A little health tip for those in the US…
Don’t eat fruit or vegetables that are out of season. The FDA allows chemical gassing, preservatives, artificial coloring and flavoring to be injected without disclosure to the public.
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=101.22
Or come to nostr:npub14f26g7dddy6dpltc70da3pg4e5w2p4apzzqjuugnsr2ema6e3y6s2xv7lu and get everything fresh and organic, paying with sats ⚡
I have been! It’s fantastic.
For all Europe sucks with its stonage rules and regulation, one place it 'shines' is in the realm of permissable food additives/products. I'd honestly feel worried to eat in the USA.
Agree. Food tastes better in Europe and most of my friends have noticed this as well as losing weight on vacation there. Most chalk it up to walking more but I think it’s the food.
Yeah def. Europeans in general look healthier on average as I see. But hard to totally generalise. Southern Europeans love their food and often put effort to prepare it.
In places like Spain things are changing tho. Was at the beach recently there and its true that bodies don't look as good as even 10 years ago. Lots of pre -packed food with sugars and crap available these days.
Another anecdote is the sweets aisle in supermarkets. Barely existed in most supermarkets 7 years ago. Now majority of supermarkets have a dedicated aisle/set of shelves
Bitcoin will hopefully get rid of cheap corn syrup and sugar subsidies.
Bitcoin will do no such thing. We will.
Well maybe. As i know the corn syrup and sugar industries in US are heavily subsidised. This floods the market with cheap sources of ingredients that help our food taste good to our reptilian brains.
Hard money that cant be printed should sort out the 'assistance' given. Currently I don't see how the government gets a return economically from these subsidies. Maybe only via jobs and better voting base??
Oh that’s interesting. Thanks for the anecdotal evidence. I see the same in South Korea. Nowhere near the obesity of the US but far more fat people than ever before especially the younger generations
Can concur
Yeah def. Was there last year and noticed similar. Younger kids have it tough. Addiction all round. Sugar, porn, mobiles, dopamine, new drugs and all the stuff of previous generations also. Sugar is crazy tho. It seems like you need it to celebrate anything these days. Easter, christmas, birthdays, weddings etc...
Not just food. Almost everything health related is better in Europe. That's why the cancer rate in most EU countries is less than half of the US. Still, Europe sucks for smoking with too many smokers, much more than the US. Confusion... why less than half the cancer rate. Could it be big ag food and big pharma creating a nation of sick sheeple who vote for more and are the greatest "market" ever created. BTW: PRINT MORE DOLLARS
I am a European who happens to work in the US food industry. You'd be surprised.
Definitely anything is better than the US and China in terms of regulation, but the differences we all find between Europe and the US are more closely related to the way distribution is handled than to what's allowed and not.
Europe is A LOT denser, and our distribution is A LOT better in all senses. We have better cold chain, better infrastructure, better central markets... We have quicker access to better food that doesn't need to travel in a truck for a week before it gets to the first distribution hub.
Second, and very important too, culturally speaking, we simply eat more whole foods and cook more than Americans do.
True, but it seems that the trend in the EU is slowly reversing regarding food safety. For instance, the EU recently authorized the used of insect-based flour in foods in substitution to plant-based flour and no labeling is required which makes it hard for consumers to avoid produces containing insect-based flours.
😞
I agree. That's why I prefaced my note with "You'd be surprised". There are other things going on closer to my niche (fish and seafood) that are also quite shocking.
Like what? Educate us!
Well, in the US you have a major problem with the tuna you eat in 99% of the supermarket sushi, which is the main channel for sushi, for example.
It's mostly dog shit grade tuna that has been in the hold of a wooden boat in a tropical country for two weeks before being offloaded. The tuna is not toxic yet, but it's on the verge. It's also, let's say, not red in color. Rather grey-brown-green. The sort of color that you would immediately reject if you were told to eat it, especially raw.
But decades ago some enterprising people figured out that if you gas the tuna with carbon monoxide, you can turn it some sort of extremely unnatural fluorescent bright pink hue. It's a purely chemical reaction that does not "revert" anything. The fish is still going bad -- but it will not ever change color again. So you can literally be eating rotten, toxin-laden tuna, and lack the visual cue to tell you that (the color).
There have been deaths due to this worldwide, so the practice has been banned in the EU, Japan, even China for the last twenty years... But not in the US. I could tell you a lot of dirty little details about how this story went down, but I won't. In short: your beef is gassed as well.
Now, good for the EU, you'll say. Well, no. After all this cracking down (which continues today), the EU turns around and allows ANOTHER type of manipulation (that's coming to the US now, by the way), that has exactly the same risks. It's just a different set of chemicals from the ascorbic acid family ("vitamin C", but not it) that are added "to preserve the color" of tuna, exactly the same that CO does, but even worse, because these are chemicals that are literally injected into the tuna flesh (plus a lot of water, so there's double fraud).
This tuna has become absolutely prevalent in Europe now. It's the default in all supermarkets, both in the frozen section, at the fish counter and in sushi. And yet, the EU doesn't ban it. Why?
Well, it's 2024, and I guess just as the US has its beef lobby, Europe has other lobbies, including the large fishing and seafood trading and processing companies in Spain, France and the Netherlands, who sell literally tens of thousands of tons of this crap continent-wide.
My point being, fiat food is everywhere and it's a strategy against the people. The process may be more advanced in the US, for local reasons. But in Europe it's progressing as well.
Whenever you hear about such and such new "protection" by EU authorities, rest assure what they mean is protection of some agri-food lobby pushed by one of the member States (especially France). Not the consumer.
Suicide via CO leaves a beautiful vibrant looking corpse behind. If you’re contemplating suicide do your family a favor and choose carbon monoxide poisoning. The death is pleasant too!
Well, every time I see someone eating that crap, I want to kill myself indeed.
🤯 I knew about the dyes, but not about the chemicals. I guess that’s why the ahi we catch here in Hawaii or the salmon we caught in Alaska looks and tastes completely different from what we get in restaurants or grocery stores. Yuck.
The "enterprising individuals" I mentioned who brought the carbon monoxide shit to the US were (are) in Hawaii............
Wow. That's crazy. I guess that's some of the skipjack that is fished in the Pacific islands? As I understood there are freezers on board and the vessels offload to motherships and resupply every couple of weeks. This kind of stuff wouldn't surprise me anyway. When I've been fishing in Guam I have to say some of the best fish I've tasted sashimi. Amazing. But it was yellow fin.
Nope, gassed and injected tuna for sashimi is basically 100% yellowfin ("ahi") from South East Asia. Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand. Then Hawaii, Fiji and other island nations. More rarely from the Indian ocean.
Natural, non manipulated tuna that's been properly bled while live, then kept in good conditions is awesome, doesn't matter what type - yellowfin, bigeye, skipjack, albacore or, of course, any of the three species of bluefin. Best to let it sit for a couple of days, though.
My trip to the supermarket lasts no time, there's almost nothing I want to eat. Spend longer queuing and wondering how stodge and soda made its way into so many Mediterraneans' diet. Seasonal fruit and veg might be OK, but often it's tasteless garbage from Dutch or Spanish glasshouse hell. When you have access to local eggs, almonds, olives, olive oil, wholegrain bread and seasonal veg, all produced pretty much as nature intended, few supermarkets have much to entice you. Co-ops have better options, more local produce, but again, so many growers throw their pytosanitary products around for fun.
I don't buy any of my meat and fish at supermarkets, full stop. I have a couple of actual fishmongers and butchers within 5 minutes on foot from my apartment, and failing that I have actual old-style wet markets within walking distance.
I do buy produce and fruits, as well as dry goods, from chain stores but what we call "supermarkets" where I live is not the type of large "discount" surface shop located 15 km away from the city that you have to drive to, but neighborhood grocers.
I'm lucky to have a variety of them immediately around my place, so I can pick and choose. All carry clearly labeled local whole foods, and at least one is specialized in eco-label, organic, etc. food, including proteins and household items.
In this scenario, I have the opportunity to completely avoid the larger, more industrialized bastardized national and even pan-European big chains like Auchan, Mercadona, Lidl, etc. which are truly disgusting. But I pay for the privilege of access to so many good options in the form of extremely expensive rent for living smack in the center of my city.
Lots and lots of other people just don't or can't, and are forced to buy from the big stores, or their small format franchises which carry the same trash. Even though absolutely everybody here has access to a wet market in their neighborhood or town, at the very least, they often miss out on them because of their work schedules. Supermarkets are more adapted to the stupid schedules of double-working couples who have kids.
And then of course there's sill the issue of price and cost. I spend A LOT of money buying good quality groceries, I don't have children, and I have time too cook. I am an exception among my friends, even though I have done the math for them many times and proven to them that buying whole foods and cooking at home is not so expensive.
And that even if they use the "bad" products from the big shops because of cost concerns, they'd still be better off compared to buying processed shit.
As I said in another note, even though we are objectively in a better situation than the US, it's nowhere near as rosy as it looks, and it's not improving. There is a clear drive towards destroying people's cultural and historical food habits, for ideological and financial reasons, it's globally coordinated, and it's moving forward here too.
Very interesting and makes sense. Thank you!
But processed food in Europe seems to always have far fewer ingredients compared to their US versions no?
Yeah, there's no doubt that despite everything processed foods in the US are *more* processed.
Hmmmm. As I know there are at least 10 ingredients banned in Europe that are allowed in US. These are substances known to produce health problems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/well/eat/food-additives-banned-europe-united-states.html
https://www.rangeme.com/blog/taking-a-closer-look-at-food-standards-eu-versus-u-s
Sure. Doesn't mean that the European food chain is clean by any stretch.
Does this apply to organic produce as well, or just conventional?
Yes organic too. The organic certification is for the soil conditions being free of chemical pesticides, hormones, etc. They can still gas, inject, etc after harvesting.
Sigh.
As I understand it, "organic" is basically a BS distinction. Just lower thresholds for herbicides & pesticides which is not the same as none. And not everything is actually tested.
One of the many reasons why carnivore is a significantly better way to eat.
Correct its total bs with no testing measures in place. Organic does not mean chemical free.
No question. Food is better in Europe. US is full of crap food. If you don't know the person that produced it in the US, don't eat it. Restaurants are highly suspect... too much chem, too much sugar, too much salt, lots of bad stuff there in the US.
nostr:npub19pj6f0nc9q6xr26qe3g8m6xe3hwe0d6p6zcvf57cm3kayghjdj0slnlenu
Good advice. And, better yet, in season produce is cheapest. Win, win.
North American food is produced in a toxic waste-dump. Glyphosate, ALONE is carcinogenic...
Just eat ruminant meat and let the animal's liver remove the poison... 🐄 🤎
