Strip out the taste

Food, Food, food poisoning — Stephen on 20 July 2008 @ 5:33 AM — 3 comments

I have always been impressed by how much better milk products (and many other products for that matter) taste outside the US. This is especially true of yogurt sold in countries such as France and Mexico. I have always chalked it up to them using whole milk vs the US obsession with de-fatted milk. But the story is actually a bit more complicated. Yesterday at the grocery, I saw a brand and type of yogurt that I recognized as one I had enjoyed in Mexico (Dannon Activia with prunes). It had identical packaging to the one in Mexico and so I thought it was the same. This was not AT ALL the same yogurt I had enjoyed just a couple of months ago in Mexico. This was something that tasted completely different, disgusting in fact. A quick look at the ingredients showed all kinds of differences from the Mexican version of the exact same product. Basically Dannon in the US makes the product out of plastic. The thing is filled with chemicals and crap you would never find in the other countries’ products (high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, gelatin, carmine, and the already suspected reduced fat milk). I recoiled in horror after reading this. What possible reason could the company have for putting all this crap in their product? All I can guess is that the transportation and storage and manufacture is easier for them somehow, and they know that Americans have no sense of flavor or taste and will eat whatever garbage they produce if they think it is “healthy” (whether or not it is). What a disappointment! If you want to know why so many Americans are so fat and unhealthy, surely the way “food” products are produced and consumed (especially with all the high fructose corn syrup) in this country is part of the picture.