The whole article is just too many words to say
Because our legally mandated food standards are better
Why use more word when few do?
European food is better.
Why many words when few do trick?
D’oh. I knew it wasn’t quite the right quote.
even less:
Europe is better
Legally Mandated
Rrrreeeeee COMMUNISM!!!
– Average American
Exactly what I was thinking. I didn’t read the whole thing, but figured that’s where it’d end up.
I did read the whole thing and thought it was a long winded intro to making an actual point. Then it didn’t.
Wishful thinking, mostly.
EU food standards are fast far far more stringent than USA? That’s not wishful thinking
I thought that the article implied the opposite.
My bad in that case.
Are you a US american? It would be such an US thing to go to a european community and think “our” means US stuff.
It literally is.
I only skimmed the article, but I am in Europe frequently. I go to the grocery almost every single time and rarely eat out. The food is better in Europe than in the US with the qualifier that it’s better at affordable prices. You can get decent stuff in the US but you’ll pay more and the variety is limited.
The overall average food is less fucked with, less processed, and fresh foods are generally of better quality.
Well, except maybe the UK. I find it harder to get decent stuff there, a lot of the store is full of packaged carb-y junk like the US.
I’ll never forget ordering a salad at the only place open late in the off season in the south of France (they served “american” food) and receiving the most delicious plate of chopped greens and vegetables I’ve ever had. It wasn’t even my first meal in France. I don’t think it would have been special to a local, it just tasted like food, not like the tasteless papery stuff I was used to.
Raw ingredients are just awful in the US, unless you shop directly from farmers, and every place you might eat out is supplied by the same very low quality company. Its honestly a bit of a nightmare and I think most people just don’t know or try not to think about it.
There’s a makeshift farmers market in a parking lot every Saturday near my mom’s house. I text her a week in advance if im coming over to visit to get me veg and fruit. It’s the only time the kids really eat their veggies and they love the fruit.
It’s crazy how much better it tastes.
The US could learn something from Europe and Europe could learn something from Japan when it comes to healthy food.
Food Is Better In Europe Than In The US
This was 96.4% true until the UK left the EU. Now it’s 100% true.
The UK is still part of Europe.
Not when it comes to food culture
Food in (some parts of) the UK got dramatically better over the last few decades. When people bash it I always wonder whether they’re working with outdated information. It used to be pretty awful. But recently when I travel from Canada to the UK the food is one thing I look forward to.
If you compare the diet of a regular blue collar worker in Manchester with the diet of a blue collar worker in Lille, Dortmund or Kraków I can assure you British guy will have the worst diet.
people have many good reasons to bash the uk, but the food isnt one. Maybe if theyre talking about traditional recipies, sure. But in terms of availability and variety, I’ve seen far worse here in ‘continental europe’.
Hey, don’t knock the UK’s traditional recipes. The British should learn to be far more proud of their food.
People who will dismiss Shepherd’s Pie (a tremendous dish when made well) will then go weak-kneed at a bloody moussaka or beef ragu because they’re fancy and exotic… There’s nothing wrong with a steak and kidney pud, or a bloody good roast with all the trimmings, or a corned-beef hash, or a cornish pasty, or a good kedgeree made with leftovers or… Well, point is there is loads of amazing food in the UK culinary tradition. That most of it doesn’t involve salad leaves artfully balanced on top of a cherry tomato owes more to climate than cuisine; nobody wants that shit when it’s winter outside 11 months in 12.
I swear the whole “British cuisine is bad” thing is just a conspiracy cooked up by the French in order to distract everyone from the fact they’ve elevated overcomplicating otherwise thoroughly unremarkable dishes to an artform. If you’ve ever worked in a French factory and had to chew on horsemeat with the texture of a car tire in the canteen, you’d know the caraffe of cooking wine isn’t there to provide a touch of exotic class, it’s to try and numb the tastebuds. (The Italians though, they get to judge tbf.)
The British diet may be awful, but it’s not because British cuisine is awful, it’s mainly because of shovelling junk food - mainly US in origin - instead of the traditional food.
It’s part of Europe the same way a divorced dad who moved out is still part of the family.
The EU does not define Europe. Istanbul is in Europe. Moscow is in Europe. The UK is in Europe.
The UK refuses to admit they are Europe. And, consult a globe, they are an island off of Europe.
They’re a series of islands in Europe*, most of them pretty close to the European mainland. I’m from another European island, a bit further out. The next landmass over is North America.
Ignoring e.g. Falklands for this.
And Guam, and even US embassies based in Europe are technically part of the USA too, but that’s not what’s being referred to.
Guam and US embassies in Europe are not part of (or in) North America. That would be the corresponding statement.
And northern Ireland is not in Great Britain.
But it’s in the UK. Honestly, I think that whole set of nations and kingdoms and islands and whatnots was constructed by a demented maths professor for an exam on Venn diagrams.
Yes, in the UK but not Britain. However some identify as British. Very confusing if you’re not familiar.
And that’s an area of regional conflict with terrorism that has come to peace.
Because food is better in Europe than in the U.S.
Wish I could get affordable smoked salmon, comté cheese, and real baguettes in the U.S.
I just want unsweetened sandwich bread. Only Aldi seems to have it at a good price here, and they aren’t everywhere
I don’t know much about time management or ingredient prices where you are, but is it an option to bake it at home? I started doing that here in Scandinavia after getting angry at the pricing for brown seed-filled bread.
I actually hadn’t considered that. I’d have to find a good whole wheat flour and have space for a bread maker, but thanks for that idea, I may try that, and add seeds of course.
If you don’t have space for a bread maker, you can make some pretty excellent no-knead loaves with nothing more than a big bowl and a spoon
In my experience I found that not only in Europe, but also in other continents the food is better than in the US. The reason? US people put too much cheap cheese on everything.
Having moved from the US to the EU recently (but having visited for 25+ years). Yes, the food is better in the EU.
The US food is over processed sugar infused sawdust unless you work hard to get specialized and direct from small farms sources.
Here in the EU I walk to any corner store or street vendor and it’s consistently amazing.
Horse shit. Unless your actual complaint is you have to drive to get there.
The VAST majority of towns have multiple sources of fresh healthy food, in just about every grocery store.
Uhhh… As an American who’s spend a huge amount of time abroad as well, I always baffles me how hard it is to eat healthy in the US. The healthy things cost more (fresh local produce, local meat, etc) and the cheapest shit is always the worse for you with ultra processed crap everywhere. Not that you can’t find a plethora of ultra processed elsewhere, it is just more expensive in much of the world.
The fact that you have to work to eat healthy in the US and spend more to do it, is absolutely a fact.
And that’s not even getting into the interesting quality of dishes you’ll get in regional difference throughout Europe as well as the rest of the world. Whereas, the US seems to thrive on selling the same food everywhere. Burger, Pizza, Hot Wings, chicken strips, house salad (with tomato, carrots slivers, maybe cucumbers), etc, etc. I swear you go into any random restaurant in the US off a road trip, it’s the same food and you have to work hard to find something interesting like steak tartare, or freshly made pasta, or a real greek salad without lettuce (like the Greeks do!), or impala steaks, or even a decent duck confit.
Even saying this is making me enjoy the fact I don’t have to fight with avoiding a Kroger, Walmart, and even now the Whole Paycheck, to find a local chain and be horrified that even they are selling Chiquita Bananas and Hass Avacados. I do miss my local ethic shops for their flair, but I’d rather have my cafe Paella and a amazing glass of house wine that isn’t totally $50.
/r/IamveryCulinary shit.
None of this has a basis in reality. You walk in, there are giant sections of veggies, cheap, some local, some of it season because strawberries don’t grow in February. It’ll be right next to the literally hundreds of pounds of local unprocessed meat.
Y’all have intervened fantasies about the food supply here.
It has a basis in reality, as I have physical visited 40+ countries in the world and lived in some crazy remote places. I’ve walked markets in 6 of the 7 continents of the world, and Antarctic doesn’t have supermarket on the Ross side, just the station stores. And that’s just what I’ve seen over 25 years of traveling for work and pleasure. I have my biases, as we all do, but I’m happy to admit how that changes my perspective. The US is the only northern hemisphere country other than Mexico itself that has a chance at being good Mexican, but it’s still not the same as street food in DF or even Veracruz. That’s one of the many biases, I’ll absolutely admit.
You are an ignorant biased prick who clearly just wants to troll. I’d be happy to talk journals and other “hard data” but as is apparent in your other comments you don’t have an open mind enough to admit you are ignorant, biased, and likely worse. Good luck on your sarcastic journey through life.
Did I say all? No most…
But now that we’re part reading comprehension, I can point out that food deserts exist in Europe as well. Both in the rich counties and those pesky Eastern ones you like to block out of your head.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36360732/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0143622823003156
https://www.slowfood.com/blog-and-news/how-food-injustice-impacts-lives-in-europe/
Y’all notice the lack of truly hard data. Turns out the yuros just ain’t monitoring and it’s highly likely through correlation to be very underreported.
Don’t even get me started on Asia.
Oh my god the fucking fragility and whataboutism.
No one ever said other countries don’t have food desert problems. They absolutely do.
Your original comment is just disingenuous when there are millions of people suffering because of the in the US, and millions more elsewhere as well.
Do you not know what most means? If I said billionaires owned most of the wealth would you be screeching over is usage?
What about 85%+ and my usage of most do you most specifically take issue with?
hahaha hahaha hahaha! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Shoot, food in Canada and even in South America is better than the USA. You have to really put effort into being healthy in the USA, especially when eating out.
I mean the typical American argument is that they don’t want to eat healthy they want to eat a 3500 calorie cheeseburger
That’s… a big burger.
The secret is adding mozzarella sticks
Restaurant food is not designed to be healthy. It’s designed to sell more.
Because European laws prevent food from containing chemicals that are toxic to humans
Because it’s true?
Why some people think food is better
Some people? Don’t you all think that?
I’ve heard French people telling me they couldn’t wait to go to the US so they can “finally” eat great food, citing novelty mcdonalds and ice cream
l guess a factor are also the different local habits for doing groceries.
Here in our home town in Germany we have three mid-sized full-range grocery stores within walking distance, so typically do shopping 3-4 times a week.
Makes it much easier to shop fresh products and stuff with more limited shelf life (this demand causes easily availability for these).As I understand shopping in the US, it seems to be more typical to go shopping only once a week or so to the far away mega-store, making it less viable to buy much fresh stuff and also increases the need for products that have been treated to ensure longer shelf-life.
Since 1977 the US federal government has had to require many grocery stores to sell produce. The margins are lower, the labor is higher, and they use a lot of grocery floor space. Without that intervention there probably wouldn’t be access to any produce at all for most Americans. Capitalism is very much the center of this story. In Europe the varieties of produce being grown are being mainly dictated by flavor and taste, in the USA resistance to insects, cheaper to harvest, size of product are the main criteria when the varieties of seeds to plant are being selected.
Feels like the headline is saying “some people” are wrong.
Around when I was 16, a bunch of really fit and slim girls from our town left to be exchange students in the US.
They all came back with roughly 10-15kg more than they had when they left. Said all bread tasted like dessert.
Nearly everything industrially made here is sweetened and it’s formed a feedback loop where it ensures that’s what “comfort food” tastes like unless it’s homemade (even then many families cook with sugar in savory meals). And since that’s what American food tastes like, companies coming in to American markets add hfcs to appeal to our tastes. Add in the fact that when cheaping out good old fashioned, highly subsidized hfcs is always a cheap crowd pleaser that can hide the flavor of substandard ingredients and processes.
Not being sweetened is more common in luxury and high quality pre made foods here, which means that they’re culturally and financially separated from the average person. The alternative to saccarine foods is to cook, something we often feel we don’t have time for and some will dislike because it tastes different. Also because “health cooking” has a well earned bad reputation here of things such as not using salt, cutting the fat off meat, and cooking tofu with no idea how to cook tofu well.
hfcs is always a cheap crowd pleaser that can hide the flavor of substandard ingredients and processes.
Not for everyone.
German tries American cola for the first time.
So do you think Americans are just lazier at cooking? But loads of that it also due to food deserts, which are much larger of a problem in the US than in Europe. Also, bad education.
I think food deserts play a role, but the biggest suspicion I have is partly how much time and energy winds up devoted to work. While it’s nothing compared to say Japan or Korea, it remains common to dedicate 10+ hours of the day to work and related tasks. With what’s left people often go for quick and easy options like takeout and frozen food. Poorer people also are more likely to have to work longer hours in addition to living in food deserts and having less access to reliable transportation.
But also our food culture changed radically in the 20th century. We were a young country, with a young culture when industrialization hit. When food production changed we got all on board. That recipe that’s been in your family for generations is more likely to come from the Campbell corporation than the old country. And from there a lot of families since WWII didn’t really teach their kids to cook. Maybe they taught a little, but the American monoculture’s idea of foods is so generational that there isn’t the sort of continuity Europeans have outside stuff like regional poverty foods (where every ingredient comes from a can). Frozen foods became extremely popular as women reentered the workforce in the 70s, and this became a huge part of American culinary habit with the famous “TV dinner”
Then we can talk subsidies. In the 1930s we passed a massive collection of governmental and economic reforms to deal with the great depression called the new deal. Among those reforms was massive subsidies to farming intended to prevent a repeat of the overfarming of the topsoil in our primary grain producing region as well as to ensure that small farmers wouldn’t keep going bust. This ultimately resulted in us producing a metric fuckton of maize. To the point where if maize can do something, the only way it isn’t the cheapest option is if petroleum or soy can do it similarly well. We have cheap cane sugar thanks to Florida and Hawaii, but hfcs is dirt cheap. These farming subsidies also are why low quality, standardized cheese is in everything here. Our government purchases dairy to keep it profitable to produce, makes generic mass produced cheeses with it to ensure it keeps, then sells it off en masse. Our government invented the cheese stuffed crust pizza to keep our dairy farmers afloat, same for every other fast food meal with too much cheese.
Do y’all learn to cook in school? Also yeah, some of us are lazier or less willing to spend limited energy cooking. I personally am rare in that most of my dinners are homemade. But I feel ascribing any cultural trend or trait to laziness is more easy than useful.
I doubt that Europeans are making healthier choices primarily from a bigger focus on education around food. I think they come across as better educated because they grew up with laws that encouraged certain food systems. I’d imagine they’d have an easier time naming the ingredients of the bread they eat than Americans could, due to laws. I think the education starts with the politics of the food system.
I’d imagine they’d have an easier time naming the ingredients of the bread they eat than Americans could
Uh, yeah, water, flour, salt and yeast.
But if you’re talking about not cooking yourself, then you’re saying Americans are lazier at cooking things?
I can assure you we have lazy people too, but it’s clearly the regulation which is the issue in the US. Even my dad who was fat by our standards was just completely fucking mindblown of the shape of Americans when he helped them in a Moomin theme park he worked at (as a road train-driver, don’t worry it’s an equally confusing in whatever language you use).
This thing.
