OT: Ultraprocessed foods from WSJ

[thollandpe]

As a kid growing up in Springfield Mass, we could smell the Dreikorn's bakery. Yes it was just white bread in a plastic wrapper (that we'd "waterproof" our boots with in winter) and maybe it's partially due to nostalgia, but it smelled and tasted great. Especially popping up out of my grandparent's chrome toaster, and smeared with a pat of room-temperature butter that came from a dairy that was also within rock-throwing distance.

My impression is a lot of this degradation in quality is related to the consolidation of food production into ever fewer and ever larger plants. This means ingredients get cheaper and come from farther away, and some get substituted for stuff that lasts longer like partially hydrogenated and soy oils (blecch). And the local stuff went away and never came back.

Like donuts were never exactly health food, but when the batter was made and the donuts were fried at the local Bess Eaton they tasted (and smelled) a lot better than being made in one gigantic plant (looking at you, Tim Hortons in Brantford Ontario) where they're fried in swimming-pool sized vats of soy oil (blecch), frozen to -40 degrees and driven hundreds or thousands of miles to the local shops where they're proofed and finished.

And don't get me started on why the NiCr elements in that old chrome toaster lasted forever and how modern toaster elements are shit, almost literally (FeCrAl is only one letter away from fecal).
Why Your Toaster Will Eventually Fail You | NYT Wirecutter