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This tech startup wants you to eat gentrified gruel

These oats stand for something.

Photo of Bryan Rolli

Bryan Rolli

Mush oats gentrification gruel

Whether you’re hunkering down at home to wait out the pandemic or dodging mind-numbingly bad headlines about the impending presidential election, you need the right fuel to get through the oppressive monotony of everyday life. You need Mush.

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If you have not stumbled upon one of the company’s Instagram ads yet, Mush sells overnight oats, which are oats that are cold-soaked in milk overnight until they congeal into a ready-to-eat, pudding-like concoction the next morning. They’re pretty good! That is, if you can get past the texture and gruel-like appearance.

Exhibit A:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCMD6zID9wB/
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There’s something else you should know: Overnight oats are not difficult to make by yourself. You pour your ingredients into a mason jar, you refrigerate, you eat. Voila.

Some people don’t feel confident in their ability to find the perfect oat-to-milk ratio, or they genuinely don’t have the time to prepare meals—and that’s fine. But how much of a premium do you have to pay if you want Mush to do the work for you? 

A 12-pack of single-serving Mush tubs currently goes for $60 on Amazon. Sixty. Dollars. That’s five bucks per serving of gentrification gruel.

By comparison, you can buy a 41-ounce bag of gluten-free Harvest PureOats (which has 28 half-cup servings of oats) on Amazon right now for $8.93. Or you can go to your local grocery store and buy a tub of store-brand oats for a couple of bucks. 

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Why the staggering up-charge for Mush oats? Part of it is the convenience fee, and part of it is the unique flavor options, including apple pie, strawberry, coffee, coconut cream, and strawberry. But it also paramount that you, dear reader, understand that Mush is woke. 

Per the company’s website, Mush is in the business of “help[ing] people feel, think, and do better” by “mak[ing] healthy food convenient and delicious so that you can incorporate more of it into your life.” Never mind that cost factors heavily into convenience and healthy eating remains a privilege that many people cannot afford. Mush would rather direct your attention to this Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote it shared on Instagram. (It also was featured on Shark Tank and tried to hire a “chief meme officer.”)

It’s thus, you guessed it, another millennial-branded tech startup that tries to reinvent the wheel by streamlining a product that is… already cheap and easy to produce. Per its packaging, the San Diego-based company re-brands milk as “mylk.” As Twitter user @quakerraina noted after running into another Mush Instagram ad, “We’ve entered this stage of dystopia.”

Inhibitive costs notwithstanding, Mush’s gentrification gruel is probably delicious. You can buy it here if you feel so inclined. Do what you need to do to cope with the hellscape that is 2020.

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