cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/26864906
Britain must allow US chlorine-washed chicken into UK markets if it wants relief from sweeping tariffs, Donald Trump has indicated.
It comes after the UK failed to avoid tariffs imposed on the global economy, with the US president slapping a 10 per cent levies on all British exports to the United States.
…
In a statement published alongside the tariff announcement, the White House said: “The UK maintains non-science-based standards that severely restrict US exports of safe, high-quality beef and poultry products.”
It suggested that Britain’s ban on chlorinated chicken was among a range of “non-tariff barriers” that limit the US’s ability to trade.
The UK has long ruled out allowing imports of chlorine-washed chicken from the US due to health concerns, with Downing Street on Thursday reiterating its manifesto commitment to high food standards.
Asked whether the UK could allow imports of chlorine washed chicken in order to appease the US, the prime minister’s officials spokesperson said: “Our position on that is unchanged. You’ve got the manifesto commitment on food standards, which obviously remains.”
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The last major polling done on the issue, conducted in 2020, revealed that 80 per cent of Britons are opposed to allowing imports to the UK, and the same proportion is also against allowing chicken products that have been farmed using hormones.
There is also growing pressure from the farming industry to rule out concessions on the issue, amid fears it could undercut British farmers and drive down food standards.
Nigel Farage admitted he would allow American chlorine-washed chicken to be sold in the UK as part of a free trade deal with the US.
Yuck! American “food”. In general, not just chicken.
I was in Atlanta recently, and our allergy kid wanted to eat a cake at a family party, so I told them to check the ingredients. They couldn’t understand the list and brought it to me. There was no wonder, the list was full of artificial everything. And here I thought the UK’s UPF was bad - I was shocked that cake was even considered food.
Well, with American bread being so loaded with corn syrup that it is considered “cake” in Europe, one should not be surprised.
And as the American attitude to those “artificial everythings” is to include them as long as they are not proven unsafe, in contrast to the European that you can only include them if they have proven generally safe, there are a lot of things you won’t find in European ingredient lists. For some of those items, it takes the US decades to withdraw them from the “suitable for food” list, sometimes even after some thrid world countries considered them illegal.
The bread being considered cake thing isn’t what you think it is. It was a matter of taxation, not nutrition.
But American bread is crazy sweet and very unbreadlike compared to European bread, I split my time between both and first thing I do when I get out of the US us have some proper bread.
This is honestly just a weird talking point I see online. I’m sure some bread is marked as “cake” or whatever but that’s not what most Americans eat.
I just checked my bread (which doesn’t come from a bakery) and the entire loaf has 6 grams of sugar in it. And you can’t make bread without sugar.
OK but have you ever been to western Europe and eatern bread? Because I’ve spent a lot of time in the US eating bread and it’s not like European bread, not at all.
It is not that weird - Subways bread is rated as “cake” at least in Ireland.
Yes, for tax purposes. It says nothing about the nutritional content.
It is rated as such because of the amount of sugars in it.
And like I said elsewhere. Fast food doesn’t represent the average Americans diet.
Fast food may not, but convenience food does. Which is not that much different ingredient- and qualitywise. With (according to statista) 70% of Americans eating convenience food, one could say this is the average American food staple. People who actually cook their own food like me have become rare.
Do you have a link to your source? That’s not one of the reports that Statista has listed
Sorry, I dug down in statista and somehow, somewhere found that number, and it was recent enough to be acceptable.
I make 2 big bread loaves every week, and have literally never put sugar in it. Salt and flour, sourdough starter, water. That’s it.
The case they’re specifically talking about is an instance in Ireland where Subway was sued about their bread containing enough sugar to be classified, under Irish law, as cake, not bread.
Yeast requires sugar to create the carbon dioxide to make dough rise. In your case (and in most), it’s feeding off the sugar in the flour. Generally, all purpose flour has about 0.5/cup.
And, this might be hard for you to believe, fast food doesn’t represent the average Americans diet.
It’s not so much sugar in the flour but amylase in the flour turning starch into simpler sugars. If you add sugar to your dough it means that you’re either not giving enough time to autolyse, or you’re making cake. Either way it’s not proper bread. And yes this also applies to non-sourdough bread. You need a minimum of two or three hours of autolysis for the dough to be nicely digestible and workable on the benchtop, there’s dough conditioners which can imitate part of that but well then you’re getting American “bread”. A typical German process develop the sourdough for about 1 1/2 days, then mix the final dough, let it rest for 2-3 hours (Stockgare, depending on temperature, humidity etc), then form it, then 1 - 1 1/2 hours of final leavening (Stückgare). And it’s not like you can’t get industrial bread over here, it’s just that they’re not taking shortcuts when it comes to time.
There’s regions which add sugar beet syrup, recipes with extra malt (often with active enzymes), or good ole pumpernickel which develops its sweetness through low and slow baking (24 hours in the oven), but adding plain sugar? That’s just ignoble.
It’s still “proper bread”, sparky. You clearly know nothing about baking.
I can’t hear you over the sound of UNESCO world heritage.
I didn’t make any such claims. Though arguably what you consider junk food and what I consider junk food may be completely different. I have no interest in digging down into that.
Yes, flour has some trace simple sugar in it. I only said I don’t add sugar to mine. Yeast will happily break down starches into simple sugars, and the end result will have some sugar. The exact percentage will depend on fermentation time.
The Irish case had bread reaching 10% by weight flour of sugar. They certainly added it.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/919189045/for-subway-a-ruling-not-so-sweet-irish-court-says-its-bread-isnt-bread
US made food items, never safe to even bring into a kitchen. Look at the general US obesity, to get scared
Indeed. Common main ingredient: HFCS.