>>Not being from Toronto, never in a million years would I even think of that as a visitor.

>I grew up in another country where Jamaican patties were popular [...]

Have you considered the possibility that Jamaican patties aren't universally popular and the fact that the two of you came from cities with a significant Jamaican diaspora doesn't invalidate the experience of the person who probably came from a city that didn't?

I think that type of law is usually supposed to protect against, not a surprised restaurant patron (because that's the kind of thing that would fix itself anyway, the customer would send it back and/or not go back) but subtle adulteration of food.

The law says the "patty" has to be nothing but meat and seasoning so that nobody can sell a "beef patty" that looks like a normal patty but actually is 10% sawdust (or more plausibly, some gross but very cheap filler product).

In a well-functioning government, this kind of thing could be worked out - the regulators would realize their rules were too far-reaching and culturally myopic, and that this is clearly not an attempt to sneak adulterated mystery meat past them. They could alter the regulation, like allowing the term "Jamaican Beef Patty" to be used, and that prefix removes the 'no encasement' regulation and allows whatever other common safe ingredients.

But of course, most governments don't function that well. The bureaucrats get deeply invested in enforcing their rules and no one with the authority to change the regulation can even hear the cries of those impacted, let alone change them.

That's not too remote of a possibility given that street foods like currywurst exist, and sausages are theoretically supposed to be sold encased in bread (ie. hot dog) similar to beef patties.

Usually, when I travel, it helps me to better understand and respect that other people may have different perspectives or experiences than me. This is probably the first time I'm seeing someone so cultured achieve the exact opposite, so thanks for familiarizing me with that.

P.S. When I search "what is a beef patty" on Google it quotes and links me to Wikipedia [1] which says absolutely nothing about Jamaica. Perhaps consider enlightening Wikipedia if you'd like to make the world a more cultured place.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty

Sorry, you’re just uncultured if you don’t understand that understandings of different “foreign” cultures differ from place to place.

I don’t even agree that the use of the term “beef patty” should be regulated just so you don’t confuse a dumb tourist lol. Getting something you didn’t expect is part of travelling. But YOUR comment is too condescending and hypocritical to NOT draw attention to, and it’s a type of hypocrisy that’s endemic to North America. You tell someone from the US that you don’t know Spanish or some aspect of Mexican culture or something like that and if they’re snooty enough they’ll call you an uncultured trailer park hick or something. Put another 1,000–2,000 km of distance to the cultural reference you’re making and you’ll get blank stares.

I live in a country that’s far further from the Caribbean, where it makes up an insignificant part of our vast multicultural landscape. Don’t act like I’m “uncultured” due to something that you’re much more likely to know about due to your geographic proximity.

[dead]

Second order effects of well intentioned regulation. As is tradition.

That sounds like industry lobbying got the better of them, we have similar fights going on here around calling things plant "milk" or "butter" and the rest. What a shame, I can't imagine it's a lot of fun having to forensically examine every item on the shelf.

>Do you have an encyclopedic knowledge of which terms are regulated and which ones aren't?

Do you have an encyclopedic knowledge of which professions are regulated and which aren't? If not, should we get rid of professional licensing?

>Don't you think it would cause more confusion if people expecting to buy a Jamaican beef patty instead have to buy a "Jamaican beef-inside-pastry product" ?

This feels like a strawman given that they settled on "Jamaican patty", which is reasonably brief and certainly less confusing than the original term of just "beef patty".