Hacker News Reader

Comment by manuelabeledo | Hacker News Reader

Anyone who has traveled to (and eaten at) Europe and, to a lesser extent, South East Asia, would be able to instantly notice how much more saltier and sweeter American foods are.

This is noticeable even in foods that are expected to be the same, e.g. Starbucks beverages, McDonalds burgers.

View on HN

My German friend said that the first time they tried bread in the US they thought it was cake.

Much of it legally is cake by EU standards: https://www.thenational.scot/news/19927787.subway-bread-clas...

But now these markets are much more saturated with smokers than the us market, so why aren’t those markets similarly saturated with salty and sweet foods?

Conventional restaurants in the West tend to abuse food with excessive salt, cream, oil, and/or sugar. The more health conscious nouveau (as opposed to health-washed pseudo-healthy dining) have somewhat reversed this trend with more raw and simpler ingredients. To be fair, mainland PRC (non-Cantonese) traditional restaurant food is bland by overall world-average standards. Cantonese food tends to be arguably a notch or 2 richer like Vietnamese food, but not as much as Westernized Thai, Indian, or Korean food which tend to be very strong.

General advice is: ask for the toppings or dressing on the side rather than smothered with 1k kcal of ranch dressing. No wonder Westerners have weight problems.

> Conventional restaurants in the West tend to abuse food with excessive salt, cream, oil, and/or sugar.

You mean American restaurants. The difference between the average European restaurant vs the American is stark.

As a Spaniard living in the US, I am constantly bothered by the amount of spices or sauces or other condiments American foods have. My personal pet peeve is having to always check for non smoked canned fish or seafood in the supermarket, why can’t I just get some regular tasting clams?

Ok, but smoking rates are far higher in Europe and Asia.

So the correlation is inverse to the theory.

The article suggests that tobacco companies pushed for hyperpalatable foods in the firms they invested to, because they are more addictive, not because sales of food would help those of tobacco.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com