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The Dorito Effect

nytimes.com

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Re: The Dorito Effect

#41

Post by jamesknelson »

shalmanese wrote: post #16
speeder wrote: post #2

I am from Brazil, here our economy depends greatly on commodity exports (meat, soybeans, iron, coal, and whatnot). Producers of commodities, tend to export the best stuff, and sell the crap internally... It has an interesting result: the flavour (or quality, for non-edible products) of some stuff, is drastically different, for example two famous cases is chicken, and oranges, it happened once to each industry to be u…

The same happens for American fruit & Japan. It was weird wandering around Japanese marketplaces and seeing Product of Oregon and Product of California signs on produce that were vastly superior to what I was able to buy in the US.

One thing that weirded me out about Japanese supermarkets is that the Australian beef I've found is totally inferior to any of the Australian beef I've seen in Australia. I wonder if preferences are different?

Re: The Dorito Effect

#42

Post by nether »

rayiner wrote: post #3

In Bangladesh, we had scrawny little chickens that you'd buy live at the market. When we moved to the U.S. I couldn't eat chicken for 6-9 months because it just tasted so bland and flavorless.

Back home in South Carolina, we had apple trees in our front yard. Never used any pesticides or anything, just let them grow. Anyway, they were about half the size of grocery apples, almost completely covered in insect bites, and tasted like ass. Incredibly sour, strangely dry, and very little sweetness. So thank god for pesticides and Fuji apples.

Re: The Dorito Effect

#43

Post by wdewind »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29
beloch wrote: post #27

A significant portion of the blandness of some supermarket foods is the result of processing, with "pro-juiciness" treatments being some of the worst offenders. Chicken (even whole chickens for roasting) are injected with water, oil, and water-binding compounds to plump them up. The water mostly evaporates during cooking so the result is usually blander rather than juicier. Most hams sold today are cured by injecting…

That's at the root of corn-fed beef too! Feeding cows corn the last days of their lives before they get on the truck to be weighed and cut up, raises their weight by far more than the cost of the corn. Its just economics. And the farmers set the beef grades, so beef raised this way is Grade A regardless of how it tastes.

Honestly I greatly prefer corn fed beef to grass fed regardless of economics. Grass fed is nice once in a while, but I think the best is grass fed, corn finished. It gives the meat a much fattier taste, and I've found also gives you a much nicer maillard crust.

Re: The Dorito Effect

#44

Post by sliverstorm »

bane wrote: post #21
rayiner wrote: post #3

In Bangladesh, we had scrawny little chickens that you'd buy live at the market. When we moved to the U.S. I couldn't eat chicken for 6-9 months because it just tasted so bland and flavorless.

Curiously, in the U.S., chickens are bread for breast meat. Growing up here, I never really got a taste for dark meat until I was in my 20s. My grandmother always preferred it. My wife, from South Korea, also grew up with non-U.S. chickens and also likes dark meat. She'll pretty much refuse to eat white meat unless there's no other option. Now that my tastes have grown and become more sophisticated, I have a strong p…

The white meats can still be delicious, but they are definitely harder to cook properly.

Re: The Dorito Effect

#45

Post by jstanek »

m_mueller wrote: post #40
comrade1 wrote: post #13

I had to spend a good amount of mental effort trying to explain to my German teacher, in German, why American pork tastes so bad (or, rather, has no flavor). When I said, 'Schwein, das andere weisse Fleisch, wie poulet' (I'm in Switzerland), she figured it out immediately and was as disturbed as anyone should be.

Wait, is pork really considered white meat in the US? I've never seen white pork, but then again I think I never consciously ate pork in the US - all I know is that ham is absolutely terrible for my taste - but I think I've never had good ham outside German/Italian/Spanish- speaking countries. I'm Swiss btw.

It's marketed as "The Other White Meat".

Re: The Dorito Effect

#46

Post by plenken »

jamesknelson wrote: post #41
shalmanese wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same happens for American fruit & Japan. It was weird wandering around Japanese marketplaces and seeing Product of Oregon and Product of California signs on produce that were vastly superior to what I was able to buy in the US.

One thing that weirded me out about Japanese supermarkets is that the Australian beef I've found is totally inferior to any of the Australian beef I've seen in Australia. I wonder if preferences are different?

Japanese beef is a strange case. Because there is so little land, produce tends to be high quality, but very expensive. Australian beef is imported specifically to fill the "cheap beef" market, so sending the good stuff would defeat the purpose.

Re: The Dorito Effect

#47

Post by eru »

caf wrote: post #38
nostromo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even much of the domestic food you eat in the US is quite old. The average supermarket apple in the US is over a year old.[1] According to Martin Lindstrom in "Brandwashed" it's an average of 14 months old. Food preservation is great and allows us to eat domestic apples year-round, but taste and texture suffers immensely. 1: http://www.today.com/food/apple-you-just-bought-might-be-yea...

It's hard to see how it could be economically efficient to have a year's worth of apples in the producer's inventory. Surely they should be trying to keep the capital tied up in inventory as low as possible?

The article nostromo links seems to talk about one year being the maximum age, not the average.

Re: The Dorito Effect

#48

Post by eru »

nether wrote: post #42
rayiner wrote: post #3

In Bangladesh, we had scrawny little chickens that you'd buy live at the market. When we moved to the U.S. I couldn't eat chicken for 6-9 months because it just tasted so bland and flavorless.

Back home in South Carolina, we had apple trees in our front yard. Never used any pesticides or anything, just let them grow. Anyway, they were about half the size of grocery apples, almost completely covered in insect bites, and tasted like ass. Incredibly sour, strangely dry, and very little sweetness. So thank god for pesticides and Fuji apples.

You could have tried a different variety.

Re: The Dorito Effect

#49

Post by rsync »

wdewind wrote: post #43
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's at the root of corn-fed beef too! Feeding cows corn the last days of their lives before they get on the truck to be weighed and cut up, raises their weight by far more than the cost of the corn. Its just economics. And the farmers set the beef grades, so beef raised this way is Grade A regardless of how it tastes.

Honestly I greatly prefer corn fed beef to grass fed regardless of economics. Grass fed is nice once in a while, but I think the best is grass fed, corn finished. It gives the meat a much fattier taste, and I've found also gives you a much nicer maillard crust.

Where and how are you eating that you are able to sample and differentiate:

- corn fed - grass fed - grass fed, corn finished - other permutations ?

Genuinely interested ... I mean, I know where I can go to get either corn or grass fed, but I wouldn't assume that other variables are controlled for. And then the grass fed, corn finished ... no idea who I would submit that request to ...

Re: The Dorito Effect

#50

Post by acomjean »

nether wrote: post #42
rayiner wrote: post #3

In Bangladesh, we had scrawny little chickens that you'd buy live at the market. When we moved to the U.S. I couldn't eat chicken for 6-9 months because it just tasted so bland and flavorless.

Back home in South Carolina, we had apple trees in our front yard. Never used any pesticides or anything, just let them grow. Anyway, they were about half the size of grocery apples, almost completely covered in insect bites, and tasted like ass. Incredibly sour, strangely dry, and very little sweetness. So thank god for pesticides and Fuji apples.

probably a "real" apple tree. Most apple varieties are created by grafting a branch of an existing variety onto a new tree. Thats why despite genetic variation, they taste pretty much the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting

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