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Comment by busyant | Hacker News Reader

> to create a "new normal" or new baseline where an e.g. strawberry is sweat again.

Just an interesting story.

About 5 years ago, I tried to cut out all processed carbs from my diet.

After several months, I was away from home and I had to eat something---the only thing open was a Dunkin Donuts. I ordered an egg-white sandwich on a plain English muffin, and for kicks I took a bite out of the English muffin.

Holy shit. It tasted super sweet!!

I can't be sure, but I assume it had refined sugar added to it to improve its palatability. Made me think about everything that goes into fast foods...

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I've been in America only once while overnighting in a hotel near LAX en-route to New Zealand from the UK.

Everything I ate at that hotel tasted sweet from the pizza I ordered that night to the toast I had in the morning. What should have been delicious and savoury was instead sickening and unpleasant - it was so weird.

I’m from Europe and had a similar experience on the first visit to the US. It’s like the sugar level is set to max for everything lol.

The food industry is really trying hard to kill Americans. Sugar everywhere, and all kinds of additives and processing everywhere else.

I had the same experience when I went from peanut butter that is just ground peanuts to some peanut butter from some of the big brands. The big brand PB tastes like cake icing.

refined sugar

I don't think there is any difference to your body between sugar and 'refined sugar'. It is all going to have a lot of fructose in it.

Things like agave syrup or whatever else are just tricks to make people think they are getting healthy sugar.

I’m sure it did have added sugar. Basically all American supermarket bread products (including most bread!) do, and are are super sweet to Europeans.

It extends shelf life though. European supermarket bread will mould in usually less than a week, but it’s really unusual for an American bread to go mouldy.

I think Twinkies last forever and they have tons of sugar.

American bread certainly does go moldy, but the sugar absorbs moisture and keeps the bread softer longer.

That being said, I'd much rather they used less. At this point it's pretty hard to buy a hamburger bun around here [SF] that doesn't taste like a brioche to me.

I started making baking at home when pandemic lockdowns started and with only flour, yeast, salt, oil and sugar my bread grows mold within one to two days (2 cups of flour with 1 teaspoon of sugar) I speculate my home humidity might be high without air conditioning or heat but it seems a lot of something is necessary to prevent commercial bread products from molding for a long time.

Home baked bread freezes really well so take advantage of that! I also bake a lot of bread at home and usually make a batch of 1kg of flour at a time, that results in two good sized loaves - one goes in the freezer until the other is finished.

I freeze it in an air tight bag, and I take it out of the freezer a day before we want to start using it and let it thaw at room temperature.

+1 for freezing. Additionally if you want less planning around when to thaw, I slice my bread before freezing, and then put it in the toaster to reheat it, with a bit of added crisp.

Do you store it in a plastic zip-bag? I saw the most rapid bad changes either at room temp for days, or in the fridge and long after it was killed.

Sourdough takes substantially longer to grow mold than most other types of bread plus it is delicious and doable to make at home.

How do you store it? Do you have a bread box?

I tried using bags and a bread box and neither worked for me so now I eat what I can when it's hot and after it's cooled down I freeze it in plastic food bags that are recycled from food stuffs I have bought. Reheating it in the oven at a lower temperature works great for me.

Sourdough was the only sliced bread I could find at my supermarket that didn't contain any added sugar and also wasn't ridiculously overpriced. That's been the only bread I've used for over a year now, and regular American sandwich bread tastes so weird to me now when I have the chance to try any

(including most bread!) do, and are are super sweet to Europeans.

Europeans, except Swedes. Swedish bread is also generally super sweet for some reason.

I'm currently on keto and am curious what sweet food will taste like if I ever try it. I hear that if you don't eat such foods for a long time, they tend to come across as really really sweet.

I have the same experience but only takes 2 days of no sugar. After that a lot of food is way to sweet.

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