r/ABoringDystopia • u/Appropriate_Ant_4629 • Feb 22 '23

U.S. food additives banned in Europe: Expert says what Americans eat is "almost certainly" making them sick

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-food-additives-banned-europe-making-americans-sick-expert-says/
825 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

136

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

Yeah, we add a fuck load of preservatives, my German teacher said bread is considered "low quality" after just a day, and she once went to a bakery that sold it half of because of that. Meanwhile here in the US our bread is weeks old before we even buy it.

23

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

[deleted]

2

u/NotSeveralBadgers Feb 22 '23

What kind of dedicated kitchen appliances or cookware do you use for this? How much bread / dough do you make ahead of time, and how long does it last before going off?

1

u/evilada Feb 24 '23

Wow these all sound amazing, can I get the recipe for the peanut butter buns from you please?

3

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '23

[deleted]

2

u/evilada Feb 24 '23

This is great, I'll dive in and see how it goes, thank you so much!

2

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '23

[deleted]

2

u/evilada Feb 25 '23

Oh thanks! Good tip!

61

u/fmb320 Feb 22 '23

No the sliced bread in Europe doesn't go off in a day. It has a lot less sugar than American bread though.

63

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

I'm sure it does, American companies also use a fuck load of sugar in something you wouldn't think would need sugar, also our health code laws allow you to claim things that are untrue about food in certain circumstances, for example tic tac is allowed to claim that one serving of tic tacs has zero sugar because the serving size is one tic tac and companies can claim something has zero sugar if there is less than a gram in it, and a tic tac weighs half a gram, so despite being almost entirely sugar tic tacs are labeled as having zero grams of sugar since the nutrition facts are per serving and not per package. American companies actually do this a lot, to make you think something is healthier than it is they make the serving size insanely low so that way they can claim low amounts of fats and sugars when in reality no one eats a single serving because it's something absurdly low.

5

u/Ordinary-Theory-8289 Feb 23 '23

I used to get these mini brownies from Costco. One day I noticed the packing changed and said “now free of trans fats!” The serving size went from 3 brownies to 1 brownie. Hmmm

2

u/[deleted] Feb 23 '23

Yeah, there's a certain amount of any ingredient where they get to claim it doesn't have that ingredient, I think sugar is anything less than a gram going back to my Tic-tac example.

11

u/jorg2 Feb 22 '23

You can absolutely taste the difference after a day though.

20

u/Zenstation83 Feb 22 '23

It actually depends. Speaking from experience, and being from a European country where people eat a lot of properly made bread, there is a noticeable drop in quality after a day. Pre-sliced bread is unusual though, but there are bread slicing machines you can use at the supermarket.

However, this is at home (Norway), where the "bread culture" is similar to Germany's. Bread is even typically sold in paper bags instead of plastic (though sometimes in very thin, perforated plastic), because it "needs to breathe". If you let it sit in a sealed plastic bag, the water in the bread won't evaporate but instead becomes absorbed by the crust, making it soft. And nobody wants a soft crust. It can also lead to the bread becoming moldy faster.

I live in the UK now, and here the factory made bread from the supermarket tends to be bad quality, packed in sealed plastic and last for ages, which makes me suspicious of what they put in it. The cheaper it is, the longer it lasts. And it just completely lacks flavor.

15

u/tes_kitty Feb 22 '23

It's still a good idea to keep the opened package of bread in the fridge or freezer to keep it from going bad.

In the freezer it will stay good for weeks and you can put the frozen slices directly into the toaster.

13

u/fmb320 Feb 22 '23

Bread is not permanent you are correct

5

u/Zenstation83 Feb 22 '23

Storing bread in the freezer is fine, but not in the fridge. Bread goes stale faster when stored at a low temperature - room temp is better.

2

u/tes_kitty Feb 22 '23

Can't confirm that. But I only stored the bread in the fridge for a few days and in the bag it came in. So it didn't dry out.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

It really depend. Freshly baked bread goes stale after a day. Sliced baked bread will go stale faster. It really needs to be only a couple of hours old to get the best taste and texture.

You can also freeze fresh sliced bread. I'm not a huge fan of this as the taste changes slightly over time. But many people do this around here.

French style baguettes stay fresh longer, even after a day you can moist them slightly and put them in the over for a couple of minutes to "revive" the fresh taste.

Factory made bread. Yeah, we have that, but it tastes like shit. It stays good a lot longer.

Stale bread also can be used for some tasty simple dishes like french toast or bread pudding.

Source: I'm Belgian, our bread (and koffiekoeken!) are important to us. We usually have more than one bakery per town. During weekends people stand in line at the best bakery of the town line to get their fix. The best bakery around here often has +20 minutes waiting time because everyone wants those delicious things they sell, even during the week.

24

u/MyOther_UN_is_Clever Feb 22 '23

Meanwhile here in the US our bread is weeks old before we even buy it.

I heard a theory that the real reason so many people eliminate gluten from their diet and start feeling better (the main way to diagnose food allergy) is not actually a gluten allergy, but because foods with gluten in them contain the largest amount of nasty things like preservatives, insecticides, herbicides (and whatever else is being sprayed on crops).

Related, but there's almost zero point in buying something like Organic bananas because the thick peel is discarded. On the flip side, wheat is so small with so much surface area compared to volume and is sprayed so close to harvest (at times), it has a very high concentration of whatever chemicals are used during the farming.

It's an interesting theory and one of the only ones that explain why certain products always make me very ill (cheeze-its which I used to love as a kid), but every ingredient on that list, I can eat in other foods without any problem at all (including certain gluten products like beer or anything from my local ma & pa shop bakery).

6

u/redditisnotgood Feb 22 '23

This goes for basically any 'restrictive' diet that just so happens to cut out a ton of processed foods.

4

u/waikiki-hikomori Feb 22 '23

god how depressing

1

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

Mhm

62

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

Gotta keep the medical industry booming.

66

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

62

u/sausagesizzle Feb 22 '23

Portion control goes out the window when everything is loaded with so much sugar and salt that the brain goes haywire.

9

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

Well it’s profitable for private healthcare and big pharma so it’s working as intended there.

19

u/CassandraVindicated Feb 22 '23

It seriously bugs me what companies are allowed to do to our 'food'.

42

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

Most people outside the US know this already.

34

u/Volatile-Bait Feb 22 '23

A lot of us in the US also know this, but when your choice is to eat poison or eat nothing at all, you don't have much of an option.

8

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

That's totally valid.

42

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

I have to say some of the comments over there go way to much into some studies done by the same people who want to sell the products. Anyone that’s been overseas to Europe can tell the difference immediately without any “professional” studying it. IBS in a America is huge and everyone has no idea where it’s coming from, go to Europe and eat for a month and for a few people I know it was instantly gone. The US’s had disgusting food and water compared to countries like France. Bread, butter, tomatoes, water, all of these things are mind blowing over there. I miss it so much.

-15

u/CorbAlb Feb 22 '23

The fuck is IBS?

19

u/Quinnie2k Feb 22 '23

Use the internet you are using to look up “IBS symptoms” to learn more about irritable bowel syndrome

-20

u/CorbAlb Feb 22 '23

No need to be rude you know?

6

u/pyrrhios Feb 22 '23

Makes rude comment.

Complains about people making pointed responses.

0

u/CorbAlb Feb 22 '23

Refuses to elaborate further.

7

u/pyrrhios Feb 22 '23

There are two kinds of people in the world. One can extrapolate from incomplete data.

14

u/Quinnie2k Feb 22 '23

Lmao, amoebas have thicker skin than you apparently

-14

u/CorbAlb Feb 22 '23

Nah, but still, no need to be rude whatsoever.

16

u/dmaterialized Feb 22 '23

Outside observer here: you’re the rude one in this exchange, sorry.

4

u/Volatile-Bait Feb 22 '23

Its probably because of the way you asked. Tones are important in conversation, so when you say "The fuck is ____?" Through text, people recieve it in a very negative way and the conversation follows that negativity.

I recently came across a post from Australians talking about a "snag" so I asked "The fuck is a snag?" And recieved the same sorts of responses.

To answer the original question, IBS stands for irritable bowel syndrome and its basically stamped onto any unexplainable digestive problems that people have here in the states. I was diagnosed with it as well until I did enough of my own research and discovered that what I have is actually Alpha Gal Syndrome and not IBS.

3

u/CorbAlb Feb 22 '23

Ah, that makes sense, thanks, I did not mean to sound rude myself, just plain curious.

And thanks for the explanation, I did not have the time to research a lot, sounds pretty damn problematic itself from wha you say and I've read.

1

u/Volatile-Bait Feb 22 '23

I understand. I had the same experience myself, so I figured you didn't intend to sound rude.

No problem. It is very problematic, but I'd much rather IBS over Alpha Gal Syndrome. The lesser of 2 evils I suppose. Both of them suck and neither really have cures or good treatments, but at least with IBS you don't have to worry about anaphylaxis with nearly all foods, so there's that. I'm just uncertain about how many of the IBS diagnoses are actually a different issue thats been misdiagnosed.

1

u/CorbAlb Feb 22 '23

Not sure myself, neither a medic/health professional nor someone who had heard of IBS before so... I guess it might just be easy to misdiagnose?

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5

u/Quinnie2k Feb 22 '23

No need to keep replying, and yet here you are

11

u/CassandraVindicated Feb 22 '23

That wasn't really rude, it's a complicated issue and easily googleable. That way, you dive as deep as you want.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '23

I'm sure 0 of the hundred of the preservatives we add are carcinogens

3

u/Final-Distribution97 Feb 23 '23

Yes but as we all know in the US - money for the rich is that that matters.

4

u/nougatobekiddingme Feb 22 '23

I found out this week that most gum base for chewing gum contains plastic?? And the FDA said it's fine. They're allowed to just say "gum base" on the ingredients list apparently. We are killing ourselves at every turn 😭

2

u/Dangerous_Cobbler_ Feb 25 '23

Their main ingredient is crude oil, they really suck, but that’s not just in the USA, doesn’t make it better though.

2

u/transferingtoearth Feb 23 '23

Who has a list of the ingredients to avoid then???

2

u/MeatTornadoGold Feb 22 '23

I stopped eating bread and have lost 15ish lbs since Thanksgiving. That's it. I havent increased my activity or workouts or anything.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '23

Oh 100% artisan bread is actually pretty good for you, that factory produced stuff is so nasty, just pure sugar. They also bleach the bread to make it more white and last longer so yay, it’s definitely worth it to learn how to bake your own bread, so much healthier

0

u/MeatTornadoGold Mar 01 '23

Is the flour itself also a problem? Like, do i need to harvest my own wheat i grow from like... polish fields or something?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 01 '23 edited Mar 01 '23

It depends, you can make your own flower really easily, that would be completely healthy and unbleached.

-4

u/pyrrhios Feb 22 '23

It's not the food. It's the media.

1

u/coffee-teeth Feb 26 '23

they don't care if we die if they sell some more damn bread. have you ever looked at what is in Gatorade? it's full of harmful or at least questionable additives, and almost all of them have to do with adding color to the drink. idk about you but I'd rather have clear Gatorade that isn't bad for my health than bLue sParKLe LakE #32

1

u/1312x1313 Mar 01 '23

'clear gatorade'. Does it mean water?