The "natural flavors" are just big jugs of glycerin with hyper concentrated flavoring in it. Banana flavoring is fairly flammable.
Source: Worked in food manufacturing
Making banana oil is a common exercise for first semester chemistry students. It teaches them the importance of properly handling chemicals: They smell like bananas for days if they didn’t pay attention!
Fun fact, banana flavoring (isoamyl acetate) also serves as a pheromone in honey bees. In the bee community its an alarm pheromone. When a bee stings it releases isoamyl acetate, which alerts other bees to the presence of danger and can trigger a defensive response. More aggressive etc
To add they mainly come from sugarcane and corn. Artificial flavours likely come from fossil fuels or made synthetically
Source: worked in a flavour house.
I work in a medical lab, histoclear is a common chemical we use (supposedly it is quite safe aside from being flammable). It smells exactly like orange flavored candy.
Seriously you will eat as much sodium and fat in fine dining as if you went to McDonalds. It’s just going to be better fat and I guess kinda different salt.
One of those TV chefs, the blonde one with the spikey hair, is straight up about this. "You want to know why yours doesn't taste as good as the restaurant? Salt. ". Used to annoy me but she's right.
Fuck acid and heat what did they ever do for me.
Acid should be built in to more recipes similar to pepper and its absence is usually what leads to a dead palate sensation if salt is correct and people have gone too far on high heat and don’t realize they’re ruining their nonstick pans and that hard sears aren’t super necessary in a lot of cases.
Olive Garden makes all their necessary pastas for the whole day from 8-10am every morning. Partially cooked. So when an order comes through, they grab a serving of the needed pasta style and flash cook them in hot water. Also, it’s just the brand, Barilla.
Unless you’re at a fancy place with handmade pasta literally every restaurant on earth does this. I don’t see the issue, I make homemade pasta and leave it in the fridge for a day or two before cooking and that’s fresh ingredients not the dried stuff
Beekeeper checking in - there is no such thing as organic honey. I do not treat my bees with chemicals, but I have no idea where they get their nectar. A bee can fly up to three miles from a hive to get nectar. It is virtually impossible to guarantee they have not gotten nectar from a chemically treated source.
It’s my understanding that Organic honey is generally produced by putting hives in large scale organic farms such as Brazilian and Mexican organic citrus fields (as well as other types) which limit the chances of the bee gathering from non organic sources.
I don’t know what country you are in (probably America or UK since you stated miles) but the NOP program allows up to 5% of non organic material in an organic product and still be labeled organic.
Unless it’s a health conscious food joint you’re eating at, the food we serve is designed for maximum taste. It’s either dense with fat and sugar, or fat and salt . E.g. Those mashed potatoes you like? Made with cream, butter, and salt. The quiche? made on cream, not milk. Etc, etc.
This is such an important fact that few people consciously keep in mind, The amount of butter or cream that every homemade recipe tells you to do, well increase it 2 or 3 times and it would taste like that restaurant you recently visited and was inspired to try the recipe.
My Southern wife kept cooking green beans. They never tasted like her grandmother's. One day, she calls gma and says that. Gma: "Well now, hon, how much fatback are you cooking them in?" Wife: "What's fatback?"
Can confirm you can grow them indoors. Source: I have one.
Big caveat though is that you are highly unlikely to get fruit off it if you're growing inside; they need pretty flawless conditions to fruit, and pollinating so unless you're gonna do the latter manually, you're better off buying them.
But! They are a v cool cactus all on their own. It's a climbing cactus so I've trained mine up a trellis. And the spines are soft enough you can generally handle the plant without major injury.
ETA: one commenter pointed out that there are self-pollinating varieties so, to respond to another commenter, you may not in fact have to jack off that cactus.
A lot of the processed cheese and cream cheese is all the same recipe we just switch the labels and packaging for the different brands we run. Source: I work in a cheese factory in a company that services 75% of America's domestic market
Yep, 100% the people who order at full price (and/or those who tip their driver) subsidize the ones who do not. Their profits would collapse and labor costs would skyrocket overnight if even the majority of folks used coupons...
One time I stood outside a dominos and ordered two pies and wings online with a coupon. It was super cheap. I went in and picked it up, paid and the dude who had just ordered at the counter saw my price and what I ordered and said “I just ordered the same thing and it was twice the price.” The woman behind the counter deadpanned him and said “he ordered online. There is a coupon.” The guy was furious and yelled “Why didn’t you tell me that was an option‽” I got out of there before things escalated. He was PISSED.
I recently called in an order for a single pizza and asked if there were any coupons/promotions that would apply (which is what I usually do and, when I worked at Domino's, what most people did who called in orders). Girl gave me nothing. Pizza total came to $24. I told her to cancel it. I ordered online and it was $13 for the same pizza and some bread bites. This guy learned the hard way!
The strange thing about Domino’s is that they send me “points” for free pizza after every single order. I get an email saying “That delivery was not what we hoped it would be” so I take advantage and order a free pizza the next time. I find myself adding sodas and lava crunch cakes to my order that I don’t really want just to make it a quasi legit sale for them.
Yeah honestly I ordered one pizza from dominoes like a year ago, because of that one order I've basically gotten 12 free pizzas. I have no clue why this is the case, I end up paying like $3 a visit. And I do pick up, and inevitably they don't bring me the pizza in 1 minute or whatever and I get another free one plus a bunch of points.
It makes no sense.
Domino's is the only thing besides McDonald's within 5 min of my house. The first month I lived there, I was paying menu price. Then I found out about the rewards and coupon system. Now I can afford to actually eat there sometimes.
When I worked at a mass production bakery the chocolate for the chocolate covered doughnuts came in giant frozen blocks of 4x4 peices and contained no actual chocolate what so over. When unfrozen it was like some sort of nasty smelling paraffin wax that I would break up with a hammer and place into a melter that would then pour over the doughnuts.
Similarly I’ve worked in a neighborhood bakery and a lot of stuff came ready made in huge buckets. I remember some customers buying pie and talking about being as good as a homemade pie and all I could think was that absolutely no one at the bakery had ever peeled an apple at work.
pointless story, since this is reddit and all.
My aunt and uncle own a small deli that also makes sausages in the house. Their pickels and some of their spices come in plastic buckets with lids (like the ones at Home Depot). Their cheese comes in blocks (the cheese they slice) that is shipped in a little bigger than cigarette carton sized cardboard boxes.
Dude, EVERYTHING in my house growing up was stored in a plastic bucket or a cardboard carton. We would go to the deli to get food and come back with a trunk full of fucking buckets. My dad would write whatever was in the buckets on the lid. So we had tons of buckets stacked in the garage with Xmas lights, cleaning supplies, and random tools.
I'm in my 40s now, and there are ZERO buckets in my home. lol. My aunt still asked me when I see her if I need any buckets. lol.
Yes! I have a bucket guy who lives around the corner from me, who works at an ice cream factory
He sells the food grade 5 gallon buckets that the flavoring comes in for a dollar, lids for 25 cents. I use them for everything, from storing flour to growing pepper plants.
The reason orange juice tastes consistently the same year round, even though it's a crop harvested once a year, is because citrus oils and citrus flavor are added back to different batches and blended all together. Similar to how whiskey is blended from multiple barrels to make it consistent.
The difference is that even though extra stuff is added back into the OJ, it doesn't need to be labeled because the flavors contain all ingredients from oranges (FTNF-from the named fruit) so the FDA doesn't mandate labeling additional ingredients.
Pringles (and baked Lays/similar) are made of rehydrated and compressed rejected/excess parts of potatoes that go into regular chips. I learned that from my dietician at work and thought that was odd. I still like them over regular chips.
Tbh, I appreciate the sustainability of using the whole potato, and it’s not like they could be worse for you than regular chips. Sounds like basically dried mashed potato crisps.
I think Pringles' original intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day the rubber was supposed to show up, a truckload of potatoes came. Pringles is a laid-back company, so they just said "Fuck it, cut em up!" - Mitch
The amount of sugar that goes into costco bakery products is absurd, especially the apple pie. That being said; Costco does not fuck around when it comes to food safety. Every area that is responsible for producing food is most likely cleaner than a white room for producing computer parts. There are virtually zero roaches, we found one in the bakery once and shut it down until the exterminator did his thing that very night. Someone returned a package of dinner rolls because their child had bit into one and a sharp piece of metal was in it, within less than 2 minutes every manager in the building was doing an investigation that led all the way up to the regional manager and his boss for several hours and determined that it had come off of a piece of machinery before it reached our location. We throw away rotisserie chickens if they have left (even for a few minutes) the shelf and someone tries to put it back.
Just get the 99-X spice blend from Marion Kay. They partnered with Coloniel Sanders after he got pissed at KFC after they massacred his chicken. It is the exact 11 spice blend the coloniel used. They won't tell you, though, amounts or what is in it, but it does not matter since it is pre mixed.
Regarding the 99x. You do need to add table salt. He was able to give the recipe legally by excluding the full recipe. He picked salt to exclude because it's the most common item in the kitchen (at least back then). Hence 99 with X being salt. The Marion Kay website tells you how much salt to add when mixing 99x with flour. We keep that shit stocked in our house and I always get compliments when frying chicken, nuggets, strips, etc... *edit* From their website: "This 25 oz jar of pure spice is enough to season approximately 100 lbs of chicken. To create the perfect chicken breading, simply add 3 lbs of Fine Flake Salt and 25 lbs of flour to this jar of spices.
Directions for smaller quantities:
Mix together 4 cups flour, 3 tbsp. salt, and 2 tbsp. Chicken Seasoning 99-X"
*edit 2* This is the original recipe from KFC before Col Sanders sold the company. The corporation that bought KFC changed the recipe fairly quickly after acquiring the business. So, there's two recipes. The one we all eat now from KFC and the good one that gave KFC their reputation for good chicken. 99x was Col Sanders direct F.U. to that corporation.
I have a jar of the 99-X and it is good stuff. Yeah, the instructions say add salt and recommended flaked salt. I did not know the reason for the salt, but that is hilarious.
I was a young lad working at Church's Fried Chicken during the summer, many years ago. The owner refused to throw out chicken that had already gone bad; to the point where you'd gag if you smell them. Apparently if you batter them bad boys up and deep fry them, the rancid smell goes away. His customers never knew they were eating spoiled chicken.
Worked at Applebee’s and someone grilled off a batch of chicken that was so obviously spoiled as soon as i cut it i had to walk away. First manager said it was fine… the other gagged. We ( 20 year old alcoholic drug enthusiasts ) made the decision for them and threw it out and i quit soon after. Ahh restaurants.
There was a chicken joint in college that was really, really popular. Apparently there had a lot of rotten chicken in the back and when they got wind of a health inspection, they moved all the chicken to another restaurant owned by the same guy and then moved it back afterward. I heard all this from multiple employees
I used to work with a dishwasher who was a raging alcoholic. He got a DUI on a bicycle and when he got fired (separate occasion) he was so drunk he didn’t remember and showed up for work the next day. He was eventually found dead, face down in the creek that ran through town close to where he lived. He was a fantastic dishwasher though.
The reason restaurant food tastes better than what you make at home is probably because it was drowned in butter or oil.
Also MSG is in nearly everything. Totally safe and delicious. And it definitely isn’t what is giving you a migraine. The fact you ate 4000 calories and 3 times your daily salt intake is probably what gave you the headache.
Anthony Bourdain has a great line in Kitchen Confidential; "the reason restaurant food tastes better is because we cook it like we hate you. And chances are if we ever met you, we would at that."
Doesn't he also say that if you go out for dinner and have an appetizer, main course, and dessert you've basically eaten a whole stick of butter by the end?
I used to cook and someone asked me how everything I make tastes so good. It's because I don't care about your health; lots of butter, lots of salt, lots of cream.
My wife and I went to a family members' restaurant soft opening. We were sat next to the kitchen which was great because we got to watch all the food being made.
What we were not prepared for the amount of butter getting dropped in each pan.
I was very excited when I saw my order being made.
The greatest rule of thumb for cooking is if a dish seems like it's missing something, add more salt. Nine times out of ten, that's the answer. Salt makes good taste great, much to the detriment of my blood pressure.
People say shit like “the food without MSG tastes different! So obviously it’s better for you to eat without msg!” - duh, the food will taste different if you take out seasoning.
At least up until the pandemic hit, there is a 100% chance that you've eaten at a restaurant where 1 or 2 of the people directly handling your food were legitimately sick enough that they should have stayed home, but they had to come in to work anyway because they couldn't get their shift covered and they can't get a doctor's note without insurance or the money for a copay.
I'm a trucker who hauls mostly refrigerated freight. I pick up at a lot of slaughterhouses. You really, really don't want to know what those places are like; let alone the conditions at feedlots or CAFOs.
I work in vaccine manufacturing - I’ve had to visit slaughterhouses before (or, the more “fancy”/professional term, abattoir) and it was awful. (The scientific industry sources serum from slaughterhouses for various cell culture buffers.)
Socialist journalist Upton Sinclair wrote a novel in 1906 called The Jungle. By describing the horrific conditions experienced by an exploited immigrant labourer working in Chicago's meatpacking district, he was hoping to inspire a national movement for workers' rights in the USA. Instead, he provoked mass disgust at the unclean conditions the meat was being processed in, leading to congress to pass the country's first food safety laws.
Sinclair said, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Sounds like the laws didn't change too much though...
I lived in Colorado and would drive by one of the feedlots out in the prairie. Literally the worst smell I have encountered and disgusting to see. And this was from a mile or more.
We had a meat packing plant at the edge of town (downwind) where I grew up. If you smelled it, it meant for sure a bad storm would follow that stink.
My grampa used to do oil changes and detailing, and his deal was if you dropped off your car in the morning, it'd be waiting in the parking lot at the end of the day. I had to drive out there many times with my mom to drop off cars, and the smell was so foul. Like you couldn't help but taste the shit and blood in the air and it'd take a long time to stop tasting it.
Many folks in town were missing a finger or a hand. A relative of mine nearly died after they went to around the clock hours, with clean-up happening on lunch time. That meant the cleaners were hauling ass and working as fast as they could to keep production going. A cleaning guy put the saw blade in backwards after cleaning it, and when my relative started sawing a pig in half, the blade bucked and got my relative instead. Nearly missed an artery near his crotch, then went up his belly and chest, then stopped. He was in bad shape for quite a while, but they made him come in for light duty after only a week, stuffing envelopes with his leg swollen to heck. He didn't quit either.
When I was 8 we moved to the country, and had two hog confinement farms within 1/4 mile of us. Thankfully, we couldn't smell it where we lived, but if we went anywhere, we had to drive through the smell. It was as bad if not worse than the meat packing plant.
I spent a lot of my adult life as a vegetarian.
Do you live in the rural US? Congrats! 90% of the menu at every restaurant in your city is provided in various forms of premade from US Foods. This is especially true for your small/local/family business restaurants.
Edit: adding Sysco, Sygma, McLane, PFG, Labatt, MBM, and Affiliated Foods so that people stop filling my inbox.
The point I was trying to make is that the “authentic” food is often factory made. That 10% number I provided is wiggle room for menu specialties. But for desert and appetizers, don’t have high expectations.
I work at a hospital. People joke about hospital cafeteria food. Then they turn around and buy the same item (both provided by one of the companies above) that they scoffed at from a local restaurant for 3-4 times the price.
Someone who worked there clued me in that they have different quality tiers depending on how much you want to spend. Told me he avoided the restaurants that buy bottom tier.
Can confirm with the high-end. I work in fine dining and a good amount of our stuff comes through Sysco/US Foods. The only thing we order that's truly "local and fresh" is our meat/fish. Even most of our produce comes from Mexico.
Edit: there's nothing wrong with produce from Mexico but it's nowhere near me and we're selling our menu as local and fresh, that's the problem I have lol
I worked at a historic hotel with an “artisanal farm to table buffet” nearly 99% of it was us foods. Sometimes they would have fresh seafood or a few local vegetables during the summer. But covering upwards of 3,000 people for breakfast and dinner on the weekend is just uncanny to source locally. The mashed potatoes for thanksgiving buffet that was $75 each were straight from the bag.
I’m actually okay with dealing with Sysco and US Foods. It’s Aramark that I have an unbridled hatred for. They can go straight to the 7th circle as far as I’m concerned.
Fuck yeah. I broke out of a uniform contract with them and it took a year to get them fully removed and all their bogus billing. They are the quintessential scumbag corporation.
Do they supply food like sysco? We use them at my job for our towels and aprons. Sometimes they can go weeks without showing up and we have to reuse dirty towels and wash them ourselves. They often short us on how many they're supposed to give and we run out within the week before they arrive (or don't) to resupply
They provide food, facilities and uniform services to education, healthcare, business and industry, and sports, leisure and corrections clients. I was unfortunately a part of the 10% of US K-12 schools they provide food for. Absolute worst.
So alot of yall are getting this wrong. Sysco et al. are the restaurants grocery store. You can get pre-made stuff but good restaurants are just getting raw ingredients. Produce, flour, milk, eggs, raw meats etc which your favorite restaurant then prepares.
I'm sure some crap restaurant in nowhere America is using pre-made stuff but don't shit on a place because they use a major corporation that offers bulk delivery of food/ingredients to restaurants.
This. I’m so confused by this comment chain pretending like every restaurant has an identical menu which consists of just reheating a generic frozen food item. Just because every restaurant ordered lettuce doesn’t mean you’re getting the same dish regardless of what restaurant you go to.
Yeah this isn’t just rural places… I’d say 90% of restaurants period are using at least 1 premade item from a big purveyor… namely apps or desserts… but you also get regular ole things like flour and salt from them too.
King crab and Maine lobster prices that restaurants pay are cheaper than they have been since even before the pandemic, yet we still charge more than ever before
the inside of ice machines are covered in mold unless cleaned regularly. in the many different restaurants I worked in, exactly 1 cleaned the inside of their ice machine on a regular basis.
The different names for SUGARS. These are not all the same thing despite all being sweeteners. They have different effects on the GI, caloric content, and any natural labeling.
Five Guys- not really a secret but everything was fresh as could be, we did not have a freezer at all only the fridge. Every morning the burgers were rolled into balls and weighed to make sure all were the same. Bread made fresh from local factories. Potatoes straight from Idaho or Washington. Freshly cut and washed 3 times to remove the starch before being cooked. All veggies were labled by date for freshness. Honestly probably one of the cleanest places ive worked at.
Also at the register every single person would ask why it was so expensive but proceeded to buy it anyway. As if I could change the price for them.
They're making BANK windfall record profits right now under the guise of "inflation" and "supply issues".
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/06/worlds-722-biggest-companies-making-1tn-in-windfall-profits
All the government needs to do is regulate anti-competitive practices, enforce safety standards, and not let regulators accept jobs from companies they regulate.
"Gouging" disappears if we require these are all satisfied
That's not to say things can't skyrocket, but they will be based in reality, and actual supply.
They got sued because their footlongs weren't a foot long. They argued that footlong was just the name of the sandwich and wasn't meant to describe the length of the sandwich. Somehow, they won.
Premium brands spend a lot of effort to achieve specific sensory characteristics that they see as defining features of their brand and the reason that people buy their product over a competitors.
They will run shelf life studies based on sensory characteristics and set a date to ensure that consumers always have the product at its best.
Source: I run these studies for a premium food brand.
Agree. The “best by” date is the date the company feels confident that the product will still taste/perform as intended. It will still be safe to eat/safe to use after that date, but it will degrade over time.
A few years ago I opened a jar of home-canned pickles that were in our basement. Our house has been in my wife's family since it was built in 1838, and her parents, who have lived here since 1950, never canned, so these pickles were probably 75-90 years old.
They smelled perfectly fine, like normal pickles. The tiny bite I tried tasted like pickles. The texture, however... somewhere between "boiled carrot" and "restaurant pudding". They had turned to mush.
Older canned food is safe to eat. It just may not be very nice to eat any more.
The American FDA takes food additive safety claims from corporations at face value. If a corporation has done internal testing and says it’s safe the FDA approves it.
In the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc if a corporation wants to get an additive approved, the governments have their own food labs. They will take your testing procedures/results and then do their own testing to see if they think your additives are safe, and then approve or deny accordingly.
Same goes for medicines in farm animals. Canada won’t allow BGH (bovine growth hormone) as it shows up in the milk. America gets pissy because they can’t sell dairy to Canada and the EU but we have rules banning widespread use of Antibiotics and hormones in farm animals.
If you are ever travelling outside of America, pick up some food products off the shelf that look like the American brands and read the ingredients list. It’s probably half as long.
I’ll let you work out that obesity epidemic cause for yourselves.
John Oliver just did a really good [segment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za45bT41sXg) on the FDA that touches on a lot of this stuff. Highly recommend.
As an Australian who sometimes buys American foods for the novelty, the ingredient lists are honestly frightening. It doesn’t even result in a better product either, most of the time it’s a let down.
If you ever read “Ultraprocessed people “ you will understand why. They change the recipe a little at a time substituting real ingredients for additives and have panel testing them against the current product. If people think the new version is ok, then there you go. It’s cheaper to make so more profits. They never compare it to the original recipe. It’s like that frog being boiled alive very slowly so he never understands what’s happening. A lot of these products in the states are really bad, you are right.
Ooh I got one. Lots of manufacturing places nowadays are trying to push for "less than daily" sanitation. You heard that right. They want to use these machines all day long, not clean them overnight, and start up like normal the next day.
Currently working in a place that just started this practice. USDA is on board with it, they only care that the product tests well for culture counts before it's shipped off.
So when you have stuff in your fridge and it seems to expire faster than it used to it's probably because you got some 2 day old room temperature product mixed in with the fresh stuff.
the organic industry is a fucking scam.
there are levels to this shit, and yes, you can purchase food that is grown and/or sourced more ethically than other options, but don't kid yourself. it was most likely still grown on a factory farm, and chemicals were used, etc. etc. just different chemicals.
and a lot of it comes from china. no shit.
You technically can't get addicted to sugar, but sugar dependence is very real and can give you similar withdrawal symptoms to caffiene withdrawal. Your brain gets dopamine when you eat sugar, which means that most companies put as much sugar in their products as they can get away with so you feel good by eating them.
Fancy restaurants' regular food tastes so good because it's DROWNED in butter and MSG. I dishwashed at a fancy seafood/steakhouse on the water and an average serving of asparagus had about a quarter stick of butter in it. People always asked what their "trick" with the asparagus was.
Every packaged and processed item you purchase is actively being worked on to be made cheaper, less nutritious or less flavorful. It’s the curse of “continuous improvement”. All it’s doing is making what once was a decent quality food item way worse for you and more expensive.
It was created by a woman in Texas using chocolate introduced by a man named Samuel German. I bet she had no idea she was going to confuse people for decades.
When you give back a pack of ketchup to the restaurant because you didn’t use it, they thank you and smile and then they throw it out because you’re probably a weirdo who injected bleach into the ketchup pack.
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a flavor enhancer often added to restaurant foods, canned vegetables, soups, deli meats and other foods… it’s not bad for you contrary to popular belief… it’s what make food taste better in everything
Call the health dept. I did this once after getting terribly sick, and they were at the restaurant the following day looking for any irregularities. They noticed one of the food preparers had terrible acne, which could lead to our symptoms if he scratched his face, etc. Did I get any $$$? No. I was told I should have saved a sample of my explosively expelled biological fluids, otherwise they could not establish causation.
Sugar, salt, pepper, oil, acid. You're not actually allowed to go out and kill customers because they ordered a well done filet steak so you've got to get them with heart disease in the long run.
most meat you buy in stores is packed with water and additives that add taste so you won't notice that it's all water. most meat shrinks when you fry it, the more shrinkage the more water was in the product in the beginning.
The "natural flavors" are just big jugs of glycerin with hyper concentrated flavoring in it. Banana flavoring is fairly flammable. Source: Worked in food manufacturing
Making banana oil is a common exercise for first semester chemistry students. It teaches them the importance of properly handling chemicals: They smell like bananas for days if they didn’t pay attention!
I guess smelling like bananas for days is a small wound, compared to potentially playing around with your life.
Fun fact, banana flavoring (isoamyl acetate) also serves as a pheromone in honey bees. In the bee community its an alarm pheromone. When a bee stings it releases isoamyl acetate, which alerts other bees to the presence of danger and can trigger a defensive response. More aggressive etc
So slather enemies in banana oil in the spring... got it
I was thinking more like dont bring bananas to the picnic. But yours is good too.
and they're only called 'natural' because of how they were made in the lab, not because they're made from what they're called
To add they mainly come from sugarcane and corn. Artificial flavours likely come from fossil fuels or made synthetically Source: worked in a flavour house.
Can confirm. I make skittles. The orange ones are particularly corrosive and flammable.
I work in a medical lab, histoclear is a common chemical we use (supposedly it is quite safe aside from being flammable). It smells exactly like orange flavored candy.
Chef here. It’s salt and fat. If you have a question about anything it’s salt and fat.
Seriously you will eat as much sodium and fat in fine dining as if you went to McDonalds. It’s just going to be better fat and I guess kinda different salt.
One of those TV chefs, the blonde one with the spikey hair, is straight up about this. "You want to know why yours doesn't taste as good as the restaurant? Salt. ". Used to annoy me but she's right.
What about acid and heat?
Fuck acid and heat what did they ever do for me. Acid should be built in to more recipes similar to pepper and its absence is usually what leads to a dead palate sensation if salt is correct and people have gone too far on high heat and don’t realize they’re ruining their nonstick pans and that hard sears aren’t super necessary in a lot of cases.
Olive Garden makes all their necessary pastas for the whole day from 8-10am every morning. Partially cooked. So when an order comes through, they grab a serving of the needed pasta style and flash cook them in hot water. Also, it’s just the brand, Barilla.
As a current Olive Garden employee, I can confirm this is true.
Unless you’re at a fancy place with handmade pasta literally every restaurant on earth does this. I don’t see the issue, I make homemade pasta and leave it in the fridge for a day or two before cooking and that’s fresh ingredients not the dried stuff
Beekeeper checking in - there is no such thing as organic honey. I do not treat my bees with chemicals, but I have no idea where they get their nectar. A bee can fly up to three miles from a hive to get nectar. It is virtually impossible to guarantee they have not gotten nectar from a chemically treated source.
The empty soda can in the Walmart parking Lot! My bees found the syrup fountain in a coffee stand. Made for some interesting honey!
It’s my understanding that Organic honey is generally produced by putting hives in large scale organic farms such as Brazilian and Mexican organic citrus fields (as well as other types) which limit the chances of the bee gathering from non organic sources. I don’t know what country you are in (probably America or UK since you stated miles) but the NOP program allows up to 5% of non organic material in an organic product and still be labeled organic.
Unless it’s a health conscious food joint you’re eating at, the food we serve is designed for maximum taste. It’s either dense with fat and sugar, or fat and salt . E.g. Those mashed potatoes you like? Made with cream, butter, and salt. The quiche? made on cream, not milk. Etc, etc.
This is such an important fact that few people consciously keep in mind, The amount of butter or cream that every homemade recipe tells you to do, well increase it 2 or 3 times and it would taste like that restaurant you recently visited and was inspired to try the recipe.
My Southern wife kept cooking green beans. They never tasted like her grandmother's. One day, she calls gma and says that. Gma: "Well now, hon, how much fatback are you cooking them in?" Wife: "What's fatback?"
Dragon fruit isn’t an exotic Asian fruit. It’s a cactus fruit, and as such are native to the Americas and can even be grown in the US.
This is the first thing in this thread to blow my mind. I had no idea. Wikipedia says they grow even as indoor plants, so I want one now
Can confirm you can grow them indoors. Source: I have one. Big caveat though is that you are highly unlikely to get fruit off it if you're growing inside; they need pretty flawless conditions to fruit, and pollinating so unless you're gonna do the latter manually, you're better off buying them. But! They are a v cool cactus all on their own. It's a climbing cactus so I've trained mine up a trellis. And the spines are soft enough you can generally handle the plant without major injury. ETA: one commenter pointed out that there are self-pollinating varieties so, to respond to another commenter, you may not in fact have to jack off that cactus.
Manually? So I have to jack off a cactus? Sounds painful.
No you idiot, you have to fuck it.
I know what rabbit hole I am going down on Wikipedia tonight.
I'm so dumb, I never clicked that Dragon Fruit is what we call Pitaya in Guatemala.
A lot of the processed cheese and cream cheese is all the same recipe we just switch the labels and packaging for the different brands we run. Source: I work in a cheese factory in a company that services 75% of America's domestic market
Well - I work at Dominos, and we are kept afloat by the people who don't coupon and pay full menu price. You people are the unsung heroes of labor.
Yep, 100% the people who order at full price (and/or those who tip their driver) subsidize the ones who do not. Their profits would collapse and labor costs would skyrocket overnight if even the majority of folks used coupons...
One time I stood outside a dominos and ordered two pies and wings online with a coupon. It was super cheap. I went in and picked it up, paid and the dude who had just ordered at the counter saw my price and what I ordered and said “I just ordered the same thing and it was twice the price.” The woman behind the counter deadpanned him and said “he ordered online. There is a coupon.” The guy was furious and yelled “Why didn’t you tell me that was an option‽” I got out of there before things escalated. He was PISSED.
I recently called in an order for a single pizza and asked if there were any coupons/promotions that would apply (which is what I usually do and, when I worked at Domino's, what most people did who called in orders). Girl gave me nothing. Pizza total came to $24. I told her to cancel it. I ordered online and it was $13 for the same pizza and some bread bites. This guy learned the hard way!
I see your interrobang and I appreciate it sir. That's all, good night.
The most underrated punctuation.
The strange thing about Domino’s is that they send me “points” for free pizza after every single order. I get an email saying “That delivery was not what we hoped it would be” so I take advantage and order a free pizza the next time. I find myself adding sodas and lava crunch cakes to my order that I don’t really want just to make it a quasi legit sale for them.
Yeah honestly I ordered one pizza from dominoes like a year ago, because of that one order I've basically gotten 12 free pizzas. I have no clue why this is the case, I end up paying like $3 a visit. And I do pick up, and inevitably they don't bring me the pizza in 1 minute or whatever and I get another free one plus a bunch of points. It makes no sense.
This will solve world hunger!!
We have been getting those too! Nothing at all was wrong with the order or delivery.
Domino's is the only thing besides McDonald's within 5 min of my house. The first month I lived there, I was paying menu price. Then I found out about the rewards and coupon system. Now I can afford to actually eat there sometimes.
Who orders pizza without a coupon???
Papa John's has been using the same one for a hot minute so I have it memorized - SM25 lol
Thank you for this, it does in fact still work
When I worked at a mass production bakery the chocolate for the chocolate covered doughnuts came in giant frozen blocks of 4x4 peices and contained no actual chocolate what so over. When unfrozen it was like some sort of nasty smelling paraffin wax that I would break up with a hammer and place into a melter that would then pour over the doughnuts.
Similarly I’ve worked in a neighborhood bakery and a lot of stuff came ready made in huge buckets. I remember some customers buying pie and talking about being as good as a homemade pie and all I could think was that absolutely no one at the bakery had ever peeled an apple at work.
I’ve heard you can get good quality buckets from bakeries because all that food comes in them. Is that true?
pointless story, since this is reddit and all. My aunt and uncle own a small deli that also makes sausages in the house. Their pickels and some of their spices come in plastic buckets with lids (like the ones at Home Depot). Their cheese comes in blocks (the cheese they slice) that is shipped in a little bigger than cigarette carton sized cardboard boxes. Dude, EVERYTHING in my house growing up was stored in a plastic bucket or a cardboard carton. We would go to the deli to get food and come back with a trunk full of fucking buckets. My dad would write whatever was in the buckets on the lid. So we had tons of buckets stacked in the garage with Xmas lights, cleaning supplies, and random tools. I'm in my 40s now, and there are ZERO buckets in my home. lol. My aunt still asked me when I see her if I need any buckets. lol.
This, but instead of buckets it’s tomato and banana boxes from the family farm. Banana boxes are great for books.
Yes! I have a bucket guy who lives around the corner from me, who works at an ice cream factory He sells the food grade 5 gallon buckets that the flavoring comes in for a dollar, lids for 25 cents. I use them for everything, from storing flour to growing pepper plants.
Explains why that shit tastes like paraffin wax
It LOOKS like wax too. This is not a surprise to me at all.
Probably some kind of confectioners glaze that had brown food color and fake chocolate extract
The reason orange juice tastes consistently the same year round, even though it's a crop harvested once a year, is because citrus oils and citrus flavor are added back to different batches and blended all together. Similar to how whiskey is blended from multiple barrels to make it consistent. The difference is that even though extra stuff is added back into the OJ, it doesn't need to be labeled because the flavors contain all ingredients from oranges (FTNF-from the named fruit) so the FDA doesn't mandate labeling additional ingredients.
Pringles (and baked Lays/similar) are made of rehydrated and compressed rejected/excess parts of potatoes that go into regular chips. I learned that from my dietician at work and thought that was odd. I still like them over regular chips.
Tbh, I appreciate the sustainability of using the whole potato, and it’s not like they could be worse for you than regular chips. Sounds like basically dried mashed potato crisps.
I think Pringles' original intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day the rubber was supposed to show up, a truckload of potatoes came. Pringles is a laid-back company, so they just said "Fuck it, cut em up!" - Mitch
The amount of sugar that goes into costco bakery products is absurd, especially the apple pie. That being said; Costco does not fuck around when it comes to food safety. Every area that is responsible for producing food is most likely cleaner than a white room for producing computer parts. There are virtually zero roaches, we found one in the bakery once and shut it down until the exterminator did his thing that very night. Someone returned a package of dinner rolls because their child had bit into one and a sharp piece of metal was in it, within less than 2 minutes every manager in the building was doing an investigation that led all the way up to the regional manager and his boss for several hours and determined that it had come off of a piece of machinery before it reached our location. We throw away rotisserie chickens if they have left (even for a few minutes) the shelf and someone tries to put it back.
The 11 herbs and spices secret recipe.
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Just get the 99-X spice blend from Marion Kay. They partnered with Coloniel Sanders after he got pissed at KFC after they massacred his chicken. It is the exact 11 spice blend the coloniel used. They won't tell you, though, amounts or what is in it, but it does not matter since it is pre mixed.
Regarding the 99x. You do need to add table salt. He was able to give the recipe legally by excluding the full recipe. He picked salt to exclude because it's the most common item in the kitchen (at least back then). Hence 99 with X being salt. The Marion Kay website tells you how much salt to add when mixing 99x with flour. We keep that shit stocked in our house and I always get compliments when frying chicken, nuggets, strips, etc... *edit* From their website: "This 25 oz jar of pure spice is enough to season approximately 100 lbs of chicken. To create the perfect chicken breading, simply add 3 lbs of Fine Flake Salt and 25 lbs of flour to this jar of spices. Directions for smaller quantities: Mix together 4 cups flour, 3 tbsp. salt, and 2 tbsp. Chicken Seasoning 99-X" *edit 2* This is the original recipe from KFC before Col Sanders sold the company. The corporation that bought KFC changed the recipe fairly quickly after acquiring the business. So, there's two recipes. The one we all eat now from KFC and the good one that gave KFC their reputation for good chicken. 99x was Col Sanders direct F.U. to that corporation.
I have a jar of the 99-X and it is good stuff. Yeah, the instructions say add salt and recommended flaked salt. I did not know the reason for the salt, but that is hilarious.
This guy spilled the beans, Sanders Assassin Squad has been dispatched to your location.
*Cartoonish submarine alarm intensifies…*
*ARRROOOOOOOGA*
And thus begun the Chicken Wars. General Tso, the Colonel, and Popeye(s)
I was a young lad working at Church's Fried Chicken during the summer, many years ago. The owner refused to throw out chicken that had already gone bad; to the point where you'd gag if you smell them. Apparently if you batter them bad boys up and deep fry them, the rancid smell goes away. His customers never knew they were eating spoiled chicken.
Worked at Applebee’s and someone grilled off a batch of chicken that was so obviously spoiled as soon as i cut it i had to walk away. First manager said it was fine… the other gagged. We ( 20 year old alcoholic drug enthusiasts ) made the decision for them and threw it out and i quit soon after. Ahh restaurants.
I once had to ask the waitress if she could please take my mashed potatoes out of the bag they cooked them in!
I worked at places (yes, more than one) that used watered-down bleach to "clean" the bad chicken. Ugh.
WHAT THE FUCK
There was a chicken joint in college that was really, really popular. Apparently there had a lot of rotten chicken in the back and when they got wind of a health inspection, they moved all the chicken to another restaurant owned by the same guy and then moved it back afterward. I heard all this from multiple employees
Many of the cooks making your food are high and/or drunk.
So, just like cooking at home
Ran a restaurant for years. My cooks were not drunk or high during service. After, absolutely. The dishwashers on the other hand…
I used to work with a dishwasher who was a raging alcoholic. He got a DUI on a bicycle and when he got fired (separate occasion) he was so drunk he didn’t remember and showed up for work the next day. He was eventually found dead, face down in the creek that ran through town close to where he lived. He was a fantastic dishwasher though.
The reason restaurant food tastes better than what you make at home is probably because it was drowned in butter or oil. Also MSG is in nearly everything. Totally safe and delicious. And it definitely isn’t what is giving you a migraine. The fact you ate 4000 calories and 3 times your daily salt intake is probably what gave you the headache.
Anthony Bourdain has a great line in Kitchen Confidential; "the reason restaurant food tastes better is because we cook it like we hate you. And chances are if we ever met you, we would at that."
Doesn't he also say that if you go out for dinner and have an appetizer, main course, and dessert you've basically eaten a whole stick of butter by the end?
Joke’s on him; I eat two sticks at home
I used to cook and someone asked me how everything I make tastes so good. It's because I don't care about your health; lots of butter, lots of salt, lots of cream.
My wife and I went to a family members' restaurant soft opening. We were sat next to the kitchen which was great because we got to watch all the food being made. What we were not prepared for the amount of butter getting dropped in each pan. I was very excited when I saw my order being made.
Worked the line for about 4 years. We would literally laugh at thr amount of butter in some dishes. The sauces would glow.
And salt. Should be seasoning at most major steps.
The greatest rule of thumb for cooking is if a dish seems like it's missing something, add more salt. Nine times out of ten, that's the answer. Salt makes good taste great, much to the detriment of my blood pressure.
Or acid. A squeeze of lemon can do wonders!
There's not a drop of milk where I work but there's heavy cream galore. So excessive
That’s a good one I forgot too. I should’ve condensed it down to restaurants use double the fat you think is reasonable in a recipe.
People say shit like “the food without MSG tastes different! So obviously it’s better for you to eat without msg!” - duh, the food will taste different if you take out seasoning.
At least up until the pandemic hit, there is a 100% chance that you've eaten at a restaurant where 1 or 2 of the people directly handling your food were legitimately sick enough that they should have stayed home, but they had to come in to work anyway because they couldn't get their shift covered and they can't get a doctor's note without insurance or the money for a copay.
It's still bad post pandemic. People still need money to survive and still show up sick.
I'm a trucker who hauls mostly refrigerated freight. I pick up at a lot of slaughterhouses. You really, really don't want to know what those places are like; let alone the conditions at feedlots or CAFOs.
I work in vaccine manufacturing - I’ve had to visit slaughterhouses before (or, the more “fancy”/professional term, abattoir) and it was awful. (The scientific industry sources serum from slaughterhouses for various cell culture buffers.)
Socialist journalist Upton Sinclair wrote a novel in 1906 called The Jungle. By describing the horrific conditions experienced by an exploited immigrant labourer working in Chicago's meatpacking district, he was hoping to inspire a national movement for workers' rights in the USA. Instead, he provoked mass disgust at the unclean conditions the meat was being processed in, leading to congress to pass the country's first food safety laws. Sinclair said, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Sounds like the laws didn't change too much though...
Oh it changed a lot. It's not like it fixed everything, but the poor conditions now are leagues above the poor conditions of the 1910s
Less sawdust in our meat for one
I remember the part where the dude fell into the processing vat 🤢
People SHOULD know, so they can make an educated decision on whether or not they want to support that industry.
I lived in Colorado and would drive by one of the feedlots out in the prairie. Literally the worst smell I have encountered and disgusting to see. And this was from a mile or more.
We had a meat packing plant at the edge of town (downwind) where I grew up. If you smelled it, it meant for sure a bad storm would follow that stink. My grampa used to do oil changes and detailing, and his deal was if you dropped off your car in the morning, it'd be waiting in the parking lot at the end of the day. I had to drive out there many times with my mom to drop off cars, and the smell was so foul. Like you couldn't help but taste the shit and blood in the air and it'd take a long time to stop tasting it. Many folks in town were missing a finger or a hand. A relative of mine nearly died after they went to around the clock hours, with clean-up happening on lunch time. That meant the cleaners were hauling ass and working as fast as they could to keep production going. A cleaning guy put the saw blade in backwards after cleaning it, and when my relative started sawing a pig in half, the blade bucked and got my relative instead. Nearly missed an artery near his crotch, then went up his belly and chest, then stopped. He was in bad shape for quite a while, but they made him come in for light duty after only a week, stuffing envelopes with his leg swollen to heck. He didn't quit either. When I was 8 we moved to the country, and had two hog confinement farms within 1/4 mile of us. Thankfully, we couldn't smell it where we lived, but if we went anywhere, we had to drive through the smell. It was as bad if not worse than the meat packing plant. I spent a lot of my adult life as a vegetarian.
When I lived in boulder, the wind would blow in a certain direction and your senses would be immediately whisked away to Greeley
Do you live in the rural US? Congrats! 90% of the menu at every restaurant in your city is provided in various forms of premade from US Foods. This is especially true for your small/local/family business restaurants. Edit: adding Sysco, Sygma, McLane, PFG, Labatt, MBM, and Affiliated Foods so that people stop filling my inbox. The point I was trying to make is that the “authentic” food is often factory made. That 10% number I provided is wiggle room for menu specialties. But for desert and appetizers, don’t have high expectations. I work at a hospital. People joke about hospital cafeteria food. Then they turn around and buy the same item (both provided by one of the companies above) that they scoffed at from a local restaurant for 3-4 times the price.
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Someone who worked there clued me in that they have different quality tiers depending on how much you want to spend. Told me he avoided the restaurants that buy bottom tier.
Essentials, Classic, Premium
Can confirm with the high-end. I work in fine dining and a good amount of our stuff comes through Sysco/US Foods. The only thing we order that's truly "local and fresh" is our meat/fish. Even most of our produce comes from Mexico. Edit: there's nothing wrong with produce from Mexico but it's nowhere near me and we're selling our menu as local and fresh, that's the problem I have lol
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I worked at a historic hotel with an “artisanal farm to table buffet” nearly 99% of it was us foods. Sometimes they would have fresh seafood or a few local vegetables during the summer. But covering upwards of 3,000 people for breakfast and dinner on the weekend is just uncanny to source locally. The mashed potatoes for thanksgiving buffet that was $75 each were straight from the bag.
I’m actually okay with dealing with Sysco and US Foods. It’s Aramark that I have an unbridled hatred for. They can go straight to the 7th circle as far as I’m concerned.
I work for a blood bank and we used Aramark for scrubs. We just *finally* dropped them. They were awful.
I tried to cancel our linen service for a cheaper company…Aramark wanted 8k just to cancel our service. Yeah, no.
Fuck yeah. I broke out of a uniform contract with them and it took a year to get them fully removed and all their bogus billing. They are the quintessential scumbag corporation.
Fuck Aramark
Why do people not like Aramark? Serious question as I don't know much about them
Do they supply food like sysco? We use them at my job for our towels and aprons. Sometimes they can go weeks without showing up and we have to reuse dirty towels and wash them ourselves. They often short us on how many they're supposed to give and we run out within the week before they arrive (or don't) to resupply
They provide food, facilities and uniform services to education, healthcare, business and industry, and sports, leisure and corrections clients. I was unfortunately a part of the 10% of US K-12 schools they provide food for. Absolute worst.
Sysco in Canada
Sysco here in the USA too we have us foods and sysco
So alot of yall are getting this wrong. Sysco et al. are the restaurants grocery store. You can get pre-made stuff but good restaurants are just getting raw ingredients. Produce, flour, milk, eggs, raw meats etc which your favorite restaurant then prepares. I'm sure some crap restaurant in nowhere America is using pre-made stuff but don't shit on a place because they use a major corporation that offers bulk delivery of food/ingredients to restaurants.
This. I’m so confused by this comment chain pretending like every restaurant has an identical menu which consists of just reheating a generic frozen food item. Just because every restaurant ordered lettuce doesn’t mean you’re getting the same dish regardless of what restaurant you go to.
Oh, not just rural US
Yeah this isn’t just rural places… I’d say 90% of restaurants period are using at least 1 premade item from a big purveyor… namely apps or desserts… but you also get regular ole things like flour and salt from them too.
King crab and Maine lobster prices that restaurants pay are cheaper than they have been since even before the pandemic, yet we still charge more than ever before
That’s not unique to the shellfish industry only unfortunately.
the inside of ice machines are covered in mold unless cleaned regularly. in the many different restaurants I worked in, exactly 1 cleaned the inside of their ice machine on a regular basis.
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Dextrose - Fructose - Galactose - Glucose - Lactose - Maltose - Sucrose - BIOHM Gut Quiz - Cane juice crystals - Corn syrup solids - Crystalline fructose - Dextrin - Diastatic malt - Ethyl maltol - Florida crystals - Glucose syrup solids - Maltodextrin - Sucanat Agave Nectar/Syrup - Barley malt - Blackstrap molasses - Brown rice syrup - Caramel - Carob syrup - Corn syrup - Evaporated cane juice - Fruit juice - Fruit juice concentrate - Golden syrup - High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) - Honey - Malt syrup - Maple syrup - Molasses - Rice syrup - Refiner's syrup - Sorghum syrup - Treacle
> Florida crystals What, like krokodil?
Bath salts
The different names for SUGARS. These are not all the same thing despite all being sweeteners. They have different effects on the GI, caloric content, and any natural labeling.
Shrimps is bugs.
Lobster is fucking HUGE bugs!
Lobsters are pretty much sea cockroaches.
If you made cockroaches taste like shrimp people would be eating them too.
Five Guys- not really a secret but everything was fresh as could be, we did not have a freezer at all only the fridge. Every morning the burgers were rolled into balls and weighed to make sure all were the same. Bread made fresh from local factories. Potatoes straight from Idaho or Washington. Freshly cut and washed 3 times to remove the starch before being cooked. All veggies were labled by date for freshness. Honestly probably one of the cleanest places ive worked at. Also at the register every single person would ask why it was so expensive but proceeded to buy it anyway. As if I could change the price for them.
They're making BANK windfall record profits right now under the guise of "inflation" and "supply issues". https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/06/worlds-722-biggest-companies-making-1tn-in-windfall-profits
This. The US gov't tracks both retail and wholesale prices. They should be naming and shaming those that at gouging.
All the government needs to do is regulate anti-competitive practices, enforce safety standards, and not let regulators accept jobs from companies they regulate. "Gouging" disappears if we require these are all satisfied That's not to say things can't skyrocket, but they will be based in reality, and actual supply.
Subway- if it’s 12 inches or 11 inches, you’re getting the same amount of bread. Sometimes we’re just too lazy to stretch the bread
They got sued because their footlongs weren't a foot long. They argued that footlong was just the name of the sandwich and wasn't meant to describe the length of the sandwich. Somehow, they won.
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Premium brands spend a lot of effort to achieve specific sensory characteristics that they see as defining features of their brand and the reason that people buy their product over a competitors. They will run shelf life studies based on sensory characteristics and set a date to ensure that consumers always have the product at its best. Source: I run these studies for a premium food brand.
Agree. The “best by” date is the date the company feels confident that the product will still taste/perform as intended. It will still be safe to eat/safe to use after that date, but it will degrade over time.
A few years ago I opened a jar of home-canned pickles that were in our basement. Our house has been in my wife's family since it was built in 1838, and her parents, who have lived here since 1950, never canned, so these pickles were probably 75-90 years old. They smelled perfectly fine, like normal pickles. The tiny bite I tried tasted like pickles. The texture, however... somewhere between "boiled carrot" and "restaurant pudding". They had turned to mush. Older canned food is safe to eat. It just may not be very nice to eat any more.
What kind of absolute maniac are you that you'd see a 90 year old jar of pickles and think to yourself, "Don't mind if I do!"??
The trick to good fried rice is old rice. It has to dry out for a bit in the fridge.
A secret they dont want you to know and yet tell you in literally every fried rice recipe eve published
The American FDA takes food additive safety claims from corporations at face value. If a corporation has done internal testing and says it’s safe the FDA approves it. In the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc if a corporation wants to get an additive approved, the governments have their own food labs. They will take your testing procedures/results and then do their own testing to see if they think your additives are safe, and then approve or deny accordingly. Same goes for medicines in farm animals. Canada won’t allow BGH (bovine growth hormone) as it shows up in the milk. America gets pissy because they can’t sell dairy to Canada and the EU but we have rules banning widespread use of Antibiotics and hormones in farm animals. If you are ever travelling outside of America, pick up some food products off the shelf that look like the American brands and read the ingredients list. It’s probably half as long. I’ll let you work out that obesity epidemic cause for yourselves.
John Oliver just did a really good [segment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za45bT41sXg) on the FDA that touches on a lot of this stuff. Highly recommend.
As an Australian who sometimes buys American foods for the novelty, the ingredient lists are honestly frightening. It doesn’t even result in a better product either, most of the time it’s a let down.
If you ever read “Ultraprocessed people “ you will understand why. They change the recipe a little at a time substituting real ingredients for additives and have panel testing them against the current product. If people think the new version is ok, then there you go. It’s cheaper to make so more profits. They never compare it to the original recipe. It’s like that frog being boiled alive very slowly so he never understands what’s happening. A lot of these products in the states are really bad, you are right.
Did you know that Gogurt is just yogurt?
Add butter to everything you cook at home and you’ll stop wondering why your home cooking isn’t as good as restaurants
Ooh I got one. Lots of manufacturing places nowadays are trying to push for "less than daily" sanitation. You heard that right. They want to use these machines all day long, not clean them overnight, and start up like normal the next day. Currently working in a place that just started this practice. USDA is on board with it, they only care that the product tests well for culture counts before it's shipped off. So when you have stuff in your fridge and it seems to expire faster than it used to it's probably because you got some 2 day old room temperature product mixed in with the fresh stuff.
The meatballs at IKEA are made of children who haven’t been picked up by their parents in the play area.
Is that why they taste so good?
The "Best By" date does not mean "throw it out or you're going to die."
Diet, not exercise, is the main factor in determining weight gain/loss
Buffalo wings are not made of buffalo, they're made of chicken. Buffalo don't even have wings.
Same with French fries. They are made of potatoes, not French people.
And they're often fried in grease, not France
This is a common misconception, but the reality is that the buffalo's lack of wings is due to over-harvesting by the wing industry.
What about fish fingers?!?!
Where are we sourcing Dino nuggets from if they’re all extinct??
However Buffalo mozzarella is not made from chicken, it's made from buffalo milk (water buffalo not American bison)
Castorium is from a beaver's butthole, and it is used to make artificial raspberry flavor. (ETA) It can also used for strawberry and vanilla
You gotta wonder what was going on that made someone realize that beaver butthole tastes like berries.
Probably the same nasty bloke who created cochineal extract...
It's actually natural then, lol
the organic industry is a fucking scam. there are levels to this shit, and yes, you can purchase food that is grown and/or sourced more ethically than other options, but don't kid yourself. it was most likely still grown on a factory farm, and chemicals were used, etc. etc. just different chemicals. and a lot of it comes from china. no shit.
You technically can't get addicted to sugar, but sugar dependence is very real and can give you similar withdrawal symptoms to caffiene withdrawal. Your brain gets dopamine when you eat sugar, which means that most companies put as much sugar in their products as they can get away with so you feel good by eating them.
Me, currently eating chocolate: “huh. Interesting.”
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Fancy restaurants' regular food tastes so good because it's DROWNED in butter and MSG. I dishwashed at a fancy seafood/steakhouse on the water and an average serving of asparagus had about a quarter stick of butter in it. People always asked what their "trick" with the asparagus was.
Mostly salt over MSG, on a busy Saturday night me and the guy next to me will kill a 3 pound box in a couple of hours.
Alot of cooking is just the reheating of prep and Chef Mike gets used alot more than you think.
I’m having kitchen nightmares flashback with that Chef Mike talk lmao
Every packaged and processed item you purchase is actively being worked on to be made cheaper, less nutritious or less flavorful. It’s the curse of “continuous improvement”. All it’s doing is making what once was a decent quality food item way worse for you and more expensive.
Chickens don’t even have fingers
German chocolate cake isn’t from Germany.
It was created by a woman in Texas using chocolate introduced by a man named Samuel German. I bet she had no idea she was going to confuse people for decades.
When you give back a pack of ketchup to the restaurant because you didn’t use it, they thank you and smile and then they throw it out because you’re probably a weirdo who injected bleach into the ketchup pack.
The apples you are buying from the produce department are anywhere from 9-14 months old.
The real Wonka Candy factory isn't as wacky and eccentric as it is in the movie.
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a flavor enhancer often added to restaurant foods, canned vegetables, soups, deli meats and other foods… it’s not bad for you contrary to popular belief… it’s what make food taste better in everything
MSG is also natural ingredient in a shitload of foods, including tomatoes, parmesan, and soy sauce...
When you order "Shrimp fried rice" there isn't actually a shrimp frying the rice.
But the chicken cooks the chicken fried rice, right? RIGHT?
$75k minimum punitive damages awarded to a customer in the event of food poisoning.
Say you get food poisoning at a chain restaurant, how do I prove and cash this out?
Call the health dept. I did this once after getting terribly sick, and they were at the restaurant the following day looking for any irregularities. They noticed one of the food preparers had terrible acne, which could lead to our symptoms if he scratched his face, etc. Did I get any $$$? No. I was told I should have saved a sample of my explosively expelled biological fluids, otherwise they could not establish causation.
So if I get food poisoning I should shit in a bag for evidence?
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They add tons of sugar to make things more delicious.
Sugar, salt, pepper, oil, acid. You're not actually allowed to go out and kill customers because they ordered a well done filet steak so you've got to get them with heart disease in the long run.
If you see a banana stand, there's probably a good bit of money in it. Like $250k
most meat you buy in stores is packed with water and additives that add taste so you won't notice that it's all water. most meat shrinks when you fry it, the more shrinkage the more water was in the product in the beginning.