Why Some People Think Food Is Better In Europe Than In The US
Why Some People Think Food Is Better In Europe Than In The US
Feels like the headline is saying “some people” are wrong.
Around when I was 16, a bunch of really fit and slim girls from our town left to be exchange students in the US.
They all came back with roughly 10-15kg more than they had when they left. Said all bread tasted like dessert.
Nearly everything industrially made here is sweetened and it’s formed a feedback loop where it ensures that’s what “comfort food” tastes like unless it’s homemade (even then many families cook with sugar in savory meals). And since that’s what American food tastes like, companies coming in to American markets add hfcs to appeal to our tastes. Add in the fact that when cheaping out good old fashioned, highly subsidized hfcs is always a cheap crowd pleaser that can hide the flavor of substandard ingredients and processes.
Not being sweetened is more common in luxury and high quality pre made foods here, which means that they’re culturally and financially separated from the average person. The alternative to saccarine foods is to cook, something we often feel we don’t have time for and some will dislike because it tastes different. Also because “health cooking” has a well earned bad reputation here of things such as not using salt, cutting the fat off meat, and cooking tofu with no idea how to cook tofu well.
hfcs is always a cheap crowd pleaser that can hide the flavor of substandard ingredients and processes.
Not for everyone.
German tries American cola for the first time.
So do you think Americans are just lazier at cooking? But loads of that it also due to food deserts, which are much larger of a problem in the US than in Europe. Also, bad education.

I’d imagine they’d have an easier time naming the ingredients of the bread they eat than Americans could
Uh, yeah, water, flour, salt and yeast.
But if you’re talking about not cooking yourself, then you’re saying Americans are lazier at cooking things?
I can assure you we have lazy people too, but it’s clearly the regulation which is the issue in the US. Even my dad who was fat by our standards was just completely fucking mindblown of the shape of Americans when he helped them in a Moomin theme park he worked at (as a road train-driver, don’t worry it’s an equally confusing in whatever language you use).
This thing.