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How we're scammed into eating phony food

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Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#231

Post by amelius »

koliber wrote: post #159
misja111 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with tomatoes and many other vegetables and fruits is, that they don't grow in the UK so they have to be imported. If they would be imported only when they were as ripe and tasty as the ones you saw in Italy, they would be rotten by the time they arrived in your supermarket in the UK. So, they are harvested when they are not quite ripe. They will ripen a bit more during transport but they will never have…

Tomatoes are something of a passion of mine. The problems are exactly what you describe, with ensuring that transport will not ruin the fruit. Another facet is not only that the tomatoes are picked unripe, but also that the varieties that are grown are ones which optimize for being able to withstand long transport times as well as for uniformity. Consumers as a group like uniform, smooth, red-colored tomatoes, and th…

What I'm wondering about is when the tomatoes are picked, can't we artificially let the tomato think it is still on the plant? E.g., by applying nutrients through the stem, and using artificial lighting?

Or why don't we ship the whole plant? :)

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#232

Post by collyw »

kevindeasis wrote: post #11
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…

I went to Italy once and it opened my eyes on how I should have higher standards on what I eat, when I come back home Edit: english

Eating out in the UK is all about the location. if a restaurant is trendy people will go.

In Spain people go for the food. There are often queues outside restaurants in which the surrounding look terrible (chairs that look like they are taken from a school 40 years ago). Spanish people understand food in a way that most Brits don't.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#233

Post by TorKlingberg »

orf wrote: post #211
coldtea wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

I came across a great article from 1946 by George Orwell, where he both explains the problems of British food, and comes to its defence: http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-orwell/essays-a...

I think I blame the British connection for some of the issues with American food: overly sweet, fish without bones, little seafood, etc.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#234

Post by kwhitefoot »

jokoon wrote: post #156
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is a huge worry for me. The quality of food in the US is atrocious. When I was there, almost nothing tasted as it should, everything tasted bland and mildly sweet. The only way I found to get decent meat was to buy ultra-posh organic stuff at ridiculous prices, and then it would be no more than on par with the cheapest meat I could buy in Spain. Even chocolate is affected! TTIP is one of the worst things th…

Unrelated, but I was just debating GMO labels on "change my view" on reddit. I admit I was trolling that if GMO are healthy, then ultimately there is no harm in a neutral label. My comments got downvoted very hard. It boiled down that those labels would essentially be a form of misinformation, or that the uneducated public would make uninformed decisions. I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but the post got 400 comme…

The problem with GMO not being labelled is not the health issue it is that my freedom of choice is being eroded.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#235

Post by toomanybeersies »

rukuu001 wrote: post #84
cyberferret wrote: post #7

I am surprised this isn't more commonly known. Locally (Australia), there has been recent furore over the 'blueberries' in most foods (including blueberry muffins etc.) not actually being blueberries, but a bluey chemical gel. Also, a local delicacy, the Barramundi fish is commonly replaced in restaurants with the cheaper, imported, less tasty, commercially raised Nile perch. Same with prawns, where beautiful sea fre…

Additionally, most Australians (don't know about the rest of the world) have never eaten an actual scallop. Mostly they're discs hole-punched from skate wings (a skate's a bit like a stingray)

Here in New Zealand, most of the time when I get scallops they have the orange egg-sac bit still attached.

Is that not the case in Aus?

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#236

Post by aiPhie5u »

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.

Having lived in various EU countries, I'm still amazed by how unaware of taste people are in UK and Ireland.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#237

Post by ghaff »

mac01021 wrote: post #121
Dutchie wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not just protectionism. If I buy Bleu d'Auvergne (it's a French cheese) in the Netherlands, I want to be sure I get the real deal, as a consumer.

But what if someone outside France is able to produce equivalent cheese using the same formula? Why do you care where it's from?

Cheese is actually a tricky example. Cheeses produced outside of their origin geo tend to have somewhat different microbiomes and, therefore, somewhat different tastes and other characteristics. See, for example, this episode of Gastropod: https://gastropod.com/say-cheese-2/

I'm by no means an extremist on the topic. I think it would be pretty silly at this point to say that only Cheddar from Cheddar, England could be labeled as such. But origin naming rules aren't silly either.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#238

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #233
orf wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

I came across a great article from 1946 by George Orwell, where he both explains the problems of British food, and comes to its defence: http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-orwell/essays-a... I think I blame the British connection for some of the issues with American food: overly sweet, fish without bones, little seafood, etc.

A summary of the problems of British food from 1986 would no longer be applicable. One from 1946, even less so.

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#239

Post by tremon »

polskibus wrote: post #38

That's why EU people are protesting against TTIP. We're worried that the lower standards that are common in USA, will prevail, and any resistance will be trampled in private arbitrage courts.

Indeed. For a different angle, see a recent publication by TNI: they argue that TTIP flies directly in the face of the Paris climate agreement.

This text looks like it has been drafted with the main purpose of safeguarding the interests of industry, and the producers and consumers of fossil fuels. Instead of including text that would help to ensure that climate targets can be met, as we had hoped, this text will only make it more difficult to reach the needed energy transition

https://www.tni.org/en/article/ttip-leaked-eu-trade-proposal...

Re: How we're scammed into eating phony food

#240

Post by kwhitefoot »

venomsnake wrote: post #218
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.

But does have a tremendous effect on the food. Of course you can get good food in the US I have been to many restaurants that were both good in an absolute sense and good value.

But you know that there is something wrong when children say "I can't eat this it's too sweet" which is what happened to me when I took my family with me to North Carolina for an extended business trip. In the supermarkets almost everything you can buy is heavily sweetened and seems to be designed for the most childish of tastes.

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