Comment on Anon travels overseas
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 5 hours agoIt’s not just the milk but milk is a rich source of nutrition and over consumed in the west.
The obesity crisis is due to excessive calories in all foods, including massive overuse of sugar in processed foods, high levels of red meats and fat etc and low levels of fruit and vegetables. This is combined with physical inactivity.
Southern Europe doesn’t have the same levels of obesity - about 10% in Italy compared to 20% in the UK and 36% in the US. They have a “Mediterranean diet” which is low fat, low sugar, with more fish, fruits and vegetables. Japan also has low obesity rates of 5-6% and again has a much healthier diet. Their rate is going up and it seems to be due to increasing westernised diet.
Jesus_666@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
And the overuse of sugar is because the sugar can mask cheaper ingredients and lower amounts of spices.
Why sell an instant curry full of expensive spices if you can cut half of them out and just replace them with sugar and salt? Why use decent meat if you can just use cheap shitty meat and add sugar to hide the fact that it’s flavorless? Why use real cream in the sauce if you can add some skim milk powder, palm oil, a thickening agent, and yet more sugar at half the price?
Or food is getting enshittified and it’s having a real impact on our health. But since public health doesn’t factor into food companies’ bottom line that’s not just tolerated but desired.
BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Having just come back to the US from Europe, I immediately miss nutriscore on groceries. A to E letter grades for the purpose of comparing two similar products to tell which are higher in sugar/salts/saturated fatty acids and which have more protein/fiber/fruits/vegetables/healthy oils. It was so nice picking up, say, two boxes of cereal and going “oh. This one is full of garbage and this one isn’t.” Not a perfect system, but a very valuable one
Jesus_666@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
In a similar vein, Germany has a neat labeling system¹ for the conditions under which animals (for meat, dairy, etc.) are kept. There are five levels, each of which has specific minimum criteria per type of animal. Basically, 1 and 2 are shit-tier, 3 is semi-decent, 4 is vaguely free-range, and 5 is “organic” (as vaguely defined as that term is).
That makes it easier to avoid buying from animal torture dungeons, plus it stands to reason that products from animals kept on better conditions have a better chance of being of good quality.
The labels are voluntary. However, you can find them on a good number of products, especially since a label with one of the higher levels has marketing value. I know I definitely prefer products that are at least level 4.
Notably, there are efforts to pressure supermarkets into abandoning level 1 and 2 products altogether, with Aldi having promised to do so for most products by 2030 and other chains giving weasely but vaguely affirmative statements.
¹ Yes, the website doesn’t seem to be fully translated. But at least the level definitions are in English.