Two-tier food

[Fantozzi 4,064]

Recently it was discovered that food companies sell products with ingridents of inferior quality to eastern europe countries compared to western europe countries.

 

Quote:

"Bulgarian Agriculture Minister Rumen Porozhanov said laboratory tests found different ingredients in seven of 31 food products sold in his country and in Austria and Germany. The experts also found 16 of the tested food items were sold at higher prices than in other EU countries."

 

[TekindusT 3,809]

Anyone who has tried the taste of the same global brand of beer in Germany and in an Eastern European country can tell you that. I definitely don't need a lab test to prove the Beck's you get in Germany is by no means the one you get in Bulgaria. 

[rsc204 21,804]

This is not unique to the Eastern Europeans, I noticed a number of my favourite products from the UK simply were different here in Germany. For example I won't buy Crunchy Nut Cornflakes here, the taste is simply off from the one I like sold in the UK. Similarly the Olivio margarine/spread is very different here, I bought some in the UK to bring back because it was way cheaper, but when looking at the ingredients list it was very different from the German one. The German one having far less fat/saturated fat in it.

Frankly this doesn't come as news to me and if people don't like the product being sold to them or think its too expensive, the answer is simple, don't buy it.

[matias93 7,535]

Can you verify the myth that European Fanta is yellow and has some orange juice on it? Because here in Latin America it's full of tartrazine, glows on radiactive orange like an 80's refrigerator and tastes like anything but orange. 

[LexusInfernus 908]

My Irish friends told me that the Guinness they export tastes worse than the Guinness they use for their own market. And frankly, the beer British buy is pretty watered down compared to what you buy in the rest of Europe. I think there is even less alcohol in it. 

But still, its pretty stupid that Eastern Europe gets all the crappier versions of simple supermarket products. 

[MissVanleider 1,850]

This is often reported the other way around, where 'leading brand' products are made in the same factory as supermarket alternatives

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2017/apr/19/aldi-hula-hoops-same-factory

I agree with the comments though, there are differences in the same products across different markets. A lot of chocolate brands are available globally and are most different on a taste test. Even the quality of the same brand can vary over time in the same market. The quality of available ingredients is obviously not always the same. 

I am a little shocked that there is more to this than just global commodity prices, varying quality of ingredients over time and local preference though

[Fantozzi 4,064]

Italian coffee comes to my mind. To my knowledge the quality of coffee depends on how it's roasted - to roast it on not so high temperature and for longer time which makes the acids dissolve but also the bean losing weight.

The same brand of italian coffee smells different in different countries but also - if you look at the beans you already can see it from the colour (green = roasted short, brown = roasted longer) that they haven't the same quality.

So probably this is no west-east conflict - seems to me companies try to establish cheap taste.

But I wonder if this does harm to economy? If you buy coffee in Italy you pay tax for the italian state and not tax at your home country. And I think the problem for Hungary is - that en masse the citizens travel across the border to buy many products - which causes economic loss for the country.

[rsc204 21,804]

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

My Irish friends told me that the Guinness they export tastes worse than the Guinness they use for their own market

Actually, until recently the exported product was mostly brewed under licence and the different taste had a lot to do with the higher quality natural water sources in Ireland. Such a spring I believe was a key part in the original decision of where to locate the factory. I think it was about 10 year ago at most they started making it all in Dublin and exporting it, shouting loudly how exported Guinness was now better. Frankly it's an acquired taste that I simply will never acquire anyhow, give me an Irish Whiskey any day.

16 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

But still, its pretty stupid that Eastern Europe gets all the crappier versions of simple supermarket products. 

Why? Isn't that likely in part because these countries have been poorer than the rest of Europe for a very long time? One can easily make a link between that and a desire to make the products cheaper to manufacture. Presumably these "highly ethical" large food multinationals would change to better ingredients out of principle the moment they could charge more for products, right? LOL, not a chance... so once again it all comes down to what the consumer is willing to pay for and expects. If you choose not to buy the crappy version, it wouldn't be long before change was enacted, but why disrupt the status quo if you can pull in more profits?

19 hours ago, matias93 said:

Can you verify the myth that European Fanta is yellow and has some orange juice on it?

It's quite orange in colour and maybe it has orange in it, but it's not really orange tasting so much as orange flavoured. In the UK we had a competing brand Tango, which was IMO much nicer, but neither compares to the French version Orangina which is quite lovely, but hard to find and usually expensive.

Oddly one of the largest supermarkets here, Rewe, has recently started stocking "imported" soft drinks, so you can buy things like mountain dew, odd coloured Fanta and other "exotic" flavoured drinks, which in reality are full of additives and colourings, for almost three times the price. The joke being, you only need look at the label to see they are not manufactured outside Europe.

But Germany is crazy for any food that isn't considered native, there is a huge margin slapped on top, even basics like tortillas, which have long since become everyday in the UK. Makes me laugh when Germans think UK supermarkets are rubbish, they don't know what they are talking about. The first time I took my German wife to a big UK hypermarket, where the aisle of meat had a bigger selection than that of the largest supermarket here for everything combined, she was simply amazed. Choice, that's what Germany lacks and that's before I get started on the prices.

Pop tarts, that's a thing I've always liked, but a pack of 8 here is 6-7€, because they are exclusively to be found in the US foods aisle and are therefore a rip off. But Pop tarts are sold in the UK and those are not imported from the states, sure enough the German ones are again made in Europe, so why are they over twice the price here? Simple answer, because there are enough idiots willing to pay 7€ for a pack. I only get them when I can bring them back with me from the UK, which is not often.

[Fantozzi 4,064]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

Presumably these "highly ethical" large food multinationals would change to better ingredients out of principle the moment they could charge more for products, right? LOL, not a chance... so once again it all comes down to what the consumer is willing to pay for and expects.

But it's difficult to use terms like 'ethical', 'quality' ... if the debate started on Nutella. It's more like: 'but your crap is more tasty than our crap'. It's like people in eastern europe are very sensitive for western softdrinks to have western flavour and they feel cheated if western softdrinks have the taste of the communist misery - to have 'Eastern Bloc Nutella' sold by western companies. 40 years they only got those grotty communist copies of so called 'Coke' - made a revolution to get free access to the real stuff - just to discover they get the same grotty copies again they had before. I don't think it's about 'food quality', it's about western crap to be 'authentic crap'. It isn't a debate about tomatoes or salad.

 

[MissVanleider 1,850]

@rsc204 My UAE based friends sometimes buy Birdseye Fish Fingers as a treat (£14 for a packet of 10)! Good job you dont pay tax on your income when a fish finger is over a pound!

[LexusInfernus 908]

9 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Frankly it's an acquired taste that I simply will never acquire anyhow, give me an Irish Whiskey any day.

I wholeheartedly agree with you there  

9 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Why? Isn't that likely in part because these countries have been poorer than the rest of Europe for a very long time? One can easily make a link between that and a desire to make the products cheaper to manufacture. Presumably these "highly ethical" large food multinationals would change to better ingredients out of principle the moment they could charge more for products, right? LOL, not a chance... so once again it all comes down to what the consumer is willing to pay for and expects. If you choose not to buy the crappy version, it wouldn't be long before change was enacted, but why disrupt the status quo if you can pull in more profits?

Well I doubt that they save a lot of money on production costs when it comes to the stuff they sell in Eastern Europe. Its all part of the EU anyways so it has to comply with the same food standards as in the rest of Europe. I think the main difference comes from how much effort they put in the finishing touches. How much stuff do they add to make their product look like it got some quality. And why not spend the effort on products for Eastern Europe? Are they not worth it? Or is it because companies think that they can get away with it because its Eastern Europe, they are used to dealing with inferior quality products? Both lines of reasoning come of as arrogant and stupid.

As a side note, while I do not think that the actual quality of the food is affected, like I said all food as to comply with EU regulations, the way food looks most definitely has an effect on the way people experience consuming their food. Good looking food tastes better in our mind than bad looking food, even if its exactly the same. Its part of the reason why so much fruits and vegetables are thrown in the garbage, before they even had a chance to go to the supermarket, because its shaped 'odd' or just doesn't look as tasty. The quality is fine, but no one wants to buy a banana that doesn't have a curve or something like that.  

[TekindusT 3,809]

39 minutes ago, LexusInfernus said:

Well I doubt that they save a lot of money on production costs when it comes to the stuff they sell in Eastern Europe. Its all part of the EU anyways so it has to comply with the same food standards as in the rest of Europe. I think the main difference comes from how much effort they put in the finishing touches. How much stuff do they add to make their product look like it got some quality. And why not spend the effort on products for Eastern Europe? Are they not worth it? Or is it because companies think that they can get away with it because its Eastern Europe, they are used to dealing with inferior quality products? Both lines of reasoning come of as arrogant and stupid.

They don't spend the effort because they know the local alternatives taste/look generally even worse, so they don't really face a great deal of competition to improve their quality. And oftentimes, global companies own the local brands.

Sorry to come back again to the beer topic but it is the one I know the best. As I said earlier in this thread, global brands don't taste the same in Eastern Europe... but still they taste like something; which is a lot to ask to the "local" beers I tried in Bulgaria. Most of "local" brands are anyways owned by the global brewery AB InBev, who seems to treat these brands as the cheap-o alternative to the more "premium" international brands brewed anyways in Bulgaria. I presume the situation is similar in the liquor industry and all non-essential food products.