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Comment by daedrdev | Hacker News Reader

The United States has far stricter labeling standards than the EU. That's why US products appear to have more ingredients, they are required to say what their ingredients are mad from, even on identical products.

Many things that are well known memes are completely false. Not everything in the EU is better regulated. Everyone always complains about chlorinated chicken, not realizing that <5% of US chicken is washed that way as chicken now uses vinegar washes, and those that did were at concentrations deemed safe by the FDA.

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> The United States has far stricter labeling standards than the EU

Source for that? All I can find says EU have stricter labeling standards except for forum comments such as yours here.

Edit: > Many things that are well known memes are completely false

To me it looks like "USA shows more additives due to harsher labeling standards" is just a meme, everything I've seen says Europe has stricter requirements on what you need to say about additives. So USA having much more additives listed comes from American products having more additives in them, not everything is better in USA.

https://www.tilleydistribution.com/insights/food-regulations...

   The European approach to food additives is visible. The EFSA assigns a 3- or 4-digit code to every food additive, and that number must be included on food labels if it’s used in a product. The EFSA believes this system makes it easier for consumers to look up and memorize specific additives.

   In the US, those same additives are required to be printed out in full.

That's not stricter, it's just different names.

It is stricter.

https://www.daymarksafety.com/news/some-fundamental-differen...

   EU labels are not required to list as much information about nutrients in a product as compared to US food labels. Plus, they often omit such items as saturated fat, fiber, and sugar.

> EU labels are not required to list as much information about nutrients in a product as compared to US food labels. Plus, they often omit such items as saturated fat, fiber, and sugar.

Those aren't additives, it just means you don't need to breakdown the nutrients label it doesn't change the additives.

So the things you have brought up doesn't seem to be the reason USA has so many more additives listed on their products. If you give a single example of an identical product listing more things in USA than in the EU and how these regulations influenced that I could trust you, but as is what you say seems to just be a meme.

So Europeans have Kryptonite biology where nutrient content doesn't matter for their health?

> what you say seems to just be a meme

The biggest meme now is hating the US while glorifying EU despite in-your-face evidence that justifies a contrary attitude.

Lol we, even you, talk about additives and then you bring up nutritional content of the food itself. Do you even understand the topic discussed? It certainly doesn't seem so, or you have an agenda to serve, for whatever reason. Or are llms today having most of computing power diverted into pretraining new version?

We do list all of that, but thats usually a separate table, or if not a separate bloc of text. Its always there. Posting random webs scraped by llms ain't providing facts and personal experience to discussion.

What's more full of shit? FDA approved food or this guy?

Thanks for citation and logical discussion. Always good to engage in such discussions.

I think some folks are full of shit so that nutritional content of the food itself, like mentioned, in a parallel comment doesn't matter much for them, but for rest of us with normal biology it does matter unfortunately.

https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/labelling-and-nutritio...

  Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 requires the vast majority of pre-packed foods to bear a nutrition declaration. It must provide the energy value and the amounts of fat, saturates, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt of the food.

> Everyone always complains about chlorinated chicken, not realizing that <5% of US chicken is washed that way as chicken now uses vinegar washes, and those that did were at concentrations deemed safe by the FDA.

So, the issue with chlorinated chicken washing is not that the chlorine is unsafe, as such. There are two concerns. The first is cross-contamination. The second is that there is some evidence that it is essentially a cheat; it defeats common tests for salmonella but does not actually reliably destroy the salmonella. So, if you allow chlorine washing, then you can pass the tests while not fixing supply chain problems.

Reference on most American chicken now being washed with _vinegar_? As far as I know that’s fairly uncontroversial ineffective.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/15/nx...

“The vast majority of chicken processed in the United States is not chilled in chlorine and hasn't been for quite a few years.

…

Less than 5% of poultry processing facilities still use chlorine in rinses and sprays, according to the National Chicken Council, an industry group that surveyed its members. (Those that still do use a highly diluted solution at concentrations deemed safe.)

Nowadays, the industry mostly uses organic acids to reduce cross contamination, primarily peracetic, or peroxyacetic acid, which is essentially a mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide.“

Ah, I see.

> primarily peracetic, or peroxyacetic acid, which is essentially a mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide

The NPR should possibly hire a science editor. Peracetic acid is not a _mixture_ of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, any more than water is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. It can be, though in practice is not, made by _combining_ them.

Anyway, same concern as chlorine from the EC’s point of view; it’s an attempt to clean up the problem after it is created, of dubious efficacy, whereas EC policy is to attempt to avoid creating it in the first place.

I fear you have been vinegar brain washed. Like this talking point was dilled into you

On the other hand, US tap water is absolutely drenched in chlorine. Awful stuff.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. The US and the European Union both allow chlorine in drinking water as in both areas it’s used kill bacteria. The US allows slightly more but both of them set it to safe levels and the chlorine and chloramane used do not make people sick

I'm talking mainly about taste not making people sick. No idea about the rest of the EU but in Germany tap water never tastes like chlorine while in the US it does everywhere I have been.

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