Your most disliked trend in the food industry.

[Mofassah]

Water lists (and even water sommeliers in a few places!). Ridiculous.

Good grief. You are joking now right? I mean it's OK to list a couple of waters on the beverage menu, like with or without bubbles, with or without a lemon twist and maybe even a couple of brands, since they actually do taste a bit different, but make a standalone water list is just stoopid. And "water sommeliers" got to be a joke. Please tell me it's a joke.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

It's not a joke.

Speaking now from a third-world country, the worst trend here is pre-packaged everything. It's killing kitchen skills.

[Twyst]

The number of people who are choosing to go dairy and gluten free is also getting really annoying, and more annoying than that are the steadily number of people who don't inform restaurants of dietary restrictions when they make their reservations (we even make it a point to ask when they make their reservation). I work in a restaurant that only offers a tasting menu, so if we don't know you are coming in with a GF, dairy free, allergic to onions and garlic dietary request you probably aren't going to get anywhere near the quality of food you would have had we had time to prepare for you.

Edited May 28, 2013 by Twyst (log)

[PSmith]

Twyst - you are so right. I have an issue with dairy products being an eczema sufferer, but I won’t ever phone up a restaurant in advance to ask for a non-dairy meal. I much prefer to try and work round it or even throw caution to the wind and enjoy the full experience – dairy included.

I have an acquaintance who has just invited herself over to an annual lunch. However she is a vegetarian (the attention whore type) and I know the restaurant involved is not vegetarian friendly. I cannot face the drama of her realising that she will have to make do with a plate of chips. As yet I have managed to fend her off.

[furzzy]

Lots of papers presented above. Many from the dark ages. Some not relevant. Some maybe relevant...hard to judge without looking up the whole reference.

I'm sure plenty of studies also exist that fail to show dangers from irradiated food.

Whatever the case with irradiation one needs to see it in context with other things we do to food...like grilling it or baking it..and what potentially toxic stuff is generated the old fashioned way.

But with Irradiated foods, as with GMO's, these are things done to the "foods" before they reach us. Grilling or baking is something we decide for ourselves.

[furzzy]

Making it really really difficult to find cream that's not ultra-pasteurized. Stuff has a dead taste that I dislike intensely but even a lot of health food stores sell only organic ultra-pasteurized. Grrrrr.

YES!!! Not only that, the ultra-pasteurized doesn't increase in volume when whipped. It's finally reached the point that I simply can't find plain old pasteurized...and I continue to ask, & ask, & ask. Wish I were in an area where I could raw milk, where the cream floats to the top.

[furzzy]

Idiotic menu items such as "Cornish hen coq au vin".If you don't know basic biology, I don't trust you to make my food.Didn't you get a sex education?Did you really import your HEN from Cornwall to Canada?Or are you just being pompous? And ignorant?

This is a plac where quotes might be appropriate: Cornish Hen a la "Coq au Vin"

Or: Cornish Hen in the method of "Coq au Vin"

(sorry about the missing accent grave over the "a" - got a new Logitech keyboard for my iPad, & have it set up for both French & English, but when I get to the French, I can't get the accents & other diacritical marks to work properly -- yet!)

[furzzy]

re: GMOs and Irradiation resistance not logical.Someone could also make the argument that eating Oscar Meyer Lunchables on a regular basis is a logical thing to do!Sorry, it's not for me!!I think that the food sovereignty and freedom of choice are defensible positions.~Martin

Of course they are defensible. They just have nothing to do with whether irradiation is safe. You can choose not to eat irradiated food, but we aren't discussing your choice.

We are (were) discussing choices...disliked trends in the food industry. Not food safety, safe food trends, unsafe foods trends. So...he doesn't like GMO's and Irradiation. That's okay. It's his choice to dislike those things for whatever reason, or no reason at all.

[annabelle]

Disliking a trend or a thing for no reason at all is silly and not a respectable position to take and be taken seriously. Irradiated foods have been sold for decades in Europe. GMOs give us the ability to reduce famine and disease. Being against practices that are nationwide, indeed worldwide and decades old "for no reason at all" is preposterous.

[lesliec]

I'm not sure if this is an international trend - it's certainly not entirely local, judging by some California oranges I bought recently - but I'm increasingly maddened by the little stickers on my apples, oranges, tomatoes and various other individual items of produce.

These things seem to serve little purpose other than to tell me the variety of fruit and/or where it came from. I already know that; I can read the side of the box, or the sign at the market. The little beasts are a fiddle to remove; they won't break down in the compost if I don't take them off, and they're not fun to bite if I miss one. And surely they must add (albeit slightly) to the cost of bringing the fruit to market.

Consumers of the world, rise up. You have nothing to lose but the stickers on your tomatoes. I hope ...

[mkayahara]

These things seem to serve little purpose other than to tell me the variety of fruit and/or where it came from.

I've always assumed their purpose was to save stores from having to train their cashiers to distinguish between Granny Smith and Mutsu apples on sight...

[annabelle]

It's inventory control. If all of the Fuji apples are just sitting around and the Granny Smiths are flying off the shelves or vice versa, the stores will know which apples to order more or less of.

[lesliec]

But they'll know that just by looking at the shelves!

The way our supermarket works, the weighing machines allow you to select what you've bought then print a price label based on the exact weight and type of fruit/veg. Granted not evrey market does that, but even the ones that don't generally give you the means of writing a product code on the bag. So stock control is based on the checkout registering that I've bought, say, 1.5kg of Granny Smiths or Fujis. Individual stickers don't help that at all.

Yeah, I know, lost cause ...

[annabelle]

The stickers are fixed at the processing plants. The produce goes out to vendors who in turn sell it to the markets. The inventory control goes far beyond what you may be picking up at Trader Joe's or the gas station, even.

[Ashen]

most of those stickers have plu numbers.. product look up.. the numbers do give you a bit of info though.. 4 digit numbers starting with 3 or 4 are conventionally grown.. 5 digit starting with a 9 is organic produce. plu's are voluntary so even though there is 5 number number combination that starts with 8 that is supposed to tell you whether something is GM almost no producers use it as they don't want to advertise it being gm. they just use the conventional plu's

[liuzhou]

Idiotic menu items such as "Cornish hen coq au vin".If you don't know basic biology, I don't trust you to make my food.

Cow Cod (or Cock) Soup has been a favourite in Jamaica for a very long time.

[pep.]

Disliking a trend or a thing for no reason at all is silly and not a respectable position to take and be taken seriously. Irradiated foods have been sold for decades in Europe. GMOs give us the ability to reduce famine and disease. Being against practices that are nationwide, indeed worldwide and decades old "for no reason at all" is preposterous.

Actually, irradiated food is seen as a US thing in (at least this part of) Europe. Only dried spices and herbs may be irradiated at all and it has to be labeled as having been treated with ionizing radiation. Other European countries allow more types of food to be treated this way, but there's a lot of controversy about it.

[Twyst]

Water lists (and even water sommeliers in a few places!). Ridiculous.

Good grief. You are joking now right? I mean it's OK to list a couple of waters on the beverage menu, like with or without bubbles, with or without a lemon twist and maybe even a couple of brands, since they actually do taste a bit different, but make a standalone water list is just stoopid. And "water sommeliers" got to be a joke. Please tell me it's a joke.

Saw this today

http://eater.com/archives/2013/08/06/la-restaurant-has-a-water-menu.php

[Tri2Cook]

Water lists (and even water sommeliers in a few places!). Ridiculous.

Good grief. You are joking now right? I mean it's OK to list a couple of waters on the beverage menu, like with or without bubbles, with or without a lemon twist and maybe even a couple of brands, since they actually do taste a bit different, but make a standalone water list is just stoopid. And "water sommeliers" got to be a joke. Please tell me it's a joke.

Saw this today

http://eater.com/archives/2013/08/06/la-restaurant-has-a-water-menu.php

A water sommelier? I think we've reached the point where some great celestial being should reach down and give us, as a species, a giant collective wedgie and tell us to get over ourselves.

[gfweb]

How much does one tip on water?

[Porthos]

This water had a very light nose and a wet finish. And the waiter did not let me look at the cap first.

[annabelle]

Worse, they wouldn't let you inspect the tap.

[rx6006]

I never thought I'd speak ill of such a treat, but...bacon. The proliferation of bacon into every possible facet of cuisine, from the greasiest of spoons to the most cutting edge of cuisine nouveau establishments. While I believe bacon has a place of honor in the culinary pantheon of ingredients, I do not believe that adding bacon to an otherwise poorly executed dish magically removes all impediments to flavor and delivers a winning bite.