I like how cheese stubbornly doesn't want to be an industrial tasteless odorless crap. Camembert is well known to be mostly controlled by industrial, meaning most Camembert even here in France are industrial crap (there is a AOP/DPO "Camembert de Normandie" which is better and at least forbids pasteurized milk).
Slice the Camembert horizontally and put it in the wooden container it comes with, add garlic, olive oil and thyme, bake for about 15min. Goes great with a lot of stuff.
To be honest, I was born and spent my first 23 years in Normandy, never quite could enjoy the real Camembert. I prefer the supermaket ones with less aggressive taste.
Ofc I moved to China and now all I can eat is Brie.
Order some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubing from Yunnan on Taobao. For western cheese try https://www.metro.com.cn/en/home who sometimes do good deals on wheels of Gouda, fetta, blue cheeses, etc. Don't buy the small highly marked up stuff from specialty retailers, they're always a ripoff. A couple of importers on Taobao too, for specific products. They are a good source for Indian, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern ingredients too.
To be fair, cheese in most countries are industrial odorless crap. Or if there's some good one, there's often not a lot of diversity. France and Italy are probably the 2 countries where cheeses are "stubborn". If people know other countries with great cheese culture, I'd be curious to know though.
We know what he means. As popularity increases quality drops as manufacturers scale up to meet demand. As demand increase the economic incentives change and there's pressure to cut costs and thus quality suffers.
"Keep an eye out for" better fits your intention. "Watch out for" implies potential danger or a need for caution. "Watch for" might work but is more for use in an active situation that changes.
TLDR: milk is produced in closed system now, meaning dust from the barn doesn't get in it. They added 1 part per thousand of hay dust to the milk, and all the holes came back
Reminds me of a book I read more than a decade ago. The Culture Code. By Clotaire Rapaille. He argued that 'the French Code for cheese is ALIVE. The American Code for cheese, on the other hand, is DEAD.'
I don’t have the book handy, but here is a quote from the web:
> I started working with a French company in America, and they were trying to sell French cheese to the Americans. And they didn't understand, because in France the cheese is alive, which means that you can buy it young, mature or old, and that's why you have to read the age of the cheese when you go to buy the cheese. So you smell, you touch, you poke. If you need cheese for today, you want to buy a mature cheese. If you want cheese for next week, you buy a young cheese. And when you buy young cheese for next week, you go home, [but] you never put the cheese in the refrigerator, because you don't put your cat in the refrigerator. It's the same; it's alive. We are very afraid of getting sick with cheese.
As a french, and also cheese lover. Yes, cheese is absolutely alive.
And one thing I love about "real" cheese is variation. Depending on the season, conditions,... and chance, you get cheese that is different. Not always great, sometimes I am disappointed, but there are other occasions where the result is so good that it is well worth the occasional disappointment. Industrial cheese is boring, it is never bad, but it is never good either.
As for being sick. I never got sick with cheese, despite eating cheese on a daily basis. And I have eaten cheese that is way after its "use by" date, cheese with the "wrong" mold, cheese strong enough to numb the tongue after eating a tip of a knife worth, cheese I forgot until smell alerted me of its presence,... and all that raw milk. I didn't try the kind with maggots yet though.
I know that cheese borne diseases exist, but overall, for how alive it is, cheese is surprisingly safe. In fact, that's the big idea with cheese. It is full of bacteria and molds that we know are safe, and these tend to outcompete the pathogenic ones.
I only buy old cheese because it is more intense.
It is rather hard to perform the "affinage" of the cheese without a controlled environment (Roquefort is "affiné" in natural caves in which you have several exits that you can open or close depending on the temperature and hygrometry of the caves, that's part of the AOP).
I never got sick eating cheese, but that's actually possible Salmonella, Listeria, E.Coli, Tick-borne encephalitis virus (and you could die from it, in rare occasions).
Yes, the US FDA has tight restrictions on unpasteurized milk and cheeses, and France does not. Some French cheeses are straight up illegal in the US because they're raw and not aged long enough i.e. reblochon.
US government and politicians would not care if not for the greed of large food corporations lobbying for absurd restrictions that only large corporate farms can economically afford to follow. This effectively pushes small farms out of business and they eat gobble up the market share. On top of this, only about 15 cents of every dollar goes back to farmers, the remaining amount pays for processing and marketing. The US food system is insane and WAY overpriced, due in large part to corporate greed.
Mostly children and elderly people though, and raw cheese isn't the lead cause for such contamination, despite regulation processed food is quite high as well (with the record in recent years going to … Nestlé, who else. /r/fucknestle)
Compared to things like listeria or salmonella? Surely, you’re joking. E. coli is benign in most cases. For perspective, in France (since we’re talking about French cheese), the orders of magnitude are hundreds of deaths each year from salmonella, tens from listeria (with a death rate of ~20% for its invasive form), and even fewer from E. coli.
Except in a tiny number of cases it is unpleasant but short and not threatening (remember to drink a lot, though, the most dangerous effect is dehydration).
E. coli is usually less than 1% of a healthy gut flora, but yeah. It one of the first bacterias to move from the mother's vagina to the newborn baby, until it uses up the oxygen which then lets the anaerobes move in.
The strains in your gut aren't really benign, they're just isolated to your gut. If you exposed someone to those strains by say not washing your hands before cooking, it would not be fine.
The E. coli strains of concern are the so-called enterotoxic (or enterotoxigenic) E. coli and the Shiga-toxin producing strains. Those are not commonly found in peoples' guts and when they are, they cause... trouble.
Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is a type of Escherichia coli and one of the leading bacterial causes of diarrhea in the developing world,[1] as well as the most common cause of travelers' diarrhea.[2] Insufficient data exists, but conservative estimates suggest that each year, about 157,000 deaths occur, mostly in children, from ETEC.[3][4][5]
The most common sources for Shiga toxin are the bacteria S. dysenteriae and some serotypes of Escherichia coli (STEC), which includes serotypes O157:H7, and O104:H4.[4][5]
Symptoms of Shiga toxin ingestion include abdominal pain as well as watery diarrhea. Severe life-threatening cases are characterized by hemorrhagic colitis (HC).[15]
The toxin is associated with hemolytic-uremic syndrome. In contrast, Shigella species may also produce shigella enterotoxins, which are the cause of dysentery.
Not really. Anyway the genome of E. coli is extremely diverse, there is not really such a thing as "E. coli." And strain that colonizes your gut may not colonize someone else's, or cause problems. But most living things can be opportunistic e.g. if your immune system is compromised.
Well, you're not totally wrong since the body does have several layers of defense to keep the bacteria in the intestine, and bad things happen when they break down: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0803124105
Im French, and when I was 16, I went to New York and was traumatized by the border checks on both ends opening all my luggages in front of everyone (and every other French person had to do it) to make sure I wasnt carrying frigging supermarket cheese nobody cares about. They specifically check French people for these crimes, I was told, because we seem not to realize we're threatening the US with our crappy Camemberts.
Yeah I didn't really get the appeal of reblochon for that reason. Really liked Brie de meaux though. Other cheeses that have "barnyard" aroma (manure) have an appeal that inscrutable to me.
There's a thriving US artisanal cheese scene, but yeah, it's not France. In the PNW there are quite a few creameries. Rogue River Blue is the best blue I've had anywhere though.
Well over 10 years ago, I went through a phase when I was into ripening cheese. I'd get a round of brie and put it into the bookshelf in my cubicle at work, for weeks. Very tasty.
One time I had a mild fever that I'm sure was from eating the stuff, but recovered overnight.
I'm Asian, so I don't have a stake in this Euro-American "conflict" personally.
What I can tell you is that I religiously avoid cheeses made in USA, because they generally taste horrible. Cheeses from continental Europe are generally fine.
I think it's worthy of a note that Europe is extremely dry and cold as inside of a refrigerator. Someone in Europe might not keep cheese artificially refrigerated, but nor would one keep it in a shower room.
Europe spans 37 degrees latitude and has a lot of climactic diversity. It's not "extremely dry and cold, like the inside of a refrigerator." Countries in the north temperate zone have four seasons.
-17C is 27C lower than what we have over here! We're definitely not in agreement with definition of "pretty warm" in absolute term. Stockholm had one day exceeding 30C throughout 2023, here we had entire August above that. 89 days total above 30C in the capital, in fact.
Definition of warm or cool can't be the same with this kind of difference - and I'd imagine similar could be said about the US, they have southerly regions where hot and wet indoor ambient atmosphere can't be cheese-safe most of the time. You guys are having it easy when it comes to food safety.
> the fungi that have accumulated multiple deleterious mutations in their genomes over years of vegetative propagation become virtually infertile
If they've identified the genes that led to the bacteria becoming infertile, then they should be able to reverse the genetic changes.
> “Genome editing is another form of selection. What we need today is the diversity provided by sexual reproduction between individuals with different genomes.”
That kind of reads like nonsense, or phobia of genetic engineering.
The only reason sexual reproduction would be required is if the original strains are not fit any more due to new selective pressures in the modern environment.
But then you run the risk of changing the properties (flavor) of cheese since it's constantly mutating. So your 2010 Brie might taste different than 2030 Brie from the same brand.
In research this was solved by making stocks of your strain once you're happy with it and freezing it at -80C so you can keep going back to it.
> But then you run the risk of changing the properties (flavor) of cheese since it's constantly mutating. So your 2010 Brie might taste different than 2030 Brie from the same brand.
God forbid something new and interesting might happen! Hopefully it isn't food poisoning though. History has shown that as soon as we learn the market optimizing mechanisms behind something, we find a way to make it boring (movie sequels, reboots, MCU anyone?)
> Until the 1950s, Camemberts still had grey, green or in some cases orange-tinged moulds on their surface. But the industry was not fond of these colours, considering them unappealing, and staked everything on the albino strain of P. camemberti, which is completely white and moreover has a silky texture.
I've done a little bit of cheesemaking, and I think it's very unusual for an average human immune system to get poisoned by cheese. You very quickly know if something's gone wrong in the process. Same goes for clabber, cultured butter, yoghurt, kefir. In fact I'd say raw milk is the greater risk.
I'm sure most of you don't want to hear it, but the dairy industry is brutal for cows, in many ways far worse than the meat industry. Cows are forceably impregnated repeatedly to keep milk flowing, and their calves are taken from them and slaughtered for veal. Some breeds are so large they can barely move, often being milked in their last moments while laying prone. Then they are slaughtered like meat cows in the end.
I wasn't looking to promote cheese alternatives, but rather point out the cruelty of the industry.
In any case, cheese is difficult to replicate due to the nature of the proteins in milk. There are companies that have made casein in bioreactors that will hopefully soon put products on the market.
Until then, there are other alternatives, but don't expect them to have the same flavor and texture. Some of the best ones are not trying to be a facsimile. There's the Vegan Cheese Co that maintains a worldwide database of vegan cheeses, and here's the list from their yearly awards:
So I think if you don't want to eat cheese for your own reasons or advocate for that.. kudos.
However, my experience is not all farms are so aggressive even in the USA (look for bull bred) and in France I've seen plenty of cheese making operations very in touch with traditional methods and not what I'd personally call cruel at all (sheep cheese made in the Pyrenees in particular)
I'm sure there is a spectrum of treatment in dairy farms, but it's nearly impossible to investigate every farm you buy dairy products from, ane virtually no one is strict enough to eat only products from farms they are familiar with, unless they are in the industry. I choose to not partake as I know I am not that disciplined and will just eat what's served to me after I've had a couple glasses of wine.
Are your discerning charcuterie board lovers open to new flavors, or are they going to demand 1:1 indistinguishable replicas of specific dairy cheeses?
My favorite locally produced moldy nut cheese (Omage) does not have a flavor or texture like any dairy cheese I've tasted. IMO, dairy cheeses taste more different from each other than vegan versions taste from the dairy cheese they are mimicking (usually by using the exact same cultures).
With all the modern biotech we have, and the speed at which you can breed microorganisms, I don't think we should shrink from the challenge of domesticating new microbes from wild sources, and we should celebrate any new interesting flavors that come from it. Tradition (i.e. DO dairy cheese) is peer pressure from dead people.
Those consumers who also don't buy heritage tomatoes or apples because of the irregularities in appearance, will be the ones who lose out. Sounds like there are still plenty of opportunities for cheeses, just not in a uniform delivery.
Uniformity and standardisation are a plague. Years ago there was an article here describing how Switzerland destroyed much of its rich cheese heritage because a powerful cheese lobby wanted everybody to standardise on Emmentaler and Gruyere.
I can only say I cannot notice this destruction. I can count about 20 types of cheese in my Swiss fridge right now (ok not all Swiss) and none is Emmentaler or Gruyere. In my village we have a cheese shop with about 200 sorts, and every chain offers a few dozens at the minimum. Again, not all Swiss, but plenty enough types some of them even regional. So if there was any push on standardizing, I would say it largely failed. But I'll definitely search for that article/initiative, I'm very curious now.
I've also encountered plenty of other cheeses in Switzerland, so it certainly wasn't absolute, but it did happen. I can't find the original article anymore, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Cheese_Union also mentions it. In short, the Cheese Union insisted on focusing on these two cheeses. This ended in 1999, so seeing more cheese now is to be expected, but even in the 1980s, there were absolutely other cheeses available. However, that doesn't mean that variety wasn't way down.
Too bad I can't find that original article, which went into a lot more detail than Wikipedia.
> I can count about 20 types of cheese in my Swiss fridge right now
Maybe a stupid question, but how can you remember all those different types of cheeses and what they taste like? I'd have to have an extensive notebook every time I went to the store if I wanted to manage 20 types of cheese.
(My typical fancy cheese buying system is to go to the store and buy something at random and hope I like it, which since I like cheese, often works out, but it means buying it again can be almost impossible)
I'm an idiot American and I can definitely remember and describe 20 different kinds of cheese. It's pretty easy to remember if you think in groups based on use: there's a couple of soft cheeses I like with fruit, a couple more that are good on top of pasta, a couple that are good on sammiches, a couple more to make creamy sauces, and a bunch that I just like to eat. You can get to 20 real fast, tho admittedly being someone who cooks makes it a lot easier to keep straight. If everything you eat comes from the freezer or Doordash, maybe not so much.
FYI, I removed the post because of your sudden hostility and because I didn't want to get into an argument. I still don't know why you took so much offense to my post, but I'm not sorry.
You can develop and improve your appreciation for cheese, you don't need to be born in France or Switzerland for that.
I'm not from one of the big cheese nations of Europe, when I grew up we had one kind of cheese for everything, but a couple of years ago I tried to broaden my palette, buy everything I could in local shops and supermarkets, and remembering twenty different kinds of cheese is not difficult.
What also helps is that these cheeses are significantly different, so Emmentaler, Camembert, Parmigiano Reggiano, Mozzarella, Bavarian Blu, Manchego, Pecorino, Gouda, Feta, etc, they all are very different, and most supermarkets in Europe have them all, so you can try out things easily.
One day I need to visit Europe and spend a week just eating cheeses.
I’ve tried buying most of these different cheeses in an upscale American supermarket and have been very disappointed. Even the ones imported from Europe, every variety just sort of tastes either gross or too similar. I swear Manchego tasted better 20 years ago the first time I had it in the US, maybe then big business got ahold of it. The best cheese I’ve ever tasted as an American was actually an expired Limburger cheese. It had such an amazing taste, I’m not joking. But it was at a weird outlet store that sells expired food and I never saw it again.
The only semi exception to this rule (although I still have to make sure it’s authentic!) is buying Parmigiano Reggiano, that stuff is a staple in our household.
Then again the best steak I’ve ever eaten was a 45 day dry aged steak, so I guess I just like funky flavors. Tasted like the most amazing cheese + amazing steak at the same time.
Tastes are pretty easy to remember - think of all the candy bars at a grocery store. Some you may have had only once or twice in your life but I bet most people know what most of the dozens and dozens of candy bars taste like and can recognize them by their branding alone. Don’t sell yourself short!
I’m an American who likes trying new things and I could list at least 2 dozen types of cheese I’m familiar with. That’s about it though unless varieties with flavorings or smoking makes them count separately.
I will say 20 is a lot but it is not uncommom to have a lot of different cheese.
First swiss often do fondue with 2 different cheeses, the usual moitié-moitié mix of Vacherin fribourgeois and Gruyère. Then sometimes you have 2 to 3 different raclette cheeses because you like different tastes. Then there are the cheese you might grate on your pastas (in my case I would usually use italian cheeses) and the different cheese you want to offer at the table in regular diners + the ones dedicated for the aperitives like Tête de Moine...It can add up quickly without being a nerd.
Vacherin fribourgeois? I thought the standard was to use Emmentaler with Gruyere.
Of course you can fondue with any kind of cheese. I love using Dutch farmer's cheese in my fondue. In fact, my brother-in-law has recently started making cheese which is very suitable for it.
I'm Dutch, and I don't have 20 cheeses, but 5 different cheeses is very common, and more than 10 is not rare for us.
Haha did you just peek in my fridge or how did you list them so precisely :) I will add to that list a piece of Ziger for when I feel spicy, a couple of goats because I couldn't make up my mind in the shop and some halloumi for a tasty lunch. Ah and there are 4 raclettes, due for consumption tonight. I really don't think this as a cheese "nerd" as I wouldn't dare giving advice or cheese reviews, but I should see myself as spoiled I guess.
I have so much envy for you right now.
I'm an Italian living in the northeast of Italy.
I love Tête de Moine, but I cannot find a place selling it at decent prices..
It always has a ridiculous "luxury" tax, ending up above 50€/kg, which is absurd for Italy...
I was going to call this price completely crazy for anywhere, then realized I pay $40/kg for Parmigiana-Reggiano, but that seems justified since it’s coming all the way from Italy to Kansas. Seems like intra-EU cheese should be more affordable!
Here parmigiano reggiano prices range from 16€/kg (12 months old, and on offer) to well above 30€/kg (24 months old and beyond).
...I'm guilty of using too much of it... it often also is my go to snack during late night fridge peeping... but hey, there are worse (and costlier) habits to entertain
It's pretty common in France, at least, to have a pretty solid collection of cheeses like that. Really glad the US has been getting better in terms of options.
In not convinced its consumers refusing to eat varied heritage tomatoes. I frequent five different farmers markets and they sell like crazy. Most people can be easily conditioned and persuaded to but anything. Hence consumerism.
I blame big food corporations for trying to homogenize, sterilize, pasteurize, and genericize the taste/appearance/chacteristics of food to the equivalent of white bread. Society just trudges along with it with extremely low awareness as to how much better it can be.
I was in Paris this past summer for the first time in a long time. In fact, it was my first time out of the US in a long time. I was stunned/disappointed by the fact that even in high-end produce stores, all the apple varieties were pretty much exactly the same ones we have in the US. Gala, Fuji, Red Delicious, Golden, Granny Smith, etc., the familiar line-up. The whole time I was in Paris, I did not encounter an unconventional apple type, and I went to many produce and grocery stores during my time there. I assumed that produce monoculture wouldn't have hit France as hard as it's hit the US... but no, it seemed just as bad there.
Wrong season, the best time is really september, october.
Even in Paris, it should be relatively easy to find Belles de boskoop and reine de reinettes which are delicious.
Otherwise, any farmer’s market in Britany and Normandie will have plenty of interesting apple varieties.
The problem though is that those more unconventional cultivars tend to only be available seasonally.
I can't speak to the grocery stores, but I did briefly work on an apple farm in Calvados. They had two dozen different kinds of apples, not one of which I'd ever heard of.
(I did once get a very lame baguette at a Monoprix once. Blew my mind that the French tolerated it.)
One possibility is that you were there out of season. We've gotten very good at preserving apples for all year, but they are harvested only for a month or so. It takes industrial climate control to make them taste good after about December.
I understand that this probably refers to a French grocery store of some sort, but I can't get the image out of my head of you ordering a baguette off of the localized French version of https://www.monoprice.com/.
> I did once get a very lame baguette at a Monoprix once. Blew my mind that the French tolerated it.
We tend to buy bread in supermarkets only in case of dire emergency. Statistically, there probably was a much better bakery around the corner from that Monoprix.
> It takes industrial climate control to make them taste good after about December.
I remember my grand mother keeping apples in her cellar (cold but not freezing, dry, close to constant temperature year round). The apple she put there were fantastic long into winter. They would not look great, slightly shrunk and with wrinkles, but the taste was excellent. Industrial climate control is to keep them look good, not to keep them taste good.
As in, where the brandy comes from? I never knew it was eponymous. Booze is of course the original technology for preserving apples and fruit in general. My understanding is that was the original intended purpose for our older orchards included those planted by Johnny Appleseed.
Since he didn't graft, the fruit from the trees he planted would have mostly been unpleasant to eat. But still fit to ferment alcohol from, or feed to livestock.
The calvados beverage is not only made in the Calvados departement. There are 3 different appelations:
- regular calvados made from cider from different parts of Normandy
- calvados Pays d'Auge which must be made from cider of that eponymous Pays d'Auge area (which is within the Calvados departement)
- calvados du Domfrontais which is made from cider of the Domfront area in the Orne departement.
Why does being grown from cuttings and grafts make them a poor choice to look at? Wouldn't there be local varieties with different flavors that people would want to consume. You can cut and graft those just the same? It seems they optimized for the varieties that are easier to ship and preserve.
For the same reason we have 1 banana and mostly only see hass avocados.
IF you take the seeds of a tomato you will get a mostly decent tomato out of it. IF you take the seeds of an apple or a haas avocado you will likely get something that looks nothing like its parent. Unlike tomatoes it takes a LONG time to grow a tree, so if you want an avocado or apple orchard your going to use grafts to make sure you get the best chance of having a good product in 5 or 10 years...
The economics of commonality should be readily apparent... pick something that you know works for your multi year bet to pay off sounds like a good plan.
Avocados are also interesting because we DO get other varieties due to how it reproduces (you need plants of both sexes). IM fairly sure that apples do not have this issue so farms are monocultures.
Add on to that the fact that the varieties we see are designed to be kept long enough to have a birthday and this is what you get.
apples themselves, all on their own, don't "breed true". If you take seeds from an apple from a tree that you love and plant them, you will not get a tree that produces fruit that tastes the same. The majority of apples "born" are sour. When a tasty apple tree is grown, it's a small miracle, and cuttings are propagated from it because it's the only way to produce more apples that are good.
Johnny Appleseed walking through colonial American planting apple trees? he was a hippy promoting more fermentation of alcoholic apple cider, for which sour apples work just fine.
virtually all French wine grapes, btw, are grown from cuttings grafted onto American root stocks because the native roots were not resistant to the invasive Phylloxera fly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylloxera
it is because of grafting that we have variety in these cases.
Why would you assume that France has a diversity of apples? (they may--but I wouldn't automatically expect it)
Johnny Appleseed is American. The US has a huge diversity of apple trees based on locality.
However, like so many things, said diversity is seasonal. There is a good reason for pressing apple cider--you need to do something with the enormous number of apples you couldn't eat directly.
If you want apples out of season, you're only going to see the mass-manufactured ones.
The point is that Johnny Appleseed actively spread apple cultivars over a very wide geographic area (Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and parts of West Virgina and Ontario).
Since these cultivars were no longer connected by breeding, they changed characteristics over several centuries giving rise to an absolutely enormous diversity of local apple types in the US--especially since apple trees from seed are kinda unstable genetically.
How they are grown has nothing to do with what varieties are grown and sold. Apples are in fact a great example of fruit that has hundreds of centuries-old varieties that are no longer traded commercially bc of homogenization of consumer taste.
It is a little more complicated for apples because apple seeds do not breed true. You get random crabapples on average, if you plant apple seeds, so all commercial apples are grafted. At least apples aren't in the same deadend that bananas are in..
ie, most of the time they won't be sweet eating apples- in the US in particular this used to be less of a problem, because apples were for cider / alcohol. During prohibition entrepreneurs got active in trying to save their industry (while others were just ploughing orchards over) and we get modern ideas like "an apple a day" and the whole modern sweet eating apple became very mainstream. Not that eating apples weren't a thing before that, but it helped explode their popularity in modern western eating habits.
in the US, especially at "organic" grocery stores such as Whole Foods, you can typically get various weird apple cultivars -- although usually newly-developed rather than traditional. worth checking out if you like apples.
Newly-developed apple varieties dominate because they have been carefully selected for maximum production, storage and transport qualities, appearance, etc., etc.
However, if you want to see some truly weird apples, heirlooms offer way more interest and variety if you can find them. (This probably involves making friends with people who have old trees, rather than finding a shop that sells them.)
For example, I live on an old family farm with an heirloom apple variety (unknown name, if it was ever named at all, but dating back to at least the 1850s) that is spicy and bubbles/fizzes when you bite into it. It's quite cool, and I think it is something some people would want to buy, but it is unsuited to modern commercial production for a few reasons; for example, it fruits on new wood at the tips of the branches, which makes it less suited to modern tree pruning strategies (all modern apple varieties fruit on older wood, which makes them much easier to prune).
Depending on your region, worth checking your local farmer's markets, food coops, and/or produce markets during fall-winter. There are multiple stalls in my town that have 15-20 apple varieties, only a few of which are "greatest hits" from grocery stores (pink something or other, jonagold). I have no doubt there is at least a sprinkling of heritage varieties in there.
> There are multiple stalls in my town that have 15-20 apple varieties
I just checked the websites of about half a dozen orchards within a reasonable driving distance from me, and they all had a range of 30-40 varieties. Not all will be ripe at the same time; 15-20 all at once is going to be a huge orchard!
I've never noticed interesting apple cultivars in places like Whole Foods. I've noticed apples that had different names, but looked and tasted like Gala apples :).
I can't speak to french apple grocery store selection, but I wonder if you should maybe go to a different grocery store in the US. In my area (SF Bay Area) at the most common grocery chain (Safeway) there are probably 8 or so varieties of apples on sale and they often rotate. I would say that they always have the common ones that you describe (Red Delicious, Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith), some less common ones that are there 80% of the time (Honeycrisp, Pink Lady) and then some more exotic ones that rotate (this time they had two I had never tried before - Pazaz [I had to check twice to make sure they didn't say Pazuzu] and Sugar Bee). The Sugar Bee's were incredible - firm, crispy, juicy and sweet with just a small hint of tartness. Beyond just the bulk loose apples, they had a bunch of weird apple "products" that were either packaged up or sold in a bag. The weirdest ones were apple "bites" which were just tiny little apples - no variety specified.
In my experience, the average US grocery store has a vast selection of produce and I see the pattern with apples (standard base varieties, with some rotating specials) across most categories of produce - citrus, cucumbers, peppers, root veggies, etc.
So in short, I dunno, I actually feel like there's a massive variety of agricultural products in the US. Certainly way more than in Switzerland, the country in which I've been to the grocery store the most outside of the US. Coop has like 3 kinds of apples, Migros was a bit better and had some interesting Kanzi apples which I had not seen in the states.
In most of france produce markets are where you'd go for this, but you're rigidly tied to the seasonal production. So you can get all kinds of apples! In september and october. And no apples at any other time.
I'm not sure this applies in paris though, I suspect it does not. It's such a big city it's likely the markets are similar to american ones, being targeted & priced at affluent upper middle class professionals. IDK though I have spent very little time in paris.
Towns and small cities will just have a permanent structure for it, usually in or near the city center. It'll say "marché" or "les halles" on it, once you know what to look for they're easy to spot. The market is normally a couple times a week, early morning hours, in some places it will be over by 9, but in the summer vendors will be leaving even before that. Very small towns will just do it in the central square in front of the city hall or prominent church. Big cities will have one huge covered market somewhere that runs daily, and then smaller ones spread around different squares on other days.
Again idk about paris. Lived in france for many years and still back regularly for family. But spent maybe a week total in paris, and even that was over a decade ago.
I was just in Paris. One of my favorite French cafes got replaced with a Popeyes. :/
My fat american butt eventually relented a few days later and I bought a single breast from them. It wasn't even good Popeyes. Tasted like either they dont know how to make a good crispy piece of chicken or Europe gets sent the scraps.
I was pretty blown away by all the Popeyes! Ironically I saw a group of Popeyes white collar employees in Popeyes swag on my flight to France. Strange, I thought. Why are they flying to France? Lo and behold, “Louisiana fried chicken” was everywhere. Is it because Louisiana has French history?
Its probably them requiring continuing growth and the US is tapped out.
Five Guys also showed up, their pistachio shake was intriguing but a huge disappointment.
I don't like what Paris has become, multiple French bistros have dropped in quality post-COVID(in my opinion).
Also seems like Costa coffee has abandoned the city? Their coffee wasn't anything to go crazy over but it had good memories when I was a broke unemployed dev touring Europe via backpack.
I'd love to buy more heirloom tomatoes. The flavor is great. The problem is that often they're like 3 USD for a single large tomato in my supermarket :(
It's a crime against humanity how much food is thrown away because it's "not appealing" enough to the eye when we have so many in this world who go to bed hungry.
I hope someday there's a society we've managed to build that's good enough to look back on the 20th and 21st centuries with the judgemental glare we rightly deserve.
>>It's a crime against humanity how much food is thrown away
How much of it is actually thrown away though? It's my understanding that the "ugly" looking vegetables are just used to make sauces, canned produce, ready meals etc etc. No one is throwing out perfectly good tomatoes just because they are ugly - they just get turned into something else.
If they are redirected at the producer, for sure. But if they are labeled as ugly, or expired, only when they are on the shelves, I'm not that sure anymore. So I don't know how much is each share - recycled vs thrown away... and again, what does "thrown away" mean? Vegetables landing in compost are thrown away?
Produce almost never gets sent to shops "as is" straight from the field - everything gets sorted into classes, 1st class, 2nd class, 3rd class etc......1st class should already be perfect and nice and even - that's usually what supermarkets buy. There might be an occassional "ugly" bunch of stuff that falls through, and I guess yes in that case it will probably be thrown out. And yes it's also a tragedy that a lot of food at supermarkets gets thrown out when unsold. But I'd bet that 99% of "ugly" produce never makes it to the shelves in the first place, it just gets turned into processed food.
I'm open to being corrected but this article doesn't offer much for proof of what this person is claiming. It starts by reaffirming ~161 billion in waste (in 2008) (termed: not eaten) and citing some of the cause of that as cosmetic defects. Then the interviewed person goes on to say it's used in alternative production as mentioned in the other comments, but offers no proof or statistics of this. And the fact that enough ugly food existed to fill the purchase orders of a number of startups going out of their way to sell it kind of implies if they weren't, it would be going in the trash.
> And the fact that enough ugly food existed to fill the purchase orders of a number of startups going out of their way to sell it kind of implies if they weren't, it would be going in the trash.
In the same way that a sudden interest in therapy for dogs would prove that dogs were suffering from a mental health crisis. Yeah, you want to sell produce at a premium so that somewhat well-off people can feel like they are making a difference? Sounds good to me, yup yup. I mean the vagaries and arbitrariness of upper/upper-middle class social signaling is a trope in itself.
No, it implies they were willing to pay more than the alternative user. Makes sense, a retail customer will always pay more for a tomato than a canning factory.
> because it's "not appealing" enough to the eye when we have so many in this world who go to bed hungry.
Throwing or not throwing away the food would make no difference in the lives of the people going hungry. The people going hungry are going hungry not because of a dearth of food, but due to issues such as war or political or family instability.
There's a pretty major problem with economics. If the food that is grown and is currently thrown away wasn't thrown away, then it would be effectively be available for a lower price than mainstream food. If this were taken to its logical conclusion, then allowing this food to be given to hungry people lowers the demand for the full-price food, leading to a reduction in price of that food, causing the people growing it to be unable to make ends meet. It is necessary for the production of food to continue to throw away the food that isn't bought, otherwise the people producing the food will go bankrupt and stop producing food.
The above sounds very harsh. Obviously there are some schemes that allow excess food to be used by poorer people, like food banks, quality tiers, common agricultural policy type schemes, or just ensuring everyone has sufficient income through tax breaks or benefit schemes. Food banks give food away for free, and they are very limited in scope, and therefore have a limited affect on food price. Quality tiers are things like a supermarket selling "wonky veg" next to full-price veg, but you'll tend to notice that the wonky veg isn't actually much lower in price than the full-price veg. The EU's old common agricultural policy scheme effectively solved the problem by getting the government to guarantee that a food grower could sell their food for a viable price, but it led to huge complaints about "butter mountains" and waste - I think the point was missed that this waste was a reasonable trade-off for ensuring that food continued to be produced in sufficient quantities even in a bad year, and the fact that the government bought the excess meant that they owned it and could if they wanted to feed the hungry with it. Tax breaks and benefit schemes solve the problem without lowering the price of the food because the food seller still gets paid full price for the food.
My point is that good intentions have generated schemes to get excess food to hungry people, but they necessarily have to be small in scale to avoid negatively affecting economics.
People who are hungry obviously can't afford the food, so giving them free food does not withdraw them from the food market, as they weren't on it already. Consequently, the overall demand for food does not fall.
> If the food that is grown and is currently thrown away wasn't thrown away, then it would be effectively be available for a lower price than mainstream food.
Putting entire political-social-economic discussions aside, this argument relies on "Wonky Veg" being cheap from farm to market, which isn't always the case, and therefore do not work at scale in real world.
Put simply, perfectly equal-sized and spherical tomatoes roll easier on conveyor belts, fit nicer and denser in cardboard boxes, slices evenly with machines, and therefore often cheaper to your table than odd shaped ones, at the same time being more lucrative to trade.
Of course it feels wrong to grow crops only to crush some, I wholeheartedly agree, but this needs a bit more thoughts than trying to "just" save them.
> It's a crime against humanity how much food is thrown away because it's "not appealing" enough to the eye when we have so many in this world who go to bed hungry.
Evidence for this? Any at all? Because I can’t imagine someone getting caught in the act of frowning in disgust which then immediately causes a shop owner to toss out that and similar-looking produce in the hopes that no one else will be disgusted. And how you would cook up such a causal connection is beyond me.
What actually happens—and which just trivially follows from good old “economics”—is that perfectly good food is thrown out because you make more money by eliminating supply that can’t be sold. (Maybe also food regulations, I don’t know.)
In different terms, think about when you go shopping. Do you take only the prettiest apples? Personally, I will take about any apple that doesn't have soft spots, damage, or mold.
(Before you argue damage is cosmetic, a significant break in the skin molds quickly)
Exactly. In fact around these parts, the more natural-looking, y’know local region grown apples are more popular. That’s what people are looking for. Not the bright red, big, more perfect apple-shaped ones with a kind of polished glean to them which were probably imported from abroad. People want those smaller red-and-green(-and-yellow) ones. (But they’re too sour for my taste.)
> Evidence for this? Any at all? Because I can’t imagine someone getting caught in the act of frowning in disgust which then immediately causes a shop owner to toss out that and similar-looking produce in the hopes that no one else will be disgusted. And how you would cook up such a causal connection is beyond me.
Yeah that'd be pretty crazy, probably why that's not what happens. It's far likelier that the produce is filtered on the farm before it even gets to a supplier.
> What actually happens—and which just trivially follows from good old “economics”—is that perfectly good food is thrown out because you make more money by eliminating supply that can’t be sold. (Maybe also food regulations, I don’t know.)
I think that's more why they lock the dumpsters behind grocery stores and/or dump bleach on the food, but that's also disgusting, so, lateral move I think.
I got worried when I saw the UC Berkeley link. But turns out it is not about research—it’s an opinion piece on the “Ugly Food MOVEMENT” (God...). Which is fronted by, yeah, you guessed it, some scrappy startups who are asserting that there is a market failure[1] and that they can amend it. Then there is a link to some concrete numbers which links to a Hill article. Which is a puff piece for one of these startups—the cause of the food waste is just asserted in the first paragraph.[2]
Then there’s the crucial farmer link. Which is just some loose “farmers we’ve talked to, like X” (one step above “people are saying”) and a link to a human interest or whatever you call those uninteresting subject-driven The New Yorker articles.
I don’t know how people are in the USA (spoiler alert), but where I am from food is the everyday grocery product that people are most stingy about.[3] Lower prices are always good. So it seems bewildering that the consumer would send such signals to the Market—surely this would cause higher prices for the consumer? Not only that but here (like in America) there are farmer subsidies. Payed for by tax payers which are also consumers.
(And Americans care about food æstehetics that much? Well let’s look to the article again: “Psychologists argued that the lack of public interest in ugly food was connected to self-esteem.” What the fuck? Seriously?)
Not to mention inflation which makes such everyday products more expensive. Which everyone who cares about Economics on this site seems to be tearing their hair out over on a weekly basis.
The article talks about how these noble startups are enabling ugly produce to be sold to smoothie retailers or whatever. Or juice factories... like the Market is so catastrophically mismanaged that you need a hipster startup for that? To connect that an orange shaped like Steve Buscemi doesn’t taste bad as juice?
I am not being negative about the article by the way. Just the Movement. The article raises the question several times about whether this is really A Thing or if it is an astroturf, someone trying to make a buck on real climate change and environmental issues. Just look at penultimate paragraph.
> The ugly produce movement exemplifies the twenty-first century consumer’s reliance on social media to navigate lifestyle changes. Food waste isn’t a simple problem; it’s an example of the broken agricultural system’s inability to distribute resources in a way that benefits all consumers. If individuals really want to be part of the solution, they have to look beyond the glitzy marketing of ‘socially responsible’ firms and become more vigilant of companies that claim to have an answer for everything.
Would you look at that.
A somewhat funny part is where they describe how the customers of these things are higher-income because it is more expensive. So the Market is so screwed up that “ugly food” isn’t something that the poor buy out of practical necessity? It’s been relegated to social indulgences-buying upper-middle class uh, people?
All in all this damning evidence that you have presented here demonstrates to me that The Ugly Food Movement is a silly, boutique food practice that some I Want To Make a New Consumer Need marketing firm cooked up, some startups made A Thing, and that upper-middle class water cooler NPCs are probably now doing the good work of spreading the word about.
[1] Because if this was about consumer choice, according to these startups, what difference would a new kind of company make?
[2] “One innovative company called [Redacted], based in [Hipsterville, USA]”
[3] Just imagine if people were given the chance to buy almost-expired or some other such ugly food... and of course they are and people love it. Why the heck do you need a startup for that?
You have gone on like... three different wild tangents here, none of which contradict anything I've said.
My point was never that startups are helping yuppies save the world by getting yuppies to buy ugly food. My point was, that food being deemed as below standard and thrown out, in any amount, is disgusting in a world that still has food-insecure people in it. That's it. I don't give a shit about these startups. If it is true what they say that they are indeed bridging a gap between food that would otherwise be discarded and well-meaning people who want to change how they consume in such a way that's slightly more beneficial to the world, then more power to them. That's a good thing, IMO. But it is also a band-aid solution to the larger problems of the logistics of food production and distribution, and if anything, it's an extension of one of the bigger problems in itself: that food is not grown, shipped, and sold to feed people, it is done to make money and therefore, if a given group of people exists that it is not profitable to sell food to, they will not be fed. That, to me, is disgusting.
The rest of this is a lot of waffle about how stupid Americans are and I'm just not interested in that as a topic.
Edit: Yeah I just saw your other comment and it's clear you're just here with an axe to grind about people you perceive to be richer than yourself, and, I dunno man, maybe that's important, but to me it's boring. Go find someone else to grind it with.
It’s actually transportability and shelf life that were the original drivers - looks were a follow-on trend. The former of course translate to price - which I can’t argue with people for being motivated by.
This is one of those cons of adapting to modern life so much, we forgotten how to pick fruits and vegetables basically. Our understanding of whats good is surface level things like what looks good or having no clue if food's actually gone bad vs not pleasing to the eyes
Its also why ugly food industry took off and companies like misfit markets or imperfect foods have billions of dollars in business, who've created a market for ugly looking perfectly edible food
Most people would call vegetable rotten when they start to ferment, but that's just like for cheese, it makes them better raw (for peppers, onions, garlic, grapes, etc..)
Bananas too. They're the best when the skin starts going black, which is when a lot of people throw em out. It's once they start turning white you might wanna move em to the compost.
They're still good for baking banana bread when they're black. I don't like directly eating bananas with black skin, though; they're mushy and overly sweet.
It depends on the variety. All the supermarket bananas I've tried in the US and Australia are way too cloying and lose what little complexity of flavor they had once they get that ripe.
However, when I did study abroad in Costa Rica, I ate a lot of different kinds of fruit out of people's backyard fruit trees. All the best bananas I tried there had entirely black peels (no yellow at all), yet the fruit was firm and not overripe, and they were so indescribably good that they completely ruined supermarket bananas for me. I no longer eat bananas.
The article doesn't really dispel the myth, just shuffles the causality around. To me it sounds like it's still true that artificial banana tastes different that what we can get now.
> To me it sounds like it's still true that artificial banana tastes different that what we can get now.
But that's not whats being claimed. He's rebutting the claim (which the original commenter may or may not have implied) that artificial banana flavor is like the old banana's that dont exist anymore. He, nor anyone here, is saying artificial banana tastes like real banana. And if someone like that shows up lets get them.
I have tasted unusual varietals of banana, mostly from SE Asian supermarkets, that taste very close to artificial banana when they are super-ripe. I have a sense for it too, because artificial banana used to be my favorite candy/popsicle flavor as a child. Full disclosure though, I probably haven't tasted artificial banana in at least a decade.
That's an interesting detail about the bananas, I've always found artificial "banana" flavourings too strong, too "artificial" and I vastly prefer the taste of a slightly green banana (as you can buy it in Europe). Apparently the artificial flavourings are actually closer to what the OG bananas tasted like.
Oh, I’m sure it isn’t. I just wanted to emphasize that I’m in Europe (central) and what they sell as bananas here may not be the exact same thing as somewhere where you can eat them fresh.
At some point I grew deeply disgusted of the flavour because of a chemistry bench experiment in school where we made the isoamyl acetate ester, which is basically what most would describe as the archetypal banana flavour... except that when you have a whole classroom of people doing that it gets extremely strong!
Took me close to a decade to enjoy bananas again. I still don't like bananas or pears that are too ripe, mostly because they become too sugary for my taste, but also because of the stronger flavour.
Knowing history doesn't let you not repeat it, it just shows you the flat circle the vast majority of society runs on, making the exact same fucking mistakes over and over again.
> Consequently, the fungi that have accumulated multiple deleterious mutations in their genomes over years of vegetative propagation become virtually infertile, adversely affecting cheese production. “This is what happens when we completely stop using sexual reproduction,” Giraud explains. “It’s the only way to compensate for detrimental mutations through the introduction of new genes – the famous genetic mixing.”
Live and learn. Seems like a common story in agriculture. Perhaps we can relearn this lesson in the context of human propagation someday.
You make it seem like they knew and just ignored the risks of lowering the biodiversity. The exceptionally more likely scenario is they had no idea what those risks were.
It’s also complete clickbait nonsense to suggest blue cheeses will go away. When the reality is they may add some more colors, or have to come up with some more options. But these cheeses aren’t going anywhere.
It doesn't seem there is a much of a problem with blue cheese in general. Some strains of blue molds are endangered, but there are plenty of other blue molds that are fine.
According to the article Camembert and Brie are more at risk as their white mold is more rare. They won't disappear either, but if we don't do something, they may stop being white and start being blue, and maybe taste a little different. It doesn't mean they can't make good cheeses, but it will be different from the cheeses we know.
Most of the penicillin breaks down before it has a chance to enter the bloodstream, but not before the components of the immune system resident in the gut and the gut's lining detect it, initiating a reaction that can involve the entire body.
I was hoping your link would have interesting information about allergic reactions to blue cheese (and possibly a trend where those allergic to penicillin are drawn to blue cheese), but for anyone who follows: no such luck.
> People with allergies to penicillin often love blue cheeses
Are you saying penicillin allergies cause or influence this? Or simply coincidental, since many people in general like blue cheese.
Also, supposedly penicillin allergies are often inaccurate. Either false diagnosis as a child or simply growing out of it. Guess maybe blue cheese could be a good test.
I don't know is the correct most answer I can provide.
In terms of am I allergic, oh ya, no question. Recently been minorly exposed and reaffirmed that one again. Though typically I must take it internally to really screw me up.
Blue cheeses taste like it's an elixer of the gods to me. totally unlike all other things. I enjoy practically all other cheeses, but they are not quite the same thing.
I don't know anything about this, to be honest this comes from ChatGPT, but anyway it reckons:
> The allergic reactions to penicillin are caused by the beta-lactam ring in the penicillin compound, which is not present in the Penicillium roqueforti mold.
Do you know that to be incorrect? Just searching it seems correct about beta-lactam allergy, but I'm not sure about what's in P. roqueforti.
> Until the 1950s, Camemberts still had grey, green or in some cases orange-tinged moulds on their surface. But the industry was not fond of these colours, considering them unappealing
I couldn't help but chuckle. The mouldy cheese industry says something is unappealing.
I don't see anything ironic or not self-aware about this. There are molds ranging from benign and non-descript to deadly and grotesque looking. I wouldn't expect someone OK with eating the former to be OK with any mold on that basis. In fact I would expect them to be highly scrutinizing because its fucking mold.
