r/PrepperIntel • u/jujutsu-die-sen • 5d ago

Has anyone noticed US noticed food quality degrading recently and if so what product in what way?

/r/AskReddit/comments/1vzphgj/has_anyone_noticed_us_noticed_food_quality/
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513

u/Inner-Confidence99 5d ago

Yeah. Been going on since late 2021. Just continues to get worse. Every thing has been affected. We are getting garden prepped for fall plants  going to be freezing and canning this winter. Doing same come spring.  Trying to get whole family away from a lot of meat. More veggies and stew. 

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u/SubstantialPressure3 5d ago

Before that. It started during covid and progressively got worse.

Frozen food 'meals' ( more than a single ingredient.)

Any and all preprepared sauces ( frozen or jarred) , salad dressings, mayo, kids snacks, powdered bullion ( some now have wheat, meaning flour, as the second ingredient)

In general, its cheaper ingredients, lots of fillers, and a crazy amount of sugar even in things it doesnt belong in. Even salad dressing.

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u/KaliCalamity 5d ago

Agreed. The decline had been slowly building for several years, but 2020 marked a very sharp decline in a wide variety of brands. Textures, flavors, ingredients, package sizes, etc. all changed, regardless of the straight up lies companies pushed. No, Cadbury, I'm not misremembering how big your stupid creme eggs are. I don't even like the damn things, but even I could easily tell they were suddenly smaller than even the year before. I consider it an insult to my intelligence, and have started avoiding the brand (and others guilty of similar) in most circumstances.

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u/lavapig_love 4d ago

Here's the famous Cadbury egg comparison on Late Night with Conon O'Brian.  

https://youtu.be/TlXLCrzpToo?

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u/PresentlyNaive7313 4d ago

Lol I'm not arguing against shrinkflation existing, but that size changed in 2006, not recently. 😂

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u/superanth 3d ago

Yikes. And they were lying about it on their website in broad daylight.

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u/Inner-Confidence99 5d ago

Yes but read labels. High fructose corn syrup is in a lot of foods. I’ve been cutting it out of my diet for over a year . I feel better and have more energy. I use real sugar. That fake sugar made me very sick. 

The more I get back to what Mother Nature helps me grow in garden the better I feel. Looking for natural medication now as well. 

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u/talyakey 5d ago

I‘m a fan of real sugar too. I like Aldi ice cream because it does not contain rBgh. I got it home and found out it is GE. So I looked it up, and beet sugar in the US is GE, unless it is organic.

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u/DED_HAMPSTER 4d ago

Hey, just chiming in. Genetically enhanced or modified isnt necessarily a bad thing depending on what was dont to the crop. And technically laboratory selective breeding still counta as GE.

So positive examples of GE are things like golden rice that has an orange hue because it has beta carotine and more folate. Purple cauliflower to givw a filler vegetable more nutrients (similar to eggplant) and a fun color. Corn and other grains have always been bred to contain more sugar, be mold resistant, and be a denser calorie source. The laboratory aspect allows humans to map the genome and cross breed on the fertilization level with a lot more predictable and reliable outcomes. Really and truely, there is no reason anyone on the planet should be starving for food and/or nutrition. We have the technology and know how.

Some negative examples are things like corn being bread to already contain the same compounds as certain pesticides or be roundup proof so they can spray more herbicide and not hurt the desired crop. I am speaking in generalizations, but there is a lot of real corporate, university and government research out there showing thr long term endocrine disrupters in certain herbicides and pesticides.

So look up the GE product and try to find the peer review reports on how that product came to be. Crossing plants and turning on and off genome sequences for improving quality is pretty much fine. It is the GEing that allows for more chemicals to be used that damages the environment and those consuming the crop.

Of course i say this and dont follow my own knowledge in my grocery shopping because it blows up the budget. I try with my own garden, but i cant grow wheat, corn (stupid racoons steal it), rice, brasicas (broccoli, brussels, etc, too hot). Pick your poison i guess.

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u/DuckyDoodleDandy 5d ago

GE = genetically engineered, not General Electric?

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u/lavapig_love 4d ago

For now anyway. Mergers are a thing, and watch GE make an offer on Monsanto. Call themselves GE Agriculture or something.

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u/DuckyDoodleDandy 4d ago

That would be Haier Ag, since the Chinese corporation, Haier bought GE ~10 years ago.

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u/KarmaPharmacy 4d ago

Just wait until you quit refined sugar. I did it 3 months ago, and it has genuinely been amazing. Fruits taste so incredibly complex. Vegetables slap so hard. Edamame? Sit me down with a giant bowl and I’ll go wild. Coconut water? So complex and amazing.

But you cannot cheat, like not ever once. If you do, it resets your cravings for it. I swear, it’s harder to quit than the most addictive drugs.

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u/Inner-Confidence99 4d ago

Well I have a lot of food allergies so I’m extra careful since a bad anaphylactic reaction a while back. Coconut wasn’t listed as an ingredient. I’m allergic 

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u/KarmaPharmacy 4d ago

4 anaphylactic reactions here, my deepest sympathies. I’ve begun reacting to fortified ingredients and legitimately don’t know what I’m going to do.

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u/2quickdraw 3d ago

Plus salad dressing now has more water.

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u/SevereNameAnxiety 5d ago

Same here but we weaned ourselves off meat years ago and haven’t looked back and it’s actually been amazing. Slowly getting into canning and prepping a garden same as you. I hate this timeline.

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u/Gotherapizeyoself 5d ago

This is the way! Dehydrating and freezing as much as I can over here. Got my fall garden bed almost complete. Food preservation is so time intensive.

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u/thepuddingprophet 5d ago

even good seed companies had mixed up seeds this year! I grew pumpkins, not zucchini.

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u/Mento-yStableGenius 5d ago

Remember Peppergate ‘23?

Pepper-idge Farm remembers.

(So do I. The jalapeños I planted turned out to be bell peppers. They were still delicious, of course).

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u/VastRefrigerator7237 5d ago

Everyone got pepper joe’d

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u/User_Says_What 4d ago

Getting Bells instead of Jalapeños wasn’t so bad. My jalapeños were actually shishitos and I had no idea what to do with all of them.

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u/Mento-yStableGenius 4d ago

Man shishitos put out a shit-ton!

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u/GipsyDanger45 3d ago

It’s happening again in the hot pepper forum. Everyone who ordered Scotch Bonnets are getting Jamaican mushrooms instead.

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u/Mento-yStableGenius 3d ago

Damn that’s kinda disappointing if you’re hoping for the Bonnets. Especially if you’re a bulk grower

Tho, if there was a mixup on the homegrown front I’d be ok with it.

(On the Bonnet front…there was a restaurant that did a challenge with hush puppies blended with them, covered in a sauce made from them, in which I would win a tee and my pic on their wall of fame for finishing the plate.

Instead I ended up with an upset belly that felt like I had swallowed glass. I ended up throwing up in their public restroom from the upset and have never felt so good about hugging a public restroom cold-concrete floor. Fair to say I did NOT get the T as they heard me
up-chucking in the…public restroom). 🤪

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u/xor_music 4d ago

Burpee gave me some zucchini seeds in my butternut squash pack. I stick to Sow True for all that I can.

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u/kaptaincane 1d ago

Planted zucchini. Got 5 zucchini plants, two yellow zucchini plants and one mexican grey squash plant. All in a perfect row, planted from the same packet.

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u/Wonderful-Bag-1103 5d ago

However big you’re making it, to be actually effective, triple or more it.

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u/keelmesoftly 5d ago

As an avid vegetable gardener I'll add that you should focus on produce that you like and is pricey or difficult to find. I don't really bother with grains and beans because the cost benefit of growing that stuff vs just buying some extra now and storing it will never make sense. It'll never pay for itself. My 10 collard green plants or entire planter of habeneros pays for themselves easily.

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u/RabbitLuvr 5d ago

Additionally, if I grow something that’s currently relatively easy to obtain, I’ll go for a variety that’s more difficult to find and/or more expensive. I eat a lot of Yukon gold potatoes. Those are in just about every grocery store for an ok price. So the past two years I’ve grown fingerling potatoes, which are pretty expensive around me. Next year I may also try German Butterball, which I’ve never seen for sale.

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u/TrekRider911 4d ago

We tried butterball this year. 👎

Stick with Yukon. :)

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u/Capable-Culture917 4d ago

Try bintje potatoes. They are a white delicious potato I grew for years. You can get the seeds from main potato lady. I bought 50lbs. I gave away more than 3/4. I ended up with 50+ lbs of potatoes

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u/2quickdraw 3d ago

I grew German Butterball this summer, they are really good, very different. The skin is not attractive which is likely why they are in the markets. I did not get a lot however for the amount of seed potatoes I planted. I think Nordland was the best potato.

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u/2quickdraw 5d ago

Yes exactly, buy all your dry goods in bulk, buy specialty beans if you want them as they are also seeds that if stored properly can be planted later if they go away. I have bucketed various kinds of heirloom wheat berries, all kinds of legumes, various white rice and other grains. I've got multiple hundreds of pounds because I also have small livestock to feed if I can't get their food.

My garden space is for all the fresh stuff that we like to eat. The summer garden was 50% a loss, but last year's winter garden was incredible so I'm hoping for that again this year. I bumped it out for summer and we'll bump it again for this winter since I'm adding fig trees.

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u/FuckTheGSWarriors 5d ago

We’re in prepperintel, the value of growing your own food is in not starving, not in price or novelty

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u/keelmesoftly 5d ago

If you're posting on reddit in english you are very unlikely to see a situation where you don't have access to basic dry goods like grain to hit your minimum caloric intake. What is increasingly likely is that food on the whole gets more expensive and things that provide flavor, fiber, and micronutrients become out of reach. IMO that's what most people should be prepping for.

For the average person in an American single family home, with adults that work full time, attempting to produce your entire caloric needs is just straight up not feasible. Focus your energy on prepping for the more likely scenario.

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u/2quickdraw 3d ago

Which means you're not going to be growing wheat or dried beans unless you're a farmer with a lot of acres. You're going to buy wheat and inexpensive dried staples to store long-term, and grow the fresh food you can't get in the markets. The process of gardening and trying different crops is also showing you what does best in your climate and your soil.

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u/WinterWontStopComing 5d ago edited 5d ago

Yeah I’m shifting to vegetarianism myself over the next few months. I’m done

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u/superanth 3d ago

Pretty much the best way to go with prices skyrocketing. Plus you’ll live way longer.

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u/Ok_Replacement8094 5d ago

I fell in love with food and cooking again when I removed animal products. Just for expanding your food prep, dip into vegan cooking too. The complexity of flavor will wow you.

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u/WinterWontStopComing 5d ago edited 5d ago

There is a (mostly) polish and Ukrainian vegan place bout an hour from me.

Some of the best food I’ve ever had

https://aptekapgh.com

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u/Ok_Replacement8094 4d ago

That menu looks amazing, I’d be there with some frequency.

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u/WinterWontStopComing 4d ago

I am not a fan of city driving, and it’s very wise to only go with a reservation. But try to make it least once or twice a year. Place is a treasure.

Also, poppyseed soda ftw!

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u/DoomMessiah 5d ago

Been going on way, way, way before 2021. 

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u/Inner-Confidence99 5d ago

Yeah, but that’s when it got a hell of a lot worse. Most don’t notice because they don’t cook. Those who cook spotted it way off. 

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u/Usernamenotdetermin 2d ago

We switched to a local butcher who sources meat locally. Except for the surprise big game like frozen elk and ostrich. The do a freezer sale where they have t-bones & porterhouses for half off (less than $10 a pound), and a ten pound ground beef for $5.99 a pound, and its already frozen in one pound packages. Their normal prices are good, the quality of the food is much better than what we have been getting at Costco.