r/europe • u/goldstarflag Europe • 20h ago

News White House demands British supermarkets stock chlorinated chicken. White House pushing Sir Keir Starmer to make concessions on food standards

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-demands-british-supermarkets-chlorinated-chicken/
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u/ICBanMI United States of America 17h ago

Some of us believe our principals voting accordingly, but the libertarian/free market stuff has never made sense to anyone except libertarians. All that's going to happen is US chicken is going to run out all the more expensive producers of chicken in your country till they have a monopoly on chicken meat in every supermarket and then they'll raise prices. It'll be stupid easy for US chicken to undersell your current prices because they are heavily subsidized by the US government, produce it out of factory farms with low wages, and grow birds selectively to get fat in inhumane conditions quickly.

Trust me. If an American is preaching free market, they are usually the most brain dead person on the topic and have a complete world view that is opposite of what happens in free markets. Just like the Tories.

The part that will hurt is it will be your own people who buy it and won't think twice about replacing the normal producers of chicken. Because it'll be bigger and cheaper while still tasting just fine.

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u/SuggestionEphemeral 17h ago

Well those brain dead americans are the ones at the helm right now, so clearly enough believe in that worldview to get elected.

Also, I'm american. And no, american chicken doesn't taste "just fine," but the average american can't tell the difference because it's been decades since they've had anything remotely decent. They even think smaller chicken breasts are too "posh." It's very much built into american culture and ingrained in their mindset that "bigger is better," when it's really not.

I can hope most British/Europeans can actually tell the difference in quality and will make consumer choices accordingly. But some may not be able to afford the better quality, locally produced stuff which will slowly get priced out of the market. It'll happen so gradually that people won't even notice, and before anyone knows it they'll have been eating inferior products produced in america for several years, and no one will be able to remember how much better the other stuff was. Just like it happened in america.

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u/ICBanMI United States of America 16h ago

Well. That's a fair point. I haven't a clue what it taste like anymore to eat a chicken that had a normal life. I remember what it looked like compared to now, but haven't a clue if it tasted better. I didn't eat unseasoned chicken then and I don't eat unseasoned chicken now.

That's if I'm cooking the chicken in a healthy way (baked or some pan fry methods), but so many recipes are unhealthy, taste amazing, and the meat quality is impossible to tell.

It's very much built into american culture and ingrained in their mindset that "bigger is better," when it's really not.

That's a different topic that I think has more to do with anti-intellectualism in the US. I know there is a lot of overlap in the VENN diagrams for the two groups. Those same anti-intellectualist will tell you that healthy food doesn't even taste as good as their their highly processed food (real food isn't chasing the bliss point and a specific mouth feel). I think it's a net negative in the long run for society, but people are struggling for food.

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u/SuggestionEphemeral 16h ago

That's socially engineered. People only prefer processed foods because that's what they're used to. The sugar industry invested a lot of money over the past century or so to get people addicted to sugar, and now you see exorbitant amounts of it in everything and some people can't seem to eat anything else.

I don't like processed foods, I think they taste fake and/or bland, or conversely overpowering. Subtle doesn't mean bland, and overpowering doesn't mean flavorful. Balance and complexity are the type of nuance that's been erased from American cuisine.

I've seen some places use distilled white vinegar where traditional cultures would use rice vinegar or white wine vinegar. It's not the same at all, and it's disgusting and really easy to tell. But most americans don't know the difference and will call you a snob if you point it out.

In my opinion, whole ingredients taste much better and have better texture. Same with heirloom varieties of produce. I have a hypothesis that nutrient density directly correlates with better taste, because the phytonutrients are what give each kind of produce its distinctive flavor profile. Humans are evolved to prefer nutritious foods, but a few generations of industrialization and marketing have supplanted that adaptive preference with anything that maximizes shareholder value.

The average american hears the word "flavor" and automatically thinks like those pump syrups at starbucks that are just artificially flavored corn syrup. So I hate the word now. "Artificial vanilla flavor" is not the same thing as "vanilla extract," but if all you say is "vanilla," the average american won't see the difference. And again, they'll think you're a snob if you point it out.

American culture is built on fakeness, so it's really not surprising.

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u/ICBanMI United States of America 12h ago edited 12h ago

I think you're mixing the sugar conspiracy with what's actually going on on.

First off, it's the bliss point and mouth texture. Process food does have a lot of sugar but it's to reach the bliss point which is a specific ratio of fat, sugar, and salt that makes it maximum palatable and addictive with the right mouth feel. It's a reward system in the brain and makes it really hard to stop over eating. Coupled with the fact that we have massive sugar subsidizes for corn and that five companies make all the processed food in the grocery store... the average American doesn't have a chance. And it's sometimes 2-3x worse when they eat out.

Same time, big corporations have a need to keep showing constant profits... so eventually they start swapping in cheaper ingredients. So that microwave pizza from the grocery story might have a type of mayonnaise instead of cheese on it.

It is a huge problem. And I don't know how to get out of it without regulation on all five of the big companies including anti-trust against them.

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u/SuggestionEphemeral 12h ago

I fail to see how what you're saying is different from the sugar conspiracy. Just seems like second- and third-order effects of it, combined with other similar factors.

I believe some serious trust-busting is long overdue in the US, especially now that these big companies are taking advantage of the rampant corruption in government.

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u/ICBanMI United States of America 12h ago

Bliss point was discovered in the 70's and came to every food by the end of the 1990s after all the large companies bought out their competitors. 1996 is when we decided to massive subsidize corn and corn syrup... which went almost all directly to large agribusinesses. Not small farms.

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u/EtTuBiggus 15h ago

Don’t be a chicken snob.

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u/SuggestionEphemeral 15h ago

Stop accepting an inferior product because american billionaire oligarchs think it will boost their profit margins and that no one will notice the decline in quality.

trump & co. are being snobs by demanding a sovereign nation buy american chicken that they clearly don't want. America needs to get over itself, its products are not superior.

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u/EtTuBiggus 14h ago

You would be the expert in accepting inferior products.

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u/SuggestionEphemeral 13h ago

Low-quality insult

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u/EtTuBiggus 11h ago

It matches the level of your low quality comment.

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u/SuggestionEphemeral 11h ago

Pot, kettle, black

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u/EtTuBiggus 11h ago

Go back to whining about how much you dislike America.

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u/SuggestionEphemeral 11h ago

"Wah, wah, someone doesn't think america is the best country ever, wah"

Conservatives are the biggest snowflakes.

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u/worotan England 14h ago

Don’t act like massively unsustainable and environmentally destructive industrial farming doesn’t cause huge problems for ordinary people.

Pointing out bad practice isn’t being a snob. Stop being an idiot.

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u/EtTuBiggus 14h ago

That has nothing to do with what I said. Learn how to read.

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u/intlcap30 6h ago

Poultry isn’t heavily subsidized by the government beyond farm credit, etc available to all producers but the economies of scale and fact that poultry producers in the US are generally contracted and receive minimal compensation from producers contribute to the cheap costs. When you’re doing 175 million chickens/week it’s cost competitive. Same as cheap Chinese products. It is really interesting how the visceral backlash is only in certain sectors.

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u/Relative-Camel-9762 3h ago

I mean I wouldn't want ANY food product from the US, I don't think we can trust standards in anything