Comment by txcwpalpha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by txcwpalpha | Hacker News Reader

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The US has its issues with food (in particular, lower class individuals have trouble finding cheap food that isn't junk food), but I'm surprised to read the rest of your comments.

I travel all around the US a lot for work (or did, pre-covid) and all the way down to your fast food restaurants all the way up to fancy $500/plate places, I've never once found it difficult to eat a "standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added". I would say that 80% of my meals are exactly that. I've never once been to a single non-fast-food restaurant where they didn't have multiple different kinds of vegetables on the menu.

There's certainly an issue with portion size at most US restaurants, but I've never found it difficult to get a plate of plain roasted vegetables with lightly seasoned fish, for example.

>It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added.

Yogurt in particular is not really popular in the US, so you will not find it in many restaurants. You can, however, find packaged sugarfree yogurt in most convenience stores and certainly every grocery store if that's your thing. Other than yogurt, there are plenty of sugarfree snacks widely available. Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables, plain fruit, plain eggs, etc, for example.

I suspect your complaints are mostly rooted in simply not being aware of certain brand names or which stores are known for what type of food, because all of the things you mentioned definitely are available as long as you aren't going to McDonald's or Five Guys for every meal.

I would really like to know which fast food restaurant allows "normal" eating. They all use sugar, they are all way too fatty and salty. And vegetables are hard. (No, fried potatoes do not count)

> "You can, however, find packaged sugarfree yogurt" That stuff is a miracle of modern chemistry. It has, however, only a passing resemblance to actual yoghurt. Nobody who grew up in Europe really wants sugar-free. It's "no sugar added" that matters. Nobody wants fat-free, either. And there are quite a few studies making the point that these "healthy" food actually contribute to weight gain.

"Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables, plain fruit, plain eggs"... if you're lucky. Usually, it's sold out fairly quickly.

In general, yes, getting healthy food in the US is much harder than it is in Europe. The vast majority of food here is processed to within an inch of its life, and the remainder is incredibly expensive, because it's treated as a luxury good.

I've spent a few decades in Europe, as well as a few in the US. I'm fairly confident I know which food I can get where in either place - and the US is severely broken. Trust me, I wish it weren't. But healthy food is difficult, and becomes extra-hard as you leave bigger cities with specialty stores behind.

Name literally any fast food place and you can get a plain salad with tomatoes, lettuce, sometimes spinach, carrots, broccoli, etc, as well as various types of plain grilled meat if you want protein. It won't be delicious, but vegetables certainly are not hard to get, even at fast food places. And that's before considering places that actually make a concerted effort to provide healthier options like Panera Bread, which has an even higher variety of different vegetables you can order.

>"Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables, plain fruit, plain eggs"... if you're lucky. Usually, it's sold out fairly quickly.

I've been throughout the US, both urban and rural, and never noticed a particular issue with it being sold out. And Starbucks was just one example; there are plenty of convenience stores that sell the same. I can't remember the last time I was in a gas station or 7-Eleven that didn't have plain fruit or plain nuts available.

I've been abroad as well (mostly in Asia, though some months in Europe) and I really do not at all have the same experience as you. Eating healthily is trivial in the US. I will acknowledge that it is not actively shoved in your face (sometimes you have to specifically ask that a dish be made without sauce, for example) but I have never, ever had a problem with the availability of healthy food.

If anything, I found that eating healthily in Asia was actually more difficult because in many situations it actually is not possible to get a dish that isn't based on some type of high-sodium/sugar sauce, white rice, or noodles. (The nice thing about Asia though is that even if their dishes are full of sugar and sodium, the portion sizes are relatively small, so it isn't as big of a deal.)

You are right you can find vegetables. But they will have a weird taste and/or have a sweetened sauce (or, you just have to sweeten it in order to eat it). This is the same in fast-food restaurants in France thought, Not a critic toward the US

This is really interesting - I'd love to sit down and compare notes how we arrived at two completely different views of the food world. (It even holds for the "plain nuts" comment - I find it incredibly hard to get nuts that aren't roasted and/or salted)

> I find it incredibly hard to get nuts that aren't roasted and/or salted

I don't see plain nuts as often as I'd like in stores, but they are super easy to find online: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=raw+almonds

Here's where Amazon's reputation for cheap fakes is biting them - I'm not risking food from them, since I can't fully trust the integrity of their goods.

But Trader Joe's usually has them too. Safeway sometimes does.

It's not that it's impossible, it's just that they don't have the same "staples" status they have in Europe. Usually, you find raw nuts in the cooking/baking ingredients area, while salted & roasted are considered "party food". And they're more likely to not have the party food variety than the raw variety.

In my house, we've been buying costco-brand (Kirkland) walnuts in mega-bulk from amazon for at least a year, and we've not yet encountered issues with their quality.

Trader Joe's has decent nuts, but their prices are not competitive when you buy in bulk.

Walnuts, in my opinion at least, don't vary in flavor that much (compared to almonds for example). So... walnuts are walnuts: always buy the cheapest! :)

> I've never once found it difficult to eat a "standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added".

Actually, I find that a simply prepared, decent (not excellent, cut of meat) steak has now become a rare thing and is ferociously expensive.

I suspect that there is too much wastage of better meat cuts and that restaurant margins are so thin that every owner immediately cuts back the expensive stuff right away.

Anything other than turkey, chicken, salmon, or shrimp is now problematic to find as a protein. And, with the possible exception of certain kinds of salmon, all those flavors are bland enough that they almost always need something in the dish to help them out (cream, butter, sugar, etc.).

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