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Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

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Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#141

Post by rvba »

Awful style of journalism. It could be summarized by few sentences: some brands cut production since this is not a popular product and one brand was blocked by FDA since it does not pass the US standard.

Since thr author tries to make a story of what is basic journalism he even invents a (racist?) name for his source just to make the article longer. Luigi? Seriously?

Also standards are standards and the mocking tone of article does not help. We dont learn if that iron level is important or not. Author probably didnt bother to contact any nutritionist / doctor.

Also promotion of a brand sounds a bit like a sponsored article.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#142

Post by rvba »

Scoundreller wrote: post #26
mewse-hn wrote: post #6

At the beginning of the article I was thinking surely there are more important things to write about, but it dives down a pretty absurd rabbit hole. Especially funny is when the pasta spokesperson begins commiserating that the reporter is making more work for them.

It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a Eu…

How is Boeing Max safe for Americans but it crashes elsewhere?

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#144

Post by rvba »

freeone3000 wrote: post #33
Scoundreller wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a Eu…

There are various regulatory trade-offs between safety and cost of compliance. For instance: Cars sold as new in Canada require daytime running lights and yellow rear turn signals, due to extended periods of low visibility. While the running lights are a requirement in Sweden, they aren't in Poland or many other European countries. There's been some effort on standardizing between US and Canada since 2016, which woul…

Daytime lights are obligatory in Poland since it joined EU - so for like 15 years. The standard is the same for whole EU.

If your car does not have those weak daytime lights (small lamps that basically dont do anything) then you are supposed to use the low/dipped beam. And most drivers use low beam all the time.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#145

Post by Stratoscope »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #113
pkos98 wrote: post #103

Hey folks, European chiming in here. If you are serious about bucatini, shoot me a DM and we can discuss importing that precious golden Ambrosia into the US of A, maybe declared as 'alimentary paste', drinking straw - or even use 'the Mexican route' to import it, if you know what I mean. I have to go now, my pasta is ready.

HN doesnt support DM, I think you should put your email or Twitter handle in your profile :)

And note that the "email" field in your profile is not public. If you want to share your email, you need to put it in the "about" section.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#146

Post by rvba »

jsmith99 wrote: post #56
Scoundreller wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a Eu…

That's the importance of regulatory harmonisation. Eg your laptop charger is probably covered in 20 different indecipherable logos showing compliance with every countries regulators, all of whom have standards at least 99.9% identical. The EU has harmonised regulations internally in order to make completely free trade work, so a single 'CE' logo is enough to show compliance for the entire EU. Regulatory harmonisation…

Note that there is the CE symbol (confirmation of Europan standards) and there is also a very simila CE symbol that means "China Export". The second one does not have anything to do with European standards. It is deceptively similar.. guess why

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#147

Post by Carioca »

teorema wrote: post #138
bamboleo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And awkward as hell too. Maccheroni is a shape of pasta, but apparently all pasta is "enriched macaroni" in the US?

"Macaroni" is a very old synonym for "pasta". It used to have a different broader meaning than the shape.

In (Brazilian) Portuguese, all pasta is called "macarrão", no doubt from the old Italian word

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#148

Post by Stratoscope »

twic wrote: post #59
legerdemain wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't whether the word "alimentary" means anything. You probably know related words like "alimony." (Tangentially, the humorous novel Through the Alimentary Canal with Gun and Camera is a surprising early precursor to Fantastic Voyage and related stories of microscopic explorers inside the human body.) The point is that calling any food product "alimentary paste" is hilariously unappetizing.

'Paste' is an old word for pastry, too. It makes old recipes rather odd sounding [1]: > make six or eight ounces of paste as No. 319, roll it to the thickness of a quarter of an inch, or a little more, put pudding-cloth in a basin, sprinkle some flour over it, lay in your paste, and then the meat, together with a few pieces of fat; when full put in three wineglasses of water; turn the paste over the meat, so as not t…

When I was a kid, one of my classmates loved to eat library paste:

http://www.letterology.com/2012/06/please-dont-eat-library-p...

Another classmate ate earthworms. I was so enraged by this that I tried to bite his ear off. Fortunately I did not succeed.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#149

Post by throwaway0a5e »

kqvamxurcagg wrote: post #134
sunpar wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think most of the governmental functions in this article worked quite well. Told another way, a firm in the marketplace for pasta found that a competitor was out of regulation with their product, and they found a person in congress who could press a slow-moving and ineffective agency to do better at doing their job: enforcing said regulations. That's exactly what you want your elected representatives to do…

Not sure how much experience you have working with business or government but what you'll find is that large corporates will have 'access' to regulators and legislators who can legislate or enforce on their behalf. The senior people will know each other and get things moving. Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competiti…

What do you think "access" looks like?

There is no "big pasta". There's like a handful of companies[1] that make it all. I'm sure the execs all own yachts but if you were to compare executive fleet displacement it's more of a Venezuelan navy than a French navy. They can't just call up their lobbyist who's already scheduled to golf with a congressman every other weekend and tell them to bring it up on their next trip. Only the Googles and the Exxons of the world have that kind of access.

What really happens is the some company notices that "hey, those other people are doing X and they're not supposed to, I'm losing money because of it. Then they call up the congressman in their district and say "I employ people in your district and pay taxes and I am getting screwed because morons who you have oversight over are not doing their jobs, make them do their goddamn jobs" but in nicer words and with situation specific details. And then the congressman's aid writes an email to someone that explains the situation and asks the relevant people to please take a look at it again.

The law might be stupid and the complaint might be petty but it's better than living in a world where state and federal legislators don't try and solve their constituents problems with government. For every stupid pasta beef there's a dozen more legitimate complaints that cross the desk of whichever staffer is doing constituent relations. My point is that the process of getting "access" to one's congressman is not really as nefarious as people make it out to be.

>Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporate.

This hasn't been my experience but I suspect that it's going to depend a lot on the political optics of the specific industry relative to the representative.

[1] Check out this handy list and research the companies if you don't believe me. https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ Many are owned by larger brands but they are not particularly big businesses themselves. These are on the order of The Office sized companies.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#150

Post by conistonwater »

rvba wrote: post #146
jsmith99 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the importance of regulatory harmonisation. Eg your laptop charger is probably covered in 20 different indecipherable logos showing compliance with every countries regulators, all of whom have standards at least 99.9% identical. The EU has harmonised regulations internally in order to make completely free trade work, so a single 'CE' logo is enough to show compliance for the entire EU. Regulatory harmonisation…

Note that there is the CE symbol (confirmation of Europan standards) and there is also a very simila CE symbol that means "China Export". The second one does not have anything to do with European standards. It is deceptively similar.. guess why

Wikipedia says the European Commission says this is an urban legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export I mean I don't know anything about it, just wanted to point that out.

But then this one https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-H... says it's real, I'm confused.

Edit: I'm going to go through every single device/cable I have at home and examine the font and the arrangement of the two letters now, the C and the E need to be on two circles that overlap by exactly the width of the lines.

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