9 ms·

Readers on food inequality in eastern Europe

115 points by spdionis 9y ago

baq 9y ago
A very good example of information and power assymetry in consumer vs corporation relations.
- krona 9y ago
  Are you saying that the local supermarkets are oblivious to the quality of the goods on their shelves, or that the local supermarket is also colluding (presumably in an anti-competitive conspiracy) to force lower quality products on local consumers?
  - baq 9y ago
    i don't have proof for the second so won't make a statement like that, but i do live in eastern europe and the difference after a few hours drive west is noticeable. less/none palm oil in food, more detergent per unit of mass in washing powder, etc. - that's just reading the labels of otherwise same brand names.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Why can’t anyone open their own stores in Romania, and just sell quality food at reasonable prices?
  - zzzcpan 9y ago
    There is a lot of regulation on food exports and imports in the world, which limits availability and global competition, making it very hard to open their own stores with better food.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      The whole idea of the EU was you could import the same things under the same terms in every EU country. Why is that not happening here?
  - timthelion 9y ago
    In the Czech Republic, there are Vietnamese people who make their living buying food in Germany and selling it here. Doing so is illegal. I'm not sure why.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      Find out why it’s illegal and you’ve likely pinpointed the real cause of the problem.
      - ac29 9y ago
        Its probably not illegal necessarily, you can certainly sell imported food. The way they are doing it is probably illegal (loading up a van with food and driving it across the border without declaring it/having it inspected/having permits/etc).
        valuearb 9y ago
        It should be possible to sell the same goods for roughly the same prices anywhere in the EU. My guess is the problem here is a lack of a demand for higher quality foodstuffs.
        timthelion 9y ago
        But if the Vietnamese can make money selling German food for more than German prices (they have to make a profit ;) ) in the Czech Republic, then obviously demand exists.
dogma1138 9y ago
On the other hand they are in a unified market with fixed fees, are limited in their ability to import outside of the EU, have little to no direct control over subsidies and will not be able to afford the same food prices that the richer countries pay nor do they have the ability to economically grow some many of the food items in question like the Mediterranean basin European countries do. The sad truth is when you are the poor fellow and had given up sovereignty over the many of the economic tools available to sovereign nation states you'll get shafted no matter what.
- rocqua 9y ago
  I don't think you'll find many Romanians that'd like to leave the EU. Even simply due to the net money flow from the EU into Romania.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    I didn't say they should leave the EU but they also can't really win in a fight against the purchasing power of wealthier countries in a single market when they can't import out of it other than via the existing EU channels. Denmark imports tomatoes from Italy at the same duty rates as Bulgaria which are zero. Denmark has more money, normally countries would enforce both import and export duties since there are no duties effectively Bulgaria and Denmark and Bulgaria can only compete on price per unit and neither country can use any other tool to control the price. If Bulgaria wants to import Tomatoes from say Turkey or Israel they also have to go through the EU red tape and effectively pay a "fixed" price which is more or less set to protect EU tomatoes growers. Bulgria also cannot subsidize Tomatoes for the most part without violating EU regulations. Now Bulgria gains a lot form being an EU nation, having lesser tomatoes is the price they pay.
- izacus 9y ago
  I think you missed the part which talks about people actually crossing borders to shop the more expensive versions of products. I remember this happening regularly in the 1990s when people from ex-Yugoslavia drove over to Italy/Austria to shop for better quality (although more expensive) products.
rocqua 9y ago
There is a very simple question here. How much cheaper is this lower quality food? I think no-one disputes that the food is lower quality. The question is how much of a discount this gets, and why stores haven't created more expensive better quality options. I recall an item on Dutch news that seemed to state that Romanians wanted the same products as Austria at a lower price. This is unlikely to be accurate reporting, because that stance is obviously unreasonable. That is presuming the desired price differential isn't just reflective of the cost savings by potentially having lower payed employees.
- izacus 9y ago
  I think the more problematic thing is that the corporations effectively lie - Milka, Nutella, etc. will have the exact same packaging but notably different contents. I doubt it would be such a huge issue if the brands would differ, but effectively saying "eh, those eastern europeans don't deserve the same amount of chocolate in their Milka!" doesn't stand well with a lot of people.
  - vilhelm_s 9y ago
    It's hard to define when this is problematic though. Coca Cola uses different recipes in the U.S. and in Mexico. A "Milky Way" is a completely different candy in America and in Europe, but sold in the same wrapper. The complaint here is that the Eastern European versions are worse, not just different, but it seems hard to legislate that.
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    "eh, those eastern europeans don't deserve the same amount of chocolate in their Milka!" I can't imagine any executive saying that. That makes no sense. Why would they? My best guess is that either people are unwilling (or unable) to pay the same price as their Austrian / Belgian / French counterparts for the same product, or the cost of selling the same product and doing business in EE is somehow higher (e.g. due to required kickbacks and high level political corruption) meaning these companies end up with less profits operating in these countries and end up taking a shortcut to maintain their profit margins. Or they actually make more from operating in EE, ending up with higher margins just because they can. That's also a possibility.
freshhawk 9y ago
I kinda laughed at the "Capitalism hasn't delivered" line. Yes it has, the companies are selling food with the lowest cost to produce that they can legally sell and using collusion and marketing to avoid a quality arms race with competitors. I think they were just confused about what was promised.
- wil421 9y ago
  Laughed as well. Maybe Capitalism will fix it if they boycott inferior goods. I’m assuming they probably don’t have a choice.
  - vixen99 9y ago
    One choice is to make use of the plentiful local produce markets.
    - miloshadzic 9y ago
      The problem there is that the best produce gets exported. I've seen garlic from China in supermarkets for example.
      - realo 9y ago
        Ah yes... the infamous garlic from China in my local supermarket. https://www.google.ca/search?q=chinese+garlic https://www.google.ca/search?q=chinese+garlic Personally, I avoid it.
        gruez 9y ago
        The google link you provided returns a snopes article about garlic roots, a blog post from McGill saying theres no problems with using human feces as fertilizer, and a bunch of natural/health food sites claiming Chinese garlic is filled with toxic chemicals. Is there any reputable source that says Chinese garlic is bad?
5_minutes 9y ago
Perhaps also the fact that food is costing 1/5th over there in Romania has something to do with it, for the multinationals. There just isn't the same base profit to make there compared to, say France. And I hate to say it, but it's perhaps it's safe to assume, that the French have a higher culinary tradition then any of the ex Soviet countries, where people's cuisine was very rudimentary. Sure there are people shopping abroad, but it's a minority. The average income in Romania is <$500 (1), so if you want to cater to people that have little money who want to buy branded products, something's gotta give. - 1- https://www.romaniaexperience.com/what-is-the-minimum-and-average-salary-in-romania-in-2017/ https://www.romaniaexperience.com/what-is-the-minimum-and-av...
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  > the French have a higher culinary tradition then any of the ex Soviet countries None of the Eastern European countries now in the EU were ever "Soviet", with the exception of the Baltic countries that were occupied by USSR.
  - cat199 9y ago
    Probably meant 'Soviet-bloc'.. but anyway. The statement still presumes that culinary culture essentially didn't exist before communist times.. I would wager that pre-wwII food quality in France vs Romania was probably fairly similar..
Mediterraneo10 9y ago
As someone from Romania, I see this as a distribution problem and a consequence of consumer apathy. If you live in a few major urban centers, you can buy high-quality food, often the same products as in Western Europe, and the prices are within reach of the average city-dweller. The problem is that in smaller towns, the sole supermarket or two might source only lower-quality products, so you cannot buy better things no matter how much you want to or how much money you are willing to spend. Wanting a quieter working environment, I recently moved from a big city to a village. The biggest shock for me is how bad the food that is sold here is. Village shops typically buy all their products from a wholesale store like Macro, sometimes the inferior versions of Western European brands, or often the generic brand. The tomato sauce is mostly sugar and food colouring, the chocolate has no actual chocolate in it, and these products are sold at the same prices as the high-quality food in the cities, so it is not a simple matter of rural people not being able to afford better. The people just accept what they get, and none of my new neighbours understands why I would complain. So, while it may seem unfair to blame the bad food on the people who are the victims of it, if there were more concern from the rural/small-town Romanian public about their food, there might be room for competition and distributors would change to serve them.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  How big is the village? Here in the US, this county of ~30,000 has 3 large supermarkets and many smaller grocers. The 10-15 miles distance to the supermarket means that the smaller places can't get away with selling total crap (it's rather rural, so people mostly have cars). The supermarkets all have store brands with decent quality and several national brands for most items.
  - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
    I couldn’t actually tell you how many people live in this village or the whole comună of which it is a part. However, even being 10–15 km away from the nearest two larger towns does not help, because those two towns have only supermarket chains that are known for lower-quality products and inferior versions of Western European brands. If you really want a large selection of high-quality food, you would have to travel 60 km to the nearest major city, and that is too far for anyone’s regular shopping. Having been to the US and spent time in some rural areas (I did work-and-travel in Alabama years ago), I would not be so quick to claim that your supermarkets have "decent quality". Most supermarket food in the US is much closer to the bad stuff I find in my village shop than the higher quality food you would find in Western Europe or the largest Romanian cities. But perhaps that is a topic for another thread.
nitramm 9y ago
This issue is known for years - similar article from 2016 - http://www.politico.eu/article/a-snack-by-any-other-name-varying-food-standards-irk-new-eu-countries/ http://www.politico.eu/article/a-snack-by-any-other-name-var... This is article in Czech - https://www.dtest.cz/clanek-5156/rozdilna-kvalita-potravin-v-eu https://www.dtest.cz/clanek-5156/rozdilna-kvalita-potravin-v... - but if you scroll down there is table showing products and you can see that the worst quality products are sometimes more expensive.
forfengeligfaen 9y ago
This is not Hacker News material.
peteretep 9y ago
My understanding was we're still in the "is there any evidence phase?" and that this is much a thing as Korean Fan Death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death Any evidence?
- rocqua 9y ago
  If I recall correctly, the Romanian food quality authority researched and published these claims.
chx 9y ago
My brother lives in a town of 8500 in Hungary. That you can't buy food there is less of an issue but even at Budapest it is such a challenge that he visits Austria about every three weeks for a large amount of great but affordable foodstuff. Capitalism did deliver, however: Hungarian people will choose the cheapest crap too often as they earn a lot less than Western Europeans and so that's what you can get.
- biztos 9y ago
  I don't really shop at supermarkets in Budapest, but I have friends who do and who also regularly go to Austria. They swear the better-quality Hungarian produce is sold in the Austrian supermarkets and often for less than the lower-quality stuff costs in BP.
  - chx 9y ago
    We know of a Hungarian sheepherder who sells his lamb meat rather to Austria and Italy than Hungary. The "for less" is not true, the very reason he sells it abroad is because no one in Hungary would pay the price he asks for quality meat.
- chx 9y ago
  by "you can't buy food there" I (obviously?) mean passable quality food. There are supermarkets etc. You just don't want to go there. There is a good bakery tho.
jk2323 9y ago
I think the East European are just very sensitive. Yes, there might be some small differences between East and West Europe with some brands. I remember the Polish freaking out about this. Polish are always afraid that their dick might be shorter and have a serious mix between inferiority and superiority complex. This being said, I traveled a lot in East Europe and did not perceive the food or supermarkets as inferior. Yes, the selection may be smaller. What shocked me was the bad quality of supermarket food in the states. An average supermarket has very low quality food (cheese, milk products, etc.). Yes, Whole foods makes most European supermarkets whine but so do the prices of whole foods.
lvh 9y ago
From the first snippet: > It’s scary when even the fruit available is obviously full of hormones. We had a grapefruit for a while and it became an experiment to see if it would ever go bad. After four months we gave up and threw it away – but it still looked fresh. "Full of hormones" is scary language. Plant hormones exist, but they are very different from animal hormones (which is what prefixless hormones normally refer to). They are indeed used in commercial farming to e.g. help cuttings grow new roots faster, or accelerate fruit ripening (e.g. ethylene is commonly used to ripen bananas). Ripeners are almost the opposite of preservatives, and plant hormones certainly don't explain a 4 month old fresh-looking grapefruit. Neither translates to "fruit full of hormones" in any meaningful sense and it certainly doesn't translate to anything negative. Animals are full of hormones all of the time: if you don't have hormones you die in pretty short order. Plants sans hormones doesn't fare much better. I'm sorry that their agriculture products suck, but perhaps one can say that without making vague scientific-sounding scaremongering statements.
- hoschicz 9y ago
  This is The Guardian quoting a reader, not The Guardian's original writing.
  - lvh 9y ago
    I understand that, but I don’t see how it impacts my point.
  - roel_v 9y ago
    Well yes, the whole problem here is that we're discussing a Guardian 'article' as something that should somehow be taken serious. I mean, let's face it, The Guardian is like Breitbart, except from another corner on the ideological n-dimensional plane.
rayiner 9y ago
This doesn’t make any sense. How do companies get away with shipping lower quality products to Romania unless Romanians are less quality conscious? If they weren’t less quality conscious, then companies would be able to do the same thing in Western Europe.
- 1_2__4 9y ago
  Because the consumer doesn’t matter? What exactly are their alternative options if the only game(s) in town decide to only sell a particular level of product quality? Not asking rhetorically. What exactly is it you’re suggesting these “quality conscious” consumers do? Markets and naked capitalism as solutions go these issues have proven ineffective. This article is evidence of it. And all you suggest is some naive, Econ 101 platitudes.
  - YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
    >Markets and naked capitalism as solutions go these issues have proven ineffective. On the contrary. You're mostly making up that there actually is a huge demand for higher priced, higher quality products there, while the fact that no one has gone for that supposed huge and very available market speaks against that being true. That wishes of a small minority are not being catered for doesn't prove anything.
  - roel_v 9y ago
    Let's say there really is a consumer preference for the 'better', Western-style goods. Why wouldn't there be someone who would drive a truck across the border a few times a week, marking up his products say 5% (which would be more than the profits supermarkets make - retail grocers are one 2-3% margins)? I mean, if people are so desperate, they'd buy his stuff right out of the back of his truck, right? The reality is much more nuanced than what you're suggesting. The reality is that people don't care as much, and that producers aren't as stupid/greedy as you make them out to be. Their buying patterns are what economists call a revealed preference. Sure, if you ask them, people will all say that they want the best-quality products. Turns out though (and not just there, but everywhere) that in reality people want a mix between quality, affordability, perception, and other things. (oh, and suggesting that an article in the Guardian of all places is "evidence" of anything is laughable)
kwhitefoot 9y ago
It's not only Hungary that has yoghurt with flour in it, there are several brands in the US that bulk the product up with corn starch with the inevitable and negative effect on the taste and texture. When flying SAS from Norway/Denmark to Newark I will eat yoghurt on the way to the US but not on the way back because then they have been supplied with the US version. It's not that there is no good yoghurt in the US of course it's just that it seems to be allowed to put stuff in it that doesn't belong so some manufacturers do.
- forinti 9y ago
  It's so easy to make yoghurt, I wonder why most people don't do it. Add jelly, honey, or whatever you like, and you get something that's better than even the most fancy brands.
  - roel_v 9y ago
    It's easy to make something that looks like yogurt with some milk and yeasts, but consistently making something that is convenient and tastes as good (including texture and potential intestinal effects on people sensitive to it) is far from easy. Try to buy 10 different yogurts (from a variety of supermarkets and specialty shops) and do a comparison on taste, texture, propensity to de-emulsify, etc. You'll find that there is a very wide range. And try to reproduce that one great yogurt you had somewhere at home. I mean, I've done the whole comparison above (and many more than 10) in a quest to replicate the yogurt from The Yogurt Shop in Adelaide's (AU) Central Market (which, from what I've been able to find, is the way it is because of a combination of two different yeast strands as well as a specific straining method they use), and I've tried many, many different ways of making yogurt - and still fail to make something like it. I mean, I won't call myself an expert because I don't even have a degree in anything biology or food production related, but I do have enough experience to say that making (good) yogurt is not 'easy' - at least not in the way that it would make sense for people to do it themselves as anything else than a novelty.
    - kwhitefoot 9y ago
      All that is true but I think the OP's point was that it is easy to make yoghurt, not that it is easy to make some specific type. And it is easy if you can get hold of a pot of live yoghurt, then all you need to add is warm milk and patience and you will have something just as good as a lot of the ordinary supermarket stuff. Of course, yes, it is a bit of a novelty because it isn't cheaper by a wide enough margin to make the effort worthwhile.
synthmeat 9y ago
I believe root cause at this was (and still is, but reducing) information asymmetry. Before, it was much harder to have customer data (abstracted as nodes of graph) to exchange information. Changes in that information system now manifests in surprise over information that, previously thought identical products, are not identical by region.
heisenbit 9y ago
> ‘Salmon is a disgrace’ > One of the biggest culprits is fish - salmon is a disgrace in the Czech Republic. It is usually cooled to a point before it freezes, then thawed before being passed off as fresh salmon. The cooling data and thawing is written on the side of boxes – but the retailers take advantage of the fact consumers cannot generally read English-language storage instructions. Savvy buyers know to buy goods where labels on products have Czech language labels stuck over the original text. This means the product that is sold in western markets is identical to the Czech market product. A lot of the salmon industry is dealing with frozen fish. Some may even argue frozen fish is safer. Salmon at the moment has a pest problem so prices go up and customers in general are feeling they are getting a bad deal. And then there is the well known fraud passing one fish of as another. This business is fishy, pun intended and that has nothing to do with being in Czech when shopping. Having people who can be quoted with their opinions does not absolve journalists from providing some perspective. The Guardian should know better.
trumpeta 9y ago
I have lived at various points in my life in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Denmark and Germany. This issue has been discussed at least since 2006, but I have never observed a drastic difference between the quality of food, except maybe things like Salmon, but that seems very clear to me that there is no way salmon bought in Slovakia is going to be fresh in any sense of the word
- miskin 9y ago
  On one hand, products are measurably different, yet they are “good enough” so people did not notice/care about it long time. Now when it hit headlines and people feel cheated.
org3432 9y ago
The multional's products sold in western Europe I wouldn't call good quality food, I think the bigger issue is the produce and fresh goods are not very good. And honestly the produce isn't that great in Austria either.
bitL 9y ago
I visited Prague at the beginning of the year; after a week I had stomach issues from the food I bought at their "Albert" supermarket. It was not as bad as when I visited Rio de Janeiro, but definitely put a question mark on what people there have to eat. And the prices were more-less same as in Germany.
- alt_f4 9y ago
  I visited Germany a week ago and had the chance to compare German foods with what's offered in Eastern Europe. The prices were about the same, some things (like chocolate and candy) were cheaper. Overall, the quality of food was of much higher standard.
  - towolf 9y ago
    When you visited, did you notice that the Milka you said is 100g here, isn't anymore? They even put it into the slogan: "Milka Alpenmilch. Für Mich – Für Dich 80g" This whole thing to me sounds like the "chemtrail" conspiracy. http://www.wz.de/home/wirtschaft/schokolade-100-gramm-tafel-ein-auslaufmodell-1.1236713 http://www.wz.de/home/wirtschaft/schokolade-100-gramm-tafel-... https://www.milka.de//Produkte/milka-tafeln-100g?categoryId=1395 https://www.milka.de//Produkte/milka-tafeln-100g?categoryId=...
quickben 9y ago
You are all missing a key point: food additives and misleading advertising. Here in Canada: Carrots can have added orange paint, legally disclosed on the packaging. Yogurt can be from other stuff that milk. Bread has to be labeled as 'whole granins' if entirely from grains, otherwise it's still sold as bread. McDonald's fishburger, isn't made from what is technically a fish. Bacon bits can be from other things than pork. Coffee, doesn't have to be from coffee beans. Things can have taste enhancers, color enhancers, odor enhancers. They can be sold unripened as ripe. Etc etc. I can count all day. When you compare food between continents, you can't ignore the above. The almighty quest for profit will cost you health.
gumby 9y ago
> Toilet paper is rough, flimsy and will actually give you paper cuts. Toilet paper is used in a location where I do NOT want to have a paper cut!
Const-me 9y ago
Eastern Europe is a big place, and there’re multiple different definitions. I live in Montenegro. Technically, by some definition it’s also Eastern Europe. Here, the food quality is awesome. Imported stuff is the same as in Western Europe. Because local market’s small, manufacturers don’t bother localizing properly, i.e. you remove a Montenegrin-language sticker required by law, you’ll likely find “Hergestellt in Deutschland” underneath. The large part of groceries are local. Some of them are from Montenegro: fish (except salmon and a couple other spices not found in Adriatic & not farmed locally; but freshly caught tuna is IMO better than frozen Norwegian salmon), wine, seasonal fruits & vegetables. Some is imported from neighbor countries, of that most is from Serbia (majority of meat and dairy products), some from Croatia, Macedonia, Italy, Greece or Spain.

115 points by spdionis 9y ago

baq 9y ago

A very good example of information and power assymetry in consumer vs corporation relations.

krona 9y ago
Are you saying that the local supermarkets are oblivious to the quality of the goods on their shelves, or that the local supermarket is also colluding (presumably in an anti-competitive conspiracy) to force lower quality products on local consumers?
- baq 9y ago
  i don't have proof for the second so won't make a statement like that, but i do live in eastern europe and the difference after a few hours drive west is noticeable. less/none palm oil in food, more detergent per unit of mass in washing powder, etc. - that's just reading the labels of otherwise same brand names.
valuearb 9y ago
Why can’t anyone open their own stores in Romania, and just sell quality food at reasonable prices?
- zzzcpan 9y ago
  There is a lot of regulation on food exports and imports in the world, which limits availability and global competition, making it very hard to open their own stores with better food.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    The whole idea of the EU was you could import the same things under the same terms in every EU country. Why is that not happening here?
- timthelion 9y ago
  In the Czech Republic, there are Vietnamese people who make their living buying food in Germany and selling it here. Doing so is illegal. I'm not sure why.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Find out why it’s illegal and you’ve likely pinpointed the real cause of the problem.
    - ac29 9y ago
      Its probably not illegal necessarily, you can certainly sell imported food. The way they are doing it is probably illegal (loading up a van with food and driving it across the border without declaring it/having it inspected/having permits/etc).
      - valuearb 9y ago
        It should be possible to sell the same goods for roughly the same prices anywhere in the EU. My guess is the problem here is a lack of a demand for higher quality foodstuffs.
        timthelion 9y ago
        But if the Vietnamese can make money selling German food for more than German prices (they have to make a profit ;) ) in the Czech Republic, then obviously demand exists.

dogma1138 9y ago

On the other hand they are in a unified market with fixed fees, are limited in their ability to import outside of the EU, have little to no direct control over subsidies and will not be able to afford the same food prices that the richer countries pay nor do they have the ability to economically grow some many of the food items in question like the Mediterranean basin European countries do. The sad truth is when you are the poor fellow and had given up sovereignty over the many of the economic tools available to sovereign nation states you'll get shafted no matter what.

rocqua 9y ago
I don't think you'll find many Romanians that'd like to leave the EU. Even simply due to the net money flow from the EU into Romania.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  I didn't say they should leave the EU but they also can't really win in a fight against the purchasing power of wealthier countries in a single market when they can't import out of it other than via the existing EU channels. Denmark imports tomatoes from Italy at the same duty rates as Bulgaria which are zero. Denmark has more money, normally countries would enforce both import and export duties since there are no duties effectively Bulgaria and Denmark and Bulgaria can only compete on price per unit and neither country can use any other tool to control the price. If Bulgaria wants to import Tomatoes from say Turkey or Israel they also have to go through the EU red tape and effectively pay a "fixed" price which is more or less set to protect EU tomatoes growers. Bulgria also cannot subsidize Tomatoes for the most part without violating EU regulations. Now Bulgria gains a lot form being an EU nation, having lesser tomatoes is the price they pay.
izacus 9y ago
I think you missed the part which talks about people actually crossing borders to shop the more expensive versions of products. I remember this happening regularly in the 1990s when people from ex-Yugoslavia drove over to Italy/Austria to shop for better quality (although more expensive) products.

rocqua 9y ago

There is a very simple question here. How much cheaper is this lower quality food? I think no-one disputes that the food is lower quality. The question is how much of a discount this gets, and why stores haven't created more expensive better quality options. I recall an item on Dutch news that seemed to state that Romanians wanted the same products as Austria at a lower price. This is unlikely to be accurate reporting, because that stance is obviously unreasonable. That is presuming the desired price differential isn't just reflective of the cost savings by potentially having lower payed employees.

izacus 9y ago
I think the more problematic thing is that the corporations effectively lie - Milka, Nutella, etc. will have the exact same packaging but notably different contents. I doubt it would be such a huge issue if the brands would differ, but effectively saying "eh, those eastern europeans don't deserve the same amount of chocolate in their Milka!" doesn't stand well with a lot of people.
- vilhelm_s 9y ago
  It's hard to define when this is problematic though. Coca Cola uses different recipes in the U.S. and in Mexico. A "Milky Way" is a completely different candy in America and in Europe, but sold in the same wrapper. The complaint here is that the Eastern European versions are worse, not just different, but it seems hard to legislate that.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  "eh, those eastern europeans don't deserve the same amount of chocolate in their Milka!" I can't imagine any executive saying that. That makes no sense. Why would they? My best guess is that either people are unwilling (or unable) to pay the same price as their Austrian / Belgian / French counterparts for the same product, or the cost of selling the same product and doing business in EE is somehow higher (e.g. due to required kickbacks and high level political corruption) meaning these companies end up with less profits operating in these countries and end up taking a shortcut to maintain their profit margins. Or they actually make more from operating in EE, ending up with higher margins just because they can. That's also a possibility.

freshhawk 9y ago

I kinda laughed at the "Capitalism hasn't delivered" line. Yes it has, the companies are selling food with the lowest cost to produce that they can legally sell and using collusion and marketing to avoid a quality arms race with competitors. I think they were just confused about what was promised.

wil421 9y ago
Laughed as well. Maybe Capitalism will fix it if they boycott inferior goods. I’m assuming they probably don’t have a choice.
- vixen99 9y ago
  One choice is to make use of the plentiful local produce markets.
  - miloshadzic 9y ago
    The problem there is that the best produce gets exported. I've seen garlic from China in supermarkets for example.
    - realo 9y ago
      Ah yes... the infamous garlic from China in my local supermarket. https://www.google.ca/search?q=chinese+garlic https://www.google.ca/search?q=chinese+garlic Personally, I avoid it.
      - gruez 9y ago
        The google link you provided returns a snopes article about garlic roots, a blog post from McGill saying theres no problems with using human feces as fertilizer, and a bunch of natural/health food sites claiming Chinese garlic is filled with toxic chemicals. Is there any reputable source that says Chinese garlic is bad?

5_minutes 9y ago

Perhaps also the fact that food is costing 1/5th over there in Romania has something to do with it, for the multinationals. There just isn't the same base profit to make there compared to, say France. And I hate to say it, but it's perhaps it's safe to assume, that the French have a higher culinary tradition then any of the ex Soviet countries, where people's cuisine was very rudimentary. Sure there are people shopping abroad, but it's a minority. The average income in Romania is <$500 (1), so if you want to cater to people that have little money who want to buy branded products, something's gotta give. - 1- https://www.romaniaexperience.com/what-is-the-minimum-and-average-salary-in-romania-in-2017/ https://www.romaniaexperience.com/what-is-the-minimum-and-av...

Mediterraneo10 9y ago
> the French have a higher culinary tradition then any of the ex Soviet countries None of the Eastern European countries now in the EU were ever "Soviet", with the exception of the Baltic countries that were occupied by USSR.
- cat199 9y ago
  Probably meant 'Soviet-bloc'.. but anyway. The statement still presumes that culinary culture essentially didn't exist before communist times.. I would wager that pre-wwII food quality in France vs Romania was probably fairly similar..

Mediterraneo10 9y ago

As someone from Romania, I see this as a distribution problem and a consequence of consumer apathy. If you live in a few major urban centers, you can buy high-quality food, often the same products as in Western Europe, and the prices are within reach of the average city-dweller. The problem is that in smaller towns, the sole supermarket or two might source only lower-quality products, so you cannot buy better things no matter how much you want to or how much money you are willing to spend. Wanting a quieter working environment, I recently moved from a big city to a village. The biggest shock for me is how bad the food that is sold here is. Village shops typically buy all their products from a wholesale store like Macro, sometimes the inferior versions of Western European brands, or often the generic brand. The tomato sauce is mostly sugar and food colouring, the chocolate has no actual chocolate in it, and these products are sold at the same prices as the high-quality food in the cities, so it is not a simple matter of rural people not being able to afford better. The people just accept what they get, and none of my new neighbours understands why I would complain. So, while it may seem unfair to blame the bad food on the people who are the victims of it, if there were more concern from the rural/small-town Romanian public about their food, there might be room for competition and distributors would change to serve them.

maxerickson 9y ago
How big is the village? Here in the US, this county of ~30,000 has 3 large supermarkets and many smaller grocers. The 10-15 miles distance to the supermarket means that the smaller places can't get away with selling total crap (it's rather rural, so people mostly have cars). The supermarkets all have store brands with decent quality and several national brands for most items.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  I couldn’t actually tell you how many people live in this village or the whole comună of which it is a part. However, even being 10–15 km away from the nearest two larger towns does not help, because those two towns have only supermarket chains that are known for lower-quality products and inferior versions of Western European brands. If you really want a large selection of high-quality food, you would have to travel 60 km to the nearest major city, and that is too far for anyone’s regular shopping. Having been to the US and spent time in some rural areas (I did work-and-travel in Alabama years ago), I would not be so quick to claim that your supermarkets have "decent quality". Most supermarket food in the US is much closer to the bad stuff I find in my village shop than the higher quality food you would find in Western Europe or the largest Romanian cities. But perhaps that is a topic for another thread.

nitramm 9y ago

This issue is known for years - similar article from 2016 - http://www.politico.eu/article/a-snack-by-any-other-name-varying-food-standards-irk-new-eu-countries/ http://www.politico.eu/article/a-snack-by-any-other-name-var... This is article in Czech - https://www.dtest.cz/clanek-5156/rozdilna-kvalita-potravin-v-eu https://www.dtest.cz/clanek-5156/rozdilna-kvalita-potravin-v... - but if you scroll down there is table showing products and you can see that the worst quality products are sometimes more expensive.

forfengeligfaen 9y ago

This is not Hacker News material.

peteretep 9y ago

My understanding was we're still in the "is there any evidence phase?" and that this is much a thing as Korean Fan Death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death Any evidence?

rocqua 9y ago
If I recall correctly, the Romanian food quality authority researched and published these claims.

chx 9y ago

My brother lives in a town of 8500 in Hungary. That you can't buy food there is less of an issue but even at Budapest it is such a challenge that he visits Austria about every three weeks for a large amount of great but affordable foodstuff. Capitalism did deliver, however: Hungarian people will choose the cheapest crap too often as they earn a lot less than Western Europeans and so that's what you can get.

biztos 9y ago
I don't really shop at supermarkets in Budapest, but I have friends who do and who also regularly go to Austria. They swear the better-quality Hungarian produce is sold in the Austrian supermarkets and often for less than the lower-quality stuff costs in BP.
- chx 9y ago
  We know of a Hungarian sheepherder who sells his lamb meat rather to Austria and Italy than Hungary. The "for less" is not true, the very reason he sells it abroad is because no one in Hungary would pay the price he asks for quality meat.
chx 9y ago
by "you can't buy food there" I (obviously?) mean passable quality food. There are supermarkets etc. You just don't want to go there. There is a good bakery tho.

jk2323 9y ago

I think the East European are just very sensitive. Yes, there might be some small differences between East and West Europe with some brands. I remember the Polish freaking out about this. Polish are always afraid that their dick might be shorter and have a serious mix between inferiority and superiority complex. This being said, I traveled a lot in East Europe and did not perceive the food or supermarkets as inferior. Yes, the selection may be smaller. What shocked me was the bad quality of supermarket food in the states. An average supermarket has very low quality food (cheese, milk products, etc.). Yes, Whole foods makes most European supermarkets whine but so do the prices of whole foods.

lvh 9y ago

From the first snippet: > It’s scary when even the fruit available is obviously full of hormones. We had a grapefruit for a while and it became an experiment to see if it would ever go bad. After four months we gave up and threw it away – but it still looked fresh. "Full of hormones" is scary language. Plant hormones exist, but they are very different from animal hormones (which is what prefixless hormones normally refer to). They are indeed used in commercial farming to e.g. help cuttings grow new roots faster, or accelerate fruit ripening (e.g. ethylene is commonly used to ripen bananas). Ripeners are almost the opposite of preservatives, and plant hormones certainly don't explain a 4 month old fresh-looking grapefruit. Neither translates to "fruit full of hormones" in any meaningful sense and it certainly doesn't translate to anything negative. Animals are full of hormones all of the time: if you don't have hormones you die in pretty short order. Plants sans hormones doesn't fare much better. I'm sorry that their agriculture products suck, but perhaps one can say that without making vague scientific-sounding scaremongering statements.

hoschicz 9y ago
This is The Guardian quoting a reader, not The Guardian's original writing.
- lvh 9y ago
  I understand that, but I don’t see how it impacts my point.
- roel_v 9y ago
  Well yes, the whole problem here is that we're discussing a Guardian 'article' as something that should somehow be taken serious. I mean, let's face it, The Guardian is like Breitbart, except from another corner on the ideological n-dimensional plane.

rayiner 9y ago

This doesn’t make any sense. How do companies get away with shipping lower quality products to Romania unless Romanians are less quality conscious? If they weren’t less quality conscious, then companies would be able to do the same thing in Western Europe.

1_2__4 9y ago
Because the consumer doesn’t matter? What exactly are their alternative options if the only game(s) in town decide to only sell a particular level of product quality? Not asking rhetorically. What exactly is it you’re suggesting these “quality conscious” consumers do? Markets and naked capitalism as solutions go these issues have proven ineffective. This article is evidence of it. And all you suggest is some naive, Econ 101 platitudes.
- YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
  >Markets and naked capitalism as solutions go these issues have proven ineffective. On the contrary. You're mostly making up that there actually is a huge demand for higher priced, higher quality products there, while the fact that no one has gone for that supposed huge and very available market speaks against that being true. That wishes of a small minority are not being catered for doesn't prove anything.
- roel_v 9y ago
  Let's say there really is a consumer preference for the 'better', Western-style goods. Why wouldn't there be someone who would drive a truck across the border a few times a week, marking up his products say 5% (which would be more than the profits supermarkets make - retail grocers are one 2-3% margins)? I mean, if people are so desperate, they'd buy his stuff right out of the back of his truck, right? The reality is much more nuanced than what you're suggesting. The reality is that people don't care as much, and that producers aren't as stupid/greedy as you make them out to be. Their buying patterns are what economists call a revealed preference. Sure, if you ask them, people will all say that they want the best-quality products. Turns out though (and not just there, but everywhere) that in reality people want a mix between quality, affordability, perception, and other things. (oh, and suggesting that an article in the Guardian of all places is "evidence" of anything is laughable)

kwhitefoot 9y ago

It's not only Hungary that has yoghurt with flour in it, there are several brands in the US that bulk the product up with corn starch with the inevitable and negative effect on the taste and texture. When flying SAS from Norway/Denmark to Newark I will eat yoghurt on the way to the US but not on the way back because then they have been supplied with the US version. It's not that there is no good yoghurt in the US of course it's just that it seems to be allowed to put stuff in it that doesn't belong so some manufacturers do.

forinti 9y ago
It's so easy to make yoghurt, I wonder why most people don't do it. Add jelly, honey, or whatever you like, and you get something that's better than even the most fancy brands.
- roel_v 9y ago
  It's easy to make something that looks like yogurt with some milk and yeasts, but consistently making something that is convenient and tastes as good (including texture and potential intestinal effects on people sensitive to it) is far from easy. Try to buy 10 different yogurts (from a variety of supermarkets and specialty shops) and do a comparison on taste, texture, propensity to de-emulsify, etc. You'll find that there is a very wide range. And try to reproduce that one great yogurt you had somewhere at home. I mean, I've done the whole comparison above (and many more than 10) in a quest to replicate the yogurt from The Yogurt Shop in Adelaide's (AU) Central Market (which, from what I've been able to find, is the way it is because of a combination of two different yeast strands as well as a specific straining method they use), and I've tried many, many different ways of making yogurt - and still fail to make something like it. I mean, I won't call myself an expert because I don't even have a degree in anything biology or food production related, but I do have enough experience to say that making (good) yogurt is not 'easy' - at least not in the way that it would make sense for people to do it themselves as anything else than a novelty.
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    All that is true but I think the OP's point was that it is easy to make yoghurt, not that it is easy to make some specific type. And it is easy if you can get hold of a pot of live yoghurt, then all you need to add is warm milk and patience and you will have something just as good as a lot of the ordinary supermarket stuff. Of course, yes, it is a bit of a novelty because it isn't cheaper by a wide enough margin to make the effort worthwhile.

synthmeat 9y ago

I believe root cause at this was (and still is, but reducing) information asymmetry. Before, it was much harder to have customer data (abstracted as nodes of graph) to exchange information. Changes in that information system now manifests in surprise over information that, previously thought identical products, are not identical by region.

heisenbit 9y ago

> ‘Salmon is a disgrace’ > One of the biggest culprits is fish - salmon is a disgrace in the Czech Republic. It is usually cooled to a point before it freezes, then thawed before being passed off as fresh salmon. The cooling data and thawing is written on the side of boxes – but the retailers take advantage of the fact consumers cannot generally read English-language storage instructions. Savvy buyers know to buy goods where labels on products have Czech language labels stuck over the original text. This means the product that is sold in western markets is identical to the Czech market product. A lot of the salmon industry is dealing with frozen fish. Some may even argue frozen fish is safer. Salmon at the moment has a pest problem so prices go up and customers in general are feeling they are getting a bad deal. And then there is the well known fraud passing one fish of as another. This business is fishy, pun intended and that has nothing to do with being in Czech when shopping. Having people who can be quoted with their opinions does not absolve journalists from providing some perspective. The Guardian should know better.

trumpeta 9y ago

I have lived at various points in my life in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Denmark and Germany. This issue has been discussed at least since 2006, but I have never observed a drastic difference between the quality of food, except maybe things like Salmon, but that seems very clear to me that there is no way salmon bought in Slovakia is going to be fresh in any sense of the word

miskin 9y ago
On one hand, products are measurably different, yet they are “good enough” so people did not notice/care about it long time. Now when it hit headlines and people feel cheated.

org3432 9y ago

The multional's products sold in western Europe I wouldn't call good quality food, I think the bigger issue is the produce and fresh goods are not very good. And honestly the produce isn't that great in Austria either.

bitL 9y ago

I visited Prague at the beginning of the year; after a week I had stomach issues from the food I bought at their "Albert" supermarket. It was not as bad as when I visited Rio de Janeiro, but definitely put a question mark on what people there have to eat. And the prices were more-less same as in Germany.

alt_f4 9y ago
I visited Germany a week ago and had the chance to compare German foods with what's offered in Eastern Europe. The prices were about the same, some things (like chocolate and candy) were cheaper. Overall, the quality of food was of much higher standard.
- towolf 9y ago
  When you visited, did you notice that the Milka you said is 100g here, isn't anymore? They even put it into the slogan: "Milka Alpenmilch. Für Mich – Für Dich 80g" This whole thing to me sounds like the "chemtrail" conspiracy. http://www.wz.de/home/wirtschaft/schokolade-100-gramm-tafel-ein-auslaufmodell-1.1236713 http://www.wz.de/home/wirtschaft/schokolade-100-gramm-tafel-... https://www.milka.de//Produkte/milka-tafeln-100g?categoryId=1395 https://www.milka.de//Produkte/milka-tafeln-100g?categoryId=...

quickben 9y ago

You are all missing a key point: food additives and misleading advertising. Here in Canada: Carrots can have added orange paint, legally disclosed on the packaging. Yogurt can be from other stuff that milk. Bread has to be labeled as 'whole granins' if entirely from grains, otherwise it's still sold as bread. McDonald's fishburger, isn't made from what is technically a fish. Bacon bits can be from other things than pork. Coffee, doesn't have to be from coffee beans. Things can have taste enhancers, color enhancers, odor enhancers. They can be sold unripened as ripe. Etc etc. I can count all day. When you compare food between continents, you can't ignore the above. The almighty quest for profit will cost you health.

gumby 9y ago

> Toilet paper is rough, flimsy and will actually give you paper cuts. Toilet paper is used in a location where I do NOT want to have a paper cut!

Const-me 9y ago

Eastern Europe is a big place, and there’re multiple different definitions. I live in Montenegro. Technically, by some definition it’s also Eastern Europe. Here, the food quality is awesome. Imported stuff is the same as in Western Europe. Because local market’s small, manufacturers don’t bother localizing properly, i.e. you remove a Montenegrin-language sticker required by law, you’ll likely find “Hergestellt in Deutschland” underneath. The large part of groceries are local. Some of them are from Montenegro: fish (except salmon and a couple other spices not found in Adriatic & not farmed locally; but freshly caught tuna is IMO better than frozen Norwegian salmon), wine, seasonal fruits & vegetables. Some is imported from neighbor countries, of that most is from Serbia (majority of meat and dairy products), some from Croatia, Macedonia, Italy, Greece or Spain.