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Comment by lprd | Hacker News Reader

I recently moved back to the US after living in France for nearly a decade. I bought some Maille Dijon mustard thinking it would taste the same...boy was I wrong. I was disgusted, it tasted nothing like what I had in France. Would the recipe change per country? I checked the label and it seems that it was fabricated here in the US, so perhaps that has something to do with it?

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Every food company changes the recipes for their products depending on the market. It was a big issue a few years ago in Eastern Europe with allegations that western companies are dumping the low quality ingredients to the easterners while keeping the same even higher prices in some cases.

This has been my experience as well.

What's worse, the French "Maille" variety of mustard is somewhat mild and boring even in France, and getting mustard that tastes like the 'Amora Fine & Forte' (available in almost every grocery store in France) anywhere in the US is damn near impossible.

Are you sure it wasn't from Canada? I love Maille and every jar I've purchased in the US was from Canada.

I've never had the French stuff to compare its quality, however.

You’re probably right, I didn’t realize that it came from Canada until I read more comments in this thread. I just assumed it was made here in the US when I saw the “nutritional facts” label on the back (they don’t do that in France). If you ever get a chance to taste the real thing, try it! Absolutely delicious with steak!

That's required labeling in the US. Has zip to do with country of origin.

> they don’t do that in France

That's just wrong, food products are labelled according to european regulation number 1169/2011. Moreover, you often find nutri-score labels on the front face: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutri-Score

Yes but it doesn't require the origin of the ingredients, I think that's what the previous poster was referring to?

I was referring to the overall [0]format that the USA uses to display the information. Of course, every country has their own version of this. The format I saw on the jar here led me to believe that it was not imported. Nutriscore is pretty new for France.

[0] France: https://world.openfoodfacts.org/images/products/872/270/003/...

[0] USA: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81SM0Jir27L._SL1500_.jpg

I don't think that's what was meant. US nutrition facts are laid out in an exact format, down to fonts and allowable variations for tall and wide packages, they're instantly recognizable. I suspect this is true in EU countries as well.

Import products are allowed to have a sticker with the information on it, and either the official style isn't required or no one cares. Point being you can tell an imported product which wasn't pre-packaged for the US market, because it won't have what we call the nutrition facts label.

France gets most of their mustard seeds from Canada, much to the average person's surprise:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/27/france-musta...

Americans’ baseline for sweetness is off the charts. I remember a colleague in the US talking about trying natural peanut butter for the first time (ground peanuts, salt and nothing else, as it should be) and complaining about how bitter it was.

Did you have the same experience with mayonnaise?

Which brand? France has Hellmann's and also tastes very similar to the Hellmann's we have here in the USA. My favorite brand of mayo is Maille, which I have not yet tried here.

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