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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe real reason the French don’t get fat
Source: The Globe and Mail
Last month, I ate a strawberry. The taste exploded in my mouth as my throat was bathed in rich juices. The meat of the berry was soft and succulent. I was in France.
Last week, I ate another strawberry. There was a slight reddish flavour, which combatted the petroleum essence of the packaging. The meat of the berry was corky, dry and flavourless. I was in Canada.
... Why is so much of our fresh food so tasteless? Is it the week-long trek in a truck all the way from California? Is it the countless days sitting on loading docks at food terminals, warehouses and supermarkets? Thats part of it.
But the big difference between our produce and the fresh food I buy in France is simple: Our varieties are selected and grown for shipping durability and visual marketing, whereas French fruits and vegetables are selected and grown for taste, taste, flavour and taste.
Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-real-reason-the-french-dont-get-fat/article18924862/
elleng
(131,292 posts)to make it to the farm market, and I DON'T buy those big tasteless ones.
unblock
(52,438 posts)they had a sort of nutty sweetness to them, not the cabbagy bitter junk you get in america.
the next day i got a bagful of them from the local supermarket and literally sat in the car eating them raw.
then, of course, i try them back in the u.s. and once again, i hate them.
i think the soil is also a big part of it. european soil is really dark and rich; not so where most american food is grown.
beveeheart
(1,373 posts)until I ate them in France.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)until I grew my own. OMG the world of difference you get in flavor when you don't use fake fertilizers, bug sprays and round up on every inch of garden.
I grow and sell radishes. Most people don't like them because they think they are hard little balls with no flavor. My radishes are crispy and spicy with a creamy sweetness in the middle. A world of difference in flavor. I can't bring enough radishes to market. They sell out every time. But now it has gotten too hot for even the D'Avignon radishes and I must wait until fall to fill my mouth with the creamy, sweet spicy flavor of a crisp radish.
And have you tasted the earthiness of a small tomatillo that is purple, yellow or green? Not those giant bland green balls they push in the grocery stores but purple and yellow earthy flavored tangy juiciness to make a real salsa. And then there are the mushrooms.
antiquie
(4,299 posts)I love making salad in the back yard. I put in some of the radish seed pods when they're tender.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)dem in texas
(2,674 posts)I used to keep a vegetable garden year round here in Texas. The miniature green beans, they'd climb up my fence, I'd pick a batch for Sunday Dinner. A big bush of cherry tomatoes, they keep on giving after the big ones play out in the Texas sun. Brandywine tomatoes, oh my! They don't always do well in Texas, but in the years they do, it makes worth all the effort. Lettuce and greens of all sorts in the winter and early spring. Fresh herbs year round, just snip them right out the garden and in the summer, pick and dry. Plant carrots with your kids or grandkids. When they are large enough to take out of the ground, let the children do it, their eyes will widen with surprise when they see that orange carrot coming out of the soil. I have even been out on a cool winter evening, using my flash light, to harvest kale that was getting big enough to cut. Best of all, no chemicals, no pesticides, picked at the peak of flavor. Well worth the effort. I tried strawberries one year, but the slugs won out. Now, I buy them at the farmer's market.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)hopemountain
(3,919 posts)oh my gosh ~ you can taste the earth!
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)have heard.)
But what do we grow in it? Soybeans and corn. Vegetables and fruit maybe for local markets.
I grew up in the Midwest. Back then, the midwestern vegetables and fruits were good. We used to do a lot of canning. We had great tomatoes and apricots, peaches, apples, and the watermelons -- Wow!
I have a tiny backyard garden, mostly in big pots.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Leme
(1,092 posts)demigoddess
(6,645 posts)they fertilized their fields with organic matter, not chemical fertilizers, and I bet they are still doing the same. Also you could buy food in an open farm market. French people will still be eating good food when the rest of us have dead fields that don't grow anything.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)maybe I need to give Rosetta Stone a try.
quakerboy
(13,923 posts)I always hated brussels sprouts too, then a belgian showed me how to cook them. Apparently nutmeg, and being absolutely certain you dont overcook them. overcooking results in that bitter cabbage taste. Cooking them right, you dont get that flavor even from US brussel sprouts.
LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)Although technically he might be considered Russian now
uppityperson
(115,681 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts).....nuff said.
Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)France legally adds sugar (chaptalisation) to their deficient grapes when they make wine. Any winemaker caught doing that in California would be hanged, drawn and quartered, then hung again.
I'm just saying.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)But France has an shortage of good grapes from year to year. They grew a grape with a perfect pH, but sugar content is often low. Conversely, California consistently grows grapes with ideal sugar, but the pH often get wacky when they ripen to quickly and the acid drops.
Any idiot winemaker can add sugar, but it takes an artist to add acid to the wine and still maintain a proper pH.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)But it takes the finest still wines from the Champagne region to make good champagne. The rest is simply sparkling wine dressed up with a fancy word, Crémant, and it isn't half bad.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)What's the word?
Thunderbird
How's it sold?
Good and cold
What's the jive?
Bird's alive
What's the price?
Thirty twice.
Ice cream? Hmm. I serve it drizzled over sorbet, which is sorta like sherbet with an accent.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)After all, it was a genius wino chemist who discovered the big-bang-for-the-buck fortified white wines from the central valley lacked the proper acid balance and adjusted them by adding lemon Kool-Aid in the alley behind an early convenience store. Bummer, he never realized any royalties from his discovery.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)The rest is history
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)And how they choose to distance themselves from the parent company. Rule of thumb: If it's from Modesto, it's made by Gallo.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)They've totally saturated the market from day one, and the only was they can expand is to deceive new customers into thinking they are supporting a small independent producer. To wit: Carlo Rossi wine. And never mind Carlo Rossi was Gallo's Ace salesman for years.
Tax dodge? No Way José!. Only a fool would try to jiggle the books in the alcohol industry.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Not to mention grants and loans from the government for their multiple "startups".
Then again, come to think of it, I bet a few local tax collectors on liquor sales can be bought cheap.
Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)In California, the check and balances of the three-tier alcohol distribution system precludes any tax corruption or collusion; the distributors simply don't want to lose their cash-cow monopoly.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)cadaverdog
(228 posts)convenience store which high powered wine he would recommend, and he replied,
"Night Train Express is my mellow."
So, as a joke I brought home a bottle for my wife's sophisticated palate, and upon sampling a glass, she remarked, "You know, that's not bad."
Go figure.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)kairos12
(12,892 posts)Drahthaardogs
(6,843 posts)And a few grams of tartaric acid. Over oaked over priced Californian monsters. Appasimento wines require a deft touch and the process justifies the price.
lark
(23,182 posts)I never had a bad bottle and we drank quite a bit. It was sooo cheap, 3-4 euros for some really good Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Reisling and Gurwurztraminer.
Brother Buzz
(36,490 posts)Good acid, fresh and fruity, but they tend to be low or moderate in alcohol content due to their low sugar content. I would never refuse a glass with a noon meal on the patio on a warm day.
YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)Drahthaardogs
(6,843 posts)I have been making wine since I was old enough to help. My grandfather was a macellaio and a wine maker from Canavesse Italy (about 15 miles from France). I know a thing or two about making wine, as I make 50 gallons or so of it a year.
Chaptalisation is quite common is your acid is too high or if your Brix is too low, and only the grape varieties and the growing season can control that. Wine making is chemistry and it varies from year to year. That some varieties of wine have to add sugar to get the Brix correct is NOT a sign of an inferior wine. I use Marquette grapes because they are available here. Some years I must chaptalise my musts because Marquette grapes can be overly acidic (upwards of %1.5). The inferior wine would be the guy who does not adjust when conditions demand it.
I know what I am doing and I have the ribbons to prove it. I would put my product up against ANY of the big growers in California in a blind taste test and I know I could hold my own. I make damned good wine!
California outlaws the process as a gimmick to try to show they are superior. However, California allows acidification and tartaric acid is added to many California wines. In addition many add tannins (oak or chestnut powder) as well to add body and substance to the wine.
Don't let price be your guide either. There is no reason anyone should be paying $100/bottle for a Cabernet out of Napa. To say that a Californian Napa is on par with a fine Italian Amarone from the Allegrini vineyard is just ridiculous; however, price point wise-they are the same. In addition, some of those $15 Malbecs coming out of Argentina are scoring 93 and 94 points.
Personally, I think the best wines coming out of California are their Old Vine Zinfnadelss. Excellent ones can be had for less than $20/bottle. They are bright, rich, complex, and overall a real pleasure to drink. You can get Cabernets every bit as good as a Napa Valley one for similar value.
Don't believe the marketing.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)That's a whole different fruit... remarkable flavor and very expensive.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)defacto7
(13,485 posts)The Japanese red/blue grapes taste like concords only missing the slightly bitter undercoating on the skin and are about 3 times the size of mine. My concords are the pride of my garden but I could never grow those massive plumb like grapes. When I was last in Tokyo they were about $150 per .5Kg. Strawberries were closer to $500 .5Kg.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)You know what? Boxed wine has improved quite a bit. We often buy a box of Franzia Chianti and find that the bag prevents oxidation. Maybe we just have poor taste.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Goes well with a rack of ribs and Sweet Baby Rays.
dem in texas
(2,674 posts)One of the best kitchen smells ever is when you are cooking the concord grapes to extract the juice for jelly making. When I lived in Tennessee, many people had Concord grapes growing on fences and in arbors and the vines would bear huge amounts of fruit. It was give away time to friends and neighbors. I was always willing to pick them to get a bushel of grapes for jelly making. Wish concords would grow in Texas.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Most of the forested areas of Ohio have wild grapes in the treetops. Some old grapevines growing on the forest floor are as thick as your arm. As kids we would often find grape vines we could swing onTarzan like. I watched the deer eat the fallen grapes from my tree stand. The wild grapes are little, about the size of a pea. But they taste very similar to the cultivated concord.
GeoWilliam750
(2,522 posts)JI7
(89,283 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts)And those have so much flavor and sweetness.
Treant
(1,968 posts)Per Wikipedia, at any rate.
The things seem to naturalize to almost any halfway decent climate, so they grow here in the US quite well, including in my garden where I don't want them.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)progressoid
(50,011 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)They use public transportation or drive for longer distances. We sit in our cars too much.
I think I was often the only person in the offices in which I worked who took a walk instead of eating a big lunch. I don't see how people can sit all day without a good walk at lunch.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)"why take the elevator when you can take the stairs?"
laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)about Lyon, France they showed school kids eating pumpkin soup for lunch? Imagine that - a vegetable soup for lunch, with fresh bread. And some kind of raspberry crème dessert. And the kids ate it up like crazy. That's normal there.
My kids don't eat that good for lunch and they pack their own lunches (we don't have school lunches here where I am in Canada) because it's hard to find good, portable healthy stuff. They take raw veggies and sandwiches and yogurt, but there's only so much variety. And from what I hear, most served school lunches are pretty crappy anyway.
But yeah, food here tastes like crap for the most part. I know because when my grandmother was alive, she kept a ginormous garden, plus they had tons of wild berries around their place. Every time we visited her place, food was such a treat. Fresh cucumber and lettuce salads, fresh berries for dessert, baby boiled potatoes, just-picked steamed green beans, fresh eggs for breakfast, fresh baked bread at every meal, rhubarb pies, chokecherry wine...the list goes on. We used to run out to the garden (a good 10 min walk from the house) and sit around picking carrots, brushing the dirt off and pigging out...on carrots. As kids. Because they were SO good. Or raw peas. You couldn't pay me to eat cooked green peas, but I'd sit in the garden shelling them and eating them raw. Or we'd pick rhubarb and eat it, making sour faces at each other, LOL.
Now even organic carrots taste like ass. And those miserable excuses for peas in the stores (with the edible pods...all shrunken and dry). And I don't think I've seen rhubarb in any of our stores, except for some frozen stuff I bought once that was so woody, I couldn't even stew it.
When you have crappy tasting food it takes more to feel satiated.
Terrible produce is why I grow a garden. At least for a short while I can eat tasty food. One year I tried an organic vegetable co-op that delivered whatever was in season. It seemed very convenient - order online, and they deliver to your door. You could adjust your order so you didn't have to get the things you hated. I ended up throwing out more than I used because my town was last on the delivery list for the week and more than once I got rotten vegetables. I understand why organic veggies rot more quickly, but at the price I was paying, I didn't want my veggies sitting for a week before they made it to my house rotten. This year I'm going to give farmer's markets another try...in the past they've been really expensive here but I haven't been in awhile. We'll see how it goes. I really dislike how things are farmed now. I've stopped buying fresh strawberries because the last 10 times I've bought strawberries, they tasted like Styrofoam. Why bother paying those prices?
closeupready
(29,503 posts)I think you're on the right track.
Delmette
(522 posts)My Mother's garden. I loved the carrots, peas, rhubarb, baby red potatoes all fresh from the ground(well not the peas). We had apple trees for applesauce, plums for jelly. The whole family would pick wild chokecherries for syrup. My sister and I still find enough chokecherries for syrup and make up several batches at least every other year. Western Montana is great for gardens.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)And my mother always had a garden just like you described...but I liked the peas...my mother would make peas with baby red potatoes in a cream sauces that was killer.
And the soil was rich and black, and if you wanted to go fishing just take a spade full of earth up and you could get all the earth worms you wanted.
I used to love the rhubarb raw.
And we did all that other stuff too...and pick and can huckleberries which was my favorite...I ate more than I picked.
Delmette
(522 posts)Just thinking of creamed potatoes and peas! I would eat on a rhubarb stalk all afternoon. I still love rhubarb pie.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)it would give sour candy a run for its money.
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)spooky3
(34,517 posts)To eat. And French people told me they rarely snack between meals.
The food there is so good I gained nearly 10 lbs in 6 weeks. Fortunately I was a little underweight at the time! My boss told me he refused to pay to widen the doors
aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)I've lived in France (my mother is French) and every time I go there for an extended period of time I lose weight because I walk. In the U.S. I've never understood why people will circle the parking lot of a health spa or gym in their cars to try to get a spot close to the entrance when they should welcome the opportunity to park away and walk. There seems to be an aversion to walking for some people.
Also, people rarely eat snacks between meals in Europe and the nighttime meal tends to be small. Lunch is the big meal.
Bigredhunk
(1,351 posts)And they don't watch TV, surf the web, or read a magazine while they eat (they're not distracted, which causes you to overeat). They take their time with their meals. We have to scarf ours down during our 20-minute break. Americans always have to be in a hurry because our corporate overlords demand it. On the same note, they do leisure. We don't. If/when we do, we feel guilty.
Of course we're exporting our fast food, shit quality, huge portions all over the world now though. Now they're getting fat too. I saw something on TV a year or two ago about how popular KFC is becoming in China. Lovely.
applegrove
(118,880 posts)own meals. I promised myself I would shop every day for fresh groceries when I got home to North America. But the produce just was never as tasty. So I gave up.
flvegan
(64,423 posts)See, we have many, many idiots here. And they are completely clueless in regards to this. Yet, they alert and raise issue like they are getting paid for it. Like this will be.
I have multiple certifications, and it matters not. Cornell be damned, some dipshit on the internet alerts and it all goes away.
WELCOME TO DU!!!!!! LOL
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)(And fruits). She eats a certain number of servings every day per the recommendations of nutritionists. She grew up on a farm and has drunk healthy milk all her life. (Not healthy for everyone, I know, but is for her.)
Until recent years she grew a lot of her own veggies.
She never smoked. Never touched a drop of alcohol.
That's how you live long and healthy.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)bananas
(27,509 posts)Flavor is one kind of qualia, but materialists don't believe in qualia, materialists only believe in zombies.
Zombies in philosophy are imaginary creatures used to illuminate problems about consciousness and its relation to the physical world. Unlike those in films or witchraft, they are exactly like us in all physical respects but without conscious experiences: by definition there is nothing it is like to be a zombie. Yet zombies behave just like us, and some even spend a lot of time discussing consciousness.
A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] For example, a philosophical zombie could be poked with a sharp object, and not feel any pain sensation, but yet, behave exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain).
The notion of a philosophical zombie is used mainly in thought experiments intended to support arguments (often called "zombie arguments" against forms of physicalism such as materialism, behaviorism and functionalism. Physicalism is the idea that all aspects of human nature can be explained by physical means: specifically, all aspects of human nature and perception can be explained from a neurobiological standpoint.
Qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkwaːle]) is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term derives from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind." Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the perceived redness of an evening sky.
Daniel Dennett (b. 1942), American philosopher and cognitive scientist, writes that qualia is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us."[1]
Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961), the famous physicist, had this counter-materialist take:
The sensation of color cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so.[2]
The importance of qualia in philosophy of mind comes largely from the fact that it is seen as posing a fundamental problem for materialist explanations of the mind-body problem. Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term that is used, as various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. As such, the nature and existence of qualia are controversial.
Silent3
(15,424 posts)Some specific claims about what is and is not good nutrition do indeed deserve to be labeled woo... but that's an entirely different thing from calling the entire concept of nutrition and food selection woo.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)I thought everyone knew. It's as backwards as our energy system!!! BIG AGRI only cares about what it tastes like if you won't buy their lousy tasting food. Fortunately for Wall Street investors most Americans have grown up eating these bland vegetative masses they call fruits and vegetables, so their investments are relatively secure. But it's actually GLOP (technical term) we're eating. PURE GLOP.
You see, fertilizers weren't invented to make food taste better nor to make it cheaper. It's to grow more food at less loss expense and thus make more profits. As it is 40% of the food we grow is left in the fields because it ain't shaped right, or the color looks a little funny.
Same with pesticides -- they aren't used to make food taste better or more nutritious. Or cheaper and thus more available to help stamp out hunger, no sir! It's used to make more profits by losing less produce to bugs. So we get a few cancers and a few farm people risk their lives handling poisons, its the price of profits!
And GMO's weren't created to combat worldwide hunger nor to defeat pests or molds or any other thing that might threaten the life of a little corn or soy plant. No GMO's were made to allow herbicides to kill weeds that choke-out corn and soy plants and such like, but supposedly not kill us (nice trick if you can do it -- but you can't). Why? PROFIT$, or course. I mean what are you gonna do about it, grow you own food??? Hahahahahaha!!!!
- Our food system is run by Wall Street and JP Morgan, not Farmer Jones. Only America would call a farm, a ''food factory.'' But then, that's exactly what they are.....
K&R
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cali
(114,904 posts)Here's what's within 5 miles of me- many on the way to the general store where I do a lot of my shopping (for dry goods I like the dented can store about 1/2 hour away and Ocean State Job Lots)
Local Beef and heirloom pork:
http://snugvalleyfarm.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/LeBlanc-Family-Farm/122509284611786?sk=page_map
http://www.hardwickbeef.com/
Local eggs and chicken:
http://www.hardwickfarmersmarketvt.com/#!daisy-hill-farm/c20ah
CSA and vegetables as well as value added products:
http://www.petesgreens.com/
Riverside Farm
(about 10 others)
Cheese glorious cheese:
http://www.jasperhillfarm.com/
http://www.cabotcheese.coop/pages/visit_us/?gclid=CjkKEQjwnqucBRDZvf_rk-fEj7wBEiQA8HDLEnl88HWqyeBjZRLFLrqSr8c9ZECXhAMl21hboJEaGQDw_wcB
and a dozen more
Good bread:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Patchwork-Farm-and-Bakery/297768706999751?directed_target_id=0
Good booze and beer
http://caledoniaspirits.com/
http://www.hillfarmstead.com/
Local tofu:
http://www.vermontsoy.com/products.html
Non GMO seeds:
http://www.highmowingseeds.com/
and the above is just a sampling. All this in or near a town of less than 3,500
http://www.hardwickagriculture.org/
http://www.yankeemagazine.com/article/features/agriculture
<snip>
In addition to Vermont Soy, Vermont Natural Coatings, Jasper Hill Cheese, High Mowing Organic Seeds, Caledonia Spirits, Hill Farmstead Brewery, Claires Restaurant, and more, the local schools are involved in agriculture. Hardwicks elementary school is proactive with its school gardens and local purchasing, and students take field trips to local businesses. The high school combines student learning with actual experience in the kitchen chopping and processing vegetables. All of this work is built on the decades of farming which is a part of the Vermont and New England culturea backbone of strong dairy farms, hardworking food producers, and families who have made a living with the land.
<snip>
http://www.donellameadows.org/closed-loop-production-creating-jobs-and-good-food-in-hardwick-vt/
roody
(10,849 posts)fans. They should be here soon.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)● 40% of all the food produced in the United States goes uneaten.
● Americans throw away an estimated 25% of the food they bring home that
is more than 20 pounds of food per person every month. Enough to fill the Rose Bowl, a 90,000 2 seat stadium, every day.
● The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that a typical American throws out 40 percent of fresh fish, 23 percent of eggs, and 20 percent of milk.
● Consider these cost estimates of all the food that never gets eaten in the U.S., and imagine just how much we can save by wasting less food:
● 25 percent of all freshwater used in U.S.
● 4 percent of total U.S. oil consumption
● $165 billion per year (more than $40 billion from households)
● $750 million per year just to dispose of the food
● 33 million tons of landfill waste (leading to greenhouse gas emissions)
Environmental Impacts
● Each time food is wasted all the resources that went into producing, processing, packaging, and transporting that food is wasted too. This means huge amounts of chemicals, energy, fertilizer, land and 25% of all freshwater in the U.S. is used to produce food that is thrown away.
● Additionally, most uneaten food rots in landfills where it accounts for almost 25% of U.S. methane emissions. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that is 21 times more harmful to the environment than CO2.
● Getting food to our tables uses 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget , uses 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 percent of freshwater consumed in the United States.
● Only about 3% of food scraps in the U.S. are composted.
● About 2/3 of household waste is due to food spoilage from not being used in time, whereas the other 1/3 is caused by people cooking or serving too much.
● 14 percent of greenhouse gases in the United States are associated with growing, manufacturing, transporting, and disposing of food.
Social Implications
● Nutrition is also lost in the mixfood saved by reducing losses by just 15% could feed more than 25 million Americans every year at a time when one in six Americans lack a secure supply of food to their tables.
● Feeding the planet is already a struggle, and will only become more difficult with 9 to 10 billion people expected on the planet in 2050. This makes food conservation all the more important. The United Nations has predicted that we'll need up to 70 percent more food to feed that projected population. Developing habits to save food now could dramatically reduce the need for increased food production in the future.
● The average American consumer wastes 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia, up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s
Global Food Waste
● About one third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste.
● Consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food, 222 million tonnes, as the entire net food production of subSaharan Africa.
● Industrialised countries waste 670 million tonnes. Developing countries lose 630 million tonnes. Total lost or wasted globally: 2.3 billion tonnes.
● The United States is the number one country in the world that wastes food. Close behind are Australia and Denmark, followed by Switzerland and Canada.
Water Usage Comparisons
Freshwater is a global resource that is depleting whenever food is wasted. Have a look at these facts about water usage in the production of commonly bought and in many cases wasted food items.
● It takes over 12,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. Meanwhile, the largest percentage of food waste from the average American consists of meat products, and 33% ends up in a landfill.
● The production of one glass of orange juice requires 45 gallons of water. 15% of wasted food from the average American consists of fruit.
● Wheat consumes about 12 % of the global water use for crop production. Americans waste about 18% of grains.
Financial Impacts
● Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year, and its costing 750 million just for the disposal.
● Supermarkets lose an estimated $15 billion annually through discarded produce.
● An American family of four ends up throwing away an average of $1,600 annually in food.
Special thanks to Dana Gunders, Food and Agriculture Project Scientist from the National Resources Defense Council, for compiling statistics and references. Check out Danas issue paper: Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill, for more information.
LINK & BIBLIOGRAPHY
FoodShift.net
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)In my household we are not wasters. My father grew up in tough times so I learned to be frugal.
treestar
(82,383 posts)does not expect a profit.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)4 or 5 course meals served in courses. I read an article about an American woman who was a dietitian and moved to France with her husband who took a job there. When she took her kids to the school she thought as a dietitian she would talk to an official about how she teaches her children to eat good foods not fast food etc. As I remember the answer was, Madam, WE will teach your child how to eat properly. And with that she saw what the routine was with each child served one course after the other at their table including an appetizer of cheese and fruit, salad?, main course with meat and a vegetable, a separate desert course and importantly, a half hour recess afterward. Each item on the menu was quality French style cuisine.
Yeah, they do things differently there.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Doctors are on salary. They take care for patients, not their bank accounts.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)They really take eating seriously.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)and tasty food, it's just not possible to gobble it down. I find myself slowing down, really savoring what I'm eating. And I tend to eat less of the good food also.
demigoddess
(6,645 posts)we found we ate less also. It tastes SO much better than grocery store meat.
Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)far better taste and much smaller portions
I always point this out to people when they say, "But it's so expensive."
No, no it's not.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)I dunno, just a guess.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Ahh! I remember the Jonathons of my childhood.
My grandmother had apple trees (as I recall but perhaps incorrectly) that produced yellow apples in the Spring. They were my favorites.
And we could eat the Delicious apples back then. They actually tasted. They tasted.
I mean that. The so-called Delicious apples my store offers today are anything but . . . delicious. They are horrible.
I like Rome apples but the season is short.
I lived in France. The French take pride in their food. They taste, savor, delight in the flavor of their food.
In the groceries, the fruits were stacked in beautiful neat piles. I never bought a piece of spoiled fruit in France. A putrid grape or strawberry would be scandaleux.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scandaleux
We would not be so fat if we learned to eat and to store and prepare our food so as to save the flavor not just the illusion of flavor.
CrispyQ
(36,552 posts)Some stores have them for a very short period of time around Halloween.
What the article said about tomatoes is so spot on. They are gorgeous red orbs & you cut them open & they are full of white pithy stuff that doesn't even look like the inside of a tomato.
The article is correct that our produce is bred to look nice & travel well.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)And they have disappeared. I cannot find them in the stores anymore.
mackerel
(4,412 posts)living here in California but I find the fruits and vegetables here absolutely delicious
jmowreader
(50,580 posts)The real reason the French don't get fat is the French rarely snack. Americans and Brits eat six meals a day, three of them are "healthy food prepared in accordance to the latest scientific breakthroughs in nutrition," the other three are shit out of sacks. French people eat three meals a day with enough saturated fat and alcohol to give the head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest a heart attack...and THEY EAT NOTHING ELSE!
laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)Recently I read something put out by some dieticians or medical journal (can't remember, it's been awhile) that said for people with insulin resistance (that would be me) eating MORE often, which has been the recommendation for many years now for people to stay slim, is actually detrimental because it causes a continuous increased release of insulin. For those of us who release too much insulin, it makes us hungry and tired and fat. More time between meals means a reduction in insulin released for a few hours at least. I know I feel much better when I keep my meals down to 2-3 a day. Especially when I eat a good, varied meal with a moderate amount of fat and a lot of vegetables and fiber. I feel full for a lot longer. I do have a stomach condition that requires I eat a bit more often which can mess things up, but for the most part, I can stick with fewer meals if I make them filling. However, I will point out, as I did above, that better tasting food means a feeling of satiety that is hard to come by when your food tastes like crap. So it's probably a combination of all those things, and, as someone else pointed out, better health care.
enough
(13,268 posts)Three wonderful delicious meals a day, with butter, bread, rice, potatoes, eggs/beef/pork grown on their farm (just for consumption, not for sale), alcohol every day in moderation (sometimes wine, sometimes drinks before dinner) and desert after every dinner. Vegetables from the garden (freezers-full for winter).
They never worried about what they ate, and they absolutely NEVER SNACKED at any time of day or night. I don't think it would ever have occurred to them.
treestar
(82,383 posts)I only eat three simply not having time to do the "healthy" thing.
jmowreader
(50,580 posts)If three of them have okay nutrition and three are bags of salt and fat (think potato chips, cookies, M&Ms and all the other crap we gorge ourselves on), then it's not okay. And that's how far too many Americans eat.
treestar
(82,383 posts)It's got to be fruits and vegetables instead.
tridim
(45,358 posts)Europeans know it, Americans don't.
The "low fat" craze is pretty much killing us. Thankfully, I had a hunch it was BS and never bothered. I never got fat.
vanlassie
(5,694 posts)JI7
(89,283 posts)jmowreader
(50,580 posts)pansypoo53219
(21,005 posts)grapefruit is ok, broccoli/cauliflower in winter. carrots, tho i load up on carrots from farmers market. i've had them last til feb. load up on dried onions. freeze peppers. make pickles. tris bread + butter peppers last year. get organic too. tastes better.
seaglass
(8,173 posts)Martinique bananas here, they go to France.
pecwae
(8,021 posts)I don't care for bananas, but when I had one in Belize I couldn't believe what I'd been missing. I ate them twice a day while there. When I got home I tried one from the grocery. One bite and it was trashed.
bananas
(27,509 posts)Sorry for the mixed metaphor, I'm kind of drunk.
"Gone Bananas" is a local swimsuit store: https://gonebananasbeachwear.com/
seaglass
(8,173 posts)Codeine
(25,586 posts)As with any epidemic, obesity is spreading.
a kennedy
(29,753 posts)That's what we've given to the world, marketing, and get it fast. Ugh..... no nutritional value, just fast and flashy. Sad really.
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)Last year we went to an organic strawberry farm on LI that had pick your own strawberries. Delicious. We have also been to farms where you can pick your own apples in the Fall. Same for oranges in Florida.
Othere than growing your own fruit and veggies, these small local farms are the best means for getting the freshest firuit and produce.
a kennedy
(29,753 posts)tridim
(45,358 posts)Because they are picked and sold ripe, not pre-ripe like grocery store produce.
Most frozen fruits and veggies are superior to "fresh".
CrispyQ
(36,552 posts)I'm going to try some.
SummerSnow
(12,608 posts)nasty.It's because of how it's handled? Damn. So I've been missing out?
Marr
(20,317 posts)every time my plate arrived-- whether I was at a restaurant or just a little diner/fast food kind of place. The portions there are *considerably* smaller than similar plates here in the States. I'd bet they're something on the order of 60% the size.
It's not so much what Americans eat, it's how much. We simply eat too much food here.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)'round about the cheese course the problem was wondering how to keep eating.
Saviolo
(3,284 posts)I live in Canada, but my in-laws live in Houston, TX. That city is a food-lover's paradise. Some amazing, stunning restaurants, tons of fresh seafood (esp. crab!!), and an amazing variety of Mexican, Tex-Mex, French, Creole, Southern, and other amazing cultural and ethnic foods.
But every time you sit down you get served a *mountain* of food. The portions are almost universally unbelievably huge. I grew up learning a strong aversion to leaving food behind or wasting it, so I do my best to eat it all... I swear I put on 10 pounds every time I visit the in-laws for a week.
laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)of the time (I live in Canada too) my parents took us to Montana for some shopping and a tour of the mountain parks there. It was my first time in the US. We stopped at Pizza hut - this was 25 years ago or so - and ordered 2 extra large pizzas for the 4 of us (yeah, there was a teenage boy in there, lol), plus some sides. The waiter looked at us and said, "are you sure you want XL pizzas?" "Of course, that's what we always order, and it's $6 cheaper per pizza here than where we're from."
He says, "you're from Canada aren't you?" "yes, why?" "Just to let you know, our extra large is a bit bigger than the extra large in Canada" "oh that's okay, we'll take the left overs back to the hotel room." "okay" he said. When he brought us the pizza, our jaws hit the floor. The pizza was easily double the size we were expecting, LOL. It hardly fit on the table. The second one had to go on another table. The waiter laughed at our expression, "I told you so" he said. We ate pizza for the next 2 days.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)...which affords them the opportunity to recline on the couch and gorge on chicken wings, popcorn, beer and soft drinks while listening to sportscasters shouting accolades about the game's athletes, replete with never-ending statistics, over the din of a roaring crowd?
I've only been in France long enough to travel from Switzerland to Luxembourg, so I wouldn't know.
PumpkinAle
(1,210 posts)and so much better decades ago.
Of course, we had to wait for the seasons for the fruit and vegetables, but oh the taste - so, so good.
Or may be it is just my taste buds have gone bitter and my memories gone sour
DFW
(54,477 posts)We usually buy a kilo of locally grown ones every two days.
In our little town in the Rheinland, we have an open air market three times a week, and local farmers, bakers, etc. bring in their wares for sale no matter what the weather is--and the people of our town buy food there, no matter what the weather is--been doing that for about the last 800 years, i.e. as long as this town has been here. Some shops sell fruit and veggies grown in greenhouses over in Holland. Big fat tasteless tomatoes, etc. But the locally grown stuff is always best, and that's mostly what we eat. As one whose parents (and ALL their siblings) had cancer, and whose wife had cancer (beat it so far), and whose cousin and brother-in-law have already died of cancer, we are in no rush to fight the next round, and see no reason to help things along by eating more chemical crap than is necessary.
lofty1
(62 posts)Organic fruits and vegetables simply have more flavor. They grow slower so the plant is denser when it is ready to be harvested. The soil that they grow in has not been depleted by pesticides so the elements and nutrients remain for the plant to utilize.
http://www.organicwish.com/does-organic-food-taste-better.html
indepat
(20,899 posts)strawberries were. Meanwhile, back home, the strawberries and tomatoes are almost inedible.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)But in those weeks, ah, the strawberries -- I can't describe how sweet and delicious they are!
They're small and very red throughout, not like those anemic giants you get in plastic. When you get them home you have to quickly spread them out on a flat surface so they don't bruise each other.
indepat
(20,899 posts)Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)is my fresh, home-grown strawberries. They're small and they only last a couple of days after they're picked, but they're SO delicious. I get many quarts every summer.
Strawberry plants make a great ground cover, as well.
2naSalit
(86,897 posts)Irradiation for shelf life. Many of the berries, fruits and veggies - especially those shipped from central and coastal Calif. - are irradiated prior to shipping. When I eat those I vomit a couple hours later. It's all about appearances since we were told, decades ago, that we should only select the most perfect looking fruits, veggies and berries. Irradiation was first applied to tomatoes and strawberries back in the 1980s.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)I had good strawberries in the US! Some not so good. I had really good strawberries in the UK, but they tended to be smaller than the bland US counterpart.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)For example, I was in Italy recently, and for lunch I could get superdelicious sandwiches pretty much anywhere (OKAY, this is not the case if you are in a tourist ripoff city). Every place was good, I did not have to look. In the US, it is hard to get a good sandwich.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)uppityperson
(115,681 posts)Also eating less prepared foods as well as walking more.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)...that we moved to the Woods and started growing our own.
We had a bumper crop of tasty, juicy Strawberries this year.
Their "shelf life" is about 2 hours.
We are still harvesting some Asparagus...and it is To Die For.
We get a little break here.
Tomatoes & Peppers are still a few weeks away.
So are the Melons, Cantaloups & Beans.
To get the really GOOD stuff,
you have to grow your own!
lark
(23,182 posts)Most produce there is grown locally and picked when ripe, not gassed. When my daughter was in school there, she ate the sandwiches at the grocery store,Simply. Said the tomatoes and lettuce were very fresh, the meat & cheese delicious and they were delivered daily. Best of all from a student's standpoint, these delicious sandwiches cost 1 euro!
The other part of the reason French aren't fat is they don't use cars a lot. They walk! Also they built up, not out and most apartment buildings don't have elevators. Hiking up 5 flights of stairs to get to an apartment and going up and down multiple times during the day, uses a lot of calories. I probably walked around 10 miles a day during the 3 weeks we were there.
DesertDiamond
(1,616 posts)as well has several times more nutrients.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)Not all the produce in France is organic. Far from it:
According to Agence Bio (2010), in 2009, the importance of organic food groups in terms of retail sales value is as follows (share of a product group of the organic food market):
22% milk, dairy products and eggs;
19% groceries (excluding dairy products and fresh fruits and
vegetables);
17% fresh fruits and vegetables;
11% meat;
11% bread and flour;
10% wines;
5% fruits and vegetable juices;
3% delicatessen;
1% sea food;
1% frozen food.
http://www.organic-europe.net/country-info-france-report.html
And no, organic produce doesn't have any more nutrients than conventional: spinach is spinach. There are a lot of reasons to eat local, organically grown spinach, but increased nutrients are not one of them.
France has been facing increased obesity rates for years: the reason is snack foods and eating on the run rather than eating three meals leisurely.
You can get vegetables as good as those in France right here in America if you shop at farmer's markets or join a CSA. American cuisine has been improving vastly over the past two or three decades. As someone who lived in France when I was younger, and who adores French food, I can say that in many ways, you can find cuisine and products--even breads--in the US that equal or surpass much of what you can find in France. Eat well and walk, and you'll be fine.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)sybylla
(8,533 posts)Every time I go to Europe or I encounter Europeans here (relatives and friends of friends) I am stunned by the very high amounts of cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption. The availability of good fresh food cannot be among the top ten causes for why they are so freaking skinny.
And just an FYI to anyone who thinks so, skinny is not equal to healthy. It is only one factor among many.
mstinamotorcity2
(1,451 posts)every year. Even small garden saves money and food taste better.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)If this person actually thinks berries of any type, one of the most highly perishable of all produce items spend "countless days sitting on loading docks at food terminals, warehouses and supermarkets", they are either being deliberately mis-leading or are totally ignorant of shipping.
From the field to your refrigerator, six days at the absolute longest anywhere in this nation.
For instance, from SoCal to Hunt's Point produce market in NYC, four days *at the outside*.
A day, maybe two days later they are on store shelves.
Strawberries are like dynamite, that load can blow up on you, and you want them out of your reefer asap.
DRoseDARs
(6,810 posts)...France is roughly the size of California and Nevada combined, and much of the country is arable land. Produce doesn't need as many preservatives to survive the trip across France as it would across the continental US and Canada.
pacalo
(24,721 posts)They eat fruit before every meal to detoxify their digestive systems. They said it helps them to keep the weight off.
pipi_k
(21,020 posts)with regard to obesity...all other things being pretty much equal, I mean.
Or, even if some things aren't quite equal...
Is it possible that the French just have a different way of eating than we Americans do?
By that, I mean, do they "dine" instead of mindlessly shoving food down their throats?
It's been said that people who eat like they've been starved for a few months tend to overeat, going past the point of fullness, whereas people who eat slowly tend to stop sooner.
I watch people all the time, and it seems to me that too many Americans just don't take the time to enjoy what they're eating.
It doesn't make sense to me that people will take time to cook up a nice meal, then not really enjoy the textures and tastes because they're bolting it down like pigs at a trough. Sorry for the awful comparison, but that's the vision I always get when I see someone finish off a huge plate of food, then go back for seconds before someone else has even gotten halfway through their dinner.
Anyway, that's what I wonder. Is part of the problem because we Americans eat like starving beasts...
AllyCat
(16,252 posts)They have not made it into the house in the three years we have grown them.
IronLionZion
(45,615 posts)if you can find a good farmers market or a friend with their own garden or something, you will notice the difference in taste. Its amazing what happens when produce is vine ripened and picked immediately before eating.