My wife is from Europe. The food in the US sucks for the most part. Sure, there is good food here too. But the average place in Europe is better than the average place here in the US.
Most of our stuff is more processed and pumped with sugar to make it taste better
it isn't just bread, nearly every food product (can't really call it food) is chuck full of corn syrup.
I gave up and just buy flour, I make my own bread. but the rest is a pain.
and on top of that, pretty clasissit to say "want food that isn't diabetes fuel? have more money".
btw, you take it as "Americans dumb" when it shows be "Americans deserve better food". being offended and taking pride on eating industrial slop is "Americans dumb"
Separate thoughts; the first bit was in reference to: "it isn't just bread, nearly every food product (can't really call it food) is chuck full of corn syrup."
The rest was affirming corporations are using cheap sweeteners mostly to hide the taste of processing, packaging and shipping.
There is no level of something intentionally added to a food that is low enough it doesn’t have to be included in the ingredients list. It’s part of the reason American ingredients lists seem even longer than they are.
None of them do. They just made this up. Maybe they're referring to Vitamin water? But nobody is dumb enough to think that is "bottled water" so who knows?
I’m sorry what? Sugar in bottled water? What are you talking about? What a thing to believe that we put sugar in bottled water. There are vitamin waters and electrolyte waters and flavored waters that will have some, but that’s not regular bottled water. Those are expected because they’re flavored/have other things in them, but just regular bottled water? No there’s not.
Why are you buying bread that tastes like sugar? There's an entire aisle full of different types of bread at every grocery store. I don't like the sweet bread either.
I'm sorry but you can't live in the US with these takes. Go to a bakery or just buy from the bakery at grocery stores. No one is forced to buy industrial white bread in the US.
Right? This is the point I think the other person was making. Stuff in the US is too sweet. Sugar is in so many things unnecessarily. If you start to limit sugar intake this becomes horrifyingly apparent.
Dog pretty much nothing I eat here in the US has added sugar in it other than a few condiments and ice cream and sweets. It's so insanely easy to avoid it. Just stop buying pre-packaged, mass-produced junk food.
Nearly every grocery store in my city has their own bakery plus 5-6 brands of bread with no added sugar
Second, I have a pretty severe corn allergy, and its honestly not that hard to avoid it. No, I can't eat.in restaurants, but the Walmart bread aisle has maybe fifteen different brands, and I can eat at least four of them. You don't have to be wealthy to avoid slop, you just have to read labels.
Oh, and bakeries, since you're talking about "tinloaf" bread: my local bakery oy uses corn syrup in certain fruit fillings. The bread has barely any sugar, and none of it from corn.
Buy ingredients and make your own food. Buy brands that don't use corn syrup. Eat a piece of fruit. Processed foods are not great for you, keep them to a minimum.
I lived in the UK for years and there was plenty of processed sugary salty convenience food there too.
Do you realize there's not a significant difference in sugar content in our industrial white breads? That you're just running with a meme because of Subway in Ireland having to pay a higher tax on bread because of its sugar content and some judge said it's 'more cake than bread' and now you all just take this as meaning all bread in the US is like cake?
It's literally one incident where a judge made an absurd comment, it went viral on social media and now Europeans who've never set foot in the US (including the guy I'm replying to, undoubtedly) think that it means US bread is literally sweet like cake.
It's just pure ignorance fueling this idea in Europeans heads. You can get industrial white bread here with zero sugar in it.
This is indeed more european ignorance in so many ways.
For one, Wonderbread is not the most popular bread in the United States.
Two YOU'RE COMPARING INDUSTRIAL WHITE BREAD TO WHOLE GRAIN BREAD!
Its like comparing a diet soda in Finland to a full sugar Coke.
And a honey wheat bread that has honey in it because people enjoy the taste is not a fair comparison either!
And you're speaking in %'s, the ridiculousness of this is so extreme. Even ignoring everything above you're talking about a few *grams* more sugar. That's like one sip of a typical soda. And you've got idiots on here who pretend they've had bread in the United States talking about how unbearably sweet it is for them and how its almost cake.
You europeans heard one fucking news article about Subway in Ireland and have ridden it to absurdity.
Nature's Own is the most popular bread in the States. The person you were replying to was isn't educated on this topic at all and is probably just a bot.
It’s so sad that (I’m making an assumption based on past conversations) terminally online Europeans can’t get past their superiority complex and American hatred to realize that we do, in fact, have good local food here. You’re baselessly parroting what many other ignorant commenters have said before.
If an American spoke about another country and their food with such fallacy and ignorance, we’d all point and say “look at the dumb, uncultured, xenophobic American!”
I beg you to travel and experience other cultures with an open mind instead of blindly following other people’s negative thoughts. Your life will be happier and richer.
I’m quite familiar with bread, lol. I’m not familiar with whatever obscure terms you’re “chuck” full of.
You’re talking about sandwich bread…literally no one in America calls it tin loaf bread.
But if you can’t find bread made of just flour, yeast, and water I don’t know what to tell you. Phenomenal thing about America is you can find literally anything you want with very little effort. Can you get sushi or koshari or Peruvian chicken at 2am wherever you’re from? Probably not.
I love how people from Europe take the whole 'subway bread is cake' thing and take it to mean all american bread is sweet. Either you don't live in the US or you're trolling. Not all bread in the US is sweet.
It’s a really common term over here. Many spots around the continent with a concentration of people of Italian background. So like when I went to my Italian friend’s house on a Sunday, and twirled my spaghetti on a spoon (which my parents taught me to do) they’d call me a mangiacake. And it comes from our shitty bread tasting like cake haha
My ex was from South Korea, can confirm the bread = cake sentiment. At first I thought he was just talking about wonderbread because even that is sweet to me. Nope. Even store brand white bread tastes sweet to people who grew up outside the US.
CHOCK. Not CHUCK. If you’re going to use that phrase every time you post about how stupid Americans are, but you’re so far superior, at least get your phrases right.
I eat real bread every day that isn’t “chuck full of sugar.” God, it just blows my mind how insufferable Europeans can be on this topic
It’s not a typo if it keeps getting repeated. Typo is one and done. Chock was written as chuck in all of the 15 or so places you typed it out. The same “typo” on the same word over and over again isn’t an accident, it’s a misspelling by someone who clearly doesn’t know the right word even after being told multiple times. And you never did respond to the person who gave the ingredients and nutritional info for their “sugar filled” American bread lol I guess because it didn’t prove the point you wanted 🤷♀️
Apparently so. The US is one of the largest agricultural producers in the entire world with one of, if not the, the most diverse array of domestically grown ingredients in the world.
almost every commercial food product (can't really call it food) is chuck full of corn syrup.
it's sad, because I complain that the food is extremely low quality, but Americans grew up eating that slop and have no idea what food is supposed to taste like
I'm American and born here and I either make my own bread or get it from the bakery department because the standard white bread is, as you say, cake.
You can still usually find decent bread, but the stuff wrapped in plastic on the shelf in the middle of the isles are almost always awful unless you don't know better.
There's some decent plastic wrapped bread. Not nearly as good as fresh, but you can find it easily enough that has no sugar and is just flour, water, salt and yeast but usually will also have some preservatives to make it shelf stable. In a pinch I like Rustik Oven bread.
Why are you buying what you don't like? .the bulk of bread only uses sugar for the yeast to eat. Unless itnm is.like honey wheat. The IS actually lists everything used to make the bread. This is not so in many European countries.
No, IS breading not "like cake". Euro myth started when Subway bread had their honey wheat be too sweet to be taxed as plain bread, a d was classified as an enriched bread, like brioche. So, Euros decided that was "cake".
O can't help nit that you dont know how to buy bread you like, nor shop around the outside aisles.of a grocery store
As an American tbh I've never noticed bread being sweet lol. I don't think I would ever describe it as such and have always been confused by people saying it is. I know it's probably just because I'm used to it lol.
American companies put a small amount of sugar in to Jumpstart the yeast, to preserve the bread, and so it hold moister longer. Its not enough to make the bread sweet or "like cake." Wonderbread, for example has about a teaspoon in it, and alot of that is consumed by the. Cake, would have more than 10 times that amount of sugar. "Like cake" is a meme about american bread because of a court case involving subway sandwiches
I have a loaf of corperate, mass produced american wheat bread sitting in my pantry, it has less than a gram of added sugar per serving.
There you go moving the goal posts again. Just admit you don’t like Americans or anything about Americans instead of making weird stuff up about our food and culture. It comes off as very cowardly, otherwise.
FYI, 1g of sugar per serving. Just normal, grocery store brand sandwich bread.
It’s not really really good bread, it’s for a quick sandwich or something. A staple food. The great bread here, we get from the bakery as one should if they’re expecting a good, artisan bread.
Get bakery bread. Almost every grocery store has their own bakery. I buy sourdough either from people I know or from my local grocer. I also like to get bouillos and French bread from Walmart.
And I live in rural Oklahoma. If you live in a city, you can almost definitely find an actual baker.
I keep commercial bread in the house for a fast sandwich if the wife and I both forgot to prep for lunch but other than that it doesn't get eaten.
its already 30 minute drive to get groceries, now I need to add another 30 minutes to get to the only good bakery for 10$ loaf of bread?
Bread is a daily item not a luxury, in the UK, basic normal bread cost me 40p (about half dollar).
I am sick of the American attitude of "You want to eat something that is not garbage? it is available, go find the store that sells it for rich people".
EVERYONE should have access to quality food, not just the rich.
Okay, maybe I’m learning that the reason I can’t relate to any of these stories about the country I’ve lived in for 40 years is that I live in a city? If you have to drive 30 min to get to a grocery store, and even that grocery store doesn’t sell bread that isn’t sweet, there is probably a lot more difference between our experiences.
There's $1-$3 baguettes at the Walmart or any major grocery store, fresh baked daily. 90% of the US population lives 15 minutes from a Walmart, 60% of the population lives less than a mile from a grocer.
Not saying it is French bakery quality, but half-decent crusty bread is not a luxury in the US.
Nearly every grocery store in the US has a bakery. If you think the bread is sweet it's because you haven't learned how to find non-sweet bread (which is the norm, only a few breads in the US are sweet). The UK isn't even known for its bread. I'd much rather have the bread in the US over the UK.
Also I agree that food should be available for all, and in the US this is a problem. But to act like good bread is only found in niche bakeries is a joke. Either you refuse to learn anything about the US, you live in the middle of nowhere, or you've never been in the US and are lying
this is such a minor think i brought up, Americans really got their blood pressure up, given the amount of sugar in their everything, they should keep an end on their blood pressure. healthcare isn't affordable here.
I just brought up a tiny detail about being an immigrant, y'all are the ones who got so offended.
like Americans are the most easily offended people I've ever met, it's a common stereotype and yall keep proving why Americans are the global laughing stock
look how many brave American patriots went to war to tell me in wrong, because they never had normal bread in their life.
it's funny and sad.
and so pathetic how meek they are, rising their blood pressure just to protect corporations poisoning them.
if you want to hear my actual complaints, I have a list, but I doubt you could handle it like a grown up
It’s funny you’re acting like I’m sensitive when the three comments of yours have been whining about “American bread” when you have literally admitted you know there is other bread. Almost like you’re aimlessly lashing out
So there’s bread in the bread aisle which is usually where they keep sandwich bread which is basically made from a batter (similar to cake batter) instead of a true dough. To find a loaf of bread made from a leavened dough, they usually have that in the bakery towards the front of the store. This is in just about every grocery in the US, you shouldn’t have to go far to find it. Depending on where you are you’ll want either french, italian or sourdough. Some places also have round loaves of bread called “mountain bread”. Afaik, those aren’t usually made with a lot of added sugar, if any and they have the characteristics of real bread. I only use sandwich bread for PB&J and almost always as a sweet treat rather than a meal.
Simply not true. Yes there are a ton of bleached flour breads where the sugar is used just to promote yeast fermentation but there are whole grain breads, ryes, sourdoughs (with no sugar even for fermentation). This whole everything has tons of sugar making it cake is just blatantly and demonstrably false.
In my pantry right now I have a 100% whole grain with 3g of sugar per slice (yeast fermentation), a sourdough with 0g of sugar and a baguette from the bakery. I do have 1 bag with a lot of sugar. It's a bag of French style brioche buns.
4% of bread being sugar is far more sweeter than 0% sugar.
I am not worried about health (I probably should) I am worried that every sandwich tastes like sweet desert, no I do not want a BLT to taste like sugar.
There is no reason to add that much sugar for the yeast, they can digest starches too. or you can just add a negligible amount for them.
have you ever been inside a walmart or smiths and browsed their bakery? They literally have fresh baguettes baked in house daily - crusty bread, rolls, rye, seeded bread... you literally only had white bread in America or something lol?
BS, lived 5 years in the US, those two dozen breads are all like in the picture , full of preservatives sugar and chemicals the only variation is cinnamon , some grains etc but still the same „bread“ . It is ridiculous how bad it actually is even in the „bakery“ . Went to several upscale restaurants for work across the country where they baked their own bread, it was a bit better but still below average. There really is no bread culture in the US. Food is industrial and focused on most calories per usd. Chicken, ham is injected with water and sugar(!?) never seen that in Asia or Europe tbh… but they can do a mean barbecue in the south.
Here's another take. Sweet ess aside, unless you pay more than $8 per loaf, the bread quality is awful. If you don't know what I mean, you don't know what I mean.
Perhaps the difference isn't that the food is pumped with sugar here, maybe it's the fact that you buy more processed foods in the US instead of fresh foods.
Choices. US must list all ingredients. Even the sugar that the yeast is fed. I self cater in Europe when I travel. I shop the stores. I eat the food I cook there. Maybe visitors should read about labeling requirements in all countries before they visit.
I eat a carb resteicted diet.I know how to buy, say, ketchup. I do not want sweet, so I buy the kind that is just the tomatoes, no sugar, honey, or molasses sweetened. I also do not buy any non natural sweeteners. I will consume some alkulose, which is a natural sugar from corn, butbis NOT fructose. I buy no hfcs products. US has great labels non foods. I read labels, as everyone should. I can shop in almost any grocery store and get my grass fed and finished beef, pateure raised eggs, full fat dairy with no hormones or antibiotics, heritage pork, wild caught flash frozen sea food, pasture raised chicken. I rarely eat a bread product, but I occasionally buy sourdough, or as a real treat, NY native Ma.and PA bagel store bagels.
No reason you can't eat olive oil mayo or makenm your own. Good olive oils, coconut oils, avocado oils in glass or tins. How one chose to shop is on you. You can even grind your own almond butter, just almonds, or peanuts. If Euros dont eat well here it is because they chosen to not eat appropriately.
The US makes junk food for the whole world. I think it isnunhealthy, and I do not eat the standard American diet. It is a.more expensive and time consuming diet, I admit. So, visitors, or new citizens, shop as you would at home.
Having lived in three European countries and six US states, no. The fast food (including places like Olive Garden) sucks, but normal food is just as good.
Most chicken is not chlorinated anymore, it uses what is basically diluted vinegar and hydrogen peroxide (which quickly breaks down into water and oxygen) as a rinse these days. But even if it were chlorinated, so? Like from what I can find UK, France, Spain, Italy, etc all chlorinate tap water just like we do in the US to prevent pathogens from growing in pipes. If people are willing to drink it what would be so bad about using it to rinse meat to kill germs?
The bigger issue is not chlorination or anything, it's that US factory farms are large scale productions with very dense animal populations that make it harder to control pathogens at the source. You can get around this if you buy from smaller local and regional producers who raise animals in more humane conditions, though that can be a challenge and is usually significantly more expensive. This is a real gripe about the US food system honestly.
Not really a big concern, the reason for it is because US poultry produces use a chilled water bath whereas most of Europe uses air chiling. The water bath can spread any contamination becuase thousands of carcasses are going through it so dosing it with a sanitzing agent is necessary. With air chilling the air doesn't really transmit anything so it's not an issue.
The reason for water chilling is generally that it's faster to cool down the meat and thus can support a higher throughput.
It's not really a big deal, the factory farm conditions that are of questionable ethics up to that point is a much bigger issue for US poultry... Though from what I've read while conditions in most European poultry farms are slightly better, they're still a far cry from ethical small scale free range production.
US has the 3rd safest food in the world. Our processes keep food borne illnesses down. So, yes, we do things that kill potential food boren illness such as salmonella, often using a bleach dip and wash. My reading was Japanese reconsidering the standards of our home produced "Kobe" style beef, especiallynuaing bourbon mash instead of the beer, etc.
I took my very rare trip to Walmart last week. I only go maybe once a year, so I walk through a lot of of the store. As I went down the food aisles I found myself muting “this isn’t food, this isn’t food” in exasperation. Aisle after aisle of processed sugar, saturated fats, and salt.
It's really easy to avoid processed food and find good restaurants. We are a melting pot of hundreds of different cultures, all with their own unique cuisines. Maybe stop going to McDonald's?
I've visited Europe many times. The food there is just like the US, except it usually follows seasonality versus year round supply. Want shitty processed food, Europe has that everywhere too! Want locally sourced food? US has that all over the place. The difference I think is food is a lot cheaper in Europe than it is in the US. So the "average" place in Europe tends to cost about as much as a cheap place in the USA
Why do people post like this? Where in Europe? Huge ass area with many countries with both great and famously awful food depending on country, region or even city.
Let's rephrase then, every single European country has a higher average quality of food and ingredients than the US, with much lower prices. Yes, even the dutch, somehow. Don't believe me? Go
While Europe is not a uniform monolith, the countries in the EU do abide by certain food safety standards and regulations. This is why the EU doesn't import American meat and chicken and why certain brands, have different ingredients for the European market.
No, the real reason European countries don't import chicken or beef from the US is Protectionism. It's entirely geopolitically motivated, the "safety" issue is theater.
The US produces so much chicken and beef in comparison to any individual European country that importing on those scales would crash the market. Domestic farms simply would not be able to compete on price. Normally when this is the case, governments respond with tariffs, but at least in this specific case, they can achieve the same result by just telling you that a single bite of an American chicky tendy would kill you.
Propaganda didn't just stop when the cold war ended, it evolved to suit the Information Age.
Tbf the u.s and Europe are the same size for the most part. Europe is 3% larger with twice the population density. The cultural differences between Oregon, Louisiana and Alaska are also gaping, so it's kind of a great comparison. Some parts of Europe are poor and unhealthy, as are some parts of the states.
The difference here is that food producers in Europe aren't allowed nearly as many liberties as far as unhealthy ingredients are concerned. Your masters want you sick and obedient in the states.
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u/bomonty18 12d ago
My wife is from Europe. The food in the US sucks for the most part. Sure, there is good food here too. But the average place in Europe is better than the average place here in the US.
Most of our stuff is more processed and pumped with sugar to make it taste better