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1 item forgotten in that list: fresh, tasty ingredients. Japanese produce and meats are just fussed over to such a degree for which an American consumer has no

1 item forgotten in that list: fresh, tasty ingredients. Japanese produce and meats are just fussed over to such a degree for which an American consumer has no frame of reference. The fruit and veg tend to be larger, less bruised / browned, and overall of better taste. As ingredients this makes for better food. Perhaps less commercialized farming? IDK. They do spend a larger portion of their household income on groceries, so this is part of the answer. Edit: By "larger" I don't mean serving size, I mean natural size of the fruit and veg. I lived in Japan for 15+ years. The produce there compared to the produce in my US Trader Joe's, was larger. And tastier. I don't know how they did it, because I too would have assumed that larger meant less tasty. Coming back to the US and seeing scrawny fruit was a shock. I wonder if the US producers are sending their largest / best overseas? Or perhaps TJ's and Fred Meyer is buying B class produce?

hx87 10y ago
> The fruit and veg tend to be larger This is certainly false, as few heritage fruit and vegetable breeds approach the size of their commercial counterparts. Larger isn't better most of the time though, and smaller versions tend to haver stronger, more intense taste.
- SamBam 10y ago
  Agree, and this is the case world-over. Coming from Italy, I'm always amazed how large US tomatoes/zucchini/eggplants/etc are, and those big, watery vegetables are almost always tasteless in comparison. I think it's a combination of selecting varieties that produce bigger fruit, as well as waiting longer to pick, so as to produce the largest (most water-heavy) produce.
  - bootload 10y ago
    "Coming from Italy, I'm always amazed how large US tomatoes/zucchini/eggplants/etc are, and those big, watery vegetables are almost always tasteless in comparison." From Melbourne, @SamBam what do think is the reason? My own personal observation, growing both Roma and large Beaf steak variety tomatoes in a home plot, is it's a combination of cultivar and heat. I agree on variety chosen. The commercial varieties are combinations of size, colour, season and preservation. Not necessarily taste. So it maybe the sugar content. Leave the tomatoes in that sun, pick them when they are ripe and the taste is there. Back at the supermarket, picked early and cooled... not so much flavour.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    The problem is less commercial growing and breeding and more that US consumers have no notion of seasonality, and will happily buy asparagus in September and tomatoes in March. It doesn't help that Italy has a longer tomato growing season than most of the US.
    - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
      >The problem is less commercial growing and breeding and more that US consumers have no notion of seasonality, and will happily buy asparagus in September and tomatoes in March. I mean, in our defense, if we actually ate mostly or only what was in season locally, we would mostly live on squash, beans, bread, and potatoes. Real, tasty vegetables are just plain difficult to grow across much of the country, and shipping from the places with easy growing to the places with difficult growing brings in all the tradeoffs of trucked produce.
  - rabboRubble 10y ago
    Don't remember the size of Japanese tomatoes. I suspect they are probably similarly sized otherwise I'd have some sort of feeling about them. I only saw zucchini for sale once in Japan and, for what is nearly a prolific weed -- can hardly give away all zucchinis if you have one plant, the zucchini cost like $10 a piece so I refused to buy them. The most commonly sold variety of eggplant in Japan is the Italian type which is hardly sold in the US and naturally smaller than the US standard regular / classic type. So not really comparable. Cucumber variety is also different. The US normally sells straight 8 type. The Japan variety is, I think, a Japanese cucumber and a different type. So not comparable.
    - mattnumbe 10y ago
      >zucchini cost like $10 a piece Out of season? We buy them for 100 yen, which is still more than free, but they they taste better than the huge ones I've had in the US. Tomatoes tend to be beefsteak, so not very good for sauces, but big and nice in salads, or mini tomatoes.
      - rabboRubble 10y ago
        May have mentally added a zero to the price :-) Considering they aren't my favorite, anything above a yen is too much.
- leemailll 10y ago
  The Fuji apple and some kind of peach can be super large compared with ones sold in US and they also taste much better
- mikekchar 10y ago
  It's not actually false, but you are also not wrong :-) I will explain. Japan has a very different agriculture system from most places I've lived in. After WWII a million people died of starvation. Japan had very poor food distribution practices in place and had been importing nearly everything. When the Americans blockaded Japan, they literally starved. Even when the occupying forces started to distribute food, it was impossible to get it out to the starving people. The US occupation of Japan was remarkable in many ways and they made many laws which are still on the books (including the bizarre pornography laws that still exist here!). Japanese culture is such that people don't tend to question authority and so they will follow the law even if they think it is strange. Many of the really good laws in Japan were put in place during the occupation, but they are things that you would never be able to get away with in most other countries. The current agriculture system is one of those things. What they did was mandate that designated farm land could never change designation. So it is illegal to build on farm land. They also made it illegal to sell farm land. The only time farm land is for sale in Japan is when the owning family dies out. The resulting sale has really complicated rules which I don't understand. The result of this is that all farms are small and they are owned by a wide variety of families. The modern factory farm basically just doesn't exist here (except up in Hokkaido where there is a lot more room -- and I think people are farming on non-farm designated land). In addition to this, they set up a food distribution monopoly. This food distribution monopoly was mandated to distribute food locally. The intent was to have many, many small farms making many, many different products and to have very good distribution from the farms to cities -- because all produce is local. This created an incredibly robust (if inefficient from a price perspective) production and distribution system. The third piece of the puzzle is that they made the import of all essential food products illegal. Although due to external pressures this is very much relaxed now, it is still illegal to import rice for anything other than glue manufacture, for instance (although possibly it is legal now for alcohol production... I can't remember). This allowed the distribution monopoly to dictate prices that would allow local production to continue. This system works fantastically well. Many foreigners are skeptical (and frustrated with their inability to trade -- a fact that constantly amuses me given that it was set up by the US in the first place). However, I live in the country side. When I go to the grocery store the food in it is grown by my neighbours. They even write the farmer's name on the bags of produce (and even have a picture of them!) Some food is grown one or two prefectures away. A very small amount (like dairy products) is produced in places like Hokkaido. Only recently have I started seeing produce from other places in the world. What has this to do with the topic? I'm glad you asked! Produce is picked fresh and put in the store that day or the next day. I know this because the JA (now a private semi-monopoly food distributor) is down the road from me. Anybody can go in and watch them work (farmers are going in an out of there all the time). So when you have tomatoes, for example, they are red when they are picked. They go to the JA, sit for a couple of hours and then go to the store. The store holds produce on average for 2-3 days, apparently. Fruit is sweet because it is ripe. It also doesn't last. Many foreigners are surprised when they buy a basket of strawberries and it is rotten in 2 days. So even though Japanese farmers choose to grow larger varieties, the produce in the store is dramatically better than the produce you normally find in grocery stores around the world. The other thing is that fruit and vegetables are expensive. Normally I think it's nearly twice as expensive as what I was used to in Canada. What this means is that for fruit production, they often limit yield. Not only that, but they do things like manually tie paper bags around fruit when it is growing so that it does not get eaten by birds. When they grow melons (one of the specialties of my area), the farmer gets up every day and turns them so that the sugar is evenly distributed through the whole melon (if you don't do this, the side that was nearest the ground is dramatically sweeter -- you can test this yourself by cutting a melon in half and tasting it blindfolded). Production is very, very small and prices are very, very high so they can do this kind of thing that would be crazy anywhere else. For the very best fruit, the farmers charge insane prices. The best apple from a crop of apples will be sold for upwards of $10 US -- for a single apple. Melons can go for as much as $100 US. A perfect bunch of grapes, picked at the perfect time can be $20. I have friends who own businesses and thanks to the gift culture in Japan, they often receive these super-fruits from their farmer customers. Since they receive more than they can eat, I sometimes benefit from a re-gift (also part of the wonderful Japanese gift culture). I seriously have never eaten fruit like this before -- even from a home grown garden. These farmers are professionals and it shows in their work. So you are correct, but are discounting the impact that the Japanese agricultural system has on the produce. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the Japanese people would get over their obsession of big fruit. I can't imagine how delicious they could make good varieties.
emodendroket 10y ago
Vegetables and especially fruits in Japan are very expensive. And I agree with the other guy; the fruits and vegetables (and portions of most other things you buy) are smaller.
vmarsy 10y ago
> The fruit and veg tend to be larger, less bruised / browned, and overall of better taste. I disagree about the size & appearance. I wouldn't say this means the veggie would be more tasty. But I definitely agree on the taste part. This is something I found in common between French and Japanese cuisine: Simplicity, but very good quality ingredients. (maybe this is why there's so many 3 Michelin stars in Japan) In the US I would say it's hard to enjoy good French/Japanese for that reason. On the contrary, it's easier to enjoy the cuisines which relies more on spices, such as Indian cuisine, because those spices taste good everywhere.
- rory096 10y ago
  >(maybe this is why there's so many 3 Michelin stars in Japan) You may be interested in this recent reddit thread about Japanese French cuisine. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/537bio/spoilers_shokugeki_no_souma_ni_no_sara_episode_12/d7qkddy https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/537bio/spoilers_shok...
- asimov42 10y ago
  Not really, I know quite a few (conservative) Indians who haven't been able to stay in the US simply due to the taste of food. IMO Indian spices are much harder to get right, whereas French cuisine relies much more on very expensive ingredients.
  - sk5t 10y ago
    Much French cuisine is built around coaxing flavor from inexpensive/undesirable ingredients. Expensive haute cuisine has little to do with the baguette, stew, stocks, etc., of regular food.
- rabboRubble 10y ago
  Thinking about my "size" comment more. Some anecdotal observations: Asian pears : Japan softball sized, US hardball sized Carrots : US carrots are hard to cut Japanese style (really is just julienned) because they are so narrow at the fat end. Roll around on the cutting board like a marble. US carrot about the thickness of my thumb. Japan carrots were fat like a silver dollar and were easier to slice into stackable sheets. Apples : I liked the cheaper apples (Fuji) in Japan. Weirdly the more expensive ones were less tasty and larger. The Fuji's probably size-wise same as the US. Grapes (the expensive hot house types) : Japan's were sized like a small plum. Strawberries : seemed more uniformly large. Still damn tasty. Anyway, those are my kitchen observations.
rawnlq 10y ago
Larger probably just means they have embraced genetically modification more? (Unlike americans who place ridiculous premiums on "organic" produces)
- coldtea 10y ago
  Nope, they ban GMOs. And nothing ridiculous about it either. Even if fears are wrong, GMOs are used to create bottom of the barrel, mass market consumption food. They are for crops to be yield faster, fend against diseases etc, become bigger, and general give cheaper mass quantities -- that is, meant for the same kind of producers that pile in pesticides, hormones, etc, and create stuff to look big and shiny (sometimes due to added food colouring) on supermarket shelves -- not exactly known for their carefully produced fruits and vegetables. Rooting for GMOs is like cheering because one eats fast food, or smokes cigarettes, just because there's food science involved in making them more addictive...
  - rawnlq 10y ago
    In terms of your fast food analogy: the study of molecular gastronomy could be used for making addictive food but can also be used to make breakthroughs in high end cuisine. There's no reason why GMO can't be used to make good produce even better.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Or, you know, save millions of people from malnutrition.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        That's the red herring argument, analogous to "think of the children" when it comes to privacy. Invariably, such better yields are not done out of some corporate goodness of heart to save people from malnutricion. The companies would rather pocket the profits from lower production costs and sell the produce at the same price or close... In fact the savings from more resistant fruits and vegetables, are offset a lot from high prices to sell seeds, and exclusive rights to GMO seeds. The same way drugs that cost little to produce (research and approval process included -- when the company has already recouperated and brings in mucho dinero from them) are still not allowed to be sold near cost in Africa and other such place, despite the potential to save millions of people, because profits.
wdewind 10y ago
> Japanese produce and meats are just fussed over to such a degree for which an American consumer has no frame of reference. The Japanese are famous for high quality Kobe beef, but the truth is most meat in Japan is actually not very high quality at all and Kobe is a relatively rare exception. Same with poultry. Most people don't want to believe it but, despite all the McDonald's and factory farming, America has the best meat on average, and at maximum too.
- linkregister 10y ago
  I assert that anyone who has visited Argentina or Uruguay would strongly disagree with you that any country in North America would outperform their beef in flavor. I would easily be disproven if you had some kind of authoritative source. I would agree with your assertion that Japanese beef is not high-quality compared to Australian or U.S. meat. I think the parent poster was talking about produce, though.
  - wdewind 10y ago
    > I assert that anyone who has visited Argentina or Uruguay I have not myself been to either of these places but know several knowledgable people who have who all say the beef was fine but not as good as American. > I would easily be disproven if you had some kind of authoritative source. Check out the movie http://steakrevolution.com/ http://steakrevolution.com/ (it's available on Netflix as well). They talk extensively about why American beef is the best, but when it comes to comparing it to South American beef (including Brazilian) it basically has to do with climate, and what cattle need to be bred for that climate. > I would agree with your assertion that Japanese beef is not high-quality compared to Australian or U.S. meat. I think the parent poster was talking about produce, though. Parent poster specifically mentioned meat.
- gkanai 10y ago
  > Same with poultry. Not sure where you are getting your information- sources would back up your claims. Japanese restaurants can serve high-quality chicken raw. Japanese eggs are eaten raw by a majority of Japanese. This would be unthinkable in the salmonella-filled chicken foodstream of the US.
mattnumbe 10y ago
> The fruit and veg tend to be larger The natural size of the fruit/vegetables here are exaggerated when you go to a normal supermarket. Chain supermarkets only sell visually appealing fruits and vegetables. Throwbacks go into juices, restaurants, and B-grade supermarkets, where you can buy a 5 kilo bag of "misshaped" carrots for a few hundred yen. The taste also seems to be standardized. For example, I prefer the carrots you can buy in the US to those you find in Japan. Japanese supermarket variety carrots have a much milder flavor than those I've had in other countries. Standardization is a key word in Japanese society ensuring a certain type of quality at a cost.

hx87 10y ago

> The fruit and veg tend to be larger This is certainly false, as few heritage fruit and vegetable breeds approach the size of their commercial counterparts. Larger isn't better most of the time though, and smaller versions tend to haver stronger, more intense taste.

SamBam 10y ago
Agree, and this is the case world-over. Coming from Italy, I'm always amazed how large US tomatoes/zucchini/eggplants/etc are, and those big, watery vegetables are almost always tasteless in comparison. I think it's a combination of selecting varieties that produce bigger fruit, as well as waiting longer to pick, so as to produce the largest (most water-heavy) produce.
- bootload 10y ago
  "Coming from Italy, I'm always amazed how large US tomatoes/zucchini/eggplants/etc are, and those big, watery vegetables are almost always tasteless in comparison." From Melbourne, @SamBam what do think is the reason? My own personal observation, growing both Roma and large Beaf steak variety tomatoes in a home plot, is it's a combination of cultivar and heat. I agree on variety chosen. The commercial varieties are combinations of size, colour, season and preservation. Not necessarily taste. So it maybe the sugar content. Leave the tomatoes in that sun, pick them when they are ripe and the taste is there. Back at the supermarket, picked early and cooled... not so much flavour.
- tptacek 10y ago
  The problem is less commercial growing and breeding and more that US consumers have no notion of seasonality, and will happily buy asparagus in September and tomatoes in March. It doesn't help that Italy has a longer tomato growing season than most of the US.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    >The problem is less commercial growing and breeding and more that US consumers have no notion of seasonality, and will happily buy asparagus in September and tomatoes in March. I mean, in our defense, if we actually ate mostly or only what was in season locally, we would mostly live on squash, beans, bread, and potatoes. Real, tasty vegetables are just plain difficult to grow across much of the country, and shipping from the places with easy growing to the places with difficult growing brings in all the tradeoffs of trucked produce.
- rabboRubble 10y ago
  Don't remember the size of Japanese tomatoes. I suspect they are probably similarly sized otherwise I'd have some sort of feeling about them. I only saw zucchini for sale once in Japan and, for what is nearly a prolific weed -- can hardly give away all zucchinis if you have one plant, the zucchini cost like $10 a piece so I refused to buy them. The most commonly sold variety of eggplant in Japan is the Italian type which is hardly sold in the US and naturally smaller than the US standard regular / classic type. So not really comparable. Cucumber variety is also different. The US normally sells straight 8 type. The Japan variety is, I think, a Japanese cucumber and a different type. So not comparable.
  - mattnumbe 10y ago
    >zucchini cost like $10 a piece Out of season? We buy them for 100 yen, which is still more than free, but they they taste better than the huge ones I've had in the US. Tomatoes tend to be beefsteak, so not very good for sauces, but big and nice in salads, or mini tomatoes.
    - rabboRubble 10y ago
      May have mentally added a zero to the price :-) Considering they aren't my favorite, anything above a yen is too much.
leemailll 10y ago
The Fuji apple and some kind of peach can be super large compared with ones sold in US and they also taste much better
mikekchar 10y ago
It's not actually false, but you are also not wrong :-) I will explain. Japan has a very different agriculture system from most places I've lived in. After WWII a million people died of starvation. Japan had very poor food distribution practices in place and had been importing nearly everything. When the Americans blockaded Japan, they literally starved. Even when the occupying forces started to distribute food, it was impossible to get it out to the starving people. The US occupation of Japan was remarkable in many ways and they made many laws which are still on the books (including the bizarre pornography laws that still exist here!). Japanese culture is such that people don't tend to question authority and so they will follow the law even if they think it is strange. Many of the really good laws in Japan were put in place during the occupation, but they are things that you would never be able to get away with in most other countries. The current agriculture system is one of those things. What they did was mandate that designated farm land could never change designation. So it is illegal to build on farm land. They also made it illegal to sell farm land. The only time farm land is for sale in Japan is when the owning family dies out. The resulting sale has really complicated rules which I don't understand. The result of this is that all farms are small and they are owned by a wide variety of families. The modern factory farm basically just doesn't exist here (except up in Hokkaido where there is a lot more room -- and I think people are farming on non-farm designated land). In addition to this, they set up a food distribution monopoly. This food distribution monopoly was mandated to distribute food locally. The intent was to have many, many small farms making many, many different products and to have very good distribution from the farms to cities -- because all produce is local. This created an incredibly robust (if inefficient from a price perspective) production and distribution system. The third piece of the puzzle is that they made the import of all essential food products illegal. Although due to external pressures this is very much relaxed now, it is still illegal to import rice for anything other than glue manufacture, for instance (although possibly it is legal now for alcohol production... I can't remember). This allowed the distribution monopoly to dictate prices that would allow local production to continue. This system works fantastically well. Many foreigners are skeptical (and frustrated with their inability to trade -- a fact that constantly amuses me given that it was set up by the US in the first place). However, I live in the country side. When I go to the grocery store the food in it is grown by my neighbours. They even write the farmer's name on the bags of produce (and even have a picture of them!) Some food is grown one or two prefectures away. A very small amount (like dairy products) is produced in places like Hokkaido. Only recently have I started seeing produce from other places in the world. What has this to do with the topic? I'm glad you asked! Produce is picked fresh and put in the store that day or the next day. I know this because the JA (now a private semi-monopoly food distributor) is down the road from me. Anybody can go in and watch them work (farmers are going in an out of there all the time). So when you have tomatoes, for example, they are red when they are picked. They go to the JA, sit for a couple of hours and then go to the store. The store holds produce on average for 2-3 days, apparently. Fruit is sweet because it is ripe. It also doesn't last. Many foreigners are surprised when they buy a basket of strawberries and it is rotten in 2 days. So even though Japanese farmers choose to grow larger varieties, the produce in the store is dramatically better than the produce you normally find in grocery stores around the world. The other thing is that fruit and vegetables are expensive. Normally I think it's nearly twice as expensive as what I was used to in Canada. What this means is that for fruit production, they often limit yield. Not only that, but they do things like manually tie paper bags around fruit when it is growing so that it does not get eaten by birds. When they grow melons (one of the specialties of my area), the farmer gets up every day and turns them so that the sugar is evenly distributed through the whole melon (if you don't do this, the side that was nearest the ground is dramatically sweeter -- you can test this yourself by cutting a melon in half and tasting it blindfolded). Production is very, very small and prices are very, very high so they can do this kind of thing that would be crazy anywhere else. For the very best fruit, the farmers charge insane prices. The best apple from a crop of apples will be sold for upwards of $10 US -- for a single apple. Melons can go for as much as $100 US. A perfect bunch of grapes, picked at the perfect time can be $20. I have friends who own businesses and thanks to the gift culture in Japan, they often receive these super-fruits from their farmer customers. Since they receive more than they can eat, I sometimes benefit from a re-gift (also part of the wonderful Japanese gift culture). I seriously have never eaten fruit like this before -- even from a home grown garden. These farmers are professionals and it shows in their work. So you are correct, but are discounting the impact that the Japanese agricultural system has on the produce. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the Japanese people would get over their obsession of big fruit. I can't imagine how delicious they could make good varieties.

emodendroket 10y ago

Vegetables and especially fruits in Japan are very expensive. And I agree with the other guy; the fruits and vegetables (and portions of most other things you buy) are smaller.

vmarsy 10y ago

> The fruit and veg tend to be larger, less bruised / browned, and overall of better taste. I disagree about the size & appearance. I wouldn't say this means the veggie would be more tasty. But I definitely agree on the taste part. This is something I found in common between French and Japanese cuisine: Simplicity, but very good quality ingredients. (maybe this is why there's so many 3 Michelin stars in Japan) In the US I would say it's hard to enjoy good French/Japanese for that reason. On the contrary, it's easier to enjoy the cuisines which relies more on spices, such as Indian cuisine, because those spices taste good everywhere.

rory096 10y ago
>(maybe this is why there's so many 3 Michelin stars in Japan) You may be interested in this recent reddit thread about Japanese French cuisine. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/537bio/spoilers_shokugeki_no_souma_ni_no_sara_episode_12/d7qkddy https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/537bio/spoilers_shok...
asimov42 10y ago
Not really, I know quite a few (conservative) Indians who haven't been able to stay in the US simply due to the taste of food. IMO Indian spices are much harder to get right, whereas French cuisine relies much more on very expensive ingredients.
- sk5t 10y ago
  Much French cuisine is built around coaxing flavor from inexpensive/undesirable ingredients. Expensive haute cuisine has little to do with the baguette, stew, stocks, etc., of regular food.
rabboRubble 10y ago
Thinking about my "size" comment more. Some anecdotal observations: Asian pears : Japan softball sized, US hardball sized Carrots : US carrots are hard to cut Japanese style (really is just julienned) because they are so narrow at the fat end. Roll around on the cutting board like a marble. US carrot about the thickness of my thumb. Japan carrots were fat like a silver dollar and were easier to slice into stackable sheets. Apples : I liked the cheaper apples (Fuji) in Japan. Weirdly the more expensive ones were less tasty and larger. The Fuji's probably size-wise same as the US. Grapes (the expensive hot house types) : Japan's were sized like a small plum. Strawberries : seemed more uniformly large. Still damn tasty. Anyway, those are my kitchen observations.

rawnlq 10y ago

Larger probably just means they have embraced genetically modification more? (Unlike americans who place ridiculous premiums on "organic" produces)

coldtea 10y ago
Nope, they ban GMOs. And nothing ridiculous about it either. Even if fears are wrong, GMOs are used to create bottom of the barrel, mass market consumption food. They are for crops to be yield faster, fend against diseases etc, become bigger, and general give cheaper mass quantities -- that is, meant for the same kind of producers that pile in pesticides, hormones, etc, and create stuff to look big and shiny (sometimes due to added food colouring) on supermarket shelves -- not exactly known for their carefully produced fruits and vegetables. Rooting for GMOs is like cheering because one eats fast food, or smokes cigarettes, just because there's food science involved in making them more addictive...
- rawnlq 10y ago
  In terms of your fast food analogy: the study of molecular gastronomy could be used for making addictive food but can also be used to make breakthroughs in high end cuisine. There's no reason why GMO can't be used to make good produce even better.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Or, you know, save millions of people from malnutrition.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      That's the red herring argument, analogous to "think of the children" when it comes to privacy. Invariably, such better yields are not done out of some corporate goodness of heart to save people from malnutricion. The companies would rather pocket the profits from lower production costs and sell the produce at the same price or close... In fact the savings from more resistant fruits and vegetables, are offset a lot from high prices to sell seeds, and exclusive rights to GMO seeds. The same way drugs that cost little to produce (research and approval process included -- when the company has already recouperated and brings in mucho dinero from them) are still not allowed to be sold near cost in Africa and other such place, despite the potential to save millions of people, because profits.

wdewind 10y ago

> Japanese produce and meats are just fussed over to such a degree for which an American consumer has no frame of reference. The Japanese are famous for high quality Kobe beef, but the truth is most meat in Japan is actually not very high quality at all and Kobe is a relatively rare exception. Same with poultry. Most people don't want to believe it but, despite all the McDonald's and factory farming, America has the best meat on average, and at maximum too.

linkregister 10y ago
I assert that anyone who has visited Argentina or Uruguay would strongly disagree with you that any country in North America would outperform their beef in flavor. I would easily be disproven if you had some kind of authoritative source. I would agree with your assertion that Japanese beef is not high-quality compared to Australian or U.S. meat. I think the parent poster was talking about produce, though.
- wdewind 10y ago
  > I assert that anyone who has visited Argentina or Uruguay I have not myself been to either of these places but know several knowledgable people who have who all say the beef was fine but not as good as American. > I would easily be disproven if you had some kind of authoritative source. Check out the movie http://steakrevolution.com/ http://steakrevolution.com/ (it's available on Netflix as well). They talk extensively about why American beef is the best, but when it comes to comparing it to South American beef (including Brazilian) it basically has to do with climate, and what cattle need to be bred for that climate. > I would agree with your assertion that Japanese beef is not high-quality compared to Australian or U.S. meat. I think the parent poster was talking about produce, though. Parent poster specifically mentioned meat.
gkanai 10y ago
> Same with poultry. Not sure where you are getting your information- sources would back up your claims. Japanese restaurants can serve high-quality chicken raw. Japanese eggs are eaten raw by a majority of Japanese. This would be unthinkable in the salmonella-filled chicken foodstream of the US.

mattnumbe 10y ago

> The fruit and veg tend to be larger The natural size of the fruit/vegetables here are exaggerated when you go to a normal supermarket. Chain supermarkets only sell visually appealing fruits and vegetables. Throwbacks go into juices, restaurants, and B-grade supermarkets, where you can buy a 5 kilo bag of "misshaped" carrots for a few hundred yen. The taste also seems to be standardized. For example, I prefer the carrots you can buy in the US to those you find in Japan. Japanese supermarket variety carrots have a much milder flavor than those I've had in other countries. Standardization is a key word in Japanese society ensuring a certain type of quality at a cost.