Poll to follow.
Also, no salt or pepper, little if any cooked fat. So, no butter on those potatoes.
No acids. Apple juice is bland, orange juice is not.
In a word, bland is boring.
Plain boiled chicken is pretty bland. Plain pasta as well.
Bland equals tasteless, or nearly so. Anything that is significantly lacking in flavor is bland. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with a lack of *added *flavors though, because some food is flavorful without adding anything at all. In fact, adding flavors would just mess it up–like, say, an orange.
It could be any of the above, depending on context. Really, just about any food that’s lacking a particular flavor you’d like it to have. 
I think I would choose the first option, with the meaning that the bowl of rice or potatoes were completely unseasoned. I don’t consider potatoes with salt and butter to be bland. It’s not spiced or spicy, but it’s not bland either.
bland
/bland/
Adjective
1.Lacking strong features or characteristics and therefore uninteresting.
2.(of food or drink) Mild or insipid.
- It was cooked by my mother.
I think of unflavored white carbs, or other foods with very little taste.
Beige food.
Oh yeah!
People often ask me how it came about that I have rather decent culinary skills. I tell them the truth: I had to learn to cook at an early age otherwise I would have starved to death.
That’s what got me started. But we were lucky if mom’s food was bland.
My mom’s cooking.
All three are possible. The first is merely the most common, but the other two make sense in context, which is comparison to more spicy or spiced foods.
Plus there are many people, like my dearly departed grandpa, who gradually lose their ability to detect flavors as they age. To my grandpa, anything without at least jalapeno-level heat was bland because he literally couldn’t taste the other flavors very well without it.
It might be bland or it might not, depending on the variety and quality of potato, butter, and preparation.
All of the above.
I’d say it would have to be all of the first three choices. If it has strong flavor or has flavorful spice or has heat, I wouldn’t call it bland.
It means I won’t eat there again.