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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

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.

maxerickson 9y ago
There's no fake chocolate being sold as chocolate or tomato sauce with food coloring in it. Perhaps I read too far into hyperbole?
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  > fake chocolate being sold as chocolate A bunch of candy products have switched to being "chocolate flavored candy". Most candy in the US is total crap, because they've cut out all the parts that make it good to save money.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Sure, despite having a sweet tooth I don't enjoy the majority of candy available here. But my phrasing holds up, even in Walmart you can read the packaging and find real dark chocolate (they stock https://www.ghirardelli.com/dark-chocolate-86-cacao-bar-(317-oz)-60725 https://www.ghirardelli.com/dark-chocolate-86-cacao-bar-(317... ).
  - adventured 9y ago
    > Most candy in the US is total crap, because they've cut out all the parts that make it good to save money. That's almost entirely a myth. Along with the myth that most of the cheese sold in the US is "American Cheese" or "cheese product." These are fantasy lines of attack on the US for people looking for an excuse to bash. Here are two more of those myths: the US only sells mediocre, watered down beer (that one has long since been destroyed, it rarely gets used now); and the US doesn't make any good domestic wine that is competitive with eg French wine. The average Walmart (a mid to lower tier grocery) has a large, normal selection for real chocolate of all varieties (including European). Typically they will have a large half aisle filled with real chocolate candy products to choose from. The US is the world's largest market for real chocolate.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      Wal-Mart is pretty crap on produce and meat, but they’re good at shelf stable stuff like chocolate. The one near me has, as you say, half an aisle of chocolate product of all kinds.
    - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
      > the US only sells mediocre, watered down beer (that one has long since been destroyed, it rarely gets used now) I think that one isn't used so much because people hear that many American regions now have interesting microbrewery scenes. However, the major national brands are mediocre and watered down compared to many national German or Czech brands (that is the whole reason American regional microbreweries have been able to compete). > a large, normal selection for real chocolate of all varieties (including European) That European chocolate in American supermarkets is quite often the lowest-quality stuff from here. For example, Milka. My friends and I spent a lot of time laughing at what American supermarkets think is worth importing. You also see the same thing in India: the worst of European chocolate sold as some exotic, special product, but I would never touch that stuff at home.
      - bitL 9y ago
        You get plenty of Lindt in the US. Can't get much better than that...
ohyes 9y ago
I suspect this is true in any rural area. Alabama is our version of rural Romania. The population density doesn't support the economy of scale required to make daily fresh produce profitable. So you get frozen/canned/otherwise preserved products. If it were profitable, someone would do it. You go to a more populated area in the US (basically any major metro), you can get the good stuff fairly easily. We also have 'food deserts' in poorer urban centers (certain cities in Alabama could qualify). I don't have an explanation for those, I think it has to do with poverty.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Even in metro areas the major chains are terrible. But we’re also less willing to pay more for food compared to Western Europe.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Food deserts are places where people mostly have cars and drive to the store. It's a bad situation for people that don't have cars, but for people with cars, 2 or 3 miles to a grocer is irrelevant. In Detroit, roughly 90% of households have at least 1 vehicle: https://datausa.io/profile/geo/detroit-mi/#category_transportation https://datausa.io/profile/geo/detroit-mi/#category_transpor...
- cat199 9y ago
  > The population density doesn't support the economy of scale required to make daily fresh produce profitable. Yet strangely, before mass-market supermarkets existed, people in rural areas ate fresh produce directly from farmers without having such 'economy of scale'.. and the people in the city had trouble accessing them.. when the 'economy of scale' is devoured by the middlemen creating it, it is neither economical nor scalable..
  - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
    > Yet strangely, before mass-market supermarkets existed, people in rural areas ate fresh produce directly from farmers Before mass-market supermarkets existed, rural people ate fresh produce often only because they grew it themselves, not because they were able to buy it direct from a farmer. To buy from a farmer, you need cash, and a lot of rural families were cash-poor. Instead, people in the countryside maintained their own gardens and they made a lot of pickled foods for the winter. However, that is all a lot of work, and in fact historically a lot of rural families had poor nutrition in terms of fresh vegetables in spite of living in the regions that these vegetables came from.
muninn_ 9y ago
Sorry this is just flat out incorrect. There is no comparison between the quality of a random US supermarket and an out of be way village shop anywhere’s in Europe. The US supermarket is superior in every way, especially in both quality and selection. I can go to a local supermarket and buy grass-fed, high-quality beef grown 5 miles away, organically grown avocados, and fair-trade coffee from a local coffee roaster in the same store and it’s cheap. Europeans for some reason have this idea in their mind that’s everything in the US is Walmart and McDonalds, even while the quality of their own food greatly suffers. And just for fun I’ve lived and worked throughout the US, Europe,and Asia.

maxerickson 9y ago

There's no fake chocolate being sold as chocolate or tomato sauce with food coloring in it. Perhaps I read too far into hyperbole?

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
> fake chocolate being sold as chocolate A bunch of candy products have switched to being "chocolate flavored candy". Most candy in the US is total crap, because they've cut out all the parts that make it good to save money.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Sure, despite having a sweet tooth I don't enjoy the majority of candy available here. But my phrasing holds up, even in Walmart you can read the packaging and find real dark chocolate (they stock https://www.ghirardelli.com/dark-chocolate-86-cacao-bar-(317-oz)-60725 https://www.ghirardelli.com/dark-chocolate-86-cacao-bar-(317... ).
- adventured 9y ago
  > Most candy in the US is total crap, because they've cut out all the parts that make it good to save money. That's almost entirely a myth. Along with the myth that most of the cheese sold in the US is "American Cheese" or "cheese product." These are fantasy lines of attack on the US for people looking for an excuse to bash. Here are two more of those myths: the US only sells mediocre, watered down beer (that one has long since been destroyed, it rarely gets used now); and the US doesn't make any good domestic wine that is competitive with eg French wine. The average Walmart (a mid to lower tier grocery) has a large, normal selection for real chocolate of all varieties (including European). Typically they will have a large half aisle filled with real chocolate candy products to choose from. The US is the world's largest market for real chocolate.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Wal-Mart is pretty crap on produce and meat, but they’re good at shelf stable stuff like chocolate. The one near me has, as you say, half an aisle of chocolate product of all kinds.
  - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
    > the US only sells mediocre, watered down beer (that one has long since been destroyed, it rarely gets used now) I think that one isn't used so much because people hear that many American regions now have interesting microbrewery scenes. However, the major national brands are mediocre and watered down compared to many national German or Czech brands (that is the whole reason American regional microbreweries have been able to compete). > a large, normal selection for real chocolate of all varieties (including European) That European chocolate in American supermarkets is quite often the lowest-quality stuff from here. For example, Milka. My friends and I spent a lot of time laughing at what American supermarkets think is worth importing. You also see the same thing in India: the worst of European chocolate sold as some exotic, special product, but I would never touch that stuff at home.
    - bitL 9y ago
      You get plenty of Lindt in the US. Can't get much better than that...

ohyes 9y ago

I suspect this is true in any rural area. Alabama is our version of rural Romania. The population density doesn't support the economy of scale required to make daily fresh produce profitable. So you get frozen/canned/otherwise preserved products. If it were profitable, someone would do it. You go to a more populated area in the US (basically any major metro), you can get the good stuff fairly easily. We also have 'food deserts' in poorer urban centers (certain cities in Alabama could qualify). I don't have an explanation for those, I think it has to do with poverty.

rayiner 9y ago
Even in metro areas the major chains are terrible. But we’re also less willing to pay more for food compared to Western Europe.
maxerickson 9y ago
Food deserts are places where people mostly have cars and drive to the store. It's a bad situation for people that don't have cars, but for people with cars, 2 or 3 miles to a grocer is irrelevant. In Detroit, roughly 90% of households have at least 1 vehicle: https://datausa.io/profile/geo/detroit-mi/#category_transportation https://datausa.io/profile/geo/detroit-mi/#category_transpor...
cat199 9y ago
> The population density doesn't support the economy of scale required to make daily fresh produce profitable. Yet strangely, before mass-market supermarkets existed, people in rural areas ate fresh produce directly from farmers without having such 'economy of scale'.. and the people in the city had trouble accessing them.. when the 'economy of scale' is devoured by the middlemen creating it, it is neither economical nor scalable..
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  > Yet strangely, before mass-market supermarkets existed, people in rural areas ate fresh produce directly from farmers Before mass-market supermarkets existed, rural people ate fresh produce often only because they grew it themselves, not because they were able to buy it direct from a farmer. To buy from a farmer, you need cash, and a lot of rural families were cash-poor. Instead, people in the countryside maintained their own gardens and they made a lot of pickled foods for the winter. However, that is all a lot of work, and in fact historically a lot of rural families had poor nutrition in terms of fresh vegetables in spite of living in the regions that these vegetables came from.

muninn_ 9y ago

Sorry this is just flat out incorrect. There is no comparison between the quality of a random US supermarket and an out of be way village shop anywhere’s in Europe. The US supermarket is superior in every way, especially in both quality and selection. I can go to a local supermarket and buy grass-fed, high-quality beef grown 5 miles away, organically grown avocados, and fair-trade coffee from a local coffee roaster in the same store and it’s cheap. Europeans for some reason have this idea in their mind that’s everything in the US is Walmart and McDonalds, even while the quality of their own food greatly suffers. And just for fun I’ve lived and worked throughout the US, Europe,and Asia.