Posted on 02/07/2022 8:19:44 AM PST by mylife
When I moved from the US to the Netherlands five years ago, the grocery store was an adjustment.
Some ingredients I used to buy, like chocolate chips, aren't available here. But it's possible to find some American ingredients and snacks in the foreign-food aisle of a Dutch grocery store.
Some ingredients I used to buy, like chocolate chips, aren't available here. But it's possible to find some American ingredients and snacks in the foreign-food aisle of a Dutch grocery store.
Some ingredients I used to buy, like chocolate chips, aren't available here. But it's possible to find some American ingredients and snacks in the foreign-food aisle of a Dutch grocery store.
Here are a few of the foods in my local grocery store's "American" section:
Candy bars might come as a bottled shake
(Excerpt) Read more at insider.com ...
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Did the pancake mix used to be called Aunt Jemima?
My thoughts exactly. Twix milk shakes? Bleck!! Why not just inject fat & cholesterol directly into ones veins? Now we are trying to export our obesity. I thought a section I read about all sports drinks on U.K./European shelves was very telling about different approaches to food: in U.K., Gatorade/sports drinks have to have natural flavors & colors. They don’t allow you to say something is healthy or diet when it isn’t. False advertising! Good idea. They also don’t allow retouched photos to be used to sell makeup/personal care items of any kind. False advertising! Smart and honest 😉
wish we had Lidl here.
Brother cooked lamb from Aldi yesterday same price as ground chuck, but not always available.
Yes, it used to be owned by Americans. I believe the Danzansky family was involved, and Joe Danzansky was the one who tried to buy the Padres and move them to DC for 1974.
The basic supermarket food groups are the same in northern Europe and in the U.S., for the simple reason that the baseline “American” population that established the baseline traditional American diet originated in northern Europe.
There’s the beef food group. The chicken food group. The lamb, fish and dairy products food groups. The green stuff food group is over there somewhere; fresh fruits are probably somewhere nearby. What’s the tonnage that flows out of a U.S. supermarket every day? We could probably use a couple of U.S. military cargo planes to fly the necessaries in each day.
The main difference between the good foods in European and American groceries is price. Most foods are significantly less expensive in the U.S. than elsewhere. This is why the EU works so hard to box U.S. staple foods out of European distribution chains on a variety of specious grounds.
This is where the anti-GMO hysteria originated, by the way. The Europeans realized decades ago that they couldn’t have cute Swiss cows on cute Swiss mountainsides if Swiss farmers had to compete with Iowa and Wisconsin. The EU’s solution was to scare EU consumers with absurd fables about the varieties of corn the cows were eating.
By the same token, European famers with their little microfarms can’t compete with big U.S. farmers practicing economies of scale made possible by modern technology.
So: the whole EU food system is organized as a conspiracy against the public. In my ideal world there would be a U.S. style supermarket — over 40,000 items on average — in every major European city, with prices marked to average U.S. grocery store levels. European consumers could see how badly they are being cheated, and they could vote with their feet. I would be happy to reprogram a big chunk of State Department funding — let’s start with all the DEI officers — to support this as a cultural outreach program.
And I helped!
By the time it went to Ahold, it was run by the Cohens. (I think Izzy was more into race horses than baseball.)
They had lots of nice things that you can’t find anymore - smoked whitefish and salmon, lots of interesting things for the Jewish holidays and lots for Christmas, like Crosse and Blackwell items. They also did a great prepared Thanksgiving dinner that you ordered and picked up the morning of, with a rotisserie-grilled turkey - the last time I ordered that, it all came frozen. And they had good on-site butchers.
All of that seemed to go away when Ahold came in. We generally shop at Safeway now.
If only they’d tried four times.
We had a Lidl open about 2-1/2 years ago. I like them quite well. Excellent croissants in the bakery, worth going just for those. And their store brand Nutella is better than the real thing.
You beat me to it. I was going to say that I’ve been going to Aruba the former Dutch colony for years and I love the cheese sections in the supermarkets. They are huge with an incredible variety.
I have a package of Lidl ground lamb in the refrigerator right now. I love a good lamb burger with feta cheese.
I generally like Lidl, but except for the croissants, their breads seem to go awfully dry and hard really fast.
The main problem I’ve had with them is that they might have something I really like - and then I can’t find it again.
But ours opened in mid-2019, and we started shopping there not long before Covid; so I don’t know how much that has impacted the stock.
the EU is a trade disaster.
Where are the “Ain’t Jemima” products? That’s right, the Dutch wouldn’d know what a black American looks like.
We lived in the NL as well.
My question is why would you want to buy American chocolate chips - mostly wax and sugar - when you are living in a country that has some of the best chocolate in the world???!
Me too!! but no Lidl here.
I take ground lamb, feta, dijon and spinach, just stuff that in Pillsbury dough an bake
so easy, so tasty..
Jemima is verboten!
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