For unnecessary food additives, 100% on the EU side and happy to be over here. Well, at least until JRM gets his grubby little hands into the legislation. I’m generally pretty happy with the way it works for medical stuff too. The steps are imperfect and will probably never be perfect, but there’s not a lot of lobbying because the politicians are out of the loop, thankfully. Bad drugs get caught and removed and the people making the decisions are smart about the balance of benefits and the risk of side effects. However tragic that may be for some individuals.
Yes, the policy in the US is what happens when industry basically writes the rules. And even if you prove harm, the level of proof required to change policy is ridiculously high.
@@TheZacman2 I’m Dutch so I’ve heard of the FDA but I’m not very familiar with them. However based on this video I think it’s safe to assume that the protection of people/animals/environment is not at the top of the list for them, but maybe money is. Not saying that’s true in all cases but there are some sketchy decisions
Interesting point at the end about having the right to choose. I don’t see how Americans are choosing this unhealthy, sometimes outright poisonous food, it’s not like the two versions are next to each other on the shelf (for the same price). I would rather be able to trust that my food isn’t intentionally poisoning me for the sake of profit for the manufacturer and profit for the health “service” in the country I live.
Yeah that’s what I thought when he said it. It doesn’t seem like American consumers are choosing to eat the chemicals in bread. It seems like the chemicals are there and if you want to eat bread, meat, cereals etc then you have to eat the chemicals too.
@@shelleyjames4446 Would be an interesting bit of history to look at. I suspect US consumers essentially did choose in the past, although maybe not an educated choice. One company starts adding chemicals to gain some advantage (e.g. lower costs, longer shelf life, etc. more profit margin than an equivalent item. Or better taste or lower shelf price to capture market share). People brought the one with additives and so soon every major producer does the same to remain competitive.
If you buy your food shopping in one place, such as a Walmart and are on a budget, I can understand buying whatever is available within your budget, but if you have time and care to do so, seeking a butcher for your meat that hasn't been cleaned with chlorine etc, find a bakery that doesn't add sugar in the loaves! Obviously this will not be feasible for everyone as I'm sure there's fewer and fewer butchers and bakeries in small towns and not everyone can travel to the next big town/city to buy a special food item, unless you can do it online but then it's not always accurate information
@@shelleyjames4446 yes exactly. It’s no choice really, either eat rubbish or don’t eat. I’d much rather eat British ‘bland’ food. Was a genuine concern of mine atleast that post Brexit our food standards would/will drop to American standards.
@@SyncViews I suspect that US consumers also didn't really get a lot of choice about it in the past either. Competition is often mostly illusory, with multiple brands all actually owned by exactly the same parent companies, and in the US in particular, a lot of products tend to only be sold regionally rather than nationwide. Also, if the additives increased profitability while not affecting taste (to any noticeable degree), and they thought that customers wouldn't even notice, then literally every big company will have treated that as a no brainer of a decision, so even where you actually had a choice, it was probably between multiple products that all decided to use the same additive!
I used to host European exchange students and without fail they all would gain 20lbs - 40lbs after living here for a year. They would be so confused because their diets didn't change much. It was just the quality of food being so garbage. Edit: the pounds would drop after moving back.
I'm from Belgium and it always weirds me out how much unnatural brightly colored food I see in US tv series and movies. Food shouldn't come in bright neon colors full of artificial harmful food coloring.
The thing that vexes me the most about the US food industry is not only their lax safety standards, but their insistence that food producers have the right not to inform consumers about the content of their foods. I have seen enormous effort in the US to prevent mandatory labelling, or create so many exemptions that requirements become pointless. For instance, if you don't make a claim that your product brings a certain health benefit, then you are usually exempt from nutrition labelling in the US. So, if food producers keep you from finding what it is in the food you are eating, is it really a free choice then? I think not.
@@iriscollins7583 not most Americans, but our government, lobbyists, and corporations definitely do. They could care less what they infect the citizens with, they aren’t eating this crap.
Another variant I came across a couple of years ago when staying with friends in the east of the US. They brought home some steaks from the supermarket (wrapped in plastic of course) and the packet said "Extra juicy" "30% water". So, in fact, 30% of what you just pay, you pay for water (virtually free from the tap) , not steak. I don' get it...
Spent most of my life in USA until I left at age 50. I also suffered terrible gastric problems which doctors couldn't identify a cause for. Since moving to EU I no longer suffer any gastric problems. I just assume I'm no longer being poisoned by food.
It’s amazing looking around at just how many people are sick with all kinds of gut and autoimmune issues. I’m super careful with everything I purchase but everything is poisoned here. Other than growing or raising your food supply which would include everything I’m not sure what to do. What’s worse is knowing about it and feeling helpless and crazy for it. We’re being poisoned at every turn.
placebo effect. you thought it would help so it did. there is alot of good food in the states. also you probably changed your diet overall so hypothetically, if you ate alot of dairy in the states and ate less in the EU by chance that could aslo do it
@@ghostbirdlaryAbsolute horseshit. Gastric problems aren't something that can be cured by placebo. Our country simply isn't all that great a place to live. Accept it.
In regards to the chicken (bleaching), I think the best metric of success is infection rates. According to the EU, the entire EU has about 90k salmonella cases each year for a population of about 450 million people. Meanwhile in the US, according to the CDC, there are 1.35 MILLION cases EACH year for a population of about 350 million people. Long term effects of ingesting chlorine aside, I think this shows that the bleaching doesn't really help and seems to rather create unsanitary environments where Salmonella can spread easier.
That explains why the few (us based) food channels I occasionally watch on yt are always going on about salmonella... when I was a kid, I was taught to always be careful with chicken & eggs, make sure they're done and all that, but other than that, I don't think it's on anyones mind. I'm almost 40, and I don't think I know anyone who ever had a salmonella infection. (just looked it up, Germany went down from ~200.000 confirmed cases in 1990 to under 14,000 in 2019, at ~83 million people)
That is just some bad logic. You assume all US salmonella cases come from chicken, what is just not true. Go take a Logic 101 class first before you comment.
@@Riley512 - yes, you have a point, it may not only be chicken, it may the _the entire rotten U.S. food industry._ Because if in 🇺🇸 there are almost *twenty times* as many cases of infections with salmonella than in 🇪🇺 then, yeah, it may not only be an issue with chicken.
When I was camping as a kid, our breakfast cereals got left out overnight by accident. All of the cereals were ripped/chewed open and eaten by (presumably) racoons, rats, and other rodents. All of the cereals were eaten except the fruit loops. NOTHING ate the fruit loops, not even the rats. They were just left in a big pile next to the ripped box. I've never eaten fruit loops since because it made me scared of what might be in them!
Some companies make what they call fruit flavored cereal and apple flavored cereal that have neither fruit nor apple in them. Read actual ingredient list and not just title of cereal. Also so called cheese flavored dog food does not taste like any kind of cheese I have eaten that I can remember.
I'm Aussie, and when I lived in the US for a couple of months, I developed THE worst cystic acne on my face and back (I rarely get pimples). As soon as I returned to Australia, within weeks, the cystic acne went away 😳😯 I was so relieved 😭 but it made me think twice about returning to US for a holiday
@@uncletiggermclaren7592 yeah thats a bit simplistic to assume its the soap. I am sure over a lifetime in their home nation they used a wide variety, many of which are available worldwide. I am in the UK and I know many friends who in the US got horrible stomach aches and whatnot after eating all that food. My best friend is moving to Virginia in 2 days after a lifetime in the UK so I will learn more 😆
Just to add to the problem, all those various “safe” ingredients actually have a compound effect. Most prominent example is Vegetable oils (especially BVO) act in tandem with that bulk of sugar in your soda to completely wreck you.
I remember moving to the UK and Denmark from the US last January, the first time I had ever a) been in a plane and b) never been overseas. I wanted to grab a Mt. Dew from Tesco, and I remember feeling very excited to get one because sodas are such rare treats for me. Upon opening the drink, I immediately stopped after the first sip. The taste difference between US and European versions of Mt. Dew are so sharp that I gave up halfway through the drink. The same thing happened with popular snacks like Ritz, Cheez-it's, cookies, and tortilla chips. It took several weeks to get used to all the flavor differences, but I'm honestly glad to have made that transition. After two weeks of not having US foods, I legitimately felt like I was going through withdrawals (I couldn't get full no matter how much I ate, I was severely anemic, I had an extremely fast heart rate, etc). But food in the UK/EU is so much healthier, and I felt it while living abroad. I think living abroad has been the healthiest period in my life. Now that I'm back in the US, foods taste so gross now- I don't know how I managed to stomach all the unhealthy sugars and salts, and I feel sick almost every other day. The FDA needs to get its shit together, idk.
I’m from Australia and whilst our food safety is probably a bit more relaxed than Europe. I remember visiting my family in California for a couple of weeks. The food there, whilst often quite delicious, well also often tasted “fake.” If that makes sense? Like I could honestly taste how processed some of it was. And the bread especially tasted so gross to me. Like I’m sure some things are added to make sure our bread stays fresher for longer (given how far some of it has to travel to end up in stores here) but even still. It doesn’t taste like sugar like in the States. Blech
Haha, glad you appreciated our regulations in the end. In the UK we've been having arguments for years since the Brexit vote about what to do with our regulations, whether to ease them to assist with international trade or keep them strict like the EU. The EU strictness appears to be winning so, fingers crossed.
@@someonerandom8552 I sawsomeone comparing how much sugar was in a piece of toast in the US and the EU. EU had 2 gr sugar per slice, UShad 6 gr per slice. That's why it'sso sweet.
Nick S , I know, but when we were little, chicken were bought live from a nearby farm, milk was delivered by the milkman, in glass containers, bacon was fatter, no lean, cereal was brown, not rainbow, and Mountain Dew was not yet invented.
@@summerbrooks9922 I couldn't imagine living in those days. I feel like I missed out. I hate that milk just marinates in plastic, sits in a fridge for days at the store after sitting for days in transit via truck. That is all I have ever known.
@midwestbadger2503 don't know about platic milk jugs but iv noticed that if I leave water inside a plastic container it tastes different than to a glass container or metal container
Read a story about fruit loops, a guy gave some to his nephew and the nephew had an ant farm, he laid some fruit loops inside of the farm just to see what the ants would do. To their ashonishment the ants grabbed all the dead ants from their "graveyard" and piled them on top of the cereal. Turns out that the cereal emitts a chemical which is the exact same ants use to identify another ant as "dead" and not alive. He wrote that he never again would touch fruit loops.
@@Lily-Bravo antscanada is a great channel of ant related things dont think you'll find a video specifically about how they deal with their dead though
Carminic acid is produced from dead bugs that use it to detere predators and nobody cares about it. Honeydew is bugs' shit that bees eat, vomit and turn into honey and people praise it for the taste. People with lots of imagination and weak stomaches really shouldn't check what they are eating.
A big part of what British people were afraid of with Brexit was that Britain might end up so desperate for food that it had to accept American food and the much lower food safety standards that American food is produced under. The “remain” campaign ran public advertisements about this possibility, while the “leave” campaign ran advertisements assuring Brits they would never have to stoop to eating American-made food.
I found during a trip to Italy that eating bread did not affect me the way it does in the US, to the point where I had to give it up almost completely at home. In Italy bread was delicious, fresh, and I felt perfectly normal. Delightful!
I absolutely noticed the same thing several years ago, I wasn’t sure if it was how it was grown or if it was all the walking I was doing in addition to eating pasta daily. Then about a year after that an article came out blaming procurement of the crops. If you want to see more organically grown non-GMO foods come by organically grown non-GMO foods. No one needs the government to just get rid of products, people Who can afford to need to use the power of their wallet to make the right choices without that being the only choice anyone gets to have. You can also buy Italian pasta in the United States or use US pasta alternatives such as making zucchini noodles, spaghetti squash, or making/buying your own fresh egg noodles correctly harvested no gluten added wheat.
Pretty much all bread in the USA sold in shelves or typical bakeries is all fake. When i lived in the USA i strictly only ate bread that i made, never ate bread anywhere else. Country of garbage fake food.
I think my favourite thing about American food law is that infusing meat and grains with carcinogenic chemicals to help with shelf life, yield and flavour is perfectly legal, but putting toys inside chocolate eggs is an incredibly dangerous and illegal action. It’s like the FDA can’t see any danger that’s too small to literally see. Microscopic chemicals are fine, because we can’t see them, but kinder eggs are horribly dangerous, because even the dumbest member of society can see that it’s technically possible to choke on one.
Evan skipped one other big food difference between the USA and UK, etc., eggs. The eggs in the USA are washed, similar to the chicken meat. In the UK, the chickens are raised in a way to keep the eggs clean and the eggs are not washed. This makes a huge difference because washing eggs removes the natural protective layer that means USA eggs must be refrigerated but UK eggs are not kept refrigerated.
It's super weird. Both the US and Europe chose their regulations around the sale of eggs in order to protect consumers from potential diseases. In the US it's illegal to sell unwashed eggs, because the dirt on the eggs could get people sick. In Europe it's illegal to sell washed eggs, because the process of washing destroys the natural protections causing the eggs to be vulnerable to diseases. The exceptionally lower number of Salmonelle cases in Europe makes me believe that one method is better than the other, though. (For one, the eggs in Europe require better treatment for the chickens and a cleaner production line. Secondly, the eggs in Europe don't actually HAVE to be refridgerated, meaning that there's not such a risk of a gap in the cooling chain getting people sick.)
@@tobiasreinhold7642 It's because the appearance matters more to the US than the insides. They have a more superficial culture - if it looks good, that all that matters, never mind if it isn't good
Side-note about E numbers: Some people think any E number is bad, but its just a system that catalogues every possible thing you could put into a product. E.g. Oxygen has the number E948. You need to look up what the E number is to find out if it might be bad, good, or if it's something completely mundane.
My favourite E number is E300 - the extremely scary acidity regulator... ascorbic acid, or otherwise known as vitamin-C. (As well as E301 and E302 which are the sodium and calcium salts of the same.) Or several ones from the food colourings section: E100 - orange, curcumin, the "superfood" part of turmeric. E101and E106 - orange/yellow, riboflavin, or vitamin-B2. E140 - green, chlorophylls, the green from leafy vegetables. E160a and 160e - yellow-orange, carotene, vitamin-A precursor, why you eat carrots. E160d - vibrant red, lycopene, the antioxidant in tomatoes. The whole 161 range is basically various carotenoid pigments that are flavonoids and antioxidants (the good parts) in plants. E163 - pH dependent pigments, anthocyanins, antioxidants in berries.
Exactly - this "E-numbers baaaaad!" thing has been annoying me (especially in the UK media) for decades... what's even more annoying is that companies have somehow been allowed to pivot back to using obscure quasi-scientific names for additives because people believe it's healthier. You used to get a very brief list of 5-10 numbers in the ingredients - very easy to check if you know certain things you have to avoid for medical/dietary reasons - now you have to scan through a paragraph of mumbo-jumbo and look up everything you don't recognise.
Yah.. And those things they add to bread made me think i was gluten intolerant. Only to discover that organic homemade bread is fine. Took me a long time to discover that its the weird additives that I'm allergic to.
Yes I think we are all suffering from some amount of inflammation from the additives in most bread. In some cases it's not the "gluten" it's the preservatives. Eincorn bread, ancient whole grain bread has gluten but does not trigger inflammation, so, its what they have done to the flour, not the flour itself. They have stripped it of its natural enzymes, making it difficult to digest.
@@mohammedjeffali1076 it's the new varieties of wheat. Bred for yield not food value. That and the longer flour is in the bag the more food value it loses.
I bought some sauerkraut today. The domestic brands ingredients included "Cabbage Product" Sulfates, water, and monosodium glutamate. The imported polish brand had "water, cabbage vinegar, salt"
@@TheoRae8289 It doesn't belong in sauerkraut. It isn't a food that has savory as a flavor to begin with. Adding is like whoever was making it didn't know how, but they had a sample of some that was cooked from a known brand and they replicated it as close as they could using their food sciences degree instead of doing 1 hour of research first into the history of it.
I don't live in the EU but every once in a while there's an import at the store and I have developed a unique appreciation for their food labeling system. You actually have a pretty good idea of what's in your food! Which shouldn't even be a question, but
It is pretty good, yes. As somebody with a nut allergy, I am particularly grateful for the fact that common allergens are now required by EU law to be printed in bold in the ingredients list, or mentioned separately at the end (many manufacturers do both now). Standing in the supermarket quickly scanning the ingredients list for anything in bold is a lot less embarassing than people seeing you meticulously read the lot of it. Also, from the pictures I've seen of US food packaging, it seems like ingredients lists are not required to be anywhere near as legible there as they are here in the EU, where there's a minimum font size and the requirement for the text to clearly contrast against the background.
The one thing that annoys me, here in Czechia, is that there's often no further specification for "spices", which means a lot of foods will have something potentially aggressive to some people hiding under that heading... common offenders being garlic and pepper.
I think the nettles and the spinach in Fruit Loops are to make them a green colour and not for flavour. The carrot for orange, the black current for purple and the paprika for red.
The extract of spinach might also be being used to fortify the cereal with additional iron. Lots of cereals are intentionally fortified with various key vitamins and minerals.
@@seraphina985 Sadly it is just for colouring the food - the cereals ARE fortified with iron, but they do that by...adding powered iron to the mix - looks pretty much like iron filings
It's important to note that E number does not imply bad. Everything you could add to food has an E number (so everything with an E number was at some point considered OK to use in food production). All the good additives also have E numbers, as well as naturally occurring stuff. Vitamin C is E300, citric acid is E330, vitamin B2 is E101, etc. It's just a consistent way to refer to additives so you know exactly what you're getting.
it's used for fearmongering a lot, and I guess it makes sense.. E948 sounds a lot scarier and artificial than Oxygen indeed, it's always good to remember that "it contains a lot of E numbers" is a pretty pointless thing to say, you're just saying it has a lot of ingredients, most of which are great, some of which are unhealthy, as in all things in life, especially food :)
@@rondowar Fearmongering is in fact part of the debate. But the sentence "contains a lot of E numbers" isn't completely pointless, it just depends on the context. Ingredient list of a ~3 buck box of microwave food? Sure, lots of ingredients are to be expected. Ingredient list of a random bottle of water? Lots of ingredients would weird me the f out!
@@astonmartin4326 they are specifically for additives yes specifically, each additive that's allowed to be used, gets an E number (later on, that additive might be banned though, and it won't be removed from the list of numbers)
Edit: I am in the US. My husband retired 15 years ago to be the "homemaker." Since then he makes all our bread from basic ingredients and almost no meal contains processed food except maybe frozen vegetables, once in a while canned. He does buy pasta and bread crumbs. We do use bottled salad dressing. Most of our food is cooked from base ingredients and this last month he perfected French fries in the air oven, so not fried, just cut potatoes with the right amounts of crispy vs soft. This video makes me glad we made this choice. I am going to show him this video regarding our meat. I could eat very little. A few bites every few days. He wants it as the main item for dinner.
Almost all salad dressing is made with soybean oil, a toxic "vegetable" oil. Nothing wrong with meat if it is pasture raised, of course this makes it much more expensive.
@@irgendwieanders2121 Are you serious? These were waste byproducts from other industries, and then they found out with enough treatment they could feed it to humans. Jake Tran has a video that explains better than I can.
@@remyllebeau77 palm oil is a huge cause of cancer but we don’t see this being mentioned at all… soybean oil have this “toxic” rep because the right people paid so it would be so. The problem is not the oil, the problem is how some places like US produce it.
As a mom that grew up with a parent that was a nutritionist, I find this type of content fascinating! Quite depressing to see how lacking the US is in making sure that both animals and humans are healthy. Looking forward to the next video!
@@zelimirfijacko9293 The US is all about freedom. Freedom for corporations to monopolize a market, freedom for corporations trying to make a profit in human suffering. Unless you want to drink a beer openly. That's taking things too far!
I’m an Italian food producer, cold cuts e seasoned meat. The most incredible thing that always shocks me is that you use estrogens inside your meat farms in the USA. They are so super unhealthy and dangerous for human consumption.
On milk: I remember dealing with engorgement as a breast feeding mother, my body naturally made excessive amounts and my babies couldn't really get through it all so, for the first few months, and the last few months (as they began eating more solids) I was in excruciating pain. Everytime the milk came in, it burned and caused tearing type pains in my skin and, occasionally, deeper structures. Then, if not completely emptied prior to more coming in, it would cause extra pain as it would cause my breasts to become completely rounded and hard, and the nipples would become flattened as the skin was stretched to it's maximum capacity, and any amount of pressure, even just something lightly brushing past, was painful enough to bring me to my knees. If that's being done regularly to cows, intentionally, and they're not being able to naturally regulate the amounts of milk they're producing, that's awful and I am extra happy I switched to a company that doesn't allow the usage of that hormone (along with various other things that caused poor quality of life for dairy cows)
Don't read this with a combatant tone. I comment to maybe ease your concerns regarding the pain threshold of cows. Cattle eat, sleep and shit directly in a spectrum of the harshest conditions nature can offer. Everyday and night, and the only thing they complain about is hunger. If this does not convince you may be underestimating the toughness of these big boned beast. Strip down to what God gave you and go spend the night in the woods. I'm not actually encouraging this experiment, but I reckon it'd take more than a moo and a draw at the feed to send you about your day?
@@rd3095 I have absolutely no idea what you're saying or what you're trying to get at ... Or, really, what it has to do with my comment..... And, you do realize that a naked human is not equal to a cow that someone hasn't popped a jacket on, right?
@@nanaak8617 it's a small local dairy farm ... Telling you exactly may be too close to telling people where I live... But they have a milkman who delivers the milk in returnable and reusable containers, which I love and feel like we should have never stopped doing. I can get eggs from them as well, I absolutely love it Edit: If you're looking to switch in your area you could try googling dairy farms that deliver near me or small dairy farms near me or something similar....
@@IrelandFyre "was painful enough to bring me to my knees. If that's being done regularly to cows" you do realize the pain thresh hold of a human is not equal to a cow right? All I was trying to say, because I have spent my entire life with cows, is you MIGHT be underestimating what is and is not painful to them.
I’m a dedicated omnivore. I do feel that the creatures that provide our food should be treated with the utmost respect and care; if their life will be short, it should be as good as we can make it.
That is my philosophy when raising livestock that will make the ultimate sacrifice for us. I am ready to go back to my own butchering so they don't have to make the stressful ride to the butcher shop. When I do it they are calm and don't know what's coming. I hate seeing those trucks on the road jammed with animals going hundreds of miles to their death.
I grew up in the UK but have lived in the US for 20+ years. When a US company starts talking about “world class” I assume that means they have to raise their standards to sell abroad where they have stricter standards. In the US I never eat fast food, read all labels, buy organic where I can and cook from scratch as much as possible so I know what’s in my food… 😞
same here, I feel like people are just lazy and think the government is supposed to do the work for them. I don't understand how people don't know that processed food is not good for them?
Remember that in the EU/UK you have to prove food, additives etc are safe. In the US, they assume they are safe unless proved unsafe. I prefer our (UK) method.
In the EU you also have to prove you have a right to freedom. Government typically assumes you don’t. (In the US freedoms are by default & gov’t is typically blocked from trampling then.)
European view that people are inferior to government traces back to the age of monarchs. That attitudes never went away. (In the US the people are the sovereigns; govt is the servant.) EUROPEAN UNION also bans things that don’t make sense. Like California champagne or pinot wine. “It didn’t come from France or Italy so you cannot sell it here!” Protectionism.
If I put a sign in my yard that said “Black people suck” the various EU states would arrest me. In the US the government cannot do anything. It cannot trample free speech, no matter how offensive .
I lived in the US for 20 years. I always wondered what was in US sliced bread that stopped it going off. It stayed soft and 'fresh' for much longer than it should. There was nothing on the label.
Based on the label for the Fruit Loops, it looks like the nettles, spinach, paprika etc. are used to colour the cereal, not flavour it. If they were used for flavour, they’d more than likely be hidden inside the “other Natural Flavourings” part of the label instead - it just wouldn’t be a wise marketing decision to tell kids their cereal is spinach and nettle flavoured. Carrot, spinach, paprika and blackcurrant are regularly used to colour drinks, too.
EUROPEAN UNION also bans things that don’t make sense. Like California champagne or pinot wine. “It didn’t come from France or Italy so you cannot sell it here!” Protectionism.
@@electrictroy2010 It's only as much protectionism as any trademark is. Do you have issues with trademarks in the US? Or did you just not think that far ahead on the topic? In either case, these cultural trademarks are not granted freely, as they come with several rules and regulation that describe what the product needs to be to be considered the said product. This is done specifically to ensure that certain products don't deteriorate and their quality and traditions are not eroded in senseless profit-hounding.
I agree that the nettle and spinach extracts are likely used for colouring but the way the ingredient list is laid out seems odd. The only colour specified is paprika - why weren't the other extracts listed as colour to make it obvious they're not nettle flavoured?
@@electrictroy2010no problem putting "Pinot" on the label since that's the grape variety. "Champagne" however is a district in France so would be false marketing in Europe. "Sparkling wine" is what it should be called.
"Every adult should have the right to put whatever they want into their body" is one thing, but that means everyone who doesn't want to has to scan every product to make sure they don't. And you are fooling yourself that producers in the US do it for FREEDOM or whatever, they do it for PROFIT.
Even if you scan the labels doesn’t mean you will identify all the nasties. They can omit many chemicals that are in small quantities or part of processing. Want to know “ where” that product came from, or if it’s fake? To bad, they don’t have to disclose that information.
@@marilynalspachtoth5635 A sneaky trick of the eu food legislation is that ingredients of a constituent ingredient do not have to be labelled - a manufacturer only has to list the ingredients they put in. Take a fruit cake. The ingredients will list "cherries", but to get a bright red cherry in the cake after baking will require use of an azo dye food colourant in the cherry, but it doesn't have to be listed if the manufacturer buys in pre-coloured cherries!
@@cigmorfil4101 Cool someone mentions this . There literally is a list (iirc actually several ) of so called "non-ingredients" which do not have to be labelled - for various reasons - acc. EU regulation . What I do like about this is that here seems to be healthy awareness about this in people concerned about food quality where i live .
I remember hearing an American say that Swedish food is really bland, which made me so confused for a really long time. I've travelled a lot in both Europe and Asia, and never once have I felt like our food here in Sweden is bland compared to other places, maybe a little less interesting at times, but not bland, however I've never been to America, so I don't know what flavours he was comparing it with. Hearing they put flavour enhancing chemicals in the cereals makes me see where he was coming from a little I guess...
Yes American food just tastes like,, so much. Coming from Australia it was hard to eat over there because most things tasted either extremely salty or extremely sweet. Definitely a lot of strong flavours in their food but not the good kind that come from herbs & spices, the kind that come from additives
I'm an American, living in Europe. The food in the USA that comes in boxes, or from restaurants is heavily salted, and most have sugar, even the savory stuff. It covers up the flavor of shelf stable chemicals, and the vitamin and mineral additives. If you eat that stuff regularly it literally takes weeks of eating actual food and having it taste bland for your taste buds to recover and be able to taste normally again.
No clue about what it's like in Sweden, but coming from Romania to the Netherlands, the vegetables here are for the most part borderline tasteless. This has to do with the fewer sunny days, the particular varieties used (long shelf life preferred) and the fact that many are harvested while still unripe, again for enhancing shelf life. Mind you, this is changing in Romania as well, as supermarkets replace farmer markets, and supermarkets prefer to bring said long shelf life methods over the veggies that spoil within 2-3 days from being picked (effectively zero shelf life). And that's on top of the traditional recipes, which don't really use all that many spices and such.
I‘m German, and only when traveling to the US, I get this uncomfortable feeling of fullness in my stomach, even though I try to eat healthy and avoid food that is too greasy or fried. As I wrote, I only experience it when I’m in the US, not in other countries. Not sure why.
‘Hidden sugar’ in preserved meats is likely your particular issue …foods here are often ‘taste tested’ but they don’t list who the cross sample is who is ‘tasting’ …so areas who have people accustomed to more salt or sugar skew the taste tests
European here. As a kid when we were learning about colours we were taught that bright colours often means danger, a lot of poisonous animlas like frogs and the same is true with plants and fungi. So basically when i look at a lot of US cereal and also different candy i just think "That looks poisonous, better stay far away"
Good point! I learned the same. The idea of neon food is so bizarre and unnatural. They're colours you usually see in plastic and paint, why would that be appetising?
That's my thoughts every time I see those bright blue "sports" drinks. Why! Are you adding dubious food colorant! To something marketed as healthy! (No it is not banned here I am in Poland)
Spinach is very commonly used as a natural green dye, you’ll find it in candy and such, like green winegums. Not there for that tasty sweet spinch flavour
@@alexisantonakis6592 Though some so called cochineal food colouring was actually not - people associated the name cochineal with red and so instead of containing actual cochineal (E120) it actually contained an azo dye (E122, E124, E127).
@@alexisantonakis6592 Cochineal was probably the very first item traded from the Americas. My local town Stroud grew rich making Scarlet wool cloth for soldiers uniforms.
I'm fussy about what I eat and I'm glad food gets labelled clearly in this country. The change that happened in the '90s was very much driven by consumers' concerns about health and the welfare of animals. Consumers got used to it fairly quickly
The labelling in the UK can still be misleading if one doesn't look at the content per 100 grams. If looked at closely, some labels will say, per tablespoon full, or, for example, a meat pie, content per 1/3 of a pie etc.
The people who pass the laws don't care about the people or the animals. To them, people are just livestock. These laws are about restricting energy or fuel in order to cut the population. If people were not restricted in these ways, for the silly, made-up reasons, the population would grow faster. The appeal to animal welfare, and such, is an emotional smokescreen only, for the masses, which is called the ostensible reason. Look at the skinny little milk carton the guy in the video "pours" onto his cereal. It is restricted at the mouth of the bottle, like I have only ever seen on alcohol...
@@-taz- most of what you said is nonsense, I prefer to eat quality meat from high welfare livestock. I don't why you seem to want your food to come from farms that are disgustingly unsanitary. Most people just tear off the seal, Evan is wierd and punches a hole in it.
@@-taz- Politicians care about votes and supermarkets care about sales, so they respond to consumer pressure and politicians respond to pressure groups within their electorate. I know this because I am one of the consumers that pressurised them into changing and I do care about animal welfare. I am also aware that they will try to get away with claiming products are organic, fair traded or free-range when they are not, so we have to stay vigilant and keep up the pressure. There are two kinds of people in the world - people who make decisions and victims of other people's decisions. You do have a choice
Cellulose materials are used as thickening agents in bread f.e. over here in the EU as well. Though I just checked our pantry and couldn’t find any products using blabla-cellulose. Most producers switched to using spelt and other fibers - which is the exact same thing, but sounds nicer. It’s not „extracted“, but just ground up finely.
I went to a European country with all my pain relievers headache pills stomach pills you name it. I was only out there for a week and all my bad symptoms went away. I returned back to United States, and within five days, I was sick all over again
The first thing I noticed when I moved to EU (from US) 20 years ago, was that I didn't feel as anxious anymore. At the time, I chalked it up to cultural differences, but now I believe it was the diet diffefences.
@@gardyloo3093 Another factor (depending where in the EU) is less exposure to motor traffic. I was much less stressed in the Netherlands because I rarely encountered fast/heavy car traffic, and thus the stress and risk that comes with that
@@OntarioTrafficMan When I first noticed that difference I was living in London, so it probably wasn't due to traffic reduction! Although I myself wasn't driving, but instead using public transport, so maybe that helped a little.
Im from England I live in America and every single time I go to England for a visit I lose weight without even dieting, roughly 7-10 pounds of weight. The moment I go back to America, and eat even healthier than I do when I home in England, within a week the weight is back and I’m convinced it is to do with all of the things that the American food industry allows in the processing/growing of food. I don’t eat meat/dairy/eggs in the US and I rarely eat seafood, I eat whole grains and I have type two diabetes. When I’m in England my blood sugar drops and there I eat chocolates, crisps, white bread and meat and cheese and if I eat any of that stuff in the US my blood sugar goes really high. It is making me consider picking up sticks and moving back to England, so I can be healthy again. 🤔
you should do it out of respect and love for yourself. I am moving away from US as well. I have so much more energy and feel heathier in Europe. And it has a lot to do with food (but non-hustle stressless lifestyle as well)
I went to europe for a year to study, i lost much more weight without trying than the i did in US on pre bariatric diet (500 cal/day) for a year. Insane
Brominated vegetable oil isn't only in Mountain Dew, it's also in some of the favors of that sugar drink they make you drink for the blood sugar test when you're pregnant. Most of the rest of the world thinks it's too dangerous to use in food, but America makes their pregnant women drink it. (You can request a different bottle, only some of the flavors contain it - I think I read it's mainly used in the citrus flavors)
Is that what it was !!! I had two children in the '70s and they just tested my blood. Had another in the late '80s and the doctor insisted I have this sugar test. I drank that 20x concentrate of orange pop and the sweet was just pounding through my veins for 2 days. I don't eat sweets. I like bitter. To put that in my system was undescribable. Then they figured the test came back with a false reading because the numbers were so high. Needless to say, I told him where to stuff it. If I was exposing my child to becoming a diabetic it would be through DNA from my grandmother not from the little bit of sugar I ate. Fast forward 30 years maybe there is more research now on insulin resistance because your American processed food supply is sooo sweet. Your bread tastes like cake.
@@evan it's amazing how various countries ban various foods from various other countries but ALL of these countries allow people to kill themselves with cigarettes and those around them with second hand smoke 🤔 .
Ugh - that stuff is gross. And they made me do a 2nd version of it because my initial results were borderline. Yes, let's check for a blood sugar problem by making it skyrocket instead of checking a fasting glucose reading.
I’m 100% behind the idea that people should be allowed to eat what they want, but the caveat is that they should know WHAT they’re eating. This is fantastic info!!! 🔥
There is big problem with this line of thinking. If you allow everything then the large chunk of industry will adopt to using all the steroids, additives, and bleach agents and what not as long as it adds profit margin. This will reduce cost of such produce but only by rather small percentage. The big problem however now is that if as a consumer you wish to buy unbleached chicken without steroids there's gonna be very little choice for you and because industries that operate in this way are smaller they will not have same economy of scales and thus will be forced to sell their products much more expensive so you end up paying multi fold more. Potential healthy ground could be taxation on additives that are not proved to be 100% safe.
E Numbers aren't necessarily bad. They're just an standardised way to categorise ingredients in food. So you can make some food in Germany, for example, then sell it in Spain - and the consumer in Spain can look up the ingredients if they want to.
@@mdx7460 "bad" is neither here nor there. Paracelsus noted already 500 years ago that everything is poison and nothing without poison - it's the dosage that makes whether it hurts or not. Water is critical for our survival. But drink more than a gallon in a short time and your kidneys will wave goodbye. We critically need salt, but ingest too much of it and again, your kidneys will go bye-bye. Botulinum toxin is one of the most lethal poisonous substances we know. It's a paralyzing nerve toxin. And yet, people ask to have it injected straight into their face in high dilution to look younger... Heck, even ascorbic acid, aka "vitamin C" has an E-number because it's used as an antioxidant and preservative. A whole lot of food colorings are nothing but extracts from plants. E 100 - curcumin - comes from turmeric. Some are made synthetically even though in theory, they could be isolated from vegetables. E-160 a-e Carotenoids naturally occur in carrots, tomatos and sundry other orange to reddish vegetables. In fact, beta-carotene is converted to vitamin A in the body. And the body gives a flying f*** about whether said beta-carotene has been purified from carrots or created synthetically.
@@mdx7460 Not really. More often than not, especially in uninformed people, the generalization "E numbers" makes them think that they are ALL bad stuff.
I had thought I was allergic to dairy and eggs back in the states (vomiting, hives, fevers when I consumed the products containing dairy or eggs) but since moving to Korea I haven't had any of those issues, and banana milk is one of my favourite drinks. I honestly think there's some hormone or preservative that's being added in the US stuff that I can't have that isn't being added in the Korean stuff.
RBST probably 😂. But don't worry the FDA says its safe 😂. But seriously another American who's traveled to Korea and Japan. Even lived there for a time. Basically all my allergies I had in the US went away living there and I, despite actually eating more than back in the US I was losing weight living there and my hypothyroidism was cured.
A lot of the world uses a2/a2 breed, and the us predominantly not. A2 has far less lactose, which is harder for your body to break down and digest as you age. Many have access to raw dairy, too. When homogenized, pasteurized and fat often removed sugar, synthetic a and d vitamins have to be added. Anything labeled lowfat means sugar (under 200 names) has been added.
@@Pomeray8 I'm pretty sure skimmed milk, at least in the UK, doesn't have sugar added. It just tastes a bit sweeter because there's less fat so more of the rest of the milk including sugar.
Banana milk is just any milk with a banana added. In Europe we use a mixer but my Korean friend just crushed the banana up with a fork so you have chewy bits, which is really nice
That's still pretty much what happens during factory farming unfortunately, as nice as it is that they put some of these rules in place there's a bigger problem with how animals are farmed
Yup. Natural colors. WAY better than artificial. Orange, usually from carrots. Red, from red beets, etc. But they also use dark red from for instance a type of lice (you may have seen them on plants. If you squish em in your hand, your hand becomes all red) All of these have E numbers btw. Good or not so good.
I remember a dutch television show doing an episode on "iron enriched" cereals. They were quite surprised to find out that the cereals contained actual iron dust! Only american companies can think of something like that. 🤗
I noticed an interesting, seemingly unconscious association in what you said at the end there. ‘I believe in bodily autonomy/the right to put whatever you want into your body’ was spoken like government prohibiting certain additives was a natural opponent of this sort of belief. But just as parents don’t research everything on the back of every food label before feeding it to their kids. People don’t research everything on the back of their food labels for themselves. We just assume it’s safe to consume (if not wise) *because* of government departments charged with making sure it is. If Kellogg laced their cereal with a cocaine-adjacent drug that’s only not illegal because it’s technically not been classified yet, and you became an addict - would you rather be screaming at the government to let you keep your drug-cereal because you have the right to eat it if you want, or screaming at them for allowing a company to get you hooked in the first place? Or, to use a less-extreme example, instead of feeling outraged that ‘the government’ is taking away your chemical #9 that makes food product x so nice and squishy/flavoured/colourful and also increases your chances of getting cancer… why don’t you feel outraged that they ever let it in? For me, I thoroughly believe that the world is full of unscrupulous scumbags who will happily harm you for their own benefit and it is literally the governments job to both stop them and punish any that slip through the net.
Do note that the thing about Chrlorinated chicken here in the UK had a scandal after a producer got trash chicken that was out of date and dumped and then washed and returned and sold as fresh chicken. So this hastened the ban.
The same happened in Argentina in the nineties. A batch of 1200 tons perished chicken products was chlorinated and sent to the market causing more than a thousand people to get ill (I can't remember but I think that some even died). The thing is, chlorinated chicken was already banned so this scandal costed the entire line of command involved including the Minister of Foreign Affairs their posts and the tightening of all the control measures involved. I do think there's an obvious link between goods production an Healthcare for if a country has to pay for the consequences of a dubious product it will think twice before letting it into the market.
I have pyropheria, (still can’t spell it correct), and I know very quickly if the cows have that growth hormone in them. My issue is the lack of labeling means it is very hard for people with health conditions to get food that will not hurt them. Same thing with roundup and other chemicals.
The really horrible thing is that, as an American who poor, there often aren't better choices. The processed junk food, which we know isn't good for us, is SO much cheaper than actual 'real' food. Or, if you are in a small town (like we are), the stores might not even stock decent food (our produce section is abysmal, it's quite common for there to be rotten/spoiled food on the shelves, and I refuse to buy some produce more than a day ahead of time because it will absolutely turn overnight). Our food situation is horrible.
You said "it's quite common for there to be rotten/spoiled food on the shelves". I am shocked - is this really true? In a developed, modern country, are there no inspectors, procedures or quality control which can roll into action if 'unfit' food is being offered for sale in a commercial establishment? It would be interesting to see what these stores have available, and the prices, and then see what a roughly-similar store in a small town in various countries in Europe can offer.
Oh, I completely understand. As someone who was flabbergasted the first time living in the US because I can't just...walk to the town's main street to the grocers. I was informed that if I want to go grocery shopping, I'd have to go to the next town over. There was no such thing as a grocery store in town, never mind that it was a freaking university town. That was a definite WTAF moment for me.
@@Marewig you said: "There was no such thing as a grocery store in town, never mind that it was a freaking university town." Another, totally shocking (to me), aspect of 'American Life'. I have lived and worked in over a dozen countries on 3 - some would say 4 - continents. I have lived in small inland Australian towns a 24-hr bus journey from the city; I know what distance and low population density means. But a _university_ town without a single grocery shop? How many students did the university have - 11?
@@lizzieburgess674 Nope. It was one of the top 50 universities in the US, because I literally checked the ranking before I applied. Yeah, the mind boggles, doesn't it? I was unprepared for it, because I literally have never lived or visited a town that size in other locations in the world that _don't_ have a grocery store, even if it was a small one. I mean, it even has a teaching hospital for its medical faculty, for goodness' sakes.
@@Marewig What the ...? was that about then? How did that even work? How far was the 'next town over'? Was there any public transport to/from this weird and peculiar university town to a place that _did_ have a grocery shop?
I spent some time in the US. Every trip to the supermarket was a nightmare: you needed to read the ingredients of everything, because there's either an ungodly amount of sugar or salt. Also food in general tastes 'funny'. I don't know how to describe it, but it's different. Even vegetables does not taste the same. Besides, i tried to bake pizza at home with the most healthy ingredients possible, and it costed me the same as eating pizza at a restaurant back in Italy. GG US. Also, my ex gf, who graduated in food safety and animal sciences, and studied in US, told me that USA food safety standards are subpar.
I had same experience. Was back in the 90ies when i went to the US a number of times. Back then, things here in NL were still good, but its going down here too now. Not as bad as the US yet, but still. Its partly bc you see more and more US products on the shelfs in supermarkets, which really never happened before. And traditional products disappearing or getting way too expensive. Its over a decade already when my youngest daughter wanted 'ben and jerry' icecream. So i said why on earth would you want that US crap? Its friggin expensive too?! I bought it for her (she already had some somewhere) and tasted it, but its really not that good. While we have great ice cream in NL. Much better and cheaper. But, its hyped and kids fall for it. ;[ You see more and more such shite now. I really hate it.
American foods are also excessively sweet for no good reason. Iced tea in Taiwan is sweet but not too much so. Iced tea in Texas is so sweet you could make freaking candy out of it. Must be a cup of sugar in each glass of tea there.
YES American vegetables & fruits are different. Our soil and the insects in the soil are different. For example we cannot grow European grapes in US soil, because it has worms that eat the grape roots phylloxera. This should be obvious that two continents separated for 20,000 years (due to oceans) will have different species & conditions.
@@electrictroy2010 Thats not it m8. Sure those account for small differences, same as within Europe, or even within a country or region. Imo its more to do with bad cooking habits, inappropriate use of herbs and adding salt and sugar to everything. Maybe also additives
About the E-Numbers: It contains a lot of additives, not necessarily bad ones or artificial ones. Vitamin C has the E-Number 300. But because of their bad reputation, most companies write the names instead of the numbers.
As a forager, nettle is good! Also the stings are denatured very quickly in higher temperatures. You can also crush all the stings so if you grab nettles very firmly and quickly you don’t get stung at all heh
Nettle pancakes/crepes with apple sauce are so damned good! 🤩 Or feta cheese&nettle quiche. Omg I feel a freezer raid coming on! (yes, i have nettles in my freezer, doesn't everybody? 😂😂)
My fiancee who is Portuguese says that whenever he is in America, certain foods have a very weird taste, he specifically talks about the meat and bread. I never really noticed myself but since we mostly live in Portugal, they have such better and stricter laws when it comes to food, its obvious that what I am used to in America and what he is used to in the EU when it comes to what is in our food, is different. I have overly processed , pumped up animals with who knows what, while over here it is as natural as you can get.
I've lived in Asia and Europe as well as the US. American bread has a weird sweet aftertaste that I didn't expect to taste in something that's not dessert. On the upside, I never impulse-bought chocolate bars near the cashier there, because they taste horrible to my taste buds (and I'm not a fan of peanut butter sweets either).
The portuguese are really proud of their quality bread so i understand why he dislikes the american one, my friends csn be highly critical of some british bread as well
Well that could explain why my friend anxiety went down when they got to Sweden and also their skin cleared up. Spinach and nettles are used for green colour , not flavour.
There's already shown to be a demonstrable link between gut health/gut bacteria diversity and mental health. So...yeah, who knows what additives are triggering the digestive and/or immune system, even if on a low-level scale?
Great point with the difference between possibility and probability in the US vs EU stances. But you talk about E numbers as if they're all suspicious. They're just standardized names for all kinds of additives. E300 is vitamin C for example.
We need to get this higher. A lot of people in the EU even don't know that all kinds of additives have E numbers, like lactic acid, citric acid that are harmless.
@@tymondabrowski12 Not quite. The legislation was changed so that manufacturers could use either the E number or the chemical name. As E numbers got such a bad press, a lot of manufacturers switched to using the chemical names as anyone looking at the ingredient list would then see no E numbers... The problem with the "can affect children" label is that it implies children will grow out of their intolerance to the colourants. We don't! Being intolerant to azo dyes this is a right PITA to me: I used to know that I had to avoid all E numbers less than E156 except E100, E101, E140 and E141 and that was easy to tell anyone else. Now I have to know all the chemical names to tell others - it's quicker and easier to get a restaurant to show me the ingredient list. If there is no list, I generally avoid any food I deem "dodgy" - namely all those with garish, day-glo colours; though I do occasionally miss some (or there is cross contamination of colours due to non-spotless cleaning of utensils between the different "foods"), go through an instant high, followed by the withdrawal (which is what people observe - this led to a plane I was on almost making an emergency landing as with the lower air pressure not much was needed to get the high, the withdrawal followed quite quickly and the cabin crew were worried about my health as they didn't realise the withdrawal they saw me going through was non life threatening). Recently I struggled trying to get a prescription without azo-dye colourants (the colours being used to identify the drug and dosage) where an "inactive" ingredient (the colourant) can have a greater effect on me than the drug! (Colourants are like a class-B drug to me.)
Sunny Delight in the 90s in UK. It was an orange drink. Yeah, young kids LOVED IT. Like catnip. It had a token amount of actual oranges in it. The ingredients list made it sound like synthetic engine oil. I never tried adding it to the fuel mix for a lawn mower, but the thought crossed my mind.
As an American, I definitely feel the struggle of loving your home and the nostalgia of foods you ate as a child and also not wanting to be sick or lied to by your country.
I wasn't born in the US so I don't feel the same. One of the first things I don't miss whenever I leave the country is its food. And one of the first things I don't look forward to when coming back is... eating American food.
That's America. Lying for money was basically something Americans have been generationally brainwashed into believing "virtuous," or a sign of "intelligence." Being king of the short bus while you're still on the short bus is kinda the plan.
@@Reiman33 "Thefreespeechzealot". Red flags everywhere. Also mr free speech thanks for literally denying the experience of someone else. This guy is here saying he struggles with something and you come out and say "no you don't" despite not knowing jackshit about his life. Moreover what this guy is expressing is a rather simple and logical situation. The USA is a deeply patriotic and proud nation, so this person much probably is used to feel this towards his country because of how they grew up. However as they discovers that objectively there's much wrong with the way of life in the USA, they find themselves in quite the struggle of having the face the cognitive dissonance of the country being so ignorantly considered great, despite the fact that... it mostly isn't for the average american. Finally I'll add that I don't see you translating any of your ideas into anything else than youtube comments. Not everyone has the will (or the ability) to go on an all out revolution because of how life is. Most people are very small and insignificant, only the rich have the right to decide which world they wanna live in.
@@Reiman33 Grow up. There's a lot of bitterness and resentment you're projecting onto a total stranger. Psychology Today has an easy way for you to find a good and affordable therapist in your area. :)
The difference between American bread and real bread is also worth doing a video on. Aside from the odd texture, American store bought bread comes with an ingredients list as long as your arm. TBH I don’t know what the additives are, but it can’t be good.
Many of the additives are just added vitamins and minerals because the flour is enriched. Obviously, there are others that act as preservatives, but a lot of the list is generally just due to the enriched flour
From Italy, I'm a baker and I can assure you that to make bread, you only need 4 things: flour, salt, water and yeast. That'it. Just try to make it by yourself and check the difference :P
@@sporospor I make sourdough weekly, and personally I'm not the biggest fan of sliced bread, but as a food science student, I just dont really care for the demonization of foods and ingredients because they have added ingredients. Also, in Canada, flour that you buy at the store is also enriched, so if you were to actually write out the full list of ingredients with those added minerals, it would actually be longer than just 4 ingredients :). I will always be team learn to make bread though, but because it's fun and I personally prefer it!
Mostly preservatives but some are good Due to vitamin deficiency amount the poor at some point some companies started adding extra nutrients to their food to prevent things like scurvy Also a loaf of carcinogens because cheap
My partner came back from LA recently. She brought me back a pack of chilli Cheetos which were neon pink. They tasted OK but stained my fingers for 2 days after eating them. And yes I did wash my hands several times. Americans have strong stomachs for sure.
Also important to consider is that in the US the parents/adults may only have access to these things, whether it be because its what they can afford or what food banks offer them. Yes, home-cooked meals are healthier and can be made cheaper, but this is still not always accessible to everyone. I do like the model of proving it is safe as that also helps protect those without a choice in what they are getting.
@@kristyl933 that is highly unlikely that "greed" is a motivation to not sell things there are some very serious underlying issues and long, long histories influencing these decisions
There is a documentary from the university of California on youtube: the cluttered life. As a European it was very interesting for me. There was also a section about how Americans eat, get their food and so on. The whole city structure is usually not for the people, it is to stress them out by trying to have a normal life. I would never change from Europe to America, although Americans themself are so kind.
Even though the accent still says American to me, your intricate knowledge of the humble doc leaf, shows the true Britishness running through your veins.
The EU has the opinion that chemicals should not be used in any food unless it is necessary, it has been proven that it is safe and the amount that can be used is regulated, and it is restricted to certain cases. The consumers in Europe do not tolerate additives and want to avoid it. The producer have found out that food with less chemicals or no chemicals are favoured by the consumer and they are working on it and find new ways of production that avoids it.
@@earlysda There are powerful interests behind the food products. The producers of those foods are no different from the tobacco companies. Their main goal is profits and they managed to imprint their products to the young generation and they will not change their habits when they grow up. The average consumer also has no idea what he is buying and what effects all the chemicals in foods might have.
@@adamabele785 you might be interested in the EU definition: food additive shall mean any substance not normally consumed as a food in itself and not normally used as a characteristic ingredient of food, whether or not it has nutritive value, the intentional addition of which to food for a technological purpose in the manufacture, processing, preparation, treatment, packaging, transport or storage of such food results, or may be reasonably expected to result, in it or its by-products becoming directly or indirectly a component of such foods;
This is making me really glad that ever since I could buy my own food I've mostly avoided processed and dyed food, most packaged foods, and mostly eat whole foods like veggies, nuts, and rice.
I the probability versus possibility thing is very interesting. Personally I prefer the eu way of setting higher standards and making it harder to cut corners, even if it means less profit and possibly making it harder to innovate
Don't say harder to innovate! In the US compagnies always cry "We can't make it without this poison (or lead in gasolin eg.)" and the politicians say "Sorry to bother you" In the EU the politicians say: We will prohibit this in two years' time. You have been warned! 18 month later the companies go: "Look what we've come up with! Just as good, and better for both you and the environment. Aren't we super nice - and clever?" - and sometimes they even wisper: He, he, it's even cheaper, so we've increased our profit. He, he! .
@@ane-louisestampe7939 great example of that is the current push to standardise chargers to USB C. Apple said it would be a problem to change from lightning chargers to USB C, EU did not care. Recently, I saw somewhere that Apple has decided that in fact it isn't a problem anymore. It is far from perfect, but EU has prooven its worth time and time again.
@@manfredrichtoften8848 One of my favorit examples! And the lead in the petrol. The commisioner of competion is a Danish schoolteacher, she's used to go up again scores of teenagers... Apple is piece of cake 🤣
As a child growing up in a very rural area, I remember collecting fresh nettles for vegetable soup. I found it tasty, and there was also a certain satisfaction in eating the formerly stinging plants. „Who‘s laughing now, nettles?“ 😉
Nettles are very nutricious and contain much protein. They get rather tough, but as long as you collect only the young leaves, you can even use it as a salad green. Young leaves have less nettle cells, still requires a bit of daring to eat raw though.
In the Netherlands we're also very strict about what can be called certain terms. For example, you can't label your item with the name fruit if it doesn't contain any actual fruit. We have fruit sprinkles that used to have 1% apple juice, but I think they needed to cut costs so now there no longer is any apple juice and now they're called "coloured sprinkles"
yup, also our cheese, im really hooked to old amsterdam, i love that oude kaas, (vind 48+ nie so lekker) but if i see the american cheese, i wouldnt even dare to put that in my mouth
@@FeScully might have been the crumbs they serve with every meal. They say it's good for your stomach. Seems legit cause I had no digestion issues the whole time I was down there. Or it could be that the food there just isn't as processed and fake like here in the US.
@@dedhart By crumbs I guess you mean the farofa, right? I’ll look it up. I’ve never heard it’s good for the stomach. I hope you enjoyed your trip to Brazil
Those of us who grew up in the 60's remember when the magazine "Newsweek" revealed that bread and cereal companies included a rather large percentage of sawdust in their products. The only one which didn't was Quaker.
That kind of shit happened in Victorian England, along with other things like plaster and asbestos to make the bread more white (white bread was fashionable and expensive then). This lead to the introduction of food standards and regulations.
My brother in law came to visit me when living in the U.S (hes french i am English) He took one bite of a ham sandwich i made him and said it was disgusting, it was how sweet it was. After i returned to England and then went back to the U.S for a visit, i couldnt get over how sweet everything tasted. Ive noticed that in the U.K over the last 15 years food has become a lot sweeter here too
whoa, an englishman should say that! I believe you m8, but english themselves were already quite fond of sugar, as i found out some 45 years ago. Was on the ferry from NL (well actually zeebrugge) to folkstone and wanted to eat something. So i chose a piece of pie, i think some berrie thing. It was so sweet i could hardly get it in. Also makes me think now that when i went to egypt (much later), they put so much sugar in their hibiscus tea, its almost sheer sugarwater. The consume more sugar than they produce. And its their main agricultural produce! But yes, Americans are sure king here. Everything is sugered up to being uneatable. And then they wonder why they are all overweight.
I'm probably going to get chewed out by another reply, but: This was something I started noticing once I converted over to diet drinks (which I drink less of, compared to 3 years ago). I'm disabled, and I've been trying to figure out how to make more of my own stuff, but it's difficult when dealing with a mix of short-term memory problems (ADHD and C-PTSD) and not living in an area where you can stretch $200 for a whole month. It's so fucking frustrating.
@@TheoRae8289 Its difficult m8, i know. I can say a few things, but it greatly depends on where you live and what your budget is. I live in NL (am dutch native), Europe. Used to be a rural area, although that is changing. Still, lots of farmers around (for the time being...) so you can always get good produce there. Im also lucky, bc as this town grew back in the 60ies, one former farmer, which had to sell his lands, started a grocery shop. He bought in from local farmers and offered that cheap. That business bloomed more and more and expanded. So i usually go there for my veggies, potatoes, fruits, etc. Ive never been fond of multinational businesses and supermarket chains that were formerly national, also went international. So i try to buy as little as possible there. Even with the price sometimes lower, i rather buy from a local bakery or butcher, bc that money stays in the community and i can trust these people. Ofc if you live in a city and you arent cheaply mobile, those things are harder and harder. Still, veggies and so will usually still be ok. So its also a mental transition to go back to cooking your own food. As for drinks; well, basically we need water. Not sodas. I drink em, but im increasingly hating the fact that i do. Its also expensive and since i dont do much movement anymore, im gaining weight, which i dont like at all. Also have an amount of problems, and yes, that sure doesnt make it easier. And also low budget. But there is always low and lower, so i cant judge what other people can do or should do. Its not so easy to change your food and drink habits. Or habits, period. Its quite a struggle actually. This probably didnt help much, but i try.
@@TheoRae8289 Sour dough bread made from self-milled grains. Pretty cheap when you have the setup (mill, some containers, oven) and you control what gets in your bread... Has some setup costs and sour dough needs regular care, but it also is fun (at least to me...)
@@irgendwieanders2121 I mean, I'd have to be able to afford containers in the first place (my whole previous set got left behind in a rushed move, and right now I am the textbook definition of destitute).
To be honest, when you go to the supermarket, 90% of what you buy is bought on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. So you really only need to look at what's in the product once, the first time you buy it. We always check out the ingredients of anything new we buy. And as someone in these comments has already said on the subject of sauerkraut, a lot of the foodstuffs made in Eastern Europe have zero additives, which has been a real eye-opener for me.
That’s right. You put in an initial investment of time to read the labels, make a list of foods you approve of (on your smartphone- the world at your fingertips!), and accept the fact that certain things will never be „ok“ to eat, but go on the guilty pleasures list.
But I’m not a nutritionist or a chemist so I don’t know what is harmful and what is not. The gov should do better so that all the food isn’t dangerous,
I'm always so fascinated by the differences in ingredients, especially for the 1-1 exact versions. Thanks for posting this, I love it so much!! Also wanted to add the Fruit Loops(unicorn) flavorings from the ingredients list here in The Netherlands- "natural citrus flavor with other natural flavors, fruit and vegetable concentrates (radish, apple, black currant, carrot, cherry)". It's crazy how different it is!
My friend from the UK walked around and around a supermerket in New Zealand, looking for "fresh orange juice", but all he could find was "orange juice". I asked him whether there was anyone at a counter with a pile of oranges and a juice extractor. He looked puzzled... I told him that "fresh" meant it has not been pasteurised and put in a plastic bottle or cardboard box like in the UK. "Fresh" meant it had just come out of an orange.
Interesting. In France most supermarket and a lot of backeries have a juice extrator and oranges where you can get your own orange juice (either you do it yourself, in supermarket, or you ask for it, in bakeries). Labelling a product "fresh orange juice" sounds fishy, it's likely not fresh if it has been conditioned.
You can buy "fresh squeezed" orange juice in plastic or glass bottles in sweden, that has NOT been pasteurized. It does not last long and is very expensive though
Here in Austria there are in many supermarkets in the fruit department often such machines where above in a large container oranges are inside. If you then take a small or larger plastic bottle from a compartment at the machine and hold it under a spout and press a small lever, then the machine starts to run, oranges are automatically halved and squeezed, and the fresh orange juice runs into the bottle. Then just screw it shut and pay at the cash register, and you can drink really freshly squeezed orange juice.
@@peterpan7903 I live in the USA but I just went to visit my Native Country, Brazil and they have those orange juice machines in the supermarket now. The problem was that the oranges were more often than not green! Even though you can get freshly squeezed juices in most places in Rio, I noticed that if the place was not upscale, the machine and preparation were unsanitary, and the fruits were unripened. By the way, since 1999, they have abandoned Brazilian cuisine and adopted processed foods for the most part. The result was obesity and other diseases we commonly find in the USA.
Point of order: double chocolate muffins (chocolate muffins with chocolate chips) are presented as breakfast foods over here in the states, and they are absolutely just chocolate cake. Also, man, excellent choice in L.L. Bean shirts. That's been my go-to mid-layer for two winters now.
I hate the fact that as an American a lot of this stuff is practically the only choice I have, and I am incapable to escape this because there's almost no chance I can move out of the US for several years. I've always been conscious about this stuff but now I'm feeling trapped with no way to escape this hellish mess of food options in the US. Sucks, but maybe there's a chance I can escape in a few years.
do you have any space to grow your own stuff, if it's only herbs on your windowsill it's a start? Used to live in a flat (apartment) and i would use window boxes to grow tomatoes and flowers.
I feel exactly the same way. At least u have hope, blessings to u. Ireland has welcoming immigration policies so I've heard. But like the other person said the Netherlands is great. So is Finland, Germany, Norway, France
Find Ezekiel bread in the freezer of your grocery store. Look for organic products and whole foods. Stay away from processed foods. Read the ingredients listed on the package. You CAN buy healthy food in the USA. If enough people cared, the food industry would shift to providing what customers demanded.
EUROPEAN UNION also bans things that don’t make sense. Like California champagne or pinot wine. “It didn’t come from France or Italy so you cannot sell it here!” Protectionism.
Very eye opening. Thanks for the information. It’s the information we don’t want to hear but we need to. Unbelievable that the US FDA Approves these goods and drinks.
I have lived in Germany and Taiwan as well as traveled and eaten in other countries. I grew up always wondering why food tastes so much better in other countries than it does here. Because of this, a long time ago I decided to only eat organic foods if they were grown in America. Your video has re-enforced my organic food practices and given me even more reason to stick to it. Thank you.
@@jwb52z9 This is a very good point, and one which I've railed against for years. WTF. I'm so angry at the United States, the home of the free. LOL. Ridiculous. We are slaves; we all work for the corporations and are given scrip to spend at the company store.
@@jwb52z9 just buy and eat smaller amounts. You won't break your budget, your food will taste better and your health will improve. Just a thought of course. In the UK where I live, organic food is also at a premium and I live on a basic pension so no frills! but I buy organic if I have the choice and prepare my own food in batches and freeze in portions (I don't enjoy cooking much, lol!) so it is quick to have a meal ready after that.
organic foods aren't neccessarily better, especially not in the US. They use "natural" pesticides (which aren't neccessrily safe or healthy cause things like deadly nightshade are technically natural.) Organic products are still often mass farmed in ways that are bad for the earth as well.
Never heard of you until you mysteriously popped up on my feed. I liked your approach, (daunting information, presented with wonder and amazement) and your humor! Well done.
I notice in Australia that caged-chicken eggs are the last to be sold . The organic, free-range, barn-fed 'green' chicken eggs sell first and the caged-hen eggs are left as a last resort , despite being much cheaper.
@@nct948 I’m not eating so many, but when I do I buy good ones. Btw it worries me that Cole’s brand milk is 50 cents cheaper than most. Is that through bulk buying or some other way? It seems like unfair competition for smaller dairy farmers.
I live in Canada and never knew I was getting a less colourful/dangerous version of froot loops but seeing how often I have been and will continue to eat them, I'm honestly pretty glad.
for a lot of things, we don't. Processed foods are likely just as bad, so that includes your breakfast cereal. However, our meat is of far better quality.
Acetaldahyde is listed as an unnamed "natural" flavor. But it also happens to be what the tobacco industry once used to make cigarettes more addictive.
My child had adhd symptoms every time she ate food with red food coloring. It stayed in her symptoms for 3 days. When we removed artificial coloring from her diet she was fine. Everyone else we knew with this issue put their child on ritalin. I researched alternative solutions (it was the 90’s so I had to read books about it from the library-we didnt have internet yet). Dr. Lyndon Smith and others published info on the danger of these food dyes many years ago. It seems many american food companies just don’t care.
Your point on the issue of washing chicken "in post" was spot on. Where I live we don't do that and there's not a great salmonella issue. They're tested and any suspected chicken can't be sold fresh. I'd have a pretty good chance of being fine biting into raw chicken, although I still don't.
I quit drinking milk over 20 years ago due to learning about the "Pus quota" Each state has their own quota, with Hawaii having the least per liter. I now live in the EU, guaranteed stomach ache if I visit the US and eat anything.
My Do-It-Yourself pest control provider told me for years that he does not worry much about the basic application safety standards, and he's "fine." His shop closed last year after he lost a cancer battle and the kids couldn't keep it going. 🤷🏻♀️
And Canada is up here floating somewhere in between. It's only in recent years that US dairy has made a significant break into the Canadian market and there was uproar from citizens across the country concerned about "the hormones." And the Canadian dairy industry, of course. We, like the EU, don't allow rbST in our dairy cattle.
Interesting. Yes, too much agra business in the US. My mother would not allow us processed cereals or junk food growing up, but even so when I was in the Navy in the 1980s I was amazed how much better food tasted in France, Italy, Spain, etc. Especially chocolates and breads.
American chocolate is absolutely fucking disgusting. It literally tastes of vomit as it uses one of the same chemicals that give vomit it's distinctive taste. A lot of it also can't be labelled as "chocolate" in the EU and must instead say "chocolate flavoured" as it doesn't contain enough cocoa.
London has a sugar tax. We actually found a Dr. Pepper, and it tasted just like a US Dr. Pepper but with no HFCS. I was so curious, “Why doesn’t the US do this???!!!” The US has an obesity problem, diabetes problem and for-profit healthcare… This seems like a no brainer
The global history of the sugar cane and beet and booze industries and mechanized plantations run by experts vs 40 acres and a mule run by trial and error hobby farmers …some countries economies thrived others crashed
EU = Prove it is safe
US = Prove it is dangerous
I'm very happy with a cautious approach thank you!
For unnecessary food additives, 100% on the EU side and happy to be over here. Well, at least until JRM gets his grubby little hands into the legislation.
I’m generally pretty happy with the way it works for medical stuff too. The steps are imperfect and will probably never be perfect, but there’s not a lot of lobbying because the politicians are out of the loop, thankfully. Bad drugs get caught and removed and the people making the decisions are smart about the balance of benefits and the risk of side effects. However tragic that may be for some individuals.
Agree
Even worse, for the US it's more like "Prove that it will affect our bottom line."
US = Prove it is dangerous; do it anyway.
Yes, the policy in the US is what happens when industry basically writes the rules. And even if you prove harm, the level of proof required to change policy is ridiculously high.
This confirmed my preconception that companies in the USA don’t care about the people/animals/environment as long as it makes more money
Have you ever heard of the FDA?
@@TheZacman2 lol. the same FDA that's allowing the chemicals in the foods. The FDA would only step in if it's found the stuff is super dangerous.
@@TheZacman2 I’m Dutch so I’ve heard of the FDA but I’m not very familiar with them. However based on this video I think it’s safe to assume that the protection of people/animals/environment is not at the top of the list for them, but maybe money is. Not saying that’s true in all cases but there are some sketchy decisions
@@TheZacman2 your state Department of Health or Agriculture has a lot more involvement on inspections of food processing facilities than the FDA does.
As an American, we’re very aware junk food companies don’t care about us 😩
Interesting point at the end about having the right to choose. I don’t see how Americans are choosing this unhealthy, sometimes outright poisonous food, it’s not like the two versions are next to each other on the shelf (for the same price). I would rather be able to trust that my food isn’t intentionally poisoning me for the sake of profit for the manufacturer and profit for the health “service” in the country I live.
Yeah that’s what I thought when he said it. It doesn’t seem like American consumers are choosing to eat the chemicals in bread. It seems like the chemicals are there and if you want to eat bread, meat, cereals etc then you have to eat the chemicals too.
@@shelleyjames4446 Would be an interesting bit of history to look at. I suspect US consumers essentially did choose in the past, although maybe not an educated choice. One company starts adding chemicals to gain some advantage (e.g. lower costs, longer shelf life, etc. more profit margin than an equivalent item. Or better taste or lower shelf price to capture market share). People brought the one with additives and so soon every major producer does the same to remain competitive.
If you buy your food shopping in one place, such as a Walmart and are on a budget, I can understand buying whatever is available within your budget, but if you have time and care to do so, seeking a butcher for your meat that hasn't been cleaned with chlorine etc, find a bakery that doesn't add sugar in the loaves!
Obviously this will not be feasible for everyone as I'm sure there's fewer and fewer butchers and bakeries in small towns and not everyone can travel to the next big town/city to buy a special food item, unless you can do it online but then it's not always accurate information
@@shelleyjames4446 yes exactly. It’s no choice really, either eat rubbish or don’t eat. I’d much rather eat British ‘bland’ food. Was a genuine concern of mine atleast that post Brexit our food standards would/will drop to American standards.
@@SyncViews I suspect that US consumers also didn't really get a lot of choice about it in the past either. Competition is often mostly illusory, with multiple brands all actually owned by exactly the same parent companies, and in the US in particular, a lot of products tend to only be sold regionally rather than nationwide. Also, if the additives increased profitability while not affecting taste (to any noticeable degree), and they thought that customers wouldn't even notice, then literally every big company will have treated that as a no brainer of a decision, so even where you actually had a choice, it was probably between multiple products that all decided to use the same additive!
I used to host European exchange students and without fail they all would gain 20lbs - 40lbs after living here for a year. They would be so confused because their diets didn't change much. It was just the quality of food being so garbage.
Edit: the pounds would drop after moving back.
I think they were confused because they didn't know what a lbs is
I've just been in the US for one week, gained 2 kilos and had bad skin. Also felt pressure in my Belly all the time.
@@AsdrubaleRossi But they did know that it's not a lbs, it's a lb
@@fuglbird I'm sorry, I'm not an expert in primitive measurement systems :P
as a teenager i travelled to US. after reading some food labels, i only bought whole food and only ate when i had access to a kitchen.
I'm from Belgium and it always weirds me out how much unnatural brightly colored food I see in US tv series and movies. Food shouldn't come in bright neon colors full of artificial harmful food coloring.
The bright colors are to make kids ask their parents to buy it, it is also to hook kids on junk food for life.
It attracts the attention of the sheeple.😂
@@davehendricks4824 😆 sheeple, never heard that word, love it!
@@lorrefl7072 you’ve got to be kidding me! My theory: if you’re not “woke” you’re ashleep!😂
In nature, the more brightly colored you are (snakes, spiders, etc.) the more toxic you are.
It’s almost like in some countries health insurance exists so the government has an interest in the health of its people and in one it doesn’t
Nail on head.
Almost. The US has health insurance. Its just privately funded.
dangerous food and costly health care ... work nicely together ... win-win
And in one country, the more unhealthy the population is, the more money the "health" care industry makes. Just saying.....
*Gasp* it all makes sense now…
The thing that vexes me the most about the US food industry is not only their lax safety standards, but their insistence that food producers have the right not to inform consumers about the content of their foods. I have seen enormous effort in the US to prevent mandatory labelling, or create so many exemptions that requirements become pointless. For instance, if you don't make a claim that your product brings a certain health benefit, then you are usually exempt from nutrition labelling in the US.
So, if food producers keep you from finding what it is in the food you are eating, is it really a free choice then? I think not.
Consumer protection is not high on the agenda in the US, they seem to prefer corporation protection.
Americans have a skewed impression of what Freedom actually is.
@@iriscollins7583 not most Americans, but our government, lobbyists, and corporations definitely do. They could care less what they infect the citizens with, they aren’t eating this crap.
To be fair, Eu food labelling regulations have lists of exemptions too .
U could tell people exactly what's in it and thier response is that it tastes good. This food is altered to be 200x more addictive than meth
Always loved that American candy always seemed to have "Artificially Flavoured and Coloured" like a badge of honour instead of a warning xD
For your health it is not relevant if it was made "artificially", if a substance is a cancerogen it is a cancerogen
I mean it's not really a badge it's just there it's expected it's a fact
don't forget the labelling of "natural flavors" on the package too.
@@lorettatayor5840 "natural and artificial flavors" yeah It's weird but you get used to it
Another variant I came across a couple of years ago when staying with friends in the east of the US. They brought home some steaks from the supermarket (wrapped in plastic of course) and the packet said "Extra juicy" "30% water". So, in fact, 30% of what you just pay, you pay for water (virtually free from the tap) , not steak. I don' get it...
Spent most of my life in USA until I left at age 50. I also suffered terrible gastric problems which doctors couldn't identify a cause for. Since moving to EU I no longer suffer any gastric problems. I just assume I'm no longer being poisoned by food.
It’s amazing looking around at just how many people are sick with all kinds of gut and autoimmune issues. I’m super careful with everything I purchase but everything is poisoned here. Other than growing or raising your food supply which would include everything I’m not sure what to do. What’s worse is knowing about it and feeling helpless and crazy for it. We’re being poisoned at every turn.
C'est édifiant comme témoignage de
You mean YOU were poisoning yourself. Plenty of healthy, organic choices in the US but also many bad options
placebo effect. you thought it would help so it did. there is alot of good food in the states. also you probably changed your diet overall so hypothetically, if you ate alot of dairy in the states and ate less in the EU by chance that could aslo do it
@@ghostbirdlaryAbsolute horseshit. Gastric problems aren't something that can be cured by placebo. Our country simply isn't all that great a place to live. Accept it.
In regards to the chicken (bleaching), I think the best metric of success is infection rates. According to the EU, the entire EU has about 90k salmonella cases each year for a population of about 450 million people. Meanwhile in the US, according to the CDC, there are 1.35 MILLION cases EACH year for a population of about 350 million people. Long term effects of ingesting chlorine aside, I think this shows that the bleaching doesn't really help and seems to rather create unsanitary environments where Salmonella can spread easier.
It seem the bleach is there just to get rid of the evidence. 😃
Bleach is also a fantastic wine substitute.
That explains why the few (us based) food channels I occasionally watch on yt are always going on about salmonella... when I was a kid, I was taught to always be careful with chicken & eggs, make sure they're done and all that, but other than that, I don't think it's on anyones mind. I'm almost 40, and I don't think I know anyone who ever had a salmonella infection.
(just looked it up, Germany went down from ~200.000 confirmed cases in 1990 to under 14,000 in 2019, at ~83 million people)
That is just some bad logic. You assume all US salmonella cases come from chicken, what is just not true. Go take a Logic 101 class first before you comment.
@@Riley512 - yes, you have a point, it may not only be chicken, it may the _the entire rotten U.S. food industry._ Because if in 🇺🇸 there are almost *twenty times* as many cases of infections with salmonella than in 🇪🇺 then, yeah, it may not only be an issue with chicken.
When I was camping as a kid, our breakfast cereals got left out overnight by accident. All of the cereals were ripped/chewed open and eaten by (presumably) racoons, rats, and other rodents. All of the cereals were eaten except the fruit loops. NOTHING ate the fruit loops, not even the rats. They were just left in a big pile next to the ripped box. I've never eaten fruit loops since because it made me scared of what might be in them!
Toxic
Some companies make what they call fruit flavored cereal and apple flavored cereal that have neither fruit nor apple in them. Read actual ingredient list and not just title of cereal. Also so called cheese flavored dog food does not taste like any kind of cheese I have eaten that I can remember.
Rat droppings?
That's actually hilarious lmao. The rats knew...
I don't eat fruit loop but I Fcking love them. But I am glad I stayed away for Yeaes from them
I'm Aussie, and when I lived in the US for a couple of months, I developed THE worst cystic acne on my face and back (I rarely get pimples). As soon as I returned to Australia, within weeks, the cystic acne went away 😳😯 I was so relieved 😭 but it made me think twice about returning to US for a holiday
I had the same experience in Mexico! My face went completely bananas with cystic acne after a few weeks!
Did you take your own soap, or use soap in the household you stayed in?.
@@uncletiggermclaren7592 yeah thats a bit simplistic to assume its the soap. I am sure over a lifetime in their home nation they used a wide variety, many of which are available worldwide.
I am in the UK and I know many friends who in the US got horrible stomach aches and whatnot after eating all that food.
My best friend is moving to Virginia in 2 days after a lifetime in the UK so I will learn more 😆
Just to add to the problem, all those various “safe” ingredients actually have a compound effect. Most prominent example is Vegetable oils (especially BVO) act in tandem with that bulk of sugar in your soda to completely wreck you.
Come back! I’ll serve you high quality food without crappy oil, grown on good soil and fed what the animal evolved to eat. Come back? 😢
I remember moving to the UK and Denmark from the US last January, the first time I had ever a) been in a plane and b) never been overseas. I wanted to grab a Mt. Dew from Tesco, and I remember feeling very excited to get one because sodas are such rare treats for me. Upon opening the drink, I immediately stopped after the first sip. The taste difference between US and European versions of Mt. Dew are so sharp that I gave up halfway through the drink. The same thing happened with popular snacks like Ritz, Cheez-it's, cookies, and tortilla chips.
It took several weeks to get used to all the flavor differences, but I'm honestly glad to have made that transition. After two weeks of not having US foods, I legitimately felt like I was going through withdrawals (I couldn't get full no matter how much I ate, I was severely anemic, I had an extremely fast heart rate, etc). But food in the UK/EU is so much healthier, and I felt it while living abroad. I think living abroad has been the healthiest period in my life. Now that I'm back in the US, foods taste so gross now- I don't know how I managed to stomach all the unhealthy sugars and salts, and I feel sick almost every other day. The FDA needs to get its shit together, idk.
I’m from Australia and whilst our food safety is probably a bit more relaxed than Europe. I remember visiting my family in California for a couple of weeks.
The food there, whilst often quite delicious, well also often tasted “fake.” If that makes sense? Like I could honestly taste how processed some of it was. And the bread especially tasted so gross to me. Like I’m sure some things are added to make sure our bread stays fresher for longer (given how far some of it has to travel to end up in stores here) but even still. It doesn’t taste like sugar like in the States. Blech
Haha, glad you appreciated our regulations in the end. In the UK we've been having arguments for years since the Brexit vote about what to do with our regulations, whether to ease them to assist with international trade or keep them strict like the EU. The EU strictness appears to be winning so, fingers crossed.
@@YonaSoundcloud The eu however have been lowering their standards, breaking the brexit agreement and accusing the UK of lowering food standars.
@@someonerandom8552 I sawsomeone comparing how much sugar was in a piece of toast in the US and the EU. EU had 2 gr sugar per slice, UShad 6 gr per slice. That's why it'sso sweet.
@@TheMissnola Yes, famously Subway was banned from calling their bread bread in Ireland because of the sugar content.
Me, an American, being raised with a diet of cereal, bread, milk, bacon, chicken, and mt dew suddenly rethinking my entire life.
Nick S , I know, but when we were little, chicken were bought live from a nearby farm, milk was delivered by the milkman, in glass containers, bacon was fatter, no lean, cereal was brown, not rainbow, and Mountain Dew was not yet invented.
@@summerbrooks9922 I couldn't imagine living in those days. I feel like I missed out. I hate that milk just marinates in plastic, sits in a fridge for days at the store after sitting for days in transit via truck. That is all I have ever known.
@@summerbrooks9922 how do people not know?
@midwestbadger2503 don't know about platic milk jugs but iv noticed that if I leave water inside a plastic container it tastes different than to a glass container or metal container
@@ehtresih9540 yes, that’s probably the BPA. It’s best to store your liquids in glass
Read a story about fruit loops, a guy gave some to his nephew and the nephew had an ant farm, he laid some fruit loops inside of the farm just to see what the ants would do. To their ashonishment the ants grabbed all the dead ants from their "graveyard" and piled them on top of the cereal. Turns out that the cereal emitts a chemical which is the exact same ants use to identify another ant as "dead" and not alive. He wrote that he never again would touch fruit loops.
You have set me off on a fascinating quest to learn about ants and their funeral habits! I have mostly found reference to Trix cereal though.
@@Lily-Bravo antscanada is a great channel of ant related things dont think you'll find a video specifically about how they deal with their dead though
awesome, when I see these colorful loops I can't eat them either, like chewing on styrofoam
Carminic acid is produced from dead bugs that use it to detere predators and nobody cares about it. Honeydew is bugs' shit that bees eat, vomit and turn into honey and people praise it for the taste.
People with lots of imagination and weak stomaches really shouldn't check what they are eating.
But dead ants are tasty, in a piquant / spicy kind of way.
A big part of what British people were afraid of with Brexit was that Britain might end up so desperate for food that it had to accept American food and the much lower food safety standards that American food is produced under. The “remain” campaign ran public advertisements about this possibility, while the “leave” campaign ran advertisements assuring Brits they would never have to stoop to eating American-made food.
It was a lie and was never going to happen I can’t believe people believed it
I found during a trip to Italy that eating bread did not affect me the way it does in the US, to the point where I had to give it up almost completely at home. In Italy bread was delicious, fresh, and I felt perfectly normal. Delightful!
The difference might be Monsanto glyphosate aka roundup
Keeping (US) people sick makes Big Pharma go round!
@@proverbalizer Good point. Another factor might be a much higher gluten content in GMO wheat
I absolutely noticed the same thing several years ago, I wasn’t sure if it was how it was grown or if it was all the walking I was doing in addition to eating pasta daily. Then about a year after that an article came out blaming procurement of the crops. If you want to see more organically grown non-GMO foods come by organically grown non-GMO foods. No one needs the government to just get rid of products, people Who can afford to need to use the power of their wallet to make the right choices without that being the only choice anyone gets to have. You can also buy Italian pasta in the United States or use US pasta alternatives such as making zucchini noodles, spaghetti squash, or making/buying your own fresh egg noodles correctly harvested no gluten added wheat.
Pretty much all bread in the USA sold in shelves or typical bakeries is all fake. When i lived in the USA i strictly only ate bread that i made, never ate bread anywhere else. Country of garbage fake food.
I think my favourite thing about American food law is that infusing meat and grains with carcinogenic chemicals to help with shelf life, yield and flavour is perfectly legal, but putting toys inside chocolate eggs is an incredibly dangerous and illegal action.
It’s like the FDA can’t see any danger that’s too small to literally see. Microscopic chemicals are fine, because we can’t see them, but kinder eggs are horribly dangerous, because even the dumbest member of society can see that it’s technically possible to choke on one.
The Kinder Egg ban was because of the CPSC, not the FDA. The Kinder Egg ban was because of the toy, not food standards.
If your looking for Kinda chocolate eggs with toys inside, I know a guy.. .
@@madensmith7014 interesting
Right ! Nice to know ur half dead at 7 yrs old. Yup cancer bodies being dissolved from the food u thought was there to help u grow SMH
😂😂 dude! I love you! 😂😂
Evan skipped one other big food difference between the USA and UK, etc., eggs. The eggs in the USA are washed, similar to the chicken meat. In the UK, the chickens are raised in a way to keep the eggs clean and the eggs are not washed. This makes a huge difference because washing eggs removes the natural protective layer that means USA eggs must be refrigerated but UK eggs are not kept refrigerated.
Same here in the NL
It's super weird. Both the US and Europe chose their regulations around the sale of eggs in order to protect consumers from potential diseases. In the US it's illegal to sell unwashed eggs, because the dirt on the eggs could get people sick. In Europe it's illegal to sell washed eggs, because the process of washing destroys the natural protections causing the eggs to be vulnerable to diseases.
The exceptionally lower number of Salmonelle cases in Europe makes me believe that one method is better than the other, though. (For one, the eggs in Europe require better treatment for the chickens and a cleaner production line. Secondly, the eggs in Europe don't actually HAVE to be refridgerated, meaning that there's not such a risk of a gap in the cooling chain getting people sick.)
@@tobiasreinhold7642 US logic: People will eat the egg shells. Let's wash the natural packaging.
Good to hear you still follow EU rules
@@tobiasreinhold7642 It's because the appearance matters more to the US than the insides. They have a more superficial culture - if it looks good, that all that matters, never mind if it isn't good
Side-note about E numbers: Some people think any E number is bad, but its just a system that catalogues every possible thing you could put into a product. E.g. Oxygen has the number E948. You need to look up what the E number is to find out if it might be bad, good, or if it's something completely mundane.
My favourite E number is E300 - the extremely scary acidity regulator... ascorbic acid, or otherwise known as vitamin-C. (As well as E301 and E302 which are the sodium and calcium salts of the same.) Or several ones from the food colourings section: E100 - orange, curcumin, the "superfood" part of turmeric. E101and E106 - orange/yellow, riboflavin, or vitamin-B2. E140 - green, chlorophylls, the green from leafy vegetables. E160a and 160e - yellow-orange, carotene, vitamin-A precursor, why you eat carrots. E160d - vibrant red, lycopene, the antioxidant in tomatoes. The whole 161 range is basically various carotenoid pigments that are flavonoids and antioxidants (the good parts) in plants. E163 - pH dependent pigments, anthocyanins, antioxidants in berries.
Exactly - this "E-numbers baaaaad!" thing has been annoying me (especially in the UK media) for decades... what's even more annoying is that companies have somehow been allowed to pivot back to using obscure quasi-scientific names for additives because people believe it's healthier. You used to get a very brief list of 5-10 numbers in the ingredients - very easy to check if you know certain things you have to avoid for medical/dietary reasons - now you have to scan through a paragraph of mumbo-jumbo and look up everything you don't recognise.
Fun fact: Subway "bread" contains so much sugar that it's classified as cake in Germany.
Subway bread has same ingredient as the rubber sole on your running shoes
In Ireland too, Subway took the Irish government to court over it lol.
@michael davidson I... What? Is this some Subway lore I don't know about? 😅
The meat is classified as wtf in America
@@rickysens597 no wonder it tastes like a spare tire
Yah.. And those things they add to bread made me think i was gluten intolerant. Only to discover that organic homemade bread is fine. Took me a long time to discover that its the weird additives that I'm allergic to.
Yes I think we are all suffering from some amount of inflammation from the additives in most bread. In some cases it's not the "gluten" it's the preservatives. Eincorn bread, ancient whole grain bread has gluten but does not trigger inflammation, so, its what they have done to the flour, not the flour itself. They have stripped it of its natural enzymes, making it difficult to digest.
@@mohammedjeffali1076 it's the new varieties of wheat. Bred for yield not food value. That and the longer flour is in the bag the more food value it loses.
Another factor is that glyphosate is sprayed on wheat to dry it out before harvesting, but not on Organic.
I’ve also heard in some cheaper made breads that use yeast they also do shortcuts so the body struggles to process the faster made yeast breads.
I make a no knead bread. Only water, flour, yeast, and salt. Only lasts 2 days but flavor is amazing and much safer 😉
I bought some sauerkraut today. The domestic brands ingredients included "Cabbage Product" Sulfates, water, and monosodium glutamate. The imported polish brand had "water, cabbage vinegar, salt"
And vinegar doesn't belong in Sauerkraut neither!
and?
Don't know enough about sulfates, but there's nothing wrong with MSG. The end result has less sodium.
@@pelidesign Depends on the style.
@@TheoRae8289 It doesn't belong in sauerkraut. It isn't a food that has savory as a flavor to begin with. Adding is like whoever was making it didn't know how, but they had a sample of some that was cooked from a known brand and they replicated it as close as they could using their food sciences degree instead of doing 1 hour of research first into the history of it.
I don't live in the EU but every once in a while there's an import at the store and I have developed a unique appreciation for their food labeling system. You actually have a pretty good idea of what's in your food! Which shouldn't even be a question, but
It is pretty good, yes. As somebody with a nut allergy, I am particularly grateful for the fact that common allergens are now required by EU law to be printed in bold in the ingredients list, or mentioned separately at the end (many manufacturers do both now). Standing in the supermarket quickly scanning the ingredients list for anything in bold is a lot less embarassing than people seeing you meticulously read the lot of it.
Also, from the pictures I've seen of US food packaging, it seems like ingredients lists are not required to be anywhere near as legible there as they are here in the EU, where there's a minimum font size and the requirement for the text to clearly contrast against the background.
I’m wondering if there’s a market for real food in the US, and not the slop being served as “food”.
The one thing that annoys me, here in Czechia, is that there's often no further specification for "spices", which means a lot of foods will have something potentially aggressive to some people hiding under that heading... common offenders being garlic and pepper.
I think the nettles and the spinach in Fruit Loops are to make them a green colour and not for flavour. The carrot for orange, the black current for purple and the paprika for red.
This!
Yep. Found in many, many other products too!
The extract of spinach might also be being used to fortify the cereal with additional iron. Lots of cereals are intentionally fortified with various key vitamins and minerals.
@@seraphina985 Sadly it is just for colouring the food - the cereals ARE fortified with iron, but they do that by...adding powered iron to the mix - looks pretty much like iron filings
Natural colourings then?
It's important to note that E number does not imply bad. Everything you could add to food has an E number (so everything with an E number was at some point considered OK to use in food production).
All the good additives also have E numbers, as well as naturally occurring stuff. Vitamin C is E300, citric acid is E330, vitamin B2 is E101, etc. It's just a consistent way to refer to additives so you know exactly what you're getting.
... and you can look up an E number easily to find out what it is.
it's used for fearmongering a lot, and I guess it makes sense.. E948 sounds a lot scarier and artificial than Oxygen
indeed, it's always good to remember that "it contains a lot of E numbers" is a pretty pointless thing to say, you're just saying it has a lot of ingredients, most of which are great, some of which are unhealthy, as in all things in life, especially food :)
@@rondowar Fearmongering is in fact part of the debate.
But the sentence "contains a lot of E numbers" isn't completely pointless, it just depends on the context.
Ingredient list of a ~3 buck box of microwave food? Sure, lots of ingredients are to be expected.
Ingredient list of a random bottle of water? Lots of ingredients would weird me the f out!
Dont they only get added if those elements are introduced to the food, rather than it already being in the food, e.g., vitamin c in an orange.
@@astonmartin4326 they are specifically for additives yes
specifically, each additive that's allowed to be used, gets an E number (later on, that additive might be banned though, and it won't be removed from the list of numbers)
Edit: I am in the US.
My husband retired 15 years ago to be the "homemaker." Since then he makes all our bread from basic ingredients and almost no meal contains processed food except maybe frozen vegetables, once in a while canned. He does buy pasta and bread crumbs. We do use bottled salad dressing. Most of our food is cooked from base ingredients and this last month he perfected French fries in the air oven, so not fried, just cut potatoes with the right amounts of crispy vs soft. This video makes me glad we made this choice.
I am going to show him this video regarding our meat. I could eat very little. A few bites every few days. He wants it as the main item for dinner.
Almost all salad dressing is made with soybean oil, a toxic "vegetable" oil. Nothing wrong with meat if it is pasture raised, of course this makes it much more expensive.
@@remyllebeau77 "...soybean oil, a toxic "vegetable" oil..."
What is the toxic part, care to name some chemicals?
@@irgendwieanders2121 Are you serious? These were waste byproducts from other industries, and then they found out with enough treatment they could feed it to humans. Jake Tran has a video that explains better than I can.
@@remyllebeau77 Yes I am serious. And sure, you can talk about industry etc...
But, simple question: How long is soy oil in use?
@@remyllebeau77 palm oil is a huge cause of cancer but we don’t see this being mentioned at all… soybean oil have this “toxic” rep because the right people paid so it would be so. The problem is not the oil, the problem is how some places like US produce it.
As a mom that grew up with a parent that was a nutritionist, I find this type of content fascinating! Quite depressing to see how lacking the US is in making sure that both animals and humans are healthy. Looking forward to the next video!
It's all about the money. Healthcare is a profitable business.
So yea US is only money money money and “best capitalisam in the world” 😂😂😂 show me the money und Gruß aus Germany
@@zelimirfijacko9293 The US is all about freedom. Freedom for corporations to monopolize a market, freedom for corporations trying to make a profit in human suffering. Unless you want to drink a beer openly. That's taking things too far!
The faster we die, the less social security we collect.
@@vidal9747 The USA is all about short term profits. No humanity allowed there anti-humans.
As a person with a food policy degree, I am so glad you're spreading awareness about these issues Evan!
What an interesting degree.
Save us! 🙏🏾
I’m an Italian food producer, cold cuts e seasoned meat.
The most incredible thing that always shocks me is that you use estrogens inside your meat farms in the USA. They are so super unhealthy and dangerous for human consumption.
On milk: I remember dealing with engorgement as a breast feeding mother, my body naturally made excessive amounts and my babies couldn't really get through it all so, for the first few months, and the last few months (as they began eating more solids) I was in excruciating pain. Everytime the milk came in, it burned and caused tearing type pains in my skin and, occasionally, deeper structures. Then, if not completely emptied prior to more coming in, it would cause extra pain as it would cause my breasts to become completely rounded and hard, and the nipples would become flattened as the skin was stretched to it's maximum capacity, and any amount of pressure, even just something lightly brushing past, was painful enough to bring me to my knees. If that's being done regularly to cows, intentionally, and they're not being able to naturally regulate the amounts of milk they're producing, that's awful and I am extra happy I switched to a company that doesn't allow the usage of that hormone (along with various other things that caused poor quality of life for dairy cows)
Which company did you switch to?
Don't read this with a combatant tone. I comment to maybe ease your concerns regarding the pain threshold of cows. Cattle eat, sleep and shit directly in a spectrum of the harshest conditions nature can offer. Everyday and night, and the only thing they complain about is hunger.
If this does not convince you may be underestimating the toughness of these big boned beast. Strip down to what God gave you and go spend the night in the woods. I'm not actually encouraging this experiment, but I reckon it'd take more than a moo and a draw at the feed to send you about your day?
@@rd3095 I have absolutely no idea what you're saying or what you're trying to get at ... Or, really, what it has to do with my comment..... And, you do realize that a naked human is not equal to a cow that someone hasn't popped a jacket on, right?
@@nanaak8617 it's a small local dairy farm ... Telling you exactly may be too close to telling people where I live... But they have a milkman who delivers the milk in returnable and reusable containers, which I love and feel like we should have never stopped doing. I can get eggs from them as well, I absolutely love it
Edit: If you're looking to switch in your area you could try googling dairy farms that deliver near me or small dairy farms near me or something similar....
@@IrelandFyre "was painful enough to bring me to my knees. If that's being done regularly to cows" you do realize the pain thresh hold of a human is not equal to a cow right?
All I was trying to say, because I have spent my entire life with cows, is you MIGHT be underestimating what is and is not painful to them.
It makes sense for countries that provide free healthcare to also put extra measures in place to try to keep their populations healthy.
Healthy people become a more protective society..
I’m a dedicated omnivore. I do feel that the creatures that provide our food should be treated with the utmost respect and care; if their life will be short, it should be as good as we can make it.
Animals not creatures - respect
That is my philosophy when raising livestock that will make the ultimate sacrifice for us. I am ready to go back to my own butchering so they don't have to make the stressful ride to the butcher shop. When I do it they are calm and don't know what's coming. I hate seeing those trucks on the road jammed with animals going hundreds of miles to their death.
Correct
Respect them by slitting their throats for a sandwich?
@@teegee5231 do you mean “respect them *by* . . .”?
That’s a pretty important distinction.
I grew up in the UK but have lived in the US for 20+ years. When a US company starts talking about “world class” I assume that means they have to raise their standards to sell abroad where they have stricter standards. In the US I never eat fast food, read all labels, buy organic where I can and cook from scratch as much as possible so I know what’s in my food… 😞
same here, I feel like people are just lazy and think the government is supposed to do the work for them. I don't understand how people don't know that processed food is not good for them?
yeah...my family has no "food sensitivities" when they eat my cooking from scratch..
@@donalkinsella4380 That’s not why - I never ate beef in the UK. In fact, even in the US I still hardly ever eat red meat.
@@donalkinsella4380 I know you have a narrative you wanna push but I never got sick from anything I ate in the UK.
@@donalkinsella4380 What a sad hateful person you are.
Remember that in the EU/UK you have to prove food, additives etc are safe. In the US, they assume they are safe unless proved unsafe. I prefer our (UK) method.
as a US citizen i wish we followed your example
Don’t forget Australia. Our food standards are pretty much in line with the UK/EU (despite American pressure).
In the EU you also have to prove you have a right to freedom. Government typically assumes you don’t. (In the US freedoms are by default & gov’t is typically blocked from trampling then.)
European view that people are inferior to government traces back to the age of monarchs. That attitudes never went away. (In the US the people are the sovereigns; govt is the servant.) EUROPEAN UNION also bans things that don’t make sense. Like California champagne or pinot wine. “It didn’t come from France or Italy so you cannot sell it here!”
Protectionism.
If I put a sign in my yard that said “Black people suck” the various EU states would arrest me. In the US the government cannot do anything. It cannot trample free speech, no matter how offensive
.
I lived in the US for 20 years. I always wondered what was in US sliced bread that stopped it going off. It stayed soft and 'fresh' for much longer than it should. There was nothing on the label.
“Preservatives” is usually on the label
Also lived in the USA for the same amount of time and you can’t find bread without sugar!!! Crazy!!!
Based on the label for the Fruit Loops, it looks like the nettles, spinach, paprika etc. are used to colour the cereal, not flavour it. If they were used for flavour, they’d more than likely be hidden inside the “other Natural Flavourings” part of the label instead - it just wouldn’t be a wise marketing decision to tell kids their cereal is spinach and nettle flavoured. Carrot, spinach, paprika and blackcurrant are regularly used to colour drinks, too.
EUROPEAN UNION also bans things that don’t make sense. Like California champagne or pinot wine. “It didn’t come from France or Italy so you cannot sell it here!”
Protectionism.
@@electrictroy2010 so?
@@electrictroy2010 It's only as much protectionism as any trademark is. Do you have issues with trademarks in the US? Or did you just not think that far ahead on the topic?
In either case, these cultural trademarks are not granted freely, as they come with several rules and regulation that describe what the product needs to be to be considered the said product.
This is done specifically to ensure that certain products don't deteriorate and their quality and traditions are not eroded in senseless profit-hounding.
I agree that the nettle and spinach extracts are likely used for colouring but the way the ingredient list is laid out seems odd. The only colour specified is paprika - why weren't the other extracts listed as colour to make it obvious they're not nettle flavoured?
@@electrictroy2010no problem putting "Pinot" on the label since that's the grape variety. "Champagne" however is a district in France so would be false marketing in Europe. "Sparkling wine" is what it should be called.
"Every adult should have the right to put whatever they want into their body" is one thing, but that means everyone who doesn't want to has to scan every product to make sure they don't. And you are fooling yourself that producers in the US do it for FREEDOM or whatever, they do it for PROFIT.
profit - cheaper - dominate markets - no choice
Even if you scan the labels doesn’t mean you will identify all the nasties. They can omit many chemicals that are in small quantities or part of processing. Want to know “ where” that product came from, or if it’s fake? To bad, they don’t have to disclose that information.
@@marilynalspachtoth5635
A sneaky trick of the eu food legislation is that ingredients of a constituent ingredient do not have to be labelled - a manufacturer only has to list the ingredients they put in.
Take a fruit cake. The ingredients will list "cherries", but to get a bright red cherry in the cake after baking will require use of an azo dye food colourant in the cherry, but it doesn't have to be listed if the manufacturer buys in pre-coloured cherries!
The thing is, if you have no right to know what is in the food you put in your body, how do you even choose ?
@@cigmorfil4101 Cool someone mentions this . There literally is a list (iirc actually several ) of so called "non-ingredients" which do not have to be labelled - for various reasons - acc. EU regulation . What I do like about this is that here seems to be healthy awareness about this in people concerned about food quality where i live .
I remember hearing an American say that Swedish food is really bland, which made me so confused for a really long time. I've travelled a lot in both Europe and Asia, and never once have I felt like our food here in Sweden is bland compared to other places, maybe a little less interesting at times, but not bland, however I've never been to America, so I don't know what flavours he was comparing it with. Hearing they put flavour enhancing chemicals in the cereals makes me see where he was coming from a little I guess...
Yes American food just tastes like,, so much. Coming from Australia it was hard to eat over there because most things tasted either extremely salty or extremely sweet. Definitely a lot of strong flavours in their food but not the good kind that come from herbs & spices, the kind that come from additives
Anyone that thinks Swedish food is bland hasn't tried Surströmming.
@@rob876 .
That crossed my mind too.
I'm an American, living in Europe. The food in the USA that comes in boxes, or from restaurants is heavily salted, and most have sugar, even the savory stuff. It covers up the flavor of shelf stable chemicals, and the vitamin and mineral additives. If you eat that stuff regularly it literally takes weeks of eating actual food and having it taste bland for your taste buds to recover and be able to taste normally again.
No clue about what it's like in Sweden, but coming from Romania to the Netherlands, the vegetables here are for the most part borderline tasteless. This has to do with the fewer sunny days, the particular varieties used (long shelf life preferred) and the fact that many are harvested while still unripe, again for enhancing shelf life. Mind you, this is changing in Romania as well, as supermarkets replace farmer markets, and supermarkets prefer to bring said long shelf life methods over the veggies that spoil within 2-3 days from being picked (effectively zero shelf life).
And that's on top of the traditional recipes, which don't really use all that many spices and such.
I‘m German, and only when traveling to the US, I get this uncomfortable feeling of fullness in my stomach, even though I try to eat healthy and avoid food that is too greasy or fried.
As I wrote, I only experience it when I’m in the US, not in other countries. Not sure why.
I had the exact same.
@@MQuinn-si4tpWow.
‘Hidden sugar’ in preserved meats is likely your particular issue …foods here are often ‘taste tested’ but they don’t list who the cross sample is who is ‘tasting’ …so areas who have people accustomed to more salt or sugar skew the taste tests
Did you ever feel bloated and constipated in the US
European here. As a kid when we were learning about colours we were taught that bright colours often means danger, a lot of poisonous animlas like frogs and the same is true with plants and fungi.
So basically when i look at a lot of US cereal and also different candy i just think "That looks poisonous, better stay far away"
Good point! I learned the same. The idea of neon food is so bizarre and unnatural. They're colours you usually see in plastic and paint, why would that be appetising?
That's my thoughts every time I see those bright blue "sports" drinks. Why! Are you adding dubious food colorant! To something marketed as healthy! (No it is not banned here I am in Poland)
Great rule of thumb
good thinking. the colourful compounds added in usa food are mostly azo-dyes, they contain azo group, which cause cancer and myriad if problems
Thank you, I love this. I'm definitely adopting it.
Spinach is very commonly used as a natural green dye, you’ll find it in candy and such, like green winegums. Not there for that tasty sweet spinch flavour
This!
You should see where Red comes from ⚠️
@@zam1007 not for ages unfortunately. And people it was Beetles Blood
@@alexisantonakis6592
Though some so called cochineal food colouring was actually not - people associated the name cochineal with red and so instead of containing actual cochineal (E120) it actually contained an azo dye (E122, E124, E127).
@@alexisantonakis6592 Cochineal was probably the very first item traded from the Americas. My local town Stroud grew rich making Scarlet wool cloth for soldiers uniforms.
I'm fussy about what I eat and I'm glad food gets labelled clearly in this country. The change that happened in the '90s was very much driven by consumers' concerns about health and the welfare of animals. Consumers got used to it fairly quickly
The labelling in the UK can still be misleading if one doesn't look at the content per 100 grams. If looked at closely, some labels will say, per tablespoon full, or, for example, a meat pie, content per 1/3 of a pie etc.
The people who pass the laws don't care about the people or the animals. To them, people are just livestock. These laws are about restricting energy or fuel in order to cut the population. If people were not restricted in these ways, for the silly, made-up reasons, the population would grow faster. The appeal to animal welfare, and such, is an emotional smokescreen only, for the masses, which is called the ostensible reason. Look at the skinny little milk carton the guy in the video "pours" onto his cereal. It is restricted at the mouth of the bottle, like I have only ever seen on alcohol...
@@-taz- most of what you said is nonsense, I prefer to eat quality meat from high welfare livestock. I don't why you seem to want your food to come from farms that are disgustingly unsanitary.
Most people just tear off the seal, Evan is wierd and punches a hole in it.
@@-taz- Politicians care about votes and supermarkets care about sales, so they respond to consumer pressure and politicians respond to pressure groups within their electorate. I know this because I am one of the consumers that pressurised them into changing and I do care about animal welfare. I am also aware that they will try to get away with claiming products are organic, fair traded or free-range when they are not, so we have to stay vigilant and keep up the pressure. There are two kinds of people in the world - people who make decisions and victims of other people's decisions. You do have a choice
If you were that fussy, you wouldn't be buying anything with an ingredient list.
I can't believe it wasn't mentioned that they add sawdust to breakfast cereal in the US (extra fiber!). This doesn't fly in the EU of course.
Cellulose materials are used as thickening agents in bread f.e. over here in the EU as well. Though I just checked our pantry and couldn’t find any products using blabla-cellulose.
Most producers switched to using spelt and other fibers - which is the exact same thing, but sounds nicer. It’s not „extracted“, but just ground up finely.
where in europe? i m sure it s not allowed as ingredient in Germany....@@ArDeeMee
I went to a European country with all my pain relievers headache pills stomach pills you name it. I was only out there for a week and all my bad symptoms went away. I returned back to United States, and within five days, I was sick all over again
The first thing I noticed when I moved to EU (from US) 20 years ago, was that I didn't feel as anxious anymore. At the time, I chalked it up to cultural differences, but now I believe it was the diet diffefences.
That is very sad. I think that is why we Americans have such foggy boggy minds and so depressed we can not even move.
You're not the first one commenting on this. There must be some real dangerous stuff in US food.
@@gardyloo3093 Another factor (depending where in the EU) is less exposure to motor traffic. I was much less stressed in the Netherlands because I rarely encountered fast/heavy car traffic, and thus the stress and risk that comes with that
@@OntarioTrafficMan When I first noticed that difference I was living in London, so it probably wasn't due to traffic reduction! Although I myself wasn't driving, but instead using public transport, so maybe that helped a little.
Im from England I live in America and every single time I go to England for a visit I lose weight without even dieting, roughly 7-10 pounds of weight. The moment I go back to America, and eat even healthier than I do when I home in England, within a week the weight is back and I’m convinced it is to do with all of the things that the American food industry allows in the processing/growing of food. I don’t eat meat/dairy/eggs in the US and I rarely eat seafood, I eat whole grains and I have type two diabetes. When I’m in England my blood sugar drops and there I eat chocolates, crisps, white bread and meat and cheese and if I eat any of that stuff in the US my blood sugar goes really high. It is making me consider picking up sticks and moving back to England, so I can be healthy again. 🤔
why not. Your health is your most precious asset at the end of the day.
You're not the first diabetic who's commented on blood sugar level. I don't know what's begins it, but the "casual relationship" seems strong enough.
you should do it out of respect and love for yourself. I am moving away from US as well. I have so much more energy and feel heathier in Europe. And it has a lot to do with food (but non-hustle stressless lifestyle as well)
Maybe you walk more in England? Different urban setting
I went to europe for a year to study, i lost much more weight without trying than the i did in US on pre bariatric diet (500 cal/day) for a year. Insane
Brominated vegetable oil isn't only in Mountain Dew, it's also in some of the favors of that sugar drink they make you drink for the blood sugar test when you're pregnant. Most of the rest of the world thinks it's too dangerous to use in food, but America makes their pregnant women drink it. (You can request a different bottle, only some of the flavors contain it - I think I read it's mainly used in the citrus flavors)
Wow
Well, in the past few years, experimental jabs were claimed to be safe for pregnant women. How crazy is that?
Is that what it was !!! I had two children in the '70s and they just tested my blood. Had another in the late '80s and the doctor insisted I have this sugar test. I drank that 20x concentrate of orange pop and the sweet was just pounding through my veins for 2 days. I don't eat sweets. I like bitter. To put that in my system was undescribable. Then they figured the test came back with a false reading because the numbers were so high. Needless to say, I told him where to stuff it. If I was exposing my child to becoming a diabetic it would be through DNA from my grandmother not from the little bit of sugar I ate. Fast forward 30 years maybe there is more research now on insulin resistance because your American processed food supply is sooo sweet. Your bread tastes like cake.
@@evan it's amazing how various countries ban various foods from various other countries but ALL of these countries allow people to kill themselves with cigarettes and those around them with second hand smoke 🤔 .
Ugh - that stuff is gross. And they made me do a 2nd version of it because my initial results were borderline. Yes, let's check for a blood sugar problem by making it skyrocket instead of checking a fasting glucose reading.
I’m 100% behind the idea that people should be allowed to eat what they want, but the caveat is that they should know WHAT they’re eating. This is fantastic info!!! 🔥
information barrier is always the biggest hurdle since the rise of humanity
There is big problem with this line of thinking. If you allow everything then the large chunk of industry will adopt to using all the steroids, additives, and bleach agents and what not as long as it adds profit margin. This will reduce cost of such produce but only by rather small percentage. The big problem however now is that if as a consumer you wish to buy unbleached chicken without steroids there's gonna be very little choice for you and because industries that operate in this way are smaller they will not have same economy of scales and thus will be forced to sell their products much more expensive so you end up paying multi fold more. Potential healthy ground could be taxation on additives that are not proved to be 100% safe.
E Numbers aren't necessarily bad. They're just an standardised way to categorise ingredients in food. So you can make some food in Germany, for example, then sell it in Spain - and the consumer in Spain can look up the ingredients if they want to.
Yea but when we mention E numbers, we are specifically referring to the bad ones.
@@mdx7460 "bad" is neither here nor there. Paracelsus noted already 500 years ago that everything is poison and nothing without poison - it's the dosage that makes whether it hurts or not.
Water is critical for our survival. But drink more than a gallon in a short time and your kidneys will wave goodbye.
We critically need salt, but ingest too much of it and again, your kidneys will go bye-bye.
Botulinum toxin is one of the most lethal poisonous substances we know. It's a paralyzing nerve toxin. And yet, people ask to have it injected straight into their face in high dilution to look younger...
Heck, even ascorbic acid, aka "vitamin C" has an E-number because it's used as an antioxidant and preservative. A whole lot of food colorings are nothing but extracts from plants. E 100 - curcumin - comes from turmeric. Some are made synthetically even though in theory, they could be isolated from vegetables. E-160 a-e Carotenoids naturally occur in carrots, tomatos and sundry other orange to reddish vegetables. In fact, beta-carotene is converted to vitamin A in the body. And the body gives a flying f*** about whether said beta-carotene has been purified from carrots or created synthetically.
@@mdx7460 Not really. More often than not, especially in uninformed people, the generalization "E numbers" makes them think that they are ALL bad stuff.
Also, when it has an E number it means that it is actually tested, and has a maximum dosage to be safe
@@justarjen Still it is funny sometimes, like with E 172, where I can be sure to get a safe dosage of iron oxide for red colouring 😁
I had thought I was allergic to dairy and eggs back in the states (vomiting, hives, fevers when I consumed the products containing dairy or eggs) but since moving to Korea I haven't had any of those issues, and banana milk is one of my favourite drinks. I honestly think there's some hormone or preservative that's being added in the US stuff that I can't have that isn't being added in the Korean stuff.
RBST probably 😂. But don't worry the FDA says its safe 😂.
But seriously another American who's traveled to Korea and Japan. Even lived there for a time.
Basically all my allergies I had in the US went away living there and I, despite actually eating more than back in the US I was losing weight living there and my hypothyroidism was cured.
A lot of the world uses a2/a2 breed, and the us predominantly not. A2 has far less lactose, which is harder for your body to break down and digest as you age. Many have access to raw dairy, too. When homogenized, pasteurized and fat often removed sugar, synthetic a and d vitamins have to be added. Anything labeled lowfat means sugar (under 200 names) has been added.
@@Pomeray8 I'm pretty sure skimmed milk, at least in the UK, doesn't have sugar added. It just tastes a bit sweeter because there's less fat so more of the rest of the milk including sugar.
Banana milk is not dairy (just like almond milk is not dairy).
Banana milk is just any milk with a banana added. In Europe we use a mixer but my Korean friend just crushed the banana up with a fork so you have chewy bits, which is really nice
I really like that a lot of the EU bans are for animal welfare, recognising that we shouldn't be torturing animals for the sake of profit
Agreed. Yes I’d happily eat the chicken but I do want said chicken to have had a happy healthy life.
healthy meat comes from healthy animals. I won't eat meat from deadly ill animals if I knew.
Don't turn this into the sad arsed vegan channel. Take your misery and depression elsewhere.
Agreed but might be needed for volume of consumption so it is affordable.
That's still pretty much what happens during factory farming unfortunately, as nice as it is that they put some of these rules in place there's a bigger problem with how animals are farmed
I think i might actually be scared of American food
As you should.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
America and China.
They are both sides of the same shit coin.
China not only have chemical food,they also have fake food.
The spinach and nettles plant extracts are there for colour, not flavour. You can buy the extracts and dried powders to colour food at home with them.
I rather eat those than the dreaded US version.
You can always put in some berries together with the cereal, if you want more taste.
beets can also be used for color
Yup. Natural colors. WAY better than artificial.
Orange, usually from carrots. Red, from red beets, etc.
But they also use dark red from for instance a type of lice (you may have seen them on plants. If you squish em in your hand, your hand becomes all red)
All of these have E numbers btw. Good or not so good.
That red is probably the insect’s blood. THE UN has launched a campaign for people to replace meat with insects (including that lice you described).
I remember a dutch television show doing an episode on "iron enriched" cereals. They were quite surprised to find out that the cereals contained actual iron dust!
Only american companies can think of something like that. 🤗
Plaster in their cottage cheese.
Which is pointless, because the human body cant process iron in that form.
@@Legendendear Presumably that does not prevent them stating that their product 'contains iron'.
@@helveticaification which is technically not wrong but...
@@Legendendear causes
oxidative stress to the body due to massive free radical build up.
I noticed an interesting, seemingly unconscious association in what you said at the end there. ‘I believe in bodily autonomy/the right to put whatever you want into your body’ was spoken like government prohibiting certain additives was a natural opponent of this sort of belief.
But just as parents don’t research everything on the back of every food label before feeding it to their kids. People don’t research everything on the back of their food labels for themselves. We just assume it’s safe to consume (if not wise) *because* of government departments charged with making sure it is. If Kellogg laced their cereal with a cocaine-adjacent drug that’s only not illegal because it’s technically not been classified yet, and you became an addict - would you rather be screaming at the government to let you keep your drug-cereal because you have the right to eat it if you want, or screaming at them for allowing a company to get you hooked in the first place? Or, to use a less-extreme example, instead of feeling outraged that ‘the government’ is taking away your chemical #9 that makes food product x so nice and squishy/flavoured/colourful and also increases your chances of getting cancer… why don’t you feel outraged that they ever let it in?
For me, I thoroughly believe that the world is full of unscrupulous scumbags who will happily harm you for their own benefit and it is literally the governments job to both stop them and punish any that slip through the net.
Do note that the thing about Chrlorinated chicken here in the UK had a scandal after a producer got trash chicken that was out of date and dumped and then washed and returned and sold as fresh chicken. So this hastened the ban.
Most of that disgusting chicken was sold to the fast food catering restaurants.
The same happened in Argentina in the nineties. A batch of 1200 tons perished chicken products was chlorinated and sent to the market causing more than a thousand people to get ill (I can't remember but I think that some even died). The thing is, chlorinated chicken was already banned so this scandal costed the entire line of command involved including the Minister of Foreign Affairs their posts and the tightening of all the control measures involved.
I do think there's an obvious link between goods production an Healthcare for if a country has to pay for the consequences of a dubious product it will think twice before letting it into the market.
@@savroi What an evil thing to do.
@@julianaylor4351 Oh well, that's ok then..
I have pyropheria, (still can’t spell it correct), and I know very quickly if the cows have that growth hormone in them. My issue is the lack of labeling means it is very hard for people with health conditions to get food that will not hurt them. Same thing with roundup and other chemicals.
The really horrible thing is that, as an American who poor, there often aren't better choices. The processed junk food, which we know isn't good for us, is SO much cheaper than actual 'real' food. Or, if you are in a small town (like we are), the stores might not even stock decent food (our produce section is abysmal, it's quite common for there to be rotten/spoiled food on the shelves, and I refuse to buy some produce more than a day ahead of time because it will absolutely turn overnight). Our food situation is horrible.
You said "it's quite common for there to be rotten/spoiled food on the shelves".
I am shocked - is this really true? In a developed, modern country, are there no inspectors, procedures or quality control which can roll into action if 'unfit' food is being offered for sale in a commercial establishment? It would be interesting to see what these stores have available, and the prices, and then see what a roughly-similar store in a small town in various countries in Europe can offer.
Oh, I completely understand. As someone who was flabbergasted the first time living in the US because I can't just...walk to the town's main street to the grocers. I was informed that if I want to go grocery shopping, I'd have to go to the next town over. There was no such thing as a grocery store in town, never mind that it was a freaking university town. That was a definite WTAF moment for me.
@@Marewig you said: "There was no such thing as a grocery store in town, never mind that it was a freaking university town."
Another, totally shocking (to me), aspect of 'American Life'. I have lived and worked in over a dozen countries on 3 - some would say 4 - continents. I have lived in small inland Australian towns a 24-hr bus journey from the city; I know what distance and low population density means. But a _university_ town without a single grocery shop? How many students did the university have - 11?
@@lizzieburgess674 Nope. It was one of the top 50 universities in the US, because I literally checked the ranking before I applied. Yeah, the mind boggles, doesn't it? I was unprepared for it, because I literally have never lived or visited a town that size in other locations in the world that _don't_ have a grocery store, even if it was a small one. I mean, it even has a teaching hospital for its medical faculty, for goodness' sakes.
@@Marewig What the ...? was that about then? How did that even work? How far was the 'next town over'? Was there any public transport to/from this weird and peculiar university town to a place that _did_ have a grocery shop?
I spent some time in the US. Every trip to the supermarket was a nightmare: you needed to read the ingredients of everything, because there's either an ungodly amount of sugar or salt. Also food in general tastes 'funny'. I don't know how to describe it, but it's different. Even vegetables does not taste the same. Besides, i tried to bake pizza at home with the most healthy ingredients possible, and it costed me the same as eating pizza at a restaurant back in Italy. GG US. Also, my ex gf, who graduated in food safety and animal sciences, and studied in US, told me that USA food safety standards are subpar.
I had same experience. Was back in the 90ies when i went to the US a number of times.
Back then, things here in NL were still good, but its going down here too now. Not as bad as the US yet, but still. Its partly bc you see more and more US products on the shelfs in supermarkets, which really never happened before. And traditional products disappearing or getting way too expensive.
Its over a decade already when my youngest daughter wanted 'ben and jerry' icecream. So i said why on earth would you want that US crap? Its friggin expensive too?! I bought it for her (she already had some somewhere) and tasted it, but its really not that good. While we have great ice cream in NL. Much better and cheaper.
But, its hyped and kids fall for it. ;[
You see more and more such shite now. I really hate it.
American foods are also excessively sweet for no good reason. Iced tea in Taiwan is sweet but not too much so. Iced tea in Texas is so sweet you could make freaking candy out of it. Must be a cup of sugar in each glass of tea there.
Oh, well, if your gf says it then it must be true.
YES American vegetables & fruits are different. Our soil and the insects in the soil are different. For example we cannot grow European grapes in US soil, because it has worms that eat the grape roots phylloxera.
This should be obvious that two continents separated for 20,000 years (due to oceans) will have different species & conditions.
@@electrictroy2010 Thats not it m8. Sure those account for small differences, same as within Europe, or even within a country or region.
Imo its more to do with bad cooking habits, inappropriate use of herbs and adding salt and sugar to everything. Maybe also additives
About the E-Numbers:
It contains a lot of additives, not necessarily bad ones or artificial ones. Vitamin C has the E-Number 300. But because of their bad reputation, most companies write the names instead of the numbers.
As a forager, nettle is good! Also the stings are denatured very quickly in higher temperatures. You can also crush all the stings so if you grab nettles very firmly and quickly you don’t get stung at all heh
You can also wear gloves to avoid getting stung of course.
Nettle pancakes/crepes with apple sauce are so damned good! 🤩 Or feta cheese&nettle quiche. Omg I feel a freezer raid coming on! (yes, i have nettles in my freezer, doesn't everybody? 😂😂)
My fiancee who is Portuguese says that whenever he is in America, certain foods have a very weird taste, he specifically talks about the meat and bread. I never really noticed myself but since we mostly live in Portugal, they have such better and stricter laws when it comes to food, its obvious that what I am used to in America and what he is used to in the EU when it comes to what is in our food, is different. I have overly processed , pumped up animals with who knows what, while over here it is as natural as you can get.
I found Fruit Loops to be inedible and completely alien as a would-be food.
I've lived in Asia and Europe as well as the US. American bread has a weird sweet aftertaste that I didn't expect to taste in something that's not dessert. On the upside, I never impulse-bought chocolate bars near the cashier there, because they taste horrible to my taste buds (and I'm not a fan of peanut butter sweets either).
The portuguese are really proud of their quality bread so i understand why he dislikes the american one, my friends csn be highly critical of some british bread as well
Well that could explain why my friend anxiety went down when they got to Sweden and also their skin cleared up. Spinach and nettles are used for green colour , not flavour.
There's already shown to be a demonstrable link between gut health/gut bacteria diversity and mental health. So...yeah, who knows what additives are triggering the digestive and/or immune system, even if on a low-level scale?
Great point with the difference between possibility and probability in the US vs EU stances. But you talk about E numbers as if they're all suspicious. They're just standardized names for all kinds of additives. E300 is vitamin C for example.
We need to get this higher. A lot of people in the EU even don't know that all kinds of additives have E numbers, like lactic acid, citric acid that are harmless.
@@DragonriderEpona I think that's why producers started to write whole ingredients names next to the numbers.
E numbers are the European approved additives there are regulations about the quantity of each that may be added and other precautions.
I TU'ed
@@tymondabrowski12
Not quite. The legislation was changed so that manufacturers could use either the E number or the chemical name. As E numbers got such a bad press, a lot of manufacturers switched to using the chemical names as anyone looking at the ingredient list would then see no E numbers...
The problem with the "can affect children" label is that it implies children will grow out of their intolerance to the colourants. We don't!
Being intolerant to azo dyes this is a right PITA to me: I used to know that I had to avoid all E numbers less than E156 except E100, E101, E140 and E141 and that was easy to tell anyone else. Now I have to know all the chemical names to tell others - it's quicker and easier to get a restaurant to show me the ingredient list.
If there is no list, I generally avoid any food I deem "dodgy" - namely all those with garish, day-glo colours; though I do occasionally miss some (or there is cross contamination of colours due to non-spotless cleaning of utensils between the different "foods"), go through an instant high, followed by the withdrawal (which is what people observe - this led to a plane I was on almost making an emergency landing as with the lower air pressure not much was needed to get the high, the withdrawal followed quite quickly and the cabin crew were worried about my health as they didn't realise the withdrawal they saw me going through was non life threatening).
Recently I struggled trying to get a prescription without azo-dye colourants (the colours being used to identify the drug and dosage) where an "inactive" ingredient (the colourant) can have a greater effect on me than the drug! (Colourants are like a class-B drug to me.)
Sunny Delight in the 90s in UK. It was an orange drink. Yeah, young kids LOVED IT. Like catnip. It had a token amount of actual oranges in it. The ingredients list made it sound like synthetic engine oil. I never tried adding it to the fuel mix for a lawn mower, but the thought crossed my mind.
It also went out of business after it turned one kid orange when she became addicted to it.
As an American, I definitely feel the struggle of loving your home and the nostalgia of foods you ate as a child and also not wanting to be sick or lied to by your country.
I wasn't born in the US so I don't feel the same. One of the first things I don't miss whenever I leave the country is its food. And one of the first things I don't look forward to when coming back is... eating American food.
@@iPlayOnSpica and everyone bitches that americans are fat.
That's America. Lying for money was basically something Americans have been generationally brainwashed into believing "virtuous," or a sign of "intelligence."
Being king of the short bus while you're still on the short bus is kinda the plan.
@@Reiman33 "Thefreespeechzealot". Red flags everywhere.
Also mr free speech thanks for literally denying the experience of someone else. This guy is here saying he struggles with something and you come out and say "no you don't" despite not knowing jackshit about his life.
Moreover what this guy is expressing is a rather simple and logical situation. The USA is a deeply patriotic and proud nation, so this person much probably is used to feel this towards his country because of how they grew up. However as they discovers that objectively there's much wrong with the way of life in the USA, they find themselves in quite the struggle of having the face the cognitive dissonance of the country being so ignorantly considered great, despite the fact that... it mostly isn't for the average american.
Finally I'll add that I don't see you translating any of your ideas into anything else than youtube comments. Not everyone has the will (or the ability) to go on an all out revolution because of how life is. Most people are very small and insignificant, only the rich have the right to decide which world they wanna live in.
@@Reiman33 Grow up. There's a lot of bitterness and resentment you're projecting onto a total stranger. Psychology Today has an easy way for you to find a good and affordable therapist in your area. :)
As Mark Twain wrote: "We have the best government money can buy".
Ouch.
Lol
Worldwide
The difference between American bread and real bread is also worth doing a video on. Aside from the odd texture, American store bought bread comes with an ingredients list as long as your arm. TBH I don’t know what the additives are, but it can’t be good.
Many of the additives are just added vitamins and minerals because the flour is enriched. Obviously, there are others that act as preservatives, but a lot of the list is generally just due to the enriched flour
From Italy, I'm a baker and I can assure you that to make bread, you only need 4 things: flour, salt, water and yeast. That'it. Just try to make it by yourself and check the difference :P
@@sporospor I make sourdough weekly, and personally I'm not the biggest fan of sliced bread, but as a food science student, I just dont really care for the demonization of foods and ingredients because they have added ingredients. Also, in Canada, flour that you buy at the store is also enriched, so if you were to actually write out the full list of ingredients with those added minerals, it would actually be longer than just 4 ingredients :). I will always be team learn to make bread though, but because it's fun and I personally prefer it!
Factory bread that lasts 30 days on the shelf. Yum.
Mostly preservatives but some are good
Due to vitamin deficiency amount the poor at some point some companies started adding extra nutrients to their food to prevent things like scurvy
Also a loaf of carcinogens because cheap
My partner came back from LA recently. She brought me back a pack of chilli Cheetos which were neon pink. They tasted OK but stained my fingers for 2 days after eating them. And yes I did wash my hands several times. Americans have strong stomachs for sure.
As a Mexican I thought we were the only ones with strong stomachs in North America
Also important to consider is that in the US the parents/adults may only have access to these things, whether it be because its what they can afford or what food banks offer them. Yes, home-cooked meals are healthier and can be made cheaper, but this is still not always accessible to everyone.
I do like the model of proving it is safe as that also helps protect those without a choice in what they are getting.
Wonder what would happen if a charity partnered with Gorilla Gardeners to not only grow wheat, but have small flour mills and bread making classes...?
I definitely don't think anyone is blaming individual consumers, this is directly the governing bodies greed causing these issues.
@@kristyl933 that is highly unlikely that "greed" is a motivation to not sell things
there are some very serious underlying issues and long, long histories influencing these decisions
Amen.
There is a documentary from the university of California on youtube: the cluttered life. As a European it was very interesting for me. There was also a section about how Americans eat, get their food and so on. The whole city structure is usually not for the people, it is to stress them out by trying to have a normal life. I would never change from Europe to America, although Americans themself are so kind.
Even though the accent still says American to me, your intricate knowledge of the humble doc leaf, shows the true Britishness running through your veins.
or even Dock leaf - fixed that for you 😉
The EU has the opinion that chemicals should not be used in any food unless it is necessary, it has been proven that it is safe and the amount that can be used is regulated, and it is restricted to certain cases. The consumers in Europe do not tolerate additives and want to avoid it. The producer have found out that food with less chemicals or no chemicals are favoured by the consumer and they are working on it and find new ways of production that avoids it.
If enough Americans stopped buying sugary, additive foods, the companies would change their products.
@@earlysda There are powerful interests behind the food products. The producers of those foods are no different from the tobacco companies. Their main goal is profits and they managed to imprint their products to the young generation and they will not change their habits when they grow up. The average consumer also has no idea what he is buying and what effects all the chemicals in foods might have.
how are "chemicals" defined in your opinion?
@@ToriZealot In this case, "Chemicals" are additives that are not food or its ingredients. Simple as that.
@@adamabele785 you might be interested in the EU definition:
food additive
shall mean any substance not normally consumed as a food in itself and not normally used as a characteristic ingredient of food, whether or not it has nutritive value, the intentional addition of which to food for a technological purpose in the manufacture, processing, preparation, treatment, packaging, transport or storage of such food results, or may be reasonably expected to result, in it or its by-products becoming directly or indirectly a component of such foods;
This is making me really glad that ever since I could buy my own food I've mostly avoided processed and dyed food, most packaged foods, and mostly eat whole foods like veggies, nuts, and rice.
Your body just needs to be genetically modified too, to survive the genetically modified food. 😮
I the probability versus possibility thing is very interesting. Personally I prefer the eu way of setting higher standards and making it harder to cut corners, even if it means less profit and possibly making it harder to innovate
Don't say harder to innovate!
In the US compagnies always cry "We can't make it without this poison (or lead in gasolin eg.)" and the politicians say "Sorry to bother you"
In the EU the politicians say: We will prohibit this in two years' time. You have been warned!
18 month later the companies go: "Look what we've come up with! Just as good, and better for both you and the environment. Aren't we super nice - and clever?"
- and sometimes they even wisper: He, he, it's even cheaper, so we've increased our profit. He, he!
.
@@ane-louisestampe7939 great example of that is the current push to standardise chargers to USB C.
Apple said it would be a problem to change from lightning chargers to USB C, EU did not care. Recently, I saw somewhere that Apple has decided that in fact it isn't a problem anymore.
It is far from perfect, but EU has prooven its worth time and time again.
@@manfredrichtoften8848 One of my favorit examples! And the lead in the petrol.
The commisioner of competion is a Danish schoolteacher, she's used to go up again scores of teenagers... Apple is piece of cake 🤣
Nettles don't hurt you once processed. You can make a homemade tea with many types of nettles, boiling it makes them safe.
The nettle leaves are fine. The stems have stingers. Nettle is a super food.
@@danielturner9832 The leaves on most types of nettles have stingers as well, but the sting goes away if you submerge them in cold water.
As a child growing up in a very rural area, I remember collecting fresh nettles for vegetable soup. I found it tasty, and there was also a certain satisfaction in eating the formerly stinging plants. „Who‘s laughing now, nettles?“ 😉
Nettles are very nutricious and contain much protein. They get rather tough, but as long as you collect only the young leaves, you can even use it as a salad green. Young leaves have less nettle cells, still requires a bit of daring to eat raw though.
In the Netherlands we're also very strict about what can be called certain terms. For example, you can't label your item with the name fruit if it doesn't contain any actual fruit. We have fruit sprinkles that used to have 1% apple juice, but I think they needed to cut costs so now there no longer is any apple juice and now they're called "coloured sprinkles"
yup, also our cheese, im really hooked to old amsterdam, i love that oude kaas, (vind 48+ nie so lekker) but if i see the american cheese, i wouldnt even dare to put that in my mouth
Fruit Of The Loom… Clothing brand illegal in Holland? Sounds good to me. 😂
Really glad to live in Europe in this respect. Also confirms my goal to buy as little processed foods as possible.
As a Mexican now I know why Americans love Mexican food after trying it
After staying in Brazil for 2 weeks I'm convinced that the food here in the US is trying to kill me.
Hi! Brazilian here. I'm curious, what did you eat in Brazil that stood out for you? What seemed different from the US?
@@FeScully might have been the crumbs they serve with every meal. They say it's good for your stomach. Seems legit cause I had no digestion issues the whole time I was down there. Or it could be that the food there just isn't as processed and fake like here in the US.
@@dedhart By crumbs I guess you mean the farofa, right? I’ll look it up. I’ve never heard it’s good for the stomach. I hope you enjoyed your trip to Brazil
@@FeScully Farofa sounds right, and Brazil was wonderful thanks!
@@FeScully farofa is made of cassava which has a lot of fibre, so yeah that's why Dylan had a functioning stomach there.
Those of us who grew up in the 60's remember when the magazine "Newsweek" revealed that bread and cereal companies included a rather large percentage of sawdust in their products. The only one which didn't was Quaker.
Also in jars of parmesain. Never eat that. Grate your own fresh.
Cellulose (powdered wood) is found in many food products now. Read labels.
You mean 1860's?
That kind of shit happened in Victorian England, along with other things like plaster and asbestos to make the bread more white (white bread was fashionable and expensive then). This lead to the introduction of food standards and regulations.
Quaker is Canadian, thats why.
My brother in law came to visit me when living in the U.S (hes french i am English)
He took one bite of a ham sandwich i made him and said it was disgusting, it was how sweet it was.
After i returned to England and then went back to the U.S for a visit, i couldnt get over how sweet everything tasted.
Ive noticed that in the U.K over the last 15 years food has become a lot sweeter here too
whoa, an englishman should say that! I believe you m8, but english themselves were already quite fond of sugar, as i found out some 45 years ago.
Was on the ferry from NL (well actually zeebrugge) to folkstone and wanted to eat something. So i chose a piece of pie, i think some berrie thing. It was so sweet i could hardly get it in. Also makes me think now that when i went to egypt (much later), they put so much sugar in their hibiscus tea, its almost sheer sugarwater. The consume more sugar than they produce. And its their main agricultural produce!
But yes, Americans are sure king here. Everything is sugered up to being uneatable. And then they wonder why they are all overweight.
I'm probably going to get chewed out by another reply, but: This was something I started noticing once I converted over to diet drinks (which I drink less of, compared to 3 years ago). I'm disabled, and I've been trying to figure out how to make more of my own stuff, but it's difficult when dealing with a mix of short-term memory problems (ADHD and C-PTSD) and not living in an area where you can stretch $200 for a whole month.
It's so fucking frustrating.
@@TheoRae8289 Its difficult m8, i know. I can say a few things, but it greatly depends on where you live and what your budget is.
I live in NL (am dutch native), Europe. Used to be a rural area, although that is changing.
Still, lots of farmers around (for the time being...) so you can always get good produce there. Im also lucky, bc as this town grew back in the 60ies, one former farmer, which had to sell his lands, started a grocery shop. He bought in from local farmers and offered that cheap. That business bloomed more and more and expanded. So i usually go there for my veggies, potatoes, fruits, etc.
Ive never been fond of multinational businesses and supermarket chains that were formerly national, also went international. So i try to buy as little as possible there. Even with the price sometimes lower, i rather buy from a local bakery or butcher, bc that money stays in the community and i can trust these people.
Ofc if you live in a city and you arent cheaply mobile, those things are harder and harder. Still, veggies and so will usually still be ok. So its also a mental transition to go back to cooking your own food.
As for drinks; well, basically we need water. Not sodas. I drink em, but im increasingly hating the fact that i do. Its also expensive and since i dont do much movement anymore, im gaining weight, which i dont like at all.
Also have an amount of problems, and yes, that sure doesnt make it easier. And also low budget. But there is always low and lower, so i cant judge what other people can do or should do.
Its not so easy to change your food and drink habits. Or habits, period. Its quite a struggle actually.
This probably didnt help much, but i try.
@@TheoRae8289 Sour dough bread made from self-milled grains.
Pretty cheap when you have the setup (mill, some containers, oven) and you control what gets in your bread...
Has some setup costs and sour dough needs regular care, but it also is fun (at least to me...)
@@irgendwieanders2121 I mean, I'd have to be able to afford containers in the first place (my whole previous set got left behind in a rushed move, and right now I am the textbook definition of destitute).
To be honest, when you go to the supermarket, 90% of what you buy is bought on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. So you really only need to look at what's in the product once, the first time you buy it. We always check out the ingredients of anything new we buy. And as someone in these comments has already said on the subject of sauerkraut, a lot of the foodstuffs made in Eastern Europe have zero additives, which has been a real eye-opener for me.
That’s right. You put in an initial investment of time to read the labels, make a list of foods you approve of (on your smartphone- the world at your fingertips!), and accept the fact that certain things will never be „ok“ to eat, but go on the guilty pleasures list.
But I’m not a nutritionist or a chemist so I don’t know what is harmful and what is not. The gov should do better so that all the food isn’t dangerous,
I'm always so fascinated by the differences in ingredients, especially for the 1-1 exact versions. Thanks for posting this, I love it so much!!
Also wanted to add the Fruit Loops(unicorn) flavorings from the ingredients list here in The Netherlands-
"natural citrus flavor with other natural flavors, fruit and vegetable concentrates (radish, apple, black currant, carrot, cherry)". It's crazy how different it is!
Hope you’ve watched insider food’s food wars
I'm sorry but why do you pour the milk with a tiny hole???
Ha I was just about to ask this as well
Maybe he's clumsy, or prone to having it burp and suddenly splash everywhere?
mans is rationing his milk 🤷🏼♂️
Safer i guess???
I was wondering about that, but also why does the milk look like it's water with some kind of white coloring in it instead of real milk?
My friend from the UK walked around and around a supermerket in New Zealand, looking for "fresh orange juice", but all he could find was "orange juice". I asked him whether there was anyone at a counter with a pile of oranges and a juice extractor. He looked puzzled... I told him that "fresh" meant it has not been pasteurised and put in a plastic bottle or cardboard box like in the UK. "Fresh" meant it had just come out of an orange.
Interesting. In France most supermarket and a lot of backeries have a juice extrator and oranges where you can get your own orange juice (either you do it yourself, in supermarket, or you ask for it, in bakeries). Labelling a product "fresh orange juice" sounds fishy, it's likely not fresh if it has been conditioned.
You can buy "fresh squeezed" orange juice in plastic or glass bottles in sweden, that has NOT been pasteurized. It does not last long and is very expensive though
Here in Austria there are in many supermarkets in the fruit department often such machines where above in a large container oranges are inside. If you then take a small or larger plastic bottle from a compartment at the machine and hold it under a spout and press a small lever, then the machine starts to run, oranges are automatically halved and squeezed, and the fresh orange juice runs into the bottle. Then just screw it shut and pay at the cash register, and you can drink really freshly squeezed orange juice.
@@peterpan7903 I live in the USA but I just went to visit my Native Country, Brazil and they have those orange juice machines in the supermarket now. The problem was that the oranges were more often than not green! Even though you can get freshly squeezed juices in most places in Rio, I noticed that if the place was not upscale, the machine and preparation were unsanitary, and the fruits were unripened. By the way, since 1999, they have abandoned Brazilian cuisine and adopted processed foods for the most part. The result was obesity and other diseases we commonly find in the USA.
@@andreaskampe9143 Same in the UK.
Point of order: double chocolate muffins (chocolate muffins with chocolate chips) are presented as breakfast foods over here in the states, and they are absolutely just chocolate cake.
Also, man, excellent choice in L.L. Bean shirts. That's been my go-to mid-layer for two winters now.
Good eye! Love my LL Bean flannels
Cake is a totally acceptable breakfast!
"Fix it in post" at the chicken thing had me DYING lmao
I hate the fact that as an American a lot of this stuff is practically the only choice I have, and I am incapable to escape this because there's almost no chance I can move out of the US for several years. I've always been conscious about this stuff but now I'm feeling trapped with no way to escape this hellish mess of food options in the US. Sucks, but maybe there's a chance I can escape in a few years.
do you have any space to grow your own stuff, if it's only herbs on your windowsill it's a start? Used to live in a flat (apartment) and i would use window boxes to grow tomatoes and flowers.
Just go now, so many are wanting to leave.
Move to the Netherlands, it’s easy for us citizens
I feel exactly the same way. At least u have hope, blessings to u.
Ireland has welcoming immigration policies so I've heard.
But like the other person said the Netherlands is great. So is Finland, Germany, Norway, France
Find Ezekiel bread in the freezer of your grocery store. Look for organic products and whole foods. Stay away from processed foods. Read the ingredients listed on the package. You CAN buy healthy food in the USA. If enough people cared, the food industry would shift to providing what customers demanded.
You’d be amazed how many US foods are banned around the world.
one has to question whether American food can still actually be classified as such
@@helgasaintpierre9809Average Euro being snudy.
@@Clown_the_Clown no as an american i too shall ask the same question
EUROPEAN UNION also bans things that don’t make sense. Like California champagne or pinot wine. “It didn’t come from France or Italy so you cannot sell it here!”
Protectionism.
Its not banned, you just cant sell it labaled as champagne.
Very eye opening. Thanks for the information. It’s the information we don’t want to hear but we need to. Unbelievable that the US FDA Approves these goods and drinks.
I have lived in Germany and Taiwan as well as traveled and eaten in other countries. I grew up always wondering why food tastes so much better in other countries than it does here. Because of this, a long time ago I decided to only eat organic foods if they were grown in America. Your video has re-enforced my organic food practices and given me even more reason to stick to it. Thank you.
@@jwb52z9 This is a very good point, and one which I've railed against for years. WTF. I'm so angry at the United States, the home of the free. LOL. Ridiculous. We are slaves; we all work for the corporations and are given scrip to spend at the company store.
@@jwb52z9 just buy and eat smaller amounts. You won't break your budget, your food will taste better and your health will improve. Just a thought of course. In the UK where I live, organic food is also at a premium and I live on a basic pension so no frills! but I buy organic if I have the choice and prepare my own food in batches and freeze in portions (I don't enjoy cooking much, lol!) so it is quick to have a meal ready after that.
@@jwb52z9 ::: You might find, that you eat less when you eat organic food, our bodies feel satiated, no cravings.
organic foods in the US aren't really that different than non organic. and for people like me with very little money, it 100% will break the bank.
organic foods aren't neccessarily better, especially not in the US. They use "natural" pesticides (which aren't neccessrily safe or healthy cause things like deadly nightshade are technically natural.) Organic products are still often mass farmed in ways that are bad for the earth as well.
Never heard of you until you mysteriously popped up on my feed. I liked your approach, (daunting information, presented with wonder and amazement) and your humor! Well done.
Thanks Debbi! I got 2 more on this topic coming this month :)
Same here...I found myself laughing a couple of times. The research was great, thank you.
I notice in Australia that caged-chicken eggs are the last to be sold . The organic, free-range, barn-fed 'green' chicken eggs sell first and the caged-hen eggs are left as a last resort , despite being much cheaper.
Not in my town. North West NSW. Eggs are so scarce we'll snatch and hoard any eggs. Cole's have restrictions on them.
@@cincin4515 I am in Labrador QLD and that's just an observation in my local Coles.
@@smkh2890 keep up the good fight against caged hens.
@@nct948 I’m not eating so many, but when I do I buy good ones. Btw it worries me that Cole’s brand milk is 50 cents cheaper than most. Is that through bulk buying or some other way? It seems like unfair competition for smaller dairy farmers.
i dont think its for health its because the free range just taste better, one of the few things you pay for quality on, eggs.
I live in Canada and never knew I was getting a less colourful/dangerous version of froot loops but seeing how often I have been and will continue to eat them, I'm honestly pretty glad.
for a lot of things, we don't. Processed foods are likely just as bad, so that includes your breakfast cereal. However, our meat is of far better quality.
Acetaldahyde is listed as an unnamed "natural" flavor. But it also happens to be what the tobacco industry once used to make cigarettes more addictive.
Acetaldehyde is indeed natural, it's a byproduct of fermentation. Since tobacco is fermented I would guess it naturally occurs in tobacco
My child had adhd symptoms every time she ate food with red food coloring. It stayed in her symptoms for 3 days. When we removed artificial coloring from her diet she was fine.
Everyone else we knew with this issue put their child on ritalin. I researched alternative solutions (it was the 90’s so I had to read books about it from the library-we didnt have internet yet). Dr. Lyndon Smith and others published info on the danger of these food dyes many years ago. It seems many american food companies just don’t care.
Your point on the issue of washing chicken "in post" was spot on. Where I live we don't do that and there's not a great salmonella issue. They're tested and any suspected chicken can't be sold fresh. I'd have a pretty good chance of being fine biting into raw chicken, although I still don't.
I quit drinking milk over 20 years ago due to learning about the "Pus quota" Each state has their own quota, with Hawaii having the least per liter.
I now live in the EU, guaranteed stomach ache if I visit the US and eat anything.
*with european accent*
Ah! Welcome, my friend! Oh, where you are? You are at the pearly gates of heaven, that we call "Europe"
? Hawaii imports its milk from the mainland at $6 a pop …that’s why it costs so much …its cost in diesel to ship it
My Do-It-Yourself pest control provider told me for years that he does not worry much about the basic application safety standards, and he's "fine." His shop closed last year after he lost a cancer battle and the kids couldn't keep it going. 🤷🏻♀️
"A little pesticide can't hurt." ~Courtney Barnett
And Canada is up here floating somewhere in between. It's only in recent years that US dairy has made a significant break into the Canadian market and there was uproar from citizens across the country concerned about "the hormones." And the Canadian dairy industry, of course. We, like the EU, don't allow rbST in our dairy cattle.
Interesting. Yes, too much agra business in the US. My mother would not allow us processed cereals or junk food growing up, but even so when I was in the Navy in the 1980s I was amazed how much better food tasted in France, Italy, Spain, etc. Especially chocolates and breads.
American chocolate is absolutely fucking disgusting. It literally tastes of vomit as it uses one of the same chemicals that give vomit it's distinctive taste. A lot of it also can't be labelled as "chocolate" in the EU and must instead say "chocolate flavoured" as it doesn't contain enough cocoa.
Yep. Chocolate and bread are so drastically different here from other countries where they aren't pumped full of plastics.
London has a sugar tax.
We actually found a Dr. Pepper, and it tasted just like a US Dr. Pepper but with no HFCS.
I was so curious, “Why doesn’t the US do this???!!!”
The US has an obesity problem, diabetes problem and for-profit healthcare…
This seems like a no brainer
The global history of the sugar cane and beet and booze industries and mechanized plantations run by experts vs 40 acres and a mule run by trial and error hobby farmers …some countries economies thrived others crashed