Comment by sologoub | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sologoub | Hacker News Reader

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The poor quality of US food is not about cars, but about the ingredients. When you compare US food vs EU food, you immediately notice that US food has a lot more ingredients and those ingredients are often very questionable. Much of that comes from how profitable it is and how EU tends to restrict things until proven safe, whereas US tends to allow until proven unsafe.

Take bread for example. Bread needs nothing more than flour, water, yeast and some salt. Here are the ingredients for Wonder Round Top White Sliced Bread: “Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Sugar, Yeast, Contains 2% Or Less Of Each Of The Following: Calcium Carbonate, Wheat Gluten, Soybean Oil, Salt, 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), Vinegar, Monocalcium Phosphate, Citric Acid, Cholecalciferol (Vitamin D3), Soy Lecithin, Calcium Propionate (To Retard Spoilage).” Source: https://www.target.com/p/wonder-round-top-white-sliced-bread...

That’s a lot of ingredients for the most basic of foods. I’d argue that’s not a good thing…

While the large cities in US have an amazing diversity of food, the quality of this food is abysmal. US also restricts many normal European foods because of the requirement to pasteurize. While I’m sure the periodic table laden recipes are dangerous if not pasteurized, I personally have yet to have an issue eating EU food within EU norms (yes, things spoil rather quickly by US standards; that’s why fresh food is important).

I agree. They have weird food safety standards!

Especially when it comes to the fermented stuff. Cheese is a good example: most of the good stuff is severely restricted in the US. Idem for cured meat—they mostly don't allow non-pink salt cured meat. Cooking temperatures in restaurant settings are also on the very safe side (finding pink pork is rare for example).

All of this contributes to food that is often underwhelming taste-wise.

It seems like you are disagreeing with GP? They are saying "EU tends to restrict things until proven safe, whereas US tends to allow until proven unsafe"...while you are bringing up the example of cheese and meat, which are more permissive in the EU than in the US, from a food safety standpoint.

I was talking about the additional ingredients/chemicals in the great example when referring to EU being more restrictive, whereas EU is more permissive with traditional foods (also in my comment), which I personally find to be positive.

> Calcium Propionate (To Retard Spoilage)

(Nice euphemism, there. Preservative is a bad word? This deceitful wording should be illegal...)

I don't know food chemsitry, but it looks like they are mostly vitamins, preservatives and softeners/moisturizers. The latter two could be a result of the low density GP suggested: if you go shopping weekly, because Target is far away, the bread needs to feel fresh for a week.

However, added vitamins is either because the ingredients are poor, or to avoid lawsuits from those who expect to survive on only white bread...

> I personally have yet to have an issue eating EU food within EU norms

I noticed this for my favorite dessert: Tiramisu

There are two types of recipes: Mascarpone creme based on whipped egg whites or cream. From my unscientific studies, it looks like European recipes most often use whipped egg whites (eaten raw), while American recipes use whipping cream.

The US has extremely high standards for bacterial contamination risk. This was a change from standards that previously were similar to Europe. For some food products, these changes materially reduced incidence of bacterial food poisoning relative to OECD countries, so it wasn’t entirely misplaced. I am skeptical of the benefit for some foods because the benefit has not been demonstrated. Scandinavia has similar food standards, so exporting food to the US often requires that it be processed in Scandinavia first, which isn’t always worth it for European food producers.

The main barrier to exporting food to the US from Europe is the higher standard of bacterial hygiene that the US requires. The US government is pretty obsessive about bacterial contamination in food.

Those are the ingredients for factory produced bread. You need to go live in a higher density neighbourhood that can facilitate a local bakery. The bakery I (sometimes) go to sells 3-day fermented artisanal hand-made sourdough baguettes for the same price as a loaf of wonderbread. It's the cars.

It’s available where I live, but it’s hardly the norm in the overall US. Why should good food be only in some places and not others?

Just wait until you find out what yeast is made of.

And here I thought “Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom” (Wikipedia seems to agree). What else should I expect to find in that yeast packet?

As an aside, anyone thinking you need all those ingredients in bread should try baking their own loaf. It’s a very rewarding process and is super simple. A good Dutch oven makes it even easier.

Yeast are amazing and useful organisms. Quite a bit of cool content on home brewing/etc. out there.

> And here I thought “Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom”.

Yes, but write out all the chemicals inside them the way you did for the wonder bread.

> As an aside, anyone thinking you need all those ingredients in bread should try baking their own loaf.

As a British expat living in NYC, I am mostly able to find a good freshly baked loaf on the way home from work. On the occasions we can’t, my Polish wife will bake her own loaf, as we would never eat the extremely sweet breads typically found in bodegas/grocery stores. And yes, she only uses 4 ingredients.

I just don’t think it’s superior because of some false pretence about the number of ingredients.

So in other words you don’t eat that yourself and prefer to eat either high end quality food (that’s unlikely to have questionable ingredients and tastes good) or bake at home? Seems we are not so different after all.

So why defend the ingredients intended to make bread last longer and appear fresher than it really is?

Co to ma wspólnego z faktem, że żona pana jest Polką?

> So in other words you don’t eat that yourself and prefer to eat either high end quality food (that’s unlikely to have questionable ingredients and tastes good) or bake at home? Seems we are not so different after all.

Sure -- I never said we were different about what we might choose to eat, but instead why we might choose it.

> Co to ma wspólnego z faktem, że żona pana jest Polką?

That we're both Europeans: it's directly relevant to the OP article and subsequent commentary in this thread.

> That we're both Europeans: it's directly relevant to the OP article and subsequent commentary in this thread.

xD

What's wrong with mushrooms?

Just wait till they realize mushrooms are fungi…

Please enlighten us?

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