How we're scammed into eating phony food • Hacker News Board

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#211

Post by orf » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 9:57 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #192

CalRobert wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I live Ireland and moved here after 30 years in the US. I agree that the TTIP is a terrible idea (and feels a bit like imperialism chasing after me as I exit). Food on the continent is a sheer delight for the senses. However, if you visit this fine emerald isle, you will find the US has no monopoly on bland, mildly sweet food. (To be fair, we _do_ have some pretty great cheese)

> However, if you visit this fine emerald isle, you will find the US has no monopoly on bland, mildly sweet food. Well, apart from whisky, nobody ever considered Ireland a place for good food. For UK of course it's even worse, they're actively known for the bad taste and cuisine.

> For UK of course it's even worse, they're actively known for the bad taste and cuisine.

As someone from the UK I take offense at that, sure we might not be on the same level as Italy or France (but really, who is?) but we have some great traditional food. Pies of all kinds, fish 'n' chips, traditional sausages, good old roast dinners, chicken tikka masala and of course the healthiest breakfast in the world. Tasty stuff. And lets not forget our mayonnaise and ketchup beats all others, hands down.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#212

Post by stephenr » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 9:59 AM UTC

I see a lot of Americans claiming that respecting origin naming laws is "stupid".

Im guessing this is partly the general "disrupt" mentality At work, and partly because based on your bread, beer and cheese, you clearly have long ago "evolved" to have no tastebuds.

Having seen what Americans insist on calling pizza, I can't imagine what you lot would do to other foods.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#213

Post by apecat » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:01 AM UTC

Here's a thing on food science from The New York Times from three years ago I keep referring to. Long but really good read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary...

In the context of new developments of food replacements from the internet (Soylent etc), you can't help but see a tragic waste in how food science has spent all this time on addicting snacks, cynically geared towards heavy consumers.

When I think about this emotionally and feel like oversimplifying, I can't help but to lump this in as a part of the James Howard Kunstleresque argument of how Western Civilization wasted much of the potential of the "good growth period" of global capitalism on completely unsustainable living conditions (suburbia etc).

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#214

Post by avree » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:02 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #130

This article is so over the top that it borders on parody. Start with the title: "Everything we love to eat is a scam". I can provide lots of counter examples to that statement. Other statements with my comments "After reading it you’ll want to be fed intravenously for the rest of your life." - Look up total intraparenteral nutrition and see if you would prefer that to eating. "Escolar is so toxic that it’s been bann…

Did you include Chipotle as a joke, or is it somehow more "hipster" to you than McDonald's...?

I really don't understand this comment. I agreed with the first sentence and then proceeded to get more and more lost until I got to the bottom and found your 'relevant' xkcd that has nothing to do with the article at all.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#215

Post by avree » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:06 AM UTC

lorenzhs wrote: post #193

vkou wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is MSG an industrial grade additive? There's a lot of it in tomatoes.

It occurs naturally in many foods (at varying concentrations), but that doesn't mean we have to smother everything else in it. It makes snacks harder to resist, which is why industry likes it. That doesn't mean I have to like it. Its current usage basically encourages unhealthy eating habits.

It doesn't make snacks any harder to resist than salt.

From a food production standpoint, MSG is a popular additive because it offers an affordable way to enhance the flavor of a wide variety of savory foods. MSG can also be used to reduce the amount of sodium in foods - it contains 30 percent less sodium than table salt, but its flavor-boosting ability keeps low-sodium foods palatable.

All MSG does is add umami flavor, which your body responds favorably to as taste is an indicator of nutrition. So in some way, yes, MSG does make the 'snacks harder to resist', in the same way that literally any flavor makes food harder to resist.

Our body wants sweet/salty/umami/bitter flavors depending on current needs, and naturally gravitates towards foods with those flavors, as taste is a direct indicator of nutritional value.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#216

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:07 AM UTC

kbart wrote: post #68

culturestate wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great argument to whip people into a frenzy, but it's a little bit of a straw man. The US has labeling laws as well - it's not that the government doesn't care, it's that they're nearly impossible to enforce at scale. Without genetic analysis of literally every shipment, how is a regulatory authority to know what's what if the paperwork is otherwise "in order?"

EU does enforce food safety and labeling laws quite well. That might be because every EU country has its own FDA equivalent that provisions much smaller market. Sure, incidents happen, but fake food is nowhere such widespread in EU than USA.

Speculating, I wonder if there's the echoes of an historical effect too: frontier peoples make do with whatever food they can get, in contrast many regions in Europe have centuries old traditions requiring very specific treatments of food items; does USA have that sir of tradition (the only one I know of is putting off-milk flavour in chocolate).

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#217

Post by tirant » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:10 AM UTC

teolemon wrote: post #188

We're trying to end this. Open Food Facts is an open, collaborative effort to try to make more sense of food and food packagings. A bit like Wikipedia, but for food. Using smartphones, you can scan any food item and get detailed and structured data about what you're about to buy/eat. If the item is not yet in the database, you can help by taking a picture, so that next time there will be detailed facts. You can perus…

Unfortunately, if you care about food, you will be buying almost everything unpackaged, so no barcode to scan.

But indeed, it's a good initiative.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#218

Post by venomsnake » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:13 AM UTC

pipio21 wrote: post #172

Food in the US is sh*t. There are great things in the US and UK( from where it comes from), but food is so wrong there. I lived some years in Japan, I enjoyed the food. China, not so much, but is is so big you can find anything, they have gastronomical culture that is different and you have to get used to new flavors. The US totally lacks gastronomical culture. Everything is about money, and quantity. As an Spanish t…

A nation of 300 000 000, spanning 4-5 time-zones, 5-6 climate ones and not a single person with functioning taste buds ... what a tragedy /s

The blandification and sugarification in the supermarket isles does not represent everything a territory has to offer in the culinary department.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#219

Post by CaptainZapp » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:13 AM UTC

lucaspiller wrote: post #9

Not quite the same, but earlier this year I was working in Italy for a few months. I went back to the UK last week and it really surprised me how poor the quality of food is there. I don't mean in restaurants, but the actual ingredients you get in supermarkets. In Italy you can go into even the cheapest supermarkets and get tomatoes that smell like actual tomatoes, where as in the UK they just have no smell. Even tom…

During the 45 weeks of the year in which fresh tomatos taste like water I actually very much prefer canned, Italian tomatos (Pelati), which taste much better than out of season tomatos and can be had for a song.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#220

Post by pcrh » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 10:14 AM UTC

nitwit005 wrote: post #94

gambiting wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in the EU there are laws that say that if something is labeled as virgin olive oil, it has to be olive oil and nothing else. Greek Yoghurt has to be made in Greece and nowhere else. Lobster meat has to be lobster meat, and Kobe beef absolutely has to be Kobe beef. TTIP basically(in extreme simplification) says that if something is allowed in US it should be allowed in any other signatory country - which would…

It's generally suggested here in the US that you buy olive oil labeled as being from California, as the Italian labels are often adulterated or mislabeled. The periodic scandals out of Italy seem to support that view: http://www.eater.com/2016/6/30/12070668/olive-oil-fraud-ital...

Isn't that a problem with US regulations and enforcement, rather than EU ones?