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Comment by emteycz | Hacker News Reader

In Europe we have microwaves everywhere, but we don't use them to heat industrially prefabricated food; instead we re-heat food we made ourselves, or got at a restaurant.

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These kind of blanket comparisons between Europe and (presumably) US tend to fall flat; my general impression is that’s the main use of microwaves in the US as well. US restaurants have fairly large portion sizes and people take the remaining food home to reheat eat later.

To stray away from "blanket statements" and "general impressions", can we find the sale of microwave meals differences between the US and Europe? I would imagine that would be the most telling statistic.

If the US uses microwaves 90% to reheat hand-prepped meals, 5% to heat water, and 5% for mass produced meals, and Europe’s figures are 94.5%, 5%, and 0.5%, the sales stats per capita may well show that the US eats 10x as many microwave meals while still mostly using their microwave to reheat hand-prepped food.

I think that line of reasoning is a trap. It is easy to come up with narratives that paint people in other countries as being “weird” in some way, but we shouldn’t. The UK has all its articles about weird EU regulations, the EU have articles about the funny things Americans do, and the Americans read articles about how weird Japan is.

This isn’t a celebration of diversity, it’s an industrial process where you find something bizarre or distasteful about another country and amplify it for views on social media.

I don't think that's the only result of that line of reasoning. We don't have to poke fun of other cultures in order to appreciate the differences. Sure, the lowest common denominator of these types of mass-produced articles are to ridicule or present as a freak show, but I feel that in a more curated and personal space like hacker news we can identify the differences and explore their deeper meaning without succumbing to the mean.

Nah, ready meals exist in Europe as well. Even in France. "Busy lifestyles" (ie the increasing demands of paid-work over domestic-work) are everywhere. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/europe-ready-meals-...

French ready-mades are horrible though, solidly in the microwave-reheat category rather than steaming something fresh. I had the feeling it was more about cost, than about speed.

Here in NL, we have these, which I associate with microwave meals: https://www.ah.nl/producten/product/wi57542/ah-cordon-bleu-m...

However, there are also meals like these, which are based on steaming fresh(er) ingredients, rather than reheating a fully-premade meal: https://www.ah.nl/producten/product/wi386070/ah-stoommaaltij...

The latter are really pretty good, even if I rarely buy them. The former are awful.

What are you on about? My local supermarket has rows and rows of industrially prefabricated food ready to be reheated in microwaves, so I'm assuming someone is buying them. Hell Picard built half their business around selling just that.

Any supermarket here in Prague (or elsewhere in CZ) has at most one row of this stuff. Mostly not even that, just a fridge shared with some other low interest specialty items like vegan milk/yogurts. I've seen the same microwave meals for literal weeks until someone took 1 (out of 5 displayed of that kind) in the supermarket I frequent. I can't imagine buying a microwave meal - a tasty, warm restaurant meal costs just 1.25x more, there's much more of it and I can buy it wherever I am using an app.

Ze only microwävez I häff are ze Wifi in my laptops, which usually are switched off, because I prefer wired connections.

I von't häff zem cooking my precious body fluidz, no no!

But seriously, I've never seen the need for them so far. Pots and pans on induction cooking plates, baking oven, water heater it is for me.

I'd consider the new solid state ones, should they be available for consumer/mass market kitchen appliances when the need to replace my oven arises. Until then? Don't care.

When you eat at a restaurant in Europe, half the food comes from the microwave.

But pre-prepared by the restaurant, not a ready-made meal from some wholesaler.

I wouldn't be too sure about that: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/07/08/200106073/fr...

Which country is that?

Exactly that I use it to heat up stuff or maybe defrost frozen food Never ever actually "made" something it it

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