America’s age-old love affair with ice cream appears to be winding down.
Consumption of regular dairy ice cream, which does not include frozen yogurt, sherbet or non- and low-fat ice creams, has been falling for years, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Recently, I was at the grocery store and the family in front of me at at a minimum of 9 tubs of ice cream. (2L ones). Turns out they are from Connecticut visiting Canada. According to the check out lady, people from the states load up on our local ice cream and cheeses. It seems to be quite common.
The brand of ice cream that they got has a factory + store front about 10 minutes away from me. We drive past it all the time, it's been extremely busy with these hot temps. With lines going out the door and into the parking lot just to have an ice cream cone.
Sure, it's anecdotal, but there's still plenty of people in love with ice cream.
About ten years ago while visiting the Canadian side of Niagra Falls, my other half wanted a pizza and to stay in at our beautiful room overlooking the falls. So we got a fancy pizza with pretzel crust from Little Caesars and holy hell it was good - soon as we got back to America I tried to order the exact same pizza a week later and it was completely different. Different crust, cheese, etc - I was so disappointed lol
Canada and US have different food and safety laws. Milk is quite a bit different, the laws are pretty strict that US cannot export their milk to Canada. There's hormones and such the US inject their cows with (in order to produce more milk) that are illegal in Canada. It affects the flavour and how healthy the milk is.
Canada has higher standards of what is acceptable to eat. I believe during covid they did not reduce their standards to meet demands. In the US, if the animal was sick it's not supposed to be suitable for consumption. But in order to meet demands, they loosened that restriction. Meat quality went down during covid. In Canada the price of meat went up.
The US is also more likely to use fillers and such to cut costs. Like how back in the medieval age, they would cut their flour with saw dust. Basically that. But it isn't necessarily the law to put that anywhere or what the filler is. There are many products in the US that cannot be sold as that product in other countries. Example: wonder bread can not be sold as bread due to all the sugar. Subway has to be classed as a desert place due to all the sugar, a specific brand of ice cream cannot be classed as ice cream due to lack of cream (and because of all the sugar), so on and so fourth.
It doesn't surprise me that it's so different. About 15 years ago I had a burger at a McDonald's Donald's in Mexico and it was so different, it was so good. It was like eating at an actual higher end burger joint. The lettuce and tomatoes were fresh, the patties were juicy, the buns weren't a sweet, wet mess. And it was bigger, too.
Oh no, I totally know it - there's a reason why I'm starting a micro-homestead to raise my own meat and fruits/vegetables - because I want to heat good healthy food, not all that other junk.
I was just so shocked at the difference in taste between the two pizzas which is not something I regularly eat anyway
Little differences add up! I'm glad you have the ability to have a homestead. We can do a garden and in theory we have the space to raise chickens or rabbits for meat/eggs but we'd probably get too attached to the chickens/rabbits to get them butchered. We do have a garden but I think most of our crop is going to fail. It's been so hot and rainy here. Our back garden flooded again yesterday. Our upper garden is fine but there's less space.