage their massive scale

and logistics operation to give restaurants basically a one-stop shop for all the ingredients

that they might need to make a positively mid chicken strips and fries.

But because food and costs for restaurants are generally getting higher every day, most restaurants can't help but buy from them.

Going to a local option is just not really feasible for a lot of restaurants.

But then, at the same time, this weird thing is happening because the food is getting worse because of the centralized industrial food system that is supporting it,

But the prices of the food is also going up.

Like normally when something gets commodified and scaled to this level, there's a corresponding drop in price, but that's not happening.

And there's a whole other side of this conversation that we could talk about where like, you know, fast food is no longer cheap, that whole thing.

But that's not this video.

These ingredients are all designed and prepared in a way that works for an AI slop kitchen to prepare them.

If you look at the Cisco catalog on their website, you can see this in its building blocks.

You can order pretty much all of your ingredients pre-sliced or diced by a robot.

They also sell a lot of pre-made meals and desserts,

which in this case, you're literally getting the exact same meal from anyone who is serving Cisco products.

This could, of course, be a couple of different videos, maybe, but this is only the first part of this video, because now we have to talk about ghost kitchens.

Now, as dystopian as this sounds,

we're actually fully already in this nightmare because we've been unknowingly most likely buying from ghost kitchens for a long time now.

Eddie Burback made a very viral video about this a little while ago.

How many views does that freaking thing have?

Thing has 14 million views.

I don't think anyone is really surprised by ghost kitchens anymore.

Like this isn't new information, but that's kind of the problem.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, a ghost kitchen is basically just a kitchen somewhere that prepares food.

You can't dine in, you can't pick it up from that location.

The whole point is that they sell online through these apps.

There has been a lot of YouTubers who have started their own restaurants on these apps as a bit, and it sort of shows how sketchy this industry can be if you don't really care.

Once these delivery apps took off, the game was kind of over.

Suddenly, people got brainwashed into thinking that overpaying for cold pad thai in a cardboard box

that's delivered to your house is great.

Okay, this was $33.

Honestly, this is a lot of food, but $33 is insane.

People got so removed from the food that they ate

and the money that they spent on it

that it just perfectly paved the way for some weird bald CEO to invent AI slop kitchens and get it funded.

100

And this is the fascinating but depressing reality of this whole situation.

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These apps have gotten so good at removing us from the food buying experience.

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They make spending the money feel almost invisible.

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You just do a few taps and the food shows up at your door.

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You don't have any time to think about where your money went, what business you supported, how much packaging came with it, or whether or not it's even healthy.

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But the money still goes somewhere.

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Every time that we spend and every time that we invest, we are making a choice about what kinds of businesses and systems get more resources,

107

Which is why today's sponsor is actually a very fitting one.

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As with all investments, Climatize projects carry a risk of underperformance or loss.

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This is not investment advice, so please review all available information before making any investment decisions.

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But Climatize is offering something really cool today

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and it's only available for use on their platform a minimum investment from the investors funds must be applied

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and explore more at climatize.earth levi hildebrand you can also click the link on the screen

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or in the description i mean you've done this before you

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know how it works a huge thank you to climatize for

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sponsoring today's video Now let's get back into the horrible and depressing world of Wonder.

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So unlike a ghost kitchen and the many apps and companies that sort of rely on that business model,

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Wonder is very different, but also exactly the same.

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Instead of having ghost kitchens that make food and then drivers who deliver it, Wonder has a central prep kitchen where all the meals are prepped.

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And then it's sent to various Wonder locations in like meal kits.

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These meal kits are then finished on site and then they're delivered.

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So those sites can then provide 500 different menu options out of one location.

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It's sort of an illusion because they have the one central prep kitchen

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that distributes the variety to all the rest of the locations, giving them the ability to do the 500 things on the menu.

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That's the whole bit.

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That's literally the whole thing.

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I hate it because, like, why would you want one restaurant that makes 500 things When in any decent-sized city,

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there's a dozen restaurants, all of which could cover the range of options

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that you would like to try and cook them all better, too.

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That's the whole concept of living in a city, is that there's a ton of restaurants, and those restaurants can make food,

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and it can be delivered to your house easily because you live near the restaurants.

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That's it.

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We already have that.

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And they're like, wait, what if the food was worse, and it was all in one place, and it costs more?

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Trade offer?

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How about that?

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You get worse food, we get more money.

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How about that?

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Of course this is the idea from a CEO

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that had AI decide what he ate for a year based on his blood tests.

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Like, of course he did.

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Their initial plan was to operate a fleet of food trucks with microwaves

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and air fryers in them that make your food while they're delivering it, I guess.

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And the idea here, from what I can tell, was just to make an Uber driver's life even worse by

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making them also cook the food in the same vehicle that they're delivering it in.

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I found this great subreddit post.

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They were like, how does Wonder Food Hall even work?

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Like, I don't understand this, which, like, valid.

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The top comment, it does so by making absolute dog food.

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They nail it.

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This person actually also seems to know what they're talking about.

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It's slightly more serious.

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It's probably a central commissary kitchen that preps, pre-cooks, seals, and or freezes the meals, then on-site slaps them in the Turbo Chef plates and garnishes.

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It is literally that.

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This Redditor is absolutely correct.

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I've tried their pineapple fried rice and it tasted how it looked.

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Some ricin seasoned in yellow, color only with zero flavor, random shrimps that were equally under seasoned, and some chopped up canned pineapple.

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Probably will never try wondering ever again.

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There's so many jokes here that I feel like I haven't exploited.

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Like, I wonder if I could get airplane food without getting on a flight.

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So at some point along the journey, the van idea didn't work out, I guess.

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So now they've pivoted to these storefronts, which is, they seem to be basically just pickup locations.

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So they were innovating by getting rid of the restaurants and the drivers.

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But now they've actually just added a step by having the storefronts.

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So they have the giant prep kitchen, the storefronts, and then the food also needs to be delivered.

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So they've actually just added extra steps to get back to what we had in the first place, now with worse food.

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Look at the order that this guy gets in this YouTube video.

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It's crazy.

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This is a $20 pizza this guy is eating right now.

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It looks bad.

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He's being so generous with it.

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Like, he's like, oh yeah, like, it looks pretty good.

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I mean, it doesn't taste like the Defara pizza that I remember, but it's, you know, it's pretty good.

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I'm like, bro, this is a YouTube channel where you talk about food.

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Like, this is garbage.

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I can tell from the video this is a bad pizza.

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And the sauce too.

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The sauce is a sweet, it's a little zesty, you know, the sauce tastes nice.

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I mean, I guess it's a little thick, it's a little paste-like, like almost looks kind of like ketchup or tomato paste.

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No, my favorite though.

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He goes over it, he even says, Slimey mashed potatoes almost looks like a microwavable dinner, but maybe it'll taste good.

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Maybe it's just because the container is being served in, after all.

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He literally says it.

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He literally says, he's like, that kind of looks like a microwavable meal.

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The comments are just so great.

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The air fryer fan blew the basil around.

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Private equity automated microwave slop.

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But this is the craziest part.

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This seemingly disastrous product with very little public appeal has secured.

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Do you have all your guesses in?

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$2 billion in funding!

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It's apparently valued at $9 billion!

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How?

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Or maybe why is a better question?

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Because none of this matters if you have nowhere else to go.

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So here's kind of like my theory.

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This is my prediction, because I don't really understand how else this really makes sense.

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Wonder is trying to get control over how we get our food by owning every step of the process

214

that it takes to get from the distributor to you.

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This is called vertical integration.

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It's how Apple manages its ecosystem.

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It's how a lot of car companies try to optimize their system

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so that they don't rely on a whole bunch of different factors.

219

And they can make all of the money from all of the different stages

220

so that all of the money comes back to them and they stay rich and we continue to be poor.

221

That's how the best kind of capitalism works.

222

Ha ha ha.

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They've acquired Blue Apron, Tastemade, and Grubhub already, and they're preparing for a big IPO to push this whole thing even further.

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They're going to scale this business as quickly as possible, offering as many options as possible to as many people,

225

giving away discounts, running ads all over the place to secure a whole bunch of users,

226

grow their user base, and then they will slowly push out all the other restaurants that can't compete

227

until they're the biggest name in town.

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We have seen this happen with a lot of other people.

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With Uber Eats and Grubhub and DoorDash and all these companies, they did exactly the same thing.

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Years of massive growth, tons of speculative money poured into these businesses as they fought for market share.

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The only difference here, though, that is kind of dystopian for me is that Wonder,

232

if successful, would have the infrastructure to feed lots and lots and lots of people out of one single business,

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all run by AI and basically robots.

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I mean, there would be some humans involved, but they're trying to eliminate them whenever possible, right?

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And what is so annoying about this is that they're trying to replace a business model that was already way too powerful.

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Like Uber Eats wasn't enough.

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With Uber Eats, all they do is operate an app.

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The restaurant takes on all the risks and makes the food.

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The drivers work for next to nothing.

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And Uber gets to take a cut from every side of the deal.

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We made a whole video called Why Uber Eats Sucks for Everyone.

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And you should watch that one if you like this one.

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But Wonder wants to take this to a whole other level.

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If they can control enough of the marketplace, they will replace mom-and-pop shops, fast food restaurants, and simultaneously become one of the biggest buyers of food,

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which will all help them do this at a fraction of the cost.

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And if this all sounds awful and terrible, it's because it is.

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We are allowing this to happen because we are

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so divorced from the food that we eat already because of our industrialized food system.

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We rarely see the farms that grow our food, or even the kitchens that make our meals now.

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Your grandma's generation would have never stood for this because they cooked all of the meals they ate for the most part.

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And the craziest thing is that this is all in the name of convenience.

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Like the CEO of Wonder literally said that.

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He says this is all about convenience.

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And I just can't believe that convenience is that important.

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That we're willing to sacrifice money, the actual flavor of the food,

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and the independence to make decisions on where we get our food just so that it arrives at our door?

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So here's my pitch, my PSA pitch at the end.

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If you made it here, thank you for being here, for supporting us on this channel and our Patreon.

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If you do, hey, shout out.

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Please don't give in to the false promise of convenience.

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This is a lie.

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Every time that you choose to cook your own meal, to ask a friend for a ride, to go for a walk instead of scrolling,

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you are interrupting the cash flows of these insane CEOs and their greed.

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Hi, everybody.

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Lou here.

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Just popping in really quick to say that we have yet another piece of Patreon-exclusive content uploaded over there.

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Matthew shows us a video of Kevin O'Leary where he's talking about his views on nutrition and, like, his dietary philosophy.

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If that sounds interesting to you or any of the other Patreon-exclusive content that we've uploaded lately, maybe consider joining us over there and supporting what we're doing here.

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And if not, no worries.

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Thank you so much for being here and see you next time.

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Bye!

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Just can't do it.

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It really just all crumbles.

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George is the voice that we needed to go famous and what we got is Mr. Wonderful.

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Kevin fucking O'Leary is sitting there trying to spread this dumbass carb-free protein-only diet bullshit.

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Meanwhile, the old man who's lived a great life.

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He's 95.

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He's like, no, Kevin, what are you talking about?

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389 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “AI Food Slop is Here”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: restaurant, kitchen, wonder. This video has 278 sentences and 3540 words to shadow. The speech runs for 19:42. The speaker talks fast, about 180 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
climatize verb	/ˈklaɪ.mɪtaɪz/	To acclimatize or become acclimatized.
ingredient noun	/ɪnˈɡɹiːdi.ənt/	One of the substances present in a mixture, especially food.
slop noun	/slɑp/	Any semisolid substance; goo, paste, pulp.
convenience noun	/kənˈvinjəns/	The quality of being convenient.
preposition noun	/ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/	Any of a class of non-inflecting words and multiword terms typically employed to connect a following noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense…
storefront noun		The side of a store (or other shop) which faces the street and usually contains display windows.
automation noun	/ˌɔ.təˈmeɪ.ʃən/	The act or process of converting the controlling of a machine or device to a more automatic system, such as computer or electronic controls.
buck noun	/ˈbʌk/	A male deer, antelope, sheep, goat, rabbit, hare, and sometimes the male of other animals such as the hamster, ferret, salmonid, shad, skunk and kangaroo.
burger noun	/ˈbɝ.ɡɚ/	A hamburger.
plug noun	/plʌɡ/	A pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one.
dystopian adjective	/dɪsˈtoʊ.pi.ən/	Of or pertaining to a dystopia.
industrialize verb	/ɪnˈdʌstɹiəlaɪz/	To develop industry; to become industrial.
microwavable adjective		Suitable for heating in a microwave oven; said of food and non-food items, especially containers.
pineapple noun	/ˈpaɪnəpəl/	A tropical plant, Ananas comosus, native to South America, having thirty or more long, spined and pointed leaves surrounding a thick stem.
distributor noun		One who or that which distributes.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
sign up verb	To add a name to the list of people who are participating in something.
come up verb	To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly.
get back to verb	Return to (an activity)
give away verb	To make a gift of (something).
go over verb	To look at carefully; to scrutinize; to analyze.
go up verb	To move upwards.
move up verb	To promote, put onto a higher level.
push out verb	To force (someone) to leave a group.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

You don't have to do anything.
Shouldn't you be grilling the burger?
It's a great watch if you haven't seen it.
Do you have all your guesses in?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have talked · have seen · I've ever watched
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	being paid · is sponsored · being pushed
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	anyone who is · storefronts, which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 57 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, can't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: preposition /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/, automation /ˌɔ.təˈmeɪ.ʃən/, nutrition /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/, prediction /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: ingredient /ɪnˈɡɹiːdi.ənt/, preposition /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/, automation /ˌɔ.təˈmeɪ.ʃən/, dystopian /dɪsˈtoʊ.pi.ən/, industrialize /ɪnˈdʌstɹiəlaɪz/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like climatize, ingredient, slop.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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