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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

#351

Post by j7ake »

Comparing grocery stores in USA and Europe (let’s say Italy), one big difference is that USA has a much larger variability in quality of products. In usa, You can buy the cheapest meats to the most expensive. While in italy the lower bound of meat quality is capped: a low end meat in Italy is medium to high end in USA.

It makes grocery shopping in Italy much more pleasant than in USA. You go into any grocery store in Italy and you are assured that you will get good quality products no matter what price range you pay.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#352

Post by watwut »

JJMcJ wrote: post #259
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…

> 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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#353

Post by thundergolfer »

nmfisher wrote: post #291
Thorentis wrote: post #188

Australia has the best supermarkets in the world, hands down. Why? Because we grow and produce almost all of our fresh produce, dairy, meat, and seafood. There are some exceptions for seasonal things, but the Australian climate allows for almost everything we eat to be grown here. The solution to this problem in the US and the UK is less globalism, not more.

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?

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#354

Post by onion2k »

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#355

Post by rightbyte »

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?

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

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#356

Post by onion2k »

JJMcJ wrote: post #259
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…

> 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.

It's quick but it requires actively prepping and cooking for the whole time. It's 20 minutes where you can't do anything else (well, you can, podcasts and audio books ftw). Cooking a frozen meal takes 1 minute of activity and then you can do other things for 30 minutes before you eat. For some that's a huge win.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#357

Post by rightbyte »

klodolph wrote: post #326
burnished wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like your railing on frozen food. You realize frozen food is far fresher and less likely to have “chemicals” or whatever is your choice enemy right? I think you're making stuff up here.

No, the sentiment about frozen food being superior is on the mark although the exact argument isn’t correct. Frozen produce is harvested at peak, frozen nearby, and then transported. The texture suffers, but in other respects this is far superior to the “fresh” produce you get, which has to survive transportation at room temperature. Whether you would prefer frozen depends on what you are getting and how you prepare…

> far superior to the “fresh” produce you get, which has to survive transportation at room temperature

Depends on the distance to transport and water content though. I have never eaten frozen pinneapple, but I guess it would be awful?

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#358

Post by watwut »

mattl wrote: post #81
CameronNemo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is indeed why Trader Joe's could never be my entire grocery shopping experience. Even staples like dry black beans are unavailable. God forbid you want to bake something... They have a couple interesting products that I can't get elsewhere, and they don't have lots of products that I can get at literally any other grocery store.

What are you using the dried black beans for that a can won’t suffice?

They taste differently, it us very noticeable. So, soups and sauces. The dried beans soup is my favorite, canned beans soup is crap.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#360

Post by rightbyte »

ABeeSea wrote: post #324
js2 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Stone Crab claws are one of the greatest seafoods in the US. But due to the way they are harvested (single claw snapped off and the rest of the crab thrown back), you have to eat them immediately so no shipping.

Wiki:

> Harvesting is accomplished by removing one or both claws from the live animal and returning it to the ocean where it can regrow the lost limb(s).

Incredible ... sounded so wasteful at first to not eat the body.

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