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Comment by PeterStuer | Hacker News Reader

When I first visited the US about 30 years ago, I was often surprised about how different things like burgers or pizza tasted from here in Europe. It was like eating candy all the time. These days even over here there's sugar in almost everything you can buy.

Side note, not related directly: I was also surprised how in some of those 'health' image supermarkets, the fruits like strawberries looked so perfect, but just had no flavor and tasted just watery. Back here fruits often didn't look so 'television commercial quality', but exploded with flavors. Again, these days even here you have to go out of your way to find e.g. a decent tomato or grow your own.

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It's very interesting to take apart some typical American fast food like McDonalds or Subway and taste it bit by bit, cleansing your pallet as you go. The bread is literally as sweet as an iced bun or something. Most of the individual components are tasteless with only things like sauces and pickles providing flavour.

I've noticed the same thing in supermarket sandwiches and things in the UK. The one place I haven't noticed it is France. You can buy a sandwich from a railway station or something there and it will actually taste good.

I’ve noticed a pattern of Europeans getting food items that are the made of the cheapest of the cheap ingredients, almost to the point of being mislabeled and using them as a benchmark for what “American food” is like.

For example, 99 cent gas station white bread loaf taste like cake to Americans too. A 1.50$ loaf at a grocery store tastes much more normal for a nominal difference.

A “snack cake” also tastes like sugar mixed with liquified sugar to Americans. It might be called “cake” but Americans treat it like candy for all intents and purposes.

Ingredient list for the top selling brand of bread in the US:

Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Honey, Sugar, Wheat Gluten, Whole Wheat Flour, Rye Flour, Wheat Bran, Contains 2% or Less of Each of the Following: Yeast, Soy Flour, Salt, Soybean Oil, Dough Conditioners (Contains One or More of the Following: Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Calcium Stearoyl Lactylate, Monoglycerides, Mono- and Diglycerides, Distilled Monoglycerides, Calcium Peroxide, Calcium Iodate, DATEM, Ethoxylated Mono- and Diglycerides, Enzymes, Ascorbic Acid), Cultured Wheat Flour, Vinegar, Calcium Sulfate, Yeast Food (Ammonium Sulfate), Monocalcium Phosphate, Soy Lecithin, Calcium Carbonate.

Best selling means they have the most volume under one name. It doesn’t mean most bread the average American eats is like that.

If you go to the average grocery store around here there is at least half of an entire aisle stocked with at least 20 brands of fresh bread from smaller scale bakers and even the store itself. And that’s excluding the additional shelf or two they usually have for national brand extra cheap breads like the type you describe.

Im guessing if you name the brand it’s going to be something I’m likely to find at a dollar store or a gas station as opposed to something that’s be in the section for fresh bread.

Fun fact: Walmart stores that don’t have a grocery section still carry bread, but mostly the type you describe.

Walmart’s with a grocery sell bread baked fresh daily in-store, and have dozens of types of bread from whole wheat to artisanal breads that you wouldn’t believe came from a Walmart.

I feel just posting the ingredients list is a bit misinforming as it would appear to be mostly sugar. For those who may be unaware - ingredients lists are supposed to be in order of most->least used ingredients. So 2 of the top 4 ingredients for this bread are sugar (honey and sugar) and the other 2 are the ingredients for bread...

Based on a Google search I think the brand of bread you selected was Nature's Own Honey Wheat Bread [0]. Which, per slice, is 2 grams of sugar. A good comparison might be Warbutons [1] - based on another quick Google search - as it seems to be the top selling brand of bread in the UK. I'm not sure how ingredient lists are required to be ordered in the U.K but the sugar content is nearly half - 1.2 grams of sugar per slice for the first result I got of their product.

But for a more fair comparison let's select Warbuton's Golden Wheat [2] since I feel that's the closest equivalent to Nature's Own Honey Wheat that Warbuton's has, seeing as these items are both wheat bread with honey. Warbuton's Golden Wheat contains 2 grams of sugar per slice. Equivalent to that of Nature's Own.

I assumed you were trying to single out the U.S for having sugary bread, but if I've misinterpreted the meaning of your post feel free to correct me.

TL;DR

Namebrand-popular U.K bread isn't any better than Namebrand-popular U.S bread when it comes to sugar content.

[0] https://www.instacart.com/whole-foods/products/16658256-natu...

[1] https://www.warburtons.co.uk/products/bread/white/800g-mediu...

[2] https://www.warburtons.co.uk/products/bread/wholemeal-brown/...

Salt and sugar (or corn syrup) confuse the tongue and keep it "addicted".

I have removed both (added) salt & sugar from my cooking for a year now and I am finally at a stage where I can actually taste all the ingredients in the food.

Someone else was making a comment about freshness of tomatoes. There isn't any :) Now add to that 0.5 spoons of salt and 1 spoon of sugar and you taste nothing at all. This way "they" can make you consume the most bland ingredients and you won't even notice it.

I did this as well for a bit. You get to the point when carrots, tomatoes and potatoes taste incredibly sweet and broccoli, if not murdered, tastes marvellous. I ended up growing a load of things.

Then there was a relapse :(

Add salt and fat; we started taking those out when we started adding sugar.

It is well worth growing your own tomatoes. The taste explosion of a freshly picked tomato is just incredible!

that's if you do it right. I'm a bad tomato grower and my tomatoes don't taste any better than the store bought ones.

but occassionally, a grower at the farmer's market will do it right and you CAN really taste the difference. Man, did those tomatoes really taste like something else.

> a decent tomato

This is unfortunately an issue worldwide. Fresh tomatoes are a giant pain in the ass to grow. Flavor varies significantly. Getting decent ones here in the Pacific Northwest is basically a crapshoot at best.

"The problem with today's tomato crops is that the fruit is too large. Growers are focusing on size, but as the international team of researchers has discovered, the bigger the tomato, the less sugar it has and the less intensive its aroma."

http://www.dw.com/en/what-makes-tomatoes-tasty/a-37292102

I grew up in the village where we used to grow our own tomatoes and it's simply not true that bigger ones taste differently. An average tomato (6-10cm in diameter), usually tastes just the same as a much smaller one growing on the same plant. Actually I didn't notice any difference in taste based on size. For a cucumbers that was definitely the case, once it passed certain size, cucumber use to become much less tastier, but tomatoes all tasted the same, delicious. And as with current tomatoes in the store, in rare instances you can be lucky and find a batch of great tomatoes that taste quite good, and they are all of decent size.

So what I'm saying is that at least my practical experience never even gave me a hint that bigger tomatoes would taste worse than smaller ones. And I was very surprised the first time I heard this hypothesis.

You cannot ship that large tomato you grew in the village, it would be mush by the time it got anywhere. Modden tomatoes are the the equivalent of a cardboard box, and for the same reason.

I had a similar experience with cakes. I have a sweet tooth but I have a hard time eating American cakes, they are just too sweet! But maybe it's a case of confirmation bias... I'd be curious to know the actual sugar concentration.

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