Posted on 10/02/2020 12:53:34 PM PDT by be-baw
LONDON -- Ireland’s Supreme Court has issued a ruling declaring that for the purposes of tax law, the bread served in Subway's hot sandwiches does not actually meet the legal definition of “bread” because of its sugar content and is rather a "confectionary or fancy baked good."
The case was brought before the court by Subway franchisee Bookfinders Ltd. which claimed that the bread Subway served qualified as a “staple food,” which, in Ireland, means that the bread would be exempt from value-added tax (VAT), thereby saving Subway money.
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I don’t think government should regulate it either.
But I think it is classic corporate-think to load up bread with as much sugar as it takes to think you’ll maximize your sales. Yeah, if they had signs up stating that their bread is 10% pure sugar some people would move on to the next fast-food provider.
It is the same thing as selling a product that looks good for the price but falls apart soon after sale. (That’s not unique to American business, of course.)
But if you were, for example, a small sandwich shop maker who took pride in your product, you wouldn’t load your bread up with sugar to start with. Or maybe you would offer a “sweet bread” option for those who want it.
What? People still go to Subway? I quit years ago when they gave me a Philly Steak sandwich with one oz of meat in it. They deserve to go bankrupt.
Here is the link to a Youtube where they have an Irish taste-testing of Krispy Kreme!
https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/study-finds-subways-chicken-only-contains-about-50-percent-chicken-dna
Thanks for the encouragement. Yeah, I’ll try again, maybe this weekend. I was ambitious when I bought it and got a jar of yeast at the same time. I hope it’s still good but, if not, I presume it’s available in grocery stores again. I know baking ingredients were hard to come by for a while.
Not as silly as a case I recall a few years ago where milk from a cow could not be labelled milk because it lacked the added chemicals.
I never had much luck with a bread machine.
Have had better luck with kneading it for a long time with my KitchenAid mixer.
I have a mixer. Not sure if I have the paddle. I think I do, but I’ve only used the mixer once for something else.
There are a lot of dough-based recipes I want to try. I watch a lot of cooking shows and it seems like a mixer is an essential appliance to have and use.
Let them eat cake (brioche, not pain) <- French lingo.
Tax law can create some weird situations. Like when Pringles argued in court that they were not really potato chips to avoid a European VAT. (Have to agree with the attorneys here that Pringles aren’t a potato chip but I would go on to say nor in any way resemble food.)
Well if you have been to Ireland their bread is really substantive stuff.
The yeast can be quite the critical element. I’m going on what my brother told me who is kind of a cooking fanatic. I think I recall him saying that his results got a lot better when he used a better quality than just store- bought yeast. the thing to remember with baking is that it’s not like a salad where you can add an extra carrot or subtract half a cucumber and it’s still a salad. It is much more like a chemical reaction where the ingredients react in Fairly specific proportions and if you have too much of one, you just end up with unreacted raw material in the final product. The other thing about homemade bread, is that it goes stale in hours, so don’t be afraid of making small batches.
In the late ’80s, I worked at Fuddruckers. They baked the burger buns fresh every morning.
I’d love to get their recipe.
Of course. It’s no surprise that business wants to maximize sales and profits. For “fast-food”, that means cheap ingredients and lots of syrup and sugar and some fillers. For cosmetics it generally means cheap and often harsh cold-mix raw materials just add color and fragrance and churn it out as fast as you can. Even construction these days, a lot of it is cookie cutter a developer buys 10,000 acres and builds 40,000 homes that look exactly alike. Some of it makes sense if the quality is there, to automate construction using pre-fab tilt up walls and standard window sizes etc. For personal products and food consumption, there are plenty of options.
Personally, in my business, we take pride and consider everything we do from the first to the last for the best possible end result. It’s much more expensive and costs the consumer more as a result. But then again, I won’t win competing with the cheapest competitor out there. It’s not what I want to do, nor what I am equipped to do.
Though I will say, sugar aside, for food it is in large part a question of caloric intake vs calories burned. Though personally I subscribe to the Atkins/Keto system - limit carbs and sugars and higher in protein. Keto suggests higher fat while Atkins promotes higher protein.
I personally do not approve of the higher fat theory. Both seem to work well if you want to lose weight... but there is more to it than just pounds there is the whole holistic system to consider - heart, kidneys, lungs etc. Just a side-note. Though I do believe eat a salad about an hour before a meal. I used to eat the French way, salad after a meal. Which probably isn’t bad per se. But the salad first seems good. I was never obese, but in the decades since college I’ve added too many pounds, and lost about half of them fairly quickly just switching away from carbs and sugar.
I believe everything you said is accurate. For now, I’ll rely on the expiration date of the yeast. I’ll probably slice the bread soon after baking and store it in the freezer. I bought some plastic bags for just that purpose. I would only use a couple or four slices a day, and it thaws quickly.
One thing I doubt I’ll every try is sourdough bread. Making and maintaining a starter doesn’t seem worth the effort to me.
I lean in the paleo to keto direction myself. Keeps my blood numbers good and makes it easier to eat less and keep weight off. I try to avoid going especially high in protein and to get plenty of veggies. (Have a good-sized garden.)
Depends on the quality of the fat, you want high Omega-3 fats, not omega-6. Get them from the SMASH fish (Salmon, Mackerel, Anchovy, Sardines, Herring), and grass-finished beef, and avocados.
Indeed. When I first switched over to the Atkins/Keto diet, my blood sugar dropped, my cholesterol dropped... the cholesterol part was astonishing to me because it seems counter-intuitive. More meat = lower cholesterol? How could that be? But in switching over to more protein, I also cut out sugar and carbs.
But actually in my layman’s research, it seems that a lot of cholesterol theories were based on faulty research. It had an inherent bias in that they did not consider or control for sugar or carb intake, only looked for meat intake. I have come to believe there is some correlation between sugar and cholesterol and am not entirely convinced cholesterol numbers are the be all and end all. And I’m speaking as a person with CV disease so I take it seriously enough to have at least done some digging around.
Agreed. But a lot of the Keto promoters push fats from beef and pork. I got no problem with fish. I have always enjoyed fish of all kinds. Except squid. And Urchin.
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