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Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

economist.com

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Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#451

Post by nmfisher »

thundergolfer wrote: post #353
nmfisher wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're joking or not, because the quality of fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and poultry at Australian supermarkets is incredibly mediocre (and even that's being generous). I'd rank Australia near-bottom of the dozen or so countries I've lived in/visited when it comes to supermarket quality[0]. Homogenized, bland food pumped full of water, optimized for profitability, shelf-life and appearance rather th…

To add some context to your comment, which country has the best, and what’s the name of the best chain in that country?

For me, Spain or Italy probably competing for top spot, with one of Carrefour/Mercadona/Esselunga being best for standard (non high-end) weekly fresh shopping.

I even rate Vanguard and Carrefour in China, and Fairprice/Cold Storage in Singapore, above Australia.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#452

Post by alistairSH »

WalterBright wrote: post #373
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?

They used to: "Home Economics" BTW, not learning math can be very costly to your financial future.

My high school offered Home Ec. But my guidance counselor made me take Latin instead (I had already completely several years of French and didn’t need language credits). Probably a good thing - in hindsight, the home ec curriculum was pretty watered-down.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#453

Post by burnished »

HWR_14 wrote: post #446
burnished wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had good luck with frozen edamame, and I understand that freezing improves fish by killing parasites. Fun stuff. Thank you for the information. To clarify, I had intended to convey that they were effectively making stuff up by accusing that other person of some sort of squeamishness.

Edamame is similar to peas, so it makes sense that if one freezes well they both do.

Yep, I only mention it because I recently realized it didn't have to be this special treat I only got when I went and ate sushi somewhere. I can just boil a handful of 'em for four minutes in salty water any time I want. Downright luxurious.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#454

Post by muro »

bradleyjg wrote: post #445
cbhl wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Appreciate" is, perhaps, not the right word. Maybe "worry"? Younger generations grew up on a message of climate change and it can be disconcerting to walk into a grocery store and find the entire produce department to be a geography lesson. This from Peru, that from Mexico, the other from Alaska, all flown and trucked in on a cold chain straight from some far-away monoculture farm. If anything I suspect the increase…

Younger generations are filled with self righteous tiresome scolds. I don’t know where we went wrong.

Maybe by underpaying teachers and getting a lot of weird ones as result?

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#455

Post by 300bps »

Gunnerhead wrote: post #339
lisper wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could buy a subscription.

Honestly, with the amount of paywalled sites posted on HN, it's impossible to have a subscription for each one.

Maybe all these paywalled sites could start a subscription service where you pay one low monthly fee and get access to X sites with it.

Then every publisher that is a member of the subscription service gets an amount of money proportionate to the number of subscribers that read their articles.

Seems so obvious to me but maybe there’s a reason why it wouldn’t (or hasn’t) worked.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#456

Post by alistairSH »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #285
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.

Something I came up with one day because my gf wanted a cabbage dish: Slice a head of cabbage, an onion, and 5 slices of bacon (or alternatively use smoked ham hocks or turkey necks). In a large pot or dutch oven over medium heat, saute the bacon until not quite fully cooked. Add the onion to scrape up the fond and cook until soft. Add a cup of chinese cooking wine, cook for 3 minutes, then add two cups of chicken st…

We eat that as a main regularly (with ground beef or turkey). No rice, just the veg and protein. Although we dumb it down even more and skip most of the liquid steps you mention - just cook up the cabbage and onion in some oil, with seasoning, toss in the meat, and done. Yours sounds richer, but ours takes all of 10 minutes from start to plate.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#457

Post by sosull »

bradleyjg wrote: post #445
cbhl wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Appreciate" is, perhaps, not the right word. Maybe "worry"? Younger generations grew up on a message of climate change and it can be disconcerting to walk into a grocery store and find the entire produce department to be a geography lesson. This from Peru, that from Mexico, the other from Alaska, all flown and trucked in on a cold chain straight from some far-away monoculture farm. If anything I suspect the increase…

Younger generations are filled with self righteous tiresome scolds. I don’t know where we went wrong.

They are oversensitive for sure. But the true mystery is why we, who know better, can’t toughen ourselves up and get over it.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#458

Post by treis »

klodolph wrote: post #332
w-ll wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Neither option tastes anything like what it’s supposed to taste like, to me. The process of making concentrate loses most of the aroma, which is then added back using perfumes which are derived from oranges. Because the perfumes are made from oranges, using certain techniques, they do not have to be listed as separate ingredients, and the can will just say “orange” in the ingredient list. One fundamental problem is t…

>Neither option tastes anything like what it’s supposed to taste like, to me.

That's because the not from concentrate is mostly bullshit. They store the juice for up to a year and preserve it by deoxygenating the giant storage containers. That destroys most of the flavor and so they add in artificial flavor packs rendering the end product an orange flavored beverage instead of juice.

From concentrate is actually better. That's 100% from an orange. You lose flavor from the solidification process but the end result is all from the orange.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#459

Post by jessaustin »

b112 wrote: post #377
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ad…

That's a fine technique. What set me off ITT was the "a kit or a flavor packet" recommendation. I have long considered these to be egregious wastes of money. The ones that act as thickeners are mostly corn starch (which is weird for non-Chinese-food), except a 2 oz packet costs more than a whole tub of corn starch. The ones for flavor are almost entirely salt and MSG. There's nothing wrong with salt or MSG, but they are also much cheaper when purchased individually.

I think this phenomenon started in USA with the "Betty Crocker" and "Bisquick" product line. This was marketed as easier than scratch cooking. There's nothing wrong with the concept (I'm sure there is a box of Bisquick in my kitchen), but it doesn't always make sense from a value standpoint. Also it is less flexible. You could apply the technique you describe no matter what you were cooking, and you could vary the timing and amounts a great deal. The "kit" stuff is more like a chemistry demonstration, which must be carried out fairly closely to the directions on the box in order to remain somewhat flavorful.

https://tastecooking.com/the-thing-about-bisquick/

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#460

Post by christophilus »

onion2k wrote: post #354
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…

There is a bakery producing French roundloaves, donuts and cookies, most produced in the last 24-48 hours. Bread in most instore supermarket bakeries is a matter of cooking frozen dough that arrived on a truck rather than making anything from scratch. What you buy was produced a lot more than 48 hours ago.

It’s usually terrible. Whole Foods (used to— haven’t been in a while) have decent fresh bread. But in general, US baked goods are awful vs any other country I’ve visited.

I make no-knead Dutch oven bread and used to make my own sourdough. It’s hard to top that, and almost everything is downhill from there.

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