Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 530 posts

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#371

Post by basisword »

fredley wrote: post #32

UK supermarkets are crap, and have got noticeably crapper in recent years. At even large mid-tier supermarkets you will find a paltry range of fruit and veg, and a maeger selection of almost entirely prepackaged meat and fish. I have noticed many things are routinely out of stock and it can be a lottery shopping for a specific recipe. I recently visited Portugal, and in a small city supermarket there was a bakery, me…

>> At even large mid-tier supermarkets you will find a paltry range of fruit and veg

How much do you need? Is the problem that the supermarkets are crap or that your expectations are stupidly high? Any large Tesco/Sainsburys etc has every vegetable that I’ve ever tasted available all year round.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#372

Post by hef19898 »

iancmceachern wrote: post #244
DubiousPusher wrote: post #172

I grew up in Montana so I am probably one of the few millennial Americans that probably recalls what life is like before supermarkets. They were just becoming a thing there as I was growing up. (Very, What's Eating Gilbert Grape.) We had an IGA in the small town I grew up in. The fresh food options there were borderline Soviet. We went to a butcher to get our meat when we didn't have meat from hunting. We got produce…

Well said. It's about priorities. My wife and I have found we are more culturally aligned with France and Italy. Focusing in enjoying the simple things in life, like a meal made from a few simple, delicious high quality ingredients.

As a rule of thumb, the further south you go in Europe the better the quality of food gets. Especially the basics, like vegetables and meat or fish. That being said, us Germans are bread fanatics. We do suck when it comes to overall food quality. We'd rather pay 100 bucks for a frying pan to cook to cheapest discoubter meat instead of payibg 10 bucks for the pan and investing the other 90 in high quality meat from the local butcher.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#373

Post by WalterBright »

symlinkk wrote: post #350
bruce511 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time involved in living healthy is not in the time it actually takes to make a meal (which is trivial, and can easily take less time than the round-trip to a fast food outlet.) The real time it takes is in the time you need to learn a bunch of skills that make that possible. In an ideal world you learnt those skills at your mother's knee, but we are now 3 generations into "fast food" so it's probable that was mis…

Why don’t we just teach that in schools? Instead of learning that the interior angles of triangles add up to 180 degrees maybe we could learn to cook healthy meals for ourselves?

They used to: "Home Economics"

BTW, not learning math can be very costly to your financial future.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#374

Post by teh_klev »

NickNameNick wrote: post #296
teh_klev wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think part of it is that UK standards are lower when it comes to food This is patent nonsense. Current UK food standards for the moment are aligned with EU standards despite Brexit. > Comparing meat specifically in Portugal vs UK, it's generally awful in the UK, but I've never heard anyone there complaining about it. Therefore, the standards must be lower, even if by simple virtue of people not knowing any better…

I think they mean personal expectations, not safety or technical standards.

Then that's what they should have said.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#375

Post by bobthepanda »

rightbyte wrote: post #355
symlinkk wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t we just teach that in schools? Instead of learning that the interior angles of triangles add up to 180 degrees maybe we could learn to cook healthy meals for ourselves?

Isn't cooking classes quite common? Atleast I had that for two semesters. Mandatory.

A lot of places have abandoned that in favor of optimizing for STEM and the college rat race.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#376

Post by bobthepanda »

watwut wrote: post #352
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 often cook like that but pre-packaged fast-food is in fact faster to cook. I am not saying it should be eaten all the time, but the receipt you describe is not that fast. Mushrooms specifically are time consuming to clean in any non symbolic quantity. And you also need rice/potato with it unless you go keto in which case you need much more cleaning/slicing mushrooms and more meat.

A lot of cooking time can be done async tho.

Rice can be put in a cooker and prepared ahead of time. Some cookers even let you specify a time in the future when it should be ready. Similarly, marinading develops a lot of flavor over time that you could be doing work or errands.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#377

Post by b112 »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #327
jessaustin wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

It was specifically about the sugar content and how American tastes have morphed to expect those things. Good tomato sauce does not take hours unless you're trying to cook it in a skillet on a sidewalk in Arizona. Sunday sauce is a bit different, but that's because you're simmering meat in it. Gravy is an entirely different animal. Yes, it's mostly flour and corn starch, but it's also not the star of the dish the way…

I'm going to hang my comment here! Your corn starch statement made a perfect hook, but there are a lot of gravy comments I don't understand in this thread.

I don't get why people would use flavour packets when making gravy, or why people would use corn starch.

Not saying it's wrong, but that it seems unneeded.

For example, let's say I fry up a pork chop. I may put 1/2 a spanish onion in the pan, and I'd definitely add some cayane pepper and mustard powder. Maybe some fresh garlic.

As the cooking nears completion, I'll add flour over everything, until all the juices and grease is absorbed.

At this point I want to brown the flour a little bit. My heat is little below medium, I want browned, not burned.

So, I try to flatten the flour against the cooking surface, spread it out, make sure it gets heat.

This takes maybe 4 minutes, with me making sure the flour gets moved around, re-flattened, mixed up a bit, so it all browns.

When ready, add in cold water. The amount is try-till-you-learn amount. If it starts out too thick, add more! Now set pan to full heat, and stir repeatedly.

When the water is hard boiling, keep stirring, making sure that during this entire process you are cleaning the bottom of the pan.

If you're using nonstick, instead of stainless or iron, you probably can't do this right. You need to scrape the pan here. You need to forcefully agitate. Right tool, right job.

You may need to turn the heat down a bit, as things thicken. Again, you need to start thin, make thick.

(When you first add the cold water, it will be very water like. Thin. But what happens is the flour breaks up, and makes it thick, so first timers will need a lot more water than they think.)

Two things will happen here. You will collect all the flavour from everything you have just cooked, and the gravy will start to thicken on its own.

No corn starch is required, or flavour packet. Full, lush, flavourful, thick gravy, no lumps, cold water is part of this, and the hard boil after.

It will take a few tries to get it right, but once learned, all things become gravy.

Note: thanks for lettimg me hang my comment here. Also hi.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#378

Post by teh_klev »

jollybean wrote: post #341
teh_klev wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think part of it is that UK standards are lower when it comes to food This is patent nonsense. Current UK food standards for the moment are aligned with EU standards despite Brexit. > Comparing meat specifically in Portugal vs UK, it's generally awful in the UK, but I've never heard anyone there complaining about it. Therefore, the standards must be lower, even if by simple virtue of people not knowing any better…

You have misunderstood the comment. The food selection in Italy, in most areas, is unmatched anywhere else. It's because of what Italians demand. If UK citizens really wanted better food, it would appear. 'Health and Safety' standards and even 'grade certifications' etc. have nothing to do with it.

> If UK citizens really wanted better food, it would appear.

You can get top quality ingredients in Scotland and eat well here too (despite the "west coast" problem).

I'm sure Italy has its own fair share of shit-end supermarkets punting low quality produce as much as any other European country.

> You have misunderstood the comment.

Hardly my fault if the OP chooses to use a very specific phrase with a very specific meaning when it comes to food quality.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#379

Post by bobthepanda »

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 think something that would be more useful, would be to make your own seasoning mixes at home. Since most of the time none of the ingredients of, say, taco seasoning are particularly challenging.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#380

Post by baby »

SoftTalker wrote: post #165
photochemsyn wrote: post #99

Farmer's markets are the way to go for produce if you have farms in your area. Some are overpriced and upscale, some are cheaper than your local chain grocery store. You can also buy grains/beans in bulk at lower prices, often direct from farmer's coops, and have it shipped to your door. Get a pressure cooker for beans, a rice cooker, save on the gas prices as they're electric, and use an induction electric stove. If…

I have never seen a cheap farmers market. Around here they seem to be exclusively for and patronized by wealthy older people, who don't blink at paying $7 for a head of lettuce.

In the US half of the farmer markets are basically expensive scams, but there’s always the legit ones with cheap products. For example, in SF there is Alemany farmer’s market, and that’s it.
Post reply on HN