The real reason American food is unhealthy

It's a feature not a bug

Thank you so much for watching! Hope you enjoyed it!

If you're new to my channel and videos, hi! I'm Evan Edinger, and I make weekly "comedy" videos every Sunday evening. As an American living in London I love noticing the funny differences between the cultures and one of my most popular video series is my British VS American one. I'm also known for making terrible puns so sorry in advance. Hope to see you around, and I'll see you next Sunday! :)

If you want to know HOW I make my videos including gear, lighting, all the tiddly bits that connect it all together, (with cheaper alternatives and kit I used to use), I've listed each item, what it's great at, and why I use it on the gear section of my website here:

Otherwise: here's a quick list of some of my kit without descriptions from the above link:

Camera: Sony A7siii

Main Lens: Sony 24mm f/1.4 G-Master

Secondary Lens: Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 G-Master

Main Light: Aputure 120d mkii

Shotgun Microphone: Sennheiser MKH-416

Really useful SSD: SanDisk Extreme Portable 2TB

[nocturne]

I saw a documentary a while ago about "food deserts" in the US. Parts of cities with no grocery store at all (but cheap fast food is abundant), I was horrified.

[katielivingabroad]

Re: the comment about food spoiling on shelves and people not having access to produce, it would definitely be worth reading up on food deserts in the US. There are absolutely places where people don’t have easy access to groceries. I’m sure you didn’t mean it, but there’s a certain amount of privilege to say ‘that can’t be, take a video and there will be public outrage’ when there is regularly not public outrage or visibility on these communities.

[joepiekl]

I remember reading about obesity in the Pacific Islands, who are the most obese countries in the world. A lot of people put it down to genetic reasons, and cultural reasons that value fatness. But the article I read pointed out that obesity rates coincidentally started rising just after they signed a trade agreement with the USA, and they went from eating local produce and a fish-heavy diet to eating loads of imported, high-calorie processed food, because it was much cheaper.

[clairewilliams]

Not American but I saw a documentary on food deserts in the USA and they definitely showed shelves full of rotting produce so I’m pretty sure that’s a real thing.

[grimnirnacht]

I can vouch for the rotten produce one. I live in a small town in Washington State. Oftentimes there are tomatoes on the shelf that are molding at the tip where the stems were. And things like green potatoes get put in the markdown section even though you absolutely should not eat green potatoes. And I've bought cheese on clearance without thinking I had to check it only to get home to find out it was moldy. But because it was marked down it wasn't worth returning. And just recently I bought a whole chicken (full price even though there were others in the vicinity marked down presumably because they were nearing the sell by date) only to open it and be assaulted with rotten egg smell. I've never encountered chicken that smelled like rotten eggs. It was so disgusting it went straight in the outside trash. There is no reason for this especially when the chicken processing plant is literally on the edge of town.

I've given up on local produce. Whenever I can, I will drive 45 minutes to the nearest big city to do grocery shopping. It's just not worth it locally.

[beltingtokra]

Fun fact: artificial food colourings nearly killed me.

In the UK, I was 4 when I received a bright blue birthday cake at nursery. It was delicious. That night I had an anaphylactic reaction and went to hospital, I've had to carry an epipen ever since. I have also had minor reactions to sweets with a range of artificial colours that were like Hives. Artificial food colourings can literally be lethal if you're allergic, it's not just an inconvenience.

As an adult, it's no biggy to avoid artificial food dyes, although they are still in number of foods in the UK (sunset yellow in cough sweets, a popular Scottish drink, brilliant blue in a number of sweets etc). However, as a 90s kid, everywhere you looked, food was multicoloured and i literally couldn't have anything apart from chocolate. First World problems lol

[binglemarie]

When I lived in Detroit, almost all of the locally owned grocery stores (i.e. almost every grocery store) were selling meat they got from the chain grocery stores that was past its sell-by date. Produce was also often on the edge of spoiling. Food deserts are a real problem in the US, where the only available safe food to eat is prepackaged junk food. I absolutely believe that the same thing happens in rural areas.

[moniebee]

Evan, food spoiling is real. I’m a flight attendant and depending on where I end up tells me how bad my diet is going to be each month. Food deserts and spoilage happens whenever I end up in smaller towns versus whole foods and healthy options when I am in other countries or bigger cities. Heck, I’m lactose intolerant in the US versus everywhere else. So in smaller places, the crews tend to bring homemade food when we can or order fast food.

[kate]

Regarding rotting food: I lived in Chicago, IL, USA for 7 years on the border of an expensive neighborhood and a low-income one. Two of the same types of grocery store were somewhat nearby; one served a much lower income community than the other. One store definitely had spoiling veggies, and the other didn't and even had a large selection of fresh-squeezed juices.

It is pretty easy to guess which is which, and it really shouldn't be.

[DruncanUK]

I think you also have to look at history in Britain to understand things. In World War II food was severely rationed so the Government had to do studies into nutrition to ensure that the population received a good balanced diet to stay healthy. This care for the population continues till today even though some people kick back against the "nanny state" I believe it is a good thing. I much prefer a Government that cares enough to ban dangerous chemicals in our food.

[alysonmcmanus]

The food spoiling thing is real unfortunately. and food deserts are such a pain too. dollar stores are putting grocery stores out of business in small towns because they undercut the prices of the local mom and pop grocery store. and then the dollar store wont carry a bunch of good products because it's a dollar store.

[Taleri]

5:39 I live in a fairly large city in the US (in the top 40 by population), and yes, the fruits and vegetables really are spoiling on the shelves. We have to be very careful when getting produce to ensure that it isn't rotten, or worse, moldy. The bulk produce (2 lb bags of onions, apples, or oranges) are especially bad. This is also not limited to one store, or one chain of grocery stores. If I don't immediately rinse berries in vinegar when I get home, they wont last a day in the fridge. It seems like such a common thing across all the supermarkets that unless the produce had maggots or flies swarming it, it wouldn't even be worthy of a news blurb. Honestly, the most surprising thing I've noticed is that Walmart has consistently had fresher produce than Fry's, Safeway, or even Trader Joes though I still need to look over the produce carefully.

[lovepuppy]

I thought I was allergic to gummies/jello/fruit juices for years, after having gone back to my home country (not USA, was there from kindergarten to fifth grade) I was given jello at a hospital and had no reaction (I was really out of it, I would have said something otherwise). I had assumed I'd grown out of it and was free to eat all the gummy snacks I wanted. Which I did.
At 20 I went back to the US to work and saw those scooby doo gummies I'd always seen kids in elementary eating that I always wanted to try. I bought a box, the culture shock that I couldn't go to a family owned corner store and just buy a single baggie was weird. They were great... until about five minutes later when my mouth felt like it was burning and my lips looked like Fungus from monsters inc. I can only be glad that the swelling went down with an ice pack, because despite being paid 15$ an hour (which compared to the 11.50$ of the next highest paid person I knew, really was high) there would have been no way I would have been able to pay for meds, let alone any medical bill.
I went back home 2 weeks later because the fear of possibly dying from anaphylactic shock and having to decide whether the bill would be worth it made me want to cry.
Once home, I got allergy tests done (for free) and the preservative concoction used in the US, in many different things but for some reason a lot of fruit flavor stuff for kids, was what had set it off. Also got emergency pills and an oral safe allergy cream for free.

[tobimisa]

I've lived in relatively okay areas with access to food in my adult life, and I can say even then that there have been instances of rotten fruit on store shelves. I stopped buying strawberries for a good while because of one too many instances of noticing that they were already molded after I put my food in the cart. I don't live in food deserts where this issue is magnetized, this is just unfortunately normal.

that said, nothing will beat the time I bought a bag of peaches only to find a dead roach clinging to one.

[skitebird]

Where I live in the US (NJ) fresh fruit/veg absolutely spoils extremely fast, and there is often wilted/rotten stuff on the shelves. If I want fresh stuff everyday, I go to the store every 2 days. It's really hard to keep fresh produce in the house.
Edit: I also think nobody takes photos or does anything about it because it's just so normal to everyone where I live. I've never really considered that it was not normal? I was always told "It's fresh food, of course it's gonna go bad on the shelf if nobody buys it fast enough!"

[somesortofdeliciousbiscuit]

My boys are both autistic and have a limited diet and my youngest briefly went through a phase of eating hotdogs 3 times a week. This coincided with weight gain, upset stomach, mood swings and a spotty rash after 3 weeks of this. All of these went or were much reduced when he stopped and he's never asked for them again. The thought that someone might live like this and think they have a chronic condition makes me shudder.

[cassieorosz]

In rural, small town America the spoiled produce on shelves is definitely a thing. We have tried drawing attention to this issue, but as a town with a population of under 2, 000 in a county with a population of under 30k, nobody cares. The same reason Flint, Michigan doesn’t/didn’t have clean drinking water.

[Emthesomething]

Evan, as you can tell from your comments here, I think you have found a good topic for yourself for a future video or videos regarding food deserts and quality of food in parts of the U.S. I think starting from the place of disbelief you are at to a place of understanding (mean the multiple definitions of understanding here; bit of privilege there, mate, saying you just don't believe that is possible and therefore it must be untrue) would be a good journey to proceed on and we'd love to come with you.

[laurahartmannfilms]

The spoiled produce can be a big issue by me. Cheaper stores like Walmart always have moldy fruit. Somewhere nicer like Trader Joe’s will have good quality produce, just at a higher price

[ninimeggie]

I live in Ohio in the US and have moved from a larger town to a village.
Food actually rotting on the shelves isn't uncommon in the poorer areas of the large town and during the off season in the village. Produce really can't be bought more than a day or two in advance because it's so close to molding or rotting, if it isn't already going bad on the shelves.

Because of this frozen fruits and vegetables are much safer choices but also way more popular meaning they're often sold out... leaving canned fruits and veg which are normally heavily sugared or heavily salted respectively.