thrown in with

[Inouez]

HI

I want to know the meaning of "thrown in with" in below phrase in The Economist.

When she began researching her book, Natasha Schüll, the cultural anthropologist from nyu, found trying to decode the logic behind many health-tech products very frustrating. Then she realised that there was no logic. It was “a pinch or two of positive psychology thrown in with the infrastructure of a punitive Skinner box, thrown in with some other notion of the brain” ending up as “a hotch-potch of ad-hoc things that was not that studied or scientific”.

Link is here.
<Apps interpreting data from wearable devices are helping people to live better>

Hope some kind person will kindly explain to me by using some para-phrase explanation.

Inouez8

 

[anthox]

"Combined with", "tossed in together with." The sense is that these different, disparate elements were combined together in a "hotch-potch of ad-hoc things."

 

[kentix]

It's sort of an analogy to a cooking recipe. You have a bowl and you throw different things into it to mix together and make the final recipe.

 

[Inouez]

Dear anthox
Combined with............ got it.

Dear kentix
from recipe......... I see, now I can easily remember this phrase by picturing the recipe image in my mind.


Thanks !!

Inouez