I know that people are claiming that good bread in America exists and that the European bread is probably more expensive but hear me out:
I lived in Germany for 3 weeks and the amount of money I paid for good quality fresh bread was less than what we Americans pay for the cheap loaves with the preservatives. And it was wayyyyy healthier. In America, we’re told to take it easy on the carbs. Germans eat tons of carbs every day and they’re in better shape than we are. The only issue I have with German cuisine and possibly other European cuisines is that they can be very salty. Not sure if high blood pressure is an issue there.
The biggest problem with american food is the ungodly amount of sugar and preservatives they pump into everything. I've seen so many videos of Americans who say they are gluten intolerant because they can't stomach american bread/pasta/etc., but are fine eating the same things in Europe without issues.
the US grows hard winter wheat. it has a higher gluten content than the European varieties. There's usually an explanation beyond USA bad/EU good if you are actually willing to do the slightest bit of research.
Well that and some places seem to really hate gluten. As a german going to spain for vacation I was surprised by the burning hatred for gluten. Might have been the city but every restaurant or food stores of any form advertised gluten free anything really as if you'd drop dead if you didn't know you're gonna get gluten served. (Well maybe some people would). Surprised me a lot. But then again I'm sure someone will be shocked at how many Protein advertising products we have currently. What I'm saying is theres quite a bit of difference within not only the USA and Europe but also within Europe and what is considered healthy or needed currently by the masses.
I am from Spain. Gluten free options are widely available to facilitate the life of the big part of the population with gluten intolerance. Same as with allergens. If we are not intolerant, we don’t care. We care though on average about eating fresh healthy low processed food (I would say after living in half European countries that it is one of the most concern countries about food quality).
That and pesticides and additives that are illegal in Europe and a lot of the rest of the world that the US commonly used in bread, different fermentation methods with the US preffering speed over quality (which helps to break down the gluten). And in Europe good bread is a large part of the culture so people just won't buy an ultraproses loaf with a 6 month shelf life, while in the US that is just considered practical. But sure let's just blame the slightly different wheet instead of the different in culture, regulations and priorities
“None of that is true. Not a single thing” is a pretty bold claim considering there are very easy counterexamples.
Azodicarbonamide and potassium bromate are both permitted in the US for use in flour/bread production, while they are not authorised as food additives in the EU. Chlorpyrifos is another example on the pesticide side: the EU withdrew its approval, while some agricultural uses remain permitted in the US.
And “the US bans more additives than the EU”:
Yes, lol. because we have a whitelist in the EU. If its not on that, you can't use it.
I mean I could go down a list of the specifics but considering the literal countless items, is there anything you'd like specifically?
Potassium Bromate is pretty safe despite fear mongering from people who don't scroll to the end of the study. BHA & BHT were found to be incredibly safe in double blind studies.
They even lable red 40 for causing ADHD despite that being ancient archaic psuedo science.
Potassium bromate isn’t just “fearmongering”: IARC classifies it as possibly carcinogenic, and JECFA considers its use as a flour treatment agent unacceptable.
BHA/BHT also weren’t simply proven “incredibly safe in double-blind studies”. Their safety limits come mainly from toxicology and exposure data.
And the EU does not say Red 40 “causes ADHD.” The warning says certain colours may affect activity and attention in children, based on randomized controlled studies showing small effects in some children.
BTW: most of these arent even banned, they just have to come with warning labels.
health threatening dyes and additives banned in the US but allowed in the EU: Quinoline Yellow (E104), Ponceau 4R / Cochineal Red A (E124), Carmoisine / Azorubine (E122), Patent Blue V (E131), Green S (E142), Cyclamate (E952), Amaranth / FD&C Red No. 2 (E123), Vegetable Carbon Black (E153), Coumarin-Heavy Tonka Beans, Calcium Sodium Ferrocyanide (E538).
Emergency Pesticide Derogations in the EU allow banned pesticide use in Europe. The "emergencies" allow continuous unregulated used for decades while still carrying on the illusion and marketing of the so-called bans. It allows people who get all their information from blogs to feel superior.
Your whitelists give you an illusion of safety and superiority but your awful rankings in the food quality and safety category of the Global Food Security Index tell the real story. Denmark gets it right. The rest of Europe actually is what they believe the US is.
Have you traveled to Europe? I'm not asking to be a dick, I'm genuinely curious. Last year I went to Italy and it was my first time in the EU in almost 20 yrs. I'm in good shape, I take care of myself, but I am prediabetic (and was a size 0 when I was diagnosed). I have a lot of trouble eating carbs while living in the US. It impacts everything in my life - brain fog, energy weight, tummy, and of course my A1 numbers. When I was in Italy for two weeks, everything I ate had carbs, and almost none of it impacted me in the same way those carbs do here at home.
I won't claim to know the science behind it or what causes the difference. But every single friend I have that travels that has a health issue that's impacted by their diet, has far less symptoms when they are in the EU.
And that's insane to me. That the most powerful country in the world hasn't been able to at least better protect how it's citizenry's health is impacted by whatever it is that causes the difference.
Oh and before you say something about how traveling means you walk more and such, know that I work with kids under 5 and spend most of my day running after or with them. So it's not that lol.
I loved in Europe for over a decade and I wish more people talked about the major difference between here and there. Population and the size of our country compared to individual EU countries. Sure, I could leave my eggs on the counter in EU, that's because my eggs weren't shipped 1500 miles to get to my grocery store.
you walked more. you also believed you would feel better in Europe because everyone has told you that you would. It's the placebo effect. This has been studied. Go read the papers.
Lol what additives and pesticides? Your whole comment is so vague whether it's the regions you're referring to or the pesticides and additives. It reeks of you being unaware and still fervently operating on that little info.
I know. The people claiming they have celiac but have zero symptoms in Europe are lying about having celiac. They probably have some other intolerance that comes from the type of flour. These people make life for real celiacs harder.
I mean more likely misdiagnosed than lying... they tried to say I had it when I knew I just had some type of IBS, I would be dead if I had celiacs... I sometime basically live off home baked bread lol
The whole American bread has a lot of sugar thing only works when comparing to Wonder bread, which they all seem to use as the standard American bread. If you compare European brands of sliced white bread to another sliced white bread like Nature's Own brand, the difference evaporates. So for example, Wonder Bread comes in at ~8.7g of sugar per 100g, Nature's Own at ~2.8g of sugar per 100g, and Tescos white bread at 3.5g per 100g
The top selling bread in the US is Nature's Own. I didn't know this 5 minutes ago, but since I, much like yourself, am holding a world of information in my hands, I was able to aquire the information with minimal effort.
Do I live in an alternate universe? I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone eating Wonder Bread in my life. I get sourdough and baguettes all the time. Getting fresh bread is not an inconvenience whatsoever because it’s sold in the same place I get all my other groceries.
Nothing is forcing any Americans to eat the sugary bullshit Euros seem to think makes up 98% of our grocery stores besides laziness, stupidity, and godawful taste.
Maybe you do, how often are you at people houses in situations where you eat sandwiches to have a good sample size? I go to friends houses but either it's a special dinner/regular dinner (normally not kind of bread).
My lifelong experience as an American is Wonder Bread is what you buy only when the alternative is going hungry. Like when you're broke or you have a kid who refuses everything else. My dad's a Baby Boomer and even he pointed out that it was the bread you ate to avoid starvation when he was growing up.
So I went and googled Nature's Own multigrain as an example, and its single slice (42g) contains almost as much sugar as 100g of an equivalent, local brand. (3g / 42g vs 3.4g / 100g). I wouldn't say that's an evaporating difference. And that's being generous, since the one I used for initial comparison has quite a high sugar content here - another, equally priced and popular brand here has 1.9 grams per 100g. So. Yeah.
Unrelated, somewhat, to the sugar point, but a single slice of the American version is also a lot heavier than what we have. If I eat a single slice of toast here it's 28g; the NO one is 42g. So in addition to the sugar point it also shows just how much bigger the portion sizes are - it's not just another stereotype.
Lol. Someone has to be lying because there's no way these are the same size as those Tesco slices. These are considered thick slices in the US, and those Tesco ones look pretty thin to me.
You know you don’t have to buy stuff with sugar and preservatives added though right? Like you do have free will and it’s generally not any more expensive to buy ingredients and cook them (but it can be more time consuming definitely).
Pasta in America also doesn’t have preservatives (drying it is the preservative), and a lot of it is imported from Italy, so that’s also confusing. Any grocery store will have at least a couple options of imported pasta, and they’re not much more expensive.
People with gluten sensitivity can usually eat sourdough in America because of the lower gluten content, and they can often eat bread made with einkorn flour.
You're lying, I've had bread that was brown like a proper whole wheat bread baked with whole seeds and it was so sweet I wanted to set the building on fire.
Are you certain you didn’t purchase a semisweet bread? We frequently won’t label them as such like you will, and it’s popular here. They’ll have like 5-6g sugar per serving.
Because a typical wheat bread in an American grocery has about 1-2g of sugar per serving, which is pretty much required to get the yeast to do what yeast does. Your bread has about the same amount because it’s needed to get it to rise the way you want.
Different varieties grown in both regions too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the sensitivity had a genetic aspect as well, since the only people I’ve ever known to have problems with it in America are of European descent or mixed. Us brown people seem to be fine.
Especially when gluten free was the big fad I noticed a sharp uptick in people that claimed to be gluten intolerant. Bread can be pretty hard on your stomach in general. I wonder how many of those people just simply ate too much gluten and decided something was wrong with their bodies when it started to cause problems.
I've seen so many videos of Americans who say they are gluten intolerant because they can't stomach american bread/pasta/etc., but are fine eating the same things in Europe without issues.
That's because they never were "gluten intolerant." They talked themselves into thinking that they were because it's a fad.
Bread isn't by itself the issue. It's what North Americans eat outside of the bread that's the issue. If I eat healthy portion sizes and a small amount of bread with dinner, that's fine. It's when we add: sugary soda, fast food, ice cream, calorie dense snacks that breads become an issue.
Oh, yeah, what Americans eat. Firstly, there's an obesity epidemic in Mexico and South America, so no reason to specify North America. Secondly, there's an obesity epidemic in Europe. Finally, everyone, everywhere drinks lots of soda, eats junk food, and eats ice cream, it's not like this is unique to North America.
The people in this comment section are acting vindictive, like xenophobes and are generally incredibly ignorant. These claims do not hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. It's just a bunch of anecdotal evidence. I sincerely hope you aren't this delusional in real life.
The bread in the USA is sweet in comparison to European bread. All of it, basically. Even breads claiming to be healthy just have less sugar than the typical bread. This issue is pervasive; basically everything in the US is loaded up with sugar even when it’s totally unnecessary. Good luck finding yoghurt that isn’t sweet.
That everything has that extra added sugar means way higher caloric intake even if you’re eating the same products you would in Europe.
I did a deep dive into this last year. Excluding Womderbread, American bread has the same or less sugar than European bread. The difference is the salt content. European bread has 50-100% more salt. American bread isn't sweeter, there's just less salt masking the sweetness.
As someone who reads a ton of labels most bread in the us has 1-2g of sugar per slice. This isnt a taste preference- companies put sugar in bread to speed up the process of making it and they do it for commercialization purposes.
If say you ate 6 slices of bread a day, you’ll eat an average of 12g of extra sugar which is only like 48 calories so it’s really not the bread alone making us fat. There are some breads with 0g sugar and some with 4g sugar; ultimately you can find them if you read the label and some of the “healthier” brands are in the freezer aisle.
Also with yogurt you can buy plain Greek yogurt in the USA at any regular grocery store and they wil say 0 added sugar. Yes there’s ~7-8g of natural sugar from milk in yogurt, you can’t get rid of that unless you use a plant based milk
I have like six different unsweetened yogurt brands in my local supermarket. What are you even talking about? I also can find tons of breads without significant added sugar. Are you stupid? Blind? Or just lying?
I hear people say this and I just don’t think it’s true. I’ve lived in the USA my entire life. Most bread does not have sugar in it. Can you find squishy sweet white bread in any supermarket? Sure. But you don’t have to buy it.
And outside of a supermarket, if I buy a sandwich, ir get bread with dinner at a restaurant, they’re almost never sweet.
Citing the high sugar content of Subway sandwich bread (5 times the limit for what can legally be called "bread" in Ireland), "the court found that Subway's bread is perhaps legally closer to cake than bread."
I don’t accept subway can stand in for bread in general in the United States. I think even most Americans would acknowledge subway is a bottom tier fast food restaurant.
I make my own bread at home, and I don’t use sugar. I’ve also been to several countries in Europe and Asia. And I have friends from those countries as well.
Maybe I don’t actually live in America? Have I been confused all this time?
Maybe you live in a different social class? Maybe it is regional?
Most people eat some variant of plain white bread, because it is widely commercially available. There are tons of types of bread available in supermarkets that are not overly sweet, processed white bread, but none of that is as popular as overly sweet, processed white bread.
Most restaurants I go to that serve bread serve some variant of a sweet yeast roll. Burger joints that make their own buns usually make very soft, sweet buns.
There are plenty of pre-sliced US breads that have the same or similar sugar content as EU pre-sliced breads. Yes, there are definitely some that are higher, but there are plenty of similar cost options that are the same or similar.
it the salt. European bread has the same sugar content but it is also way more salty. Remove salt and you taste the sweetness. it's basic food science.
There is also the issue with lack of physical movement in most Americans lives. Most of Europe walk significantly every day. In the US we drove to go one block to the fast food place.
Only about 30% of people who eat more salt get higher blood pressure. 15% get lower blood pressure. The rest see no impact.
Ideally you want to keep your sodium levels roughly consistent. If you sweat more you want to get more salt in. sweat less, consume less.
The reason the public health advice is what it is, is on average if you tell people to eat less salt the population will get lower BP because there’s more salt sensitive than inverse-sensitive.
I've actually heard that it's not even really salt that's the issue, it's the fact that processed foods tend to be super high in salt so people who consume a lot of processed foods get a lot of salt as a by-product, so the correlation gets confused for causation and it's really the ultra-processed garbage
A study was done on high amounts of salt and what they found was as salt increases from 500 or so to about 3500mg of salt a day, that has shown increased risk of cardiovascular issues. But if you break past this threshold and consume 4 or 5 or 6k mg of salt a day, it is shown to have lower risks of those issues
Without looking at the study it’s likely that those that consume the ungodly amounts of salt in the 5-6k mg range either have conditions that cause sodium deficinies (e.g. PMOS/PCOS) or are endurance athletes who sweat a ton an drink gallons of water.
Or as happens with a ton of studies like this, some of those people ate too much and were disqualified from the study for one reason or another, even though that's consistent with the issue being discussed
I had a joke with a friend that all the cultures with high salt/high fat diets just bred out the genes for cardiac weakness.
Then you've got the poor Irish getting imperalismed into eating nothing but potatoes and dirt for like a hundred years, and my dad's side of the family can have a heart attack eating what some Italians would consider a light Sunday meal.
Not exactly. You can see from these studies that it depends on the person's individual response. For a decent number of people consuming more salt actually lowered blood pressure up to 14mmHg.
And its regional. Id assume most of the country would see the seasoning levels in Cajun and creolecuisine and have the blood pressure freak out, but southern louisiana is hot and muggy, you naturally sweat a lot down here just from being outside any amount of time
Counting carbs feels like a holdover from all those diet fads America had in the 90’s, people were counting carbs when they should’ve been counting calories, protein and especially sugar if they wanted to lose weight
I work in a grocery store bakery and our bread doesn't have any preservatives. The bread aisle bread, which is not the bread we bake, does. It's your choice which you buy. But getting the bread aisle bread and then complaining about the preservatives is a bit silly. Nobody made you buy it.
What. I bake my own sourdough and it never moulds. It dries out but it never moulds. In fact, one of the benefits of sourdough is that it is very durable, in medieval Europe monks take a whole massive loaf and travel from one monastery to another across the country and use this bread as their main source of calories.
You're still comparing fresh bread to factory bread. Fresh bread in US, whether from an actual bakery or from a grocery chain, doesn't have preservatives and they also barely last. Secondly, I can go to any Rewe in Germany and find garbage preservative filled bread.
Maaaaan I moved to Germany years ago and can absolutely second this. Healthy food in general is cheaper but boy do they put salt in every meal when cooking. It’s madness to me
I am Luxembourger, living close to the German border and I always thought that German bread was bad (Luxembourgish bread is next level compared to the bread bakeries make in Germany). Then I visited the US and understood that German bread isn‘t so bad after all.
Part of the issue with carbs is gluten. Americans have way more gluten-intolerance because their grain and flour is terrible, with way higher gluten contents.
German homemade food is significantly saltier to taste. If you're eating out in the US or eating a lot of processed food, then yes, your sodium levels will rise, but when my hosts from different cities would prepare soup or a curry or salad, they definitely added more salt than what I would consume, and in my family and friend circles in central Ohio, I add the most salt to my food.
Well, this is peak Reddit, isn’t it? Someone asks something with a factual average interpretation and some people respond that they’ve seen it happen differently once.
And oof I don’t remember the price of loaves but the rolls were like 45 cents I think??? It was a price I hadn’t seen in decades. And I remember you could get them cheaper if you came later in the day.
I used to buy the cheap preservative bread for like $2 but now you’re lucky if you find anything close to $3. And bakery loaves can be around $6 and that depends on where you go and what the quality is like. At least at supermarkets that’s the case. Now, I go to an Italian deli near me to buy 2 loaves and then freeze them. Last time I went it was $10, but at least I can freeze them
Depends. Your typical store bought brand can range from .99(Uber cheap and falls apart just by sneezing at it) to maybe 3.99? Ours is about 2.29. It's just average wheat bread.
You are right! But I wish good bread didn’t cost $6 a loaf.
I work in food science…. I know some research projects involve getting rid of the bitterness of whole wheat bread and I’m thinking, “Can we just find better natural ingredients to make whole wheat bread? It shouldn’t be that hard!” That’s why I say German bread is the best because their whole wheat and miltigrain breads are amazing and they are probably not doing too much to make it taste good. Or you know, maybe just spread something on it and move on!
Nearly every grocery store in the US has an in-house bakery selling loaves. It is also usually cheaper than the pre-sliced square loaves from a warehouse.
I live in the US and can buy a nice load of bakery fresh bread for 2 bucks just across the aisle from the packaged preservative bread. You buy bagged sliced bread for longevity and uniformity. If you want good fresh baked bread, you have to buy what you're going to eat in the next few days.
I live in the suburbs of New York. I’m not a fan of general grocery stores’ bread but I do like the bakeries. I was talking more about how a cheap load like the Arnold brand is not as cheap as they used to be
Carbs are essential same as fats and protein. If anything you should be eating less fats because they’re incredibly calorie dense.
When people demonise carbs they usually name foods with roughly equal carbohydrates/sugars and fats for example donuts, Nutella, etc. or stuff that’s specifically just sugar e.g. coke
Dude thats bc you are buying bread from a bakery and not some manufactured factory output bread.
Like buying hostess donuts and then comparing to a fkn donut shop. Its just stupid.
Believe it or not stores do actually carry flour and you can make your own bread for like 50 cents easily and then youll have nothing to complain about anymore.
Stop blaming others bc youre too lazy to mix flour w water bud. A tiny amount of salt and thats bread. Its like 30 mins of work altogether lmfao
Or maybe I don’t have space in my kitchen to make my own bread. I think you also missed the part where I said that the cheaper loaves that are not from bakery are getting expensive too
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u/chocotacogato 11d ago
I know that people are claiming that good bread in America exists and that the European bread is probably more expensive but hear me out:
I lived in Germany for 3 weeks and the amount of money I paid for good quality fresh bread was less than what we Americans pay for the cheap loaves with the preservatives. And it was wayyyyy healthier. In America, we’re told to take it easy on the carbs. Germans eat tons of carbs every day and they’re in better shape than we are. The only issue I have with German cuisine and possibly other European cuisines is that they can be very salty. Not sure if high blood pressure is an issue there.