The food in stores is cheap. And that matters to consumers more than whatever alleged quality small-time farmers can produce (was food actually better a hundred years ago? Doubt).
I highly recommend you to visit third world countries and sample food from there. I grew up in Burma and have been living in the US for almost 20 years. Every time I went back to Burma, I buy milk, egg and chicken from local markets. I boil the milk and egg, and make curry out of the chicken. The milk is super creamy and if you boil it for 2-3 times, you get like 1-cm creamy foam on top. I tried the same with Costco whole milk, and didn't get as much cream/richness. The chickens are usually smaller, but they don't have "fishy" (for the lack of better way to describe it; but you can notice if you have lived in Burma for a while and came back to the US to eat factory-farmed chicken) smell before/after cooking. The chicken bone is a bit thicker and there is more bone marrow (I like chewing on bones and eating the marrow). Maybe it's the breed difference, but certainly there's no smell.
I'd also recommend you to try different kinds of fresh water fish that are available in places like Burma and Thailand. These fish are more and more difficult (expensive) to buy thanks to overfishing, but the variety and the flavor will just amazes you.
In general, I believe that factory farming has reduced the variety of available food in the US. Whether that impacts the long term health/flavor of the food is something we probably should conduct a long-term scientific study to confirm.
My wife and mom (from the same country) both told me that they cannot eat the chicken from US markets because of the smell, and it took me a while (15 years) to get that distinct scent that they mention and once I starts cooking more and more, I learned to distinguish that myself.
> The milk is super creamy and if you boil it for 2-3 times, you get like 1-cm creamy foam on top. I tried the same with Costco whole milk, and didn't get as much cream/richness.
That's probably because supermarket milk is typically homogenised, meaning it's been put through a very narrow funnel with great force until the fat globules break and become more evenly distributed throughout the milk. That's why supermarket milk doesn't have "cream on top". The fat stays suspended in the milk liquid and doesn't rise to the top (as is normal with milk that hasn't been homogenised). Homogenisation also usually standardises milk to a certain fat content while the excess goes to make butter, so you can expect homogenised milk to be just exactly 3.5% in fat (for cow's milk) while the milk you get from your local farmer is going to vary a lot above and below that, depending on season, feed, reproductive cycle and activity of the animals etc.
I suspect that the fishy smell in US chicken is because of a chlorine wash. There was a bit of a scandal about it recently in Britain.
Things that eat fish, taste of fish. For example muttonbird in New Zealand is a seabird that tastes as strong as anchovy. The chickens are possibly being fed on fish processing waste, or ocean-caught “inedible” species like krill https://www.google.com/search?q=alibaba+krill+chicken+feed
It's also likely that if it's from a big processor (e.g. Tyson) that it has been washed in bleach to kill bacteria. This may make for safer food but it certainly leaves an aftertaste.
(was food actually better a hundred years ago? Doubt).
It absolutely was, but of course there was less of it. Have you ever had real farm fresh eggs from a free range chicken? It's a completely different thing from those white shells with bright yellow yolks you get at the grocery store. Same goes for vegetables. Ever had a home grown tomato? Those things are worth their weight in gold. The grocery store version is really just a bunch of water in the shape of a tomato.
The reason the store egg shells are white is because the Leghorn breed is the most productive layer and it produces white shells.
But to compare our homestead eggs to the store's, you can simply hard boil the two and then use a knife to cut the eggs in half. Our pampered chickens make much denser yolks that are much harder to cut. There's clearly more of something in them.
Studies repeatedly have shown that micronutrients do not get replenished in monoculture crops, resulting in a measurable decrease in nutrition available in food grown in that soil. So, yes, food was actually better a hundred years ago.
Yes but it's difficult to get them in a form that is highly available for digestion/absorption, so most fortified food may have the same things on paper but it doesn't all get absorbed into your body.
We are not eating soil, we are eating plants (and animal flesh). An atom of (say) molybdenum taken up by a plant will be put into use in that plant in a way that's not dependent on its state in the soil.
Measurement and correction of soil trace element abundances -- often on a small scale -- is already state of the practice for large scale agriculture.
The whole micronutrient thing sounds like trying to apply a thin coating of science to a non-scientific thought process.
What about chirality? I mean this in several ways. First we are not doing atomic assembly or molecular kitchen here.
Which means the atoms of single nutrients transform into molecules by biochemical processes.
Second, those structures are involved further into transporting nutrients around the plant during growth.
Third, the structure of the soil with a healthy network of fungi and soil seems to be important. Or at least that is the way plants have evolved, even if it seems chaotic and inefficient (like photosynthesis).
Fourth, with wine people speaking of the Terroir, which determines the complex interactions of soil, geography, temperature, sunshine, weather and whatnot else to produce that one specific taste. Why wouldn't the same be true for other plants and products thereof?
Fifth, if it would be sufficient to give them just the 18 common nutrients, light, water and heat they need, why can't we have them massproduced in the most efficient way in growhouses via (say) Aeroponics, where their roots are in no growth medium at all anymore, just sprayed with a fine mist which contains all the necessary nutrients?
Sixth, science is the process of understanding what happens by modelling, until further evidence necessitates revising of the model.
Seventh, I'm not saying I know it, or others do, it's just that we all don't really know so far. While you pretend to.
Do you really think all the posters in this thread complaining about taste are suffering from some placebo/nocebo effect? Dancing their names under the full moon, or what?
Plants make their own organic molecules. They're not fungi, slurping them up from the soil.
Micronutrients, as the term is used in agriculture, means specific chemical elements that are needed in lesser amounts than the primary nutrients (N, P, K) and the secondary nutrients (Ca, Mg, S). Micronutrients are B, Cu, Fe, Cl, Mn, Mo, and Zn.
Soil structure is of course important, but that doesn't have anything to do with micronutrients.
If you could afford it. Which is precisely where we find ourselves today isn't it? You can buy whatever artisanal produce you want. You can have your yak milk from Bhutan if you have the money.
The plebeians will just have to do with the supermarket.
> You know those human growth hormone jumbo chicken beasts that have the woody texture and taste like water?
Which country do you live at? They don’t give growth hormone to chicken in US, which are enormous nevertheless, so I am now somewhat morbidly interested in seeing US enormous chicken breeds that are additionally given growth hormones.
I'd also recommend you to try different kinds of fresh water fish that are available in places like Burma and Thailand. These fish are more and more difficult (expensive) to buy thanks to overfishing, but the variety and the flavor will just amazes you.
In general, I believe that factory farming has reduced the variety of available food in the US. Whether that impacts the long term health/flavor of the food is something we probably should conduct a long-term scientific study to confirm.
My wife and mom (from the same country) both told me that they cannot eat the chicken from US markets because of the smell, and it took me a while (15 years) to get that distinct scent that they mention and once I starts cooking more and more, I learned to distinguish that myself.