Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#301

Post by steve_gh » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:02 AM UTC

fredley wrote: post #96

sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it is that UK standards are lower when it comes to food, yes. I know this might be offensive, but I think there's some truth to it. The reason I think there's truth to it is that it works in the opposite direction too. Standards for food are higher in Italy than in Portugal and guess what? Their grocery stores are better than the Portuguese ones. Comparing meat specifically in Portugal vs UK, it's gen…

I think you're right. For example in EU supermarkets you will typically find, separately: white onions, brown onions, sweet onions etc. In the UK: onions. Maybe sometimes also 'large onions'. Same goes for most other produce. It's chicken and egg, as the demand for this won't materialise without awareness and the awareness won't arise without the knowledge there even are different types of onions, I imagine most Brit…

Depends where you are. Food deserts exist, even in relatively affluent countries. The range of goods at a supermarket is different in Bath (affluent) to Maerdy (poor).

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#302

Post by krnlpnc » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:03 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #273

JJMcJ wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fast with few ingredients Slice an onion. Slice mushrooms. Fry up with ground beef. Add a little water or soup stock or bone broth. Let simmer for a minute. Quick meal. Just one of a million examples for quick recipes that take minimal skill. You can even run the veggies through a chopper or food processor.

I regularly grind up a pile of vegetables in the vitamix and drink the result. Prep time is 5 minutes. Cleanup is 1 minute. I'm not really buying the "no time to eat healthy" thing.

Time yes, but also “no lapses in self-discipline” is a factor as well.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#303

Post by yaomtc » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:06 AM UTC

sydthrowaway wrote: post #251

mgraczyk wrote: post #192

It would be hard for me to believe any generalizations about grocery stores in the US. In San Francisco where I live, there are ~5 grocery stores within walking distance that span an order of magnitude in price and markup. Some items are only available at the higher end stores, and items that overlap are sold for up to 10x the price at the smaller, more expensive stores. For example I can get a pint of heavy cream fo…

You are clearly ultra-wealthy, so don’t speak for the majority of Americans

This reads like sarcasm, but I don't know. I wouldn't assume someone is ultra-wealthy because they live in SF.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#304

Post by MisterBastahrd » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:08 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #293

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems with Americans and food is that we've been conditioned to have sugar in absolutely everything, and the 80s made it worse because of the low-fat fad (they just increased sugar content to maintain mouthfeel). Ask any Gen Xer and they'll regale you with nightmares of the dominance of oat bran in 80s cuisine. On the one hand, you get a muffin. On the other hand, it tastes like cardboard flavored with…

The store brands taste like a freaking dessert topping comparatively. True! ...convinced into believing that everything needs to be cooked from scratch and that any meal that involves a kit or a flavor packet is inferior. These kits and flavor packets also come from the store, and also contain unnecessary ingredients. Family members from other generations insist on using envelopes of powder for everything, and they e…

I know perfectly well how to make a gravy from scratch. It's not hard, anyone can do it. Gravy is just flour, fat, stock, and seasoning. Cook it long enough without seasoning and you have a roux. Cook for a few minutes and add milk and you've got a white gravy.

But for a brown gravy to be served with dinner, most people own one fridge/freezer. They aren't going to sit there and reduce chicken or beef broth to make stock, doing the little ice-cube-in-a-ziplock trick, and virtually all store-bought shelf-stable stocks are horrible and virtually indistinguishable from broths. Most don't have the room and don't want to spend the time.

It is vastly easier and more time efficient when getting home from work with mouths to feed to use an off-the-shelf product and doctor it up than it is to go through all the steps needed to produce a similar quality gravy, and there's virtually no nutritional difference between one and the other despite the snobbish protestations of people like Alton Brown, who has never been involved at any level of professional food preparation. He's a drama nerd who found a niche, not a chef.

Go look at a restaurant supply store website. Marvel at all the fun powders and bouillon and other flavor enhancers they have. If Michelin star restaurants can use them, so can you.

Anyway, say you want to make fried chicken. You know that buttermilk is a great marinade. How many different things can you use to achieve a similar result?

You can:

1. Just use buttermilk

2. Rehydrate buttermilk powder and use that

3. Use ranch dressing

4. Use a ranch dressing packet

5. Thin out yogurt and use that

6. Use kefir

7. Literally use any other slightly acidic dressing

The important thing is NOT the buttermilk. It's the acid in the buttermilk that helps keep the meat tender, and the viscosity that keeps it stuck to the meat. I rarely use it, because I don't keep buttermilk around. I usually use either ranch or off-the-shelf Italian dressing.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#305

Post by js2 » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:08 AM UTC

w-ll wrote: post #286

ramraj07 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d trust a good can of tomatoes before I touch the borderline unappealing off season strawberries they have in those markets. Happy that you’re trying not to judge but looks like you still have a ways to go before getting off a high horse. As oogway says, “one often meets their destiny on their path to avoid it.” When I remember the solid research showing people taking multivitamins die faster I keep thinking what m…

I feel the same with with orange juice FROM concentrate vs the shelf stable stuff, everyone calls me crazy for it.

I’m from Florida. You’re crazy. Both are equally bad. If you want fresh orange juice, buy Florida oranges and squeeze the juice yourself. They aren’t very good for eating though. For that you want California navels.

(Florida’s true delicacies are the keylime and the stone crab. I’ve never gotten a keylime in a grocery store that comes close to what grows on the trees in the state. And stone crab you’ll never find in a grocery.)

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#306

Post by jandrewrogers » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:11 AM UTC

wikibob wrote: post #294

jandrewrogers wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this generalizes, it really depends on where you live in the US. I work in Europe and know many US expats there, so this is something we talk about. The consensus has been that the quality and diversity of fresh foods in the US these days is frequently superior in many categories at the median, though notably worse in others. The paucity of good produce is noticeable everywhere, for example, a fraction…

Strongly strongly disagree. The average produce, meat, cured meat, and seafood in the western EU is vastly superior to the average available in the USA. Bread is especially disgusting in the US compared to EU.

That "average available in the USA" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The USA is larger than Europe, but no one would credibly say that these things are all good across Europe. You can find plenty of terrible bread, meat, and seafood in Europe. To call it "vastly superior" is indefensible on its face.

Hence why I referenced the median. It wouldn't make sense to cherry-pick a US city like Seattle, which has amazing ingredient quality and diversity that few cities can compete with, and generalize it to the entire US. I've lived a lot of places and recognize the variance. The ingredient quality isn't even consistent within single European countries, having surprisingly high variance over -- by American standards -- relatively small geographic areas.

If you compare blue collar city against blue collar city, the US is definitely competitive in my experience. I think many people have an outdated view of the food available in flyover country. I split my time between Western Europe and the US, and get around both. I am having a difficult time finding these "vastly superior" ingredients in Europe that you speak of.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#307

Post by coliveira » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC

wikibob wrote: post #294

jandrewrogers wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this generalizes, it really depends on where you live in the US. I work in Europe and know many US expats there, so this is something we talk about. The consensus has been that the quality and diversity of fresh foods in the US these days is frequently superior in many categories at the median, though notably worse in others. The paucity of good produce is noticeable everywhere, for example, a fraction…

Strongly strongly disagree. The average produce, meat, cured meat, and seafood in the western EU is vastly superior to the average available in the USA. Bread is especially disgusting in the US compared to EU.

What I think is worst in the US markets is bread and cheese. They taste terrible, and bread is so bad they need to put something inside to have at least some taste. Fruits are terrible too, but they're not produced here, so that is understandable.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#308

Post by presentation » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:21 AM UTC

This article is mostly about costs but being a Japan resident while most things are more expensive and productd are mostly only around in season, produce tastes so much better than what I bought in the USA so I’m not complaining.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#309

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #304

jessaustin wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The store brands taste like a freaking dessert topping comparatively. True! ...convinced into believing that everything needs to be cooked from scratch and that any meal that involves a kit or a flavor packet is inferior. These kits and flavor packets also come from the store, and also contain unnecessary ingredients. Family members from other generations insist on using envelopes of powder for everything, and they e…

I know perfectly well how to make a gravy from scratch. It's not hard, anyone can do it. Gravy is just flour, fat, stock, and seasoning. Cook it long enough without seasoning and you have a roux. Cook for a few minutes and add milk and you've got a white gravy. But for a brown gravy to be served with dinner, most people own one fridge/freezer. They aren't going to sit there and reduce chicken or beef broth to make st…

By all means, eat what you want to eat. No judgment. I was just trying to understand the difference between "dessert topping tomato sauce" snobbery and "gravy from a mysterious powder that is secretly mostly corn starch" hypothetical practicality. There seems to be a contradiction? Scratch gravy takes like 20% longer than envelope-of-mysterious-powder gravy, while good tomato sauce takes hours. Of course, you can make it on the weekend and throw it in the freezer, but the same is true of homemade stock and basically every other prepared ingredient. (including gravy!)

I literally do have multiple boomer-generation family members who cannot make a gravy from scratch. The "greatest" generation folks in my family, while we still had them around, were also not outstanding cooks. They had an excuse, because they grew up in shotgun cabins eating government commodities. I'm not so sure about the boomers...

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#310

Post by asiachick » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:25 AM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #278

asiachick wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure supermarkets now are better than what you grew up with in Montana but I have the opposite experience. I'm in SF, we supposedly have good produce, farmer's markets, and big supermarkets with lots of selection. But they pale in comparison to what I'm used to from Japan and France. The bread here in SF is horrid and that includes that massively over rated Tartine, not to mention how bad the baked products are a…

I don't think this generalizes, it really depends on where you live in the US. I work in Europe and know many US expats there, so this is something we talk about. The consensus has been that the quality and diversity of fresh foods in the US these days is frequently superior in many categories at the median, though notably worse in others. The paucity of good produce is noticeable everywhere, for example, a fraction…

You're right, I forgot about the cheese shops, because in France I wouldn't have to go out of my way to find good cheese.

But, "Bread is indistinguishable"? WAT? Really? I guess we have different tastes. Other than some sourdough there is no bread I've had that I like in SF. That definitely varies by country in Europe. Hard to find good bread in Germany and some of those northern countries have their interesting breads that are an acquired taste I have yet to acquire.

My impression of fish in SF, LA, Seattle, NYC, Baltimore, is it's not close to France and Japan. The selection is small, the quality mediocre. Maybe like cheese there's some speciality shops I'm forgetting.