> It's mind boggling how much sugar is in everything
I remember traveling to Western Europe a couple of years ago (I live further East) and trying to buy plain yogurt from a supermarket, I mean yogurt which should have tasted as close as possible to the one my peasant grandma used to make. It was close to impossible to find such a product, as even the yogurt labeled as "plain" had a sweetish taste, you could definitely tell that they had put sugar in it. I imagine that in the US the state of affairs regarding sugary foods is even worse.
its Amazing how much less sugar common foods in Germany have than the USA. It took us a bit to adjust but when we got back all the bakery sweets here tasted disgusting. Wish we could change the culture here to be closer to European in that aspect.
When I was about 10 years old my parents took my siblings and me on a 5 week vacation to the US (I'm from Europe). It was a lot of fun, but I distinctly remember that it was impossible for me to eat the bread that we would buy at the supermarket because it was just too sweet. And this was not because my parents just bought some bread but they actually tried to find some "normal" tasting bread and it was not possible.
But for pudding the problem was kind of the reverse: It was hard to find normal tasting pudding because instead of sugar and fat there were artificial sweeteners in everything.
I used to eat rye bread because it was heartier than white or 'wheat' bread. Because unlike modern wheat rye still had historical ratio's of carbs to protein.
Now it's just rye flavored white bread.
And all the healthy hippie dippie bread have buttloads of hidden sugars in it.
You can always bake your own bread. Takes only about 10 real minutes of your time (plus 2 hours proofing and 30 minutes baking), you know exactly what's in it, and it's certainly cheaper (you just need flour, water, salt, yeast, and optionally a little bit of olive oil).
A more recent published report (some of which uses 2008 data) looks at the consumption of "ultra-processed" foods in Europe. "Ultra-processed" refers to food made in a factory with industrial ingredients and additives invented by food technologists.
Which countries in Europe consume "ultra-processed" food more than any other? The top three are: UK, Ireland and Germany:
Glad to hear, that's a plus for me for German foods then. It was actually the French-speaking part of Switzerland, the Coop stores (which is strange because otherwise they sell great cheese). What's even worse is that after two or three days I was getting accustomed to that sweetish yogurt and I was starting to think that that was its natural taste.
Like I said, after a couple of days even to me it started tasting “normal”, but at first it certainly tasted more sweet compared to what I can usually purchase in my country. Different to what I was accustomed, yes, but also more sweet. For comparison I never had the same issue while buying yogurts from Greece or ayran from Turkey. They also tasted different to what I was accustomed but not sweeter.
I just purchased an Instant Pot recently and it advertised yogurt making.
I didn't try it because I'm indifferent on yogurt here. Now that you've told me that homemade yogurt is significantly different, I might have to give it a try...
I remember traveling to Western Europe a couple of years ago (I live further East) and trying to buy plain yogurt from a supermarket, I mean yogurt which should have tasted as close as possible to the one my peasant grandma used to make. It was close to impossible to find such a product, as even the yogurt labeled as "plain" had a sweetish taste, you could definitely tell that they had put sugar in it. I imagine that in the US the state of affairs regarding sugary foods is even worse.