French cheese under threat from lack of microbial diversity

And this leads me to Chouffe and McChouffe beers, and Lupulus.

Except in a tiny number of cases it is unpleasant but short and not threatening (remember to drink a lot, though, the most dangerous effect is dehydration).

Definition of warm or cool can't be the same with this kind of difference - and I'd imagine similar could be said about the US, they have southerly regions where hot and wet indoor ambient atmosphere can't be cheese-safe most of the time. You guys are having it easy when it comes to food safety.

Putting entire political-social-economic discussions aside, this argument relies on "Wonky Veg" being cheap from farm to market, which isn't always the case, and therefore do not work at scale in real world.

Put simply, perfectly equal-sized and spherical tomatoes roll easier on conveyor belts, fit nicer and denser in cardboard boxes, slices evenly with machines, and therefore often cheaper to your table than odd shaped ones, at the same time being more lucrative to trade.

Of course it feels wrong to grow crops only to crush some, I wholeheartedly agree, but this needs a bit more thoughts than trying to "just" save them.

In the same way that a sudden interest in therapy for dogs would prove that dogs were suffering from a mental health crisis. Yeah, you want to sell produce at a premium so that somewhat well-off people can feel like they are making a difference? Sounds good to me, yup yup. I mean the vagaries and arbitrariness of upper/upper-middle class social signaling is a trope in itself.

Then there’s the crucial farmer link. Which is just some loose “farmers we’ve talked to, like X” (one step above “people are saying”) and a link to a human interest or whatever you call those uninteresting subject-driven The New Yorker articles.

I don’t know how people are in the USA (spoiler alert), but where I am from food is the everyday grocery product that people are most stingy about.[3] Lower prices are always good. So it seems bewildering that the consumer would send such signals to the Market—surely this would cause higher prices for the consumer? Not only that but here (like in America) there are farmer subsidies. Payed for by tax payers which are also consumers.

(And Americans care about food æstehetics that much? Well let’s look to the article again: “Psychologists argued that the lack of public interest in ugly food was connected to self-esteem.” What the fuck? Seriously?)

Not to mention inflation which makes such everyday products more expensive. Which everyone who cares about Economics on this site seems to be tearing their hair out over on a weekly basis.

The article talks about how these noble startups are enabling ugly produce to be sold to smoothie retailers or whatever. Or juice factories... like the Market is so catastrophically mismanaged that you need a hipster startup for that? To connect that an orange shaped like Steve Buscemi doesn’t taste bad as juice?

I am not being negative about the article by the way. Just the Movement. The article raises the question several times about whether this is really A Thing or if it is an astroturf, someone trying to make a buck on real climate change and environmental issues. Just look at penultimate paragraph.

> The ugly produce movement exemplifies the twenty-first century consumer’s reliance on social media to navigate lifestyle changes. Food waste isn’t a simple problem; it’s an example of the broken agricultural system’s inability to distribute resources in a way that benefits all consumers. If individuals really want to be part of the solution, they have to look beyond the glitzy marketing of ‘socially responsible’ firms and become more vigilant of companies that claim to have an answer for everything.

Would you look at that.

A somewhat funny part is where they describe how the customers of these things are higher-income because it is more expensive. So the Market is so screwed up that “ugly food” isn’t something that the poor buy out of practical necessity? It’s been relegated to social indulgences-buying upper-middle class uh, people?

All in all this damning evidence that you have presented here demonstrates to me that The Ugly Food Movement is a silly, boutique food practice that some I Want To Make a New Consumer Need marketing firm cooked up, some startups made A Thing, and that upper-middle class water cooler NPCs are probably now doing the good work of spreading the word about.

[1] Because if this was about consumer choice, according to these startups, what difference would a new kind of company make?

[2] “One innovative company called [Redacted], based in [Hipsterville, USA]”

[3] Just imagine if people were given the chance to buy almost-expired or some other such ugly food... and of course they are and people love it. Why the heck do you need a startup for that?

First swiss often do fondue with 2 different cheeses, the usual moitié-moitié mix of Vacherin fribourgeois and Gruyère. Then sometimes you have 2 to 3 different raclette cheeses because you like different tastes. Then there are the cheese you might grate on your pastas (in my case I would usually use italian cheeses) and the different cheese you want to offer at the table in regular diners + the ones dedicated for the aperitives like Tête de Moine...It can add up quickly without being a nerd.

We do the same but with cheeses.

I'm not from one of the big cheese nations of Europe, when I grew up we had one kind of cheese for everything, but a couple of years ago I tried to broaden my palette, buy everything I could in local shops and supermarkets, and remembering twenty different kinds of cheese is not difficult.

What also helps is that these cheeses are significantly different, so Emmentaler, Camembert, Parmigiano Reggiano, Mozzarella, Bavarian Blu, Manchego, Pecorino, Gouda, Feta, etc, they all are very different, and most supermarkets in Europe have them all, so you can try out things easily.

It's part of your culture because you discuss guns all the time, well in France, we do the same but for cheese.

Again idk about paris. Lived in france for many years and still back regularly for family. But spent maybe a week total in paris, and even that was over a decade ago.

Reminds me of Luther Burbank:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burbank

Johnny Appleseed is American. The US has a huge diversity of apple trees based on locality.

However, like so many things, said diversity is seasonal. There is a good reason for pressing apple cider--you need to do something with the enormous number of apples you couldn't eat directly.

If you want apples out of season, you're only going to see the mass-manufactured ones.

IF you take the seeds of a tomato you will get a mostly decent tomato out of it. IF you take the seeds of an apple or a haas avocado you will likely get something that looks nothing like its parent. Unlike tomatoes it takes a LONG time to grow a tree, so if you want an avocado or apple orchard your going to use grafts to make sure you get the best chance of having a good product in 5 or 10 years...

The economics of commonality should be readily apparent... pick something that you know works for your multi year bet to pay off sounds like a good plan.

Avocados are also interesting because we DO get other varieties due to how it reproduces (you need plants of both sexes). IM fairly sure that apples do not have this issue so farms are monocultures.

Add on to that the fact that the varieties we see are designed to be kept long enough to have a birthday and this is what you get.

ie, most of the time they won't be sweet eating apples- in the US in particular this used to be less of a problem, because apples were for cider / alcohol. During prohibition entrepreneurs got active in trying to save their industry (while others were just ploughing orchards over) and we get modern ideas like "an apple a day" and the whole modern sweet eating apple became very mainstream. Not that eating apples weren't a thing before that, but it helped explode their popularity in modern western eating habits.

I just checked the websites of about half a dozen orchards within a reasonable driving distance from me, and they all had a range of 30-40 varieties. Not all will be ripe at the same time; 15-20 all at once is going to be a huge orchard!

Five Guys also showed up, their pistachio shake was intriguing but a huge disappointment.

I don't like what Paris has become, multiple French bistros have dropped in quality post-COVID(in my opinion).

Also seems like Costa coffee has abandoned the city? Their coffee wasn't anything to go crazy over but it had good memories when I was a broke unemployed dev touring Europe via backpack.

But that's not whats being claimed. He's rebutting the claim (which the original commenter may or may not have implied) that artificial banana flavor is like the old banana's that dont exist anymore. He, nor anyone here, is saying artificial banana tastes like real banana. And if someone like that shows up lets get them.