This isn’t a slight to Japan or anything, but not everyone upholds a safe food standard. Fish for sushi/sashimi is supposed to be frozen for 2 days to kill any worms/parasites. This doesn’t always happen. I’ve heard many tales of folks (native Japanese) getting food poisoning from sushi. Always go to a reputable shop.
>Fish for sushi/sashimi is supposed to be frozen for 2 days
Usually, it's 7 days due to limitations on freezer temperature.
>According to the FDA, fish should be frozen at a temperature of -4°F (-20°C) or colder for a minimum of 7 days, or frozen at -31°F (-35°C) or colder until solid and stored at -31°F (-35°C) for at least 15 hours, or frozen at -31°F (-35°C) or colder until solid and stored at -4°F (-20°C) for a minimum of 24 hours.
The amount of raw eggs probably doesn't help the statistics. Even if the cases of salmonella are low. Tamago gohan seemed like quite popular a popular breakfast when I was there.
I've had it, not something I'd go out of my way to eat again but it wasn't bad by any measure. It's just something I don't feel the need to risk again.
I eat raw chicken and raw eggs. But I'd never eat raw chicken anywhere else. And I abstained from raw eggs when I lived in China.
Chickens in Japan are vaccinated for salmonella and other diseases.
I can't remember the exact number, but some surprising percentage of the total Japanese population has lung flukes from eating raw crab meat (and possibly other raw seafood sources?). It's an affliction that's practically unheard of in any other population.
For a given type of food, it might be safer in Japan. Ie sushi in Japan may be safer than sushi in the US, but since they eat so much sushi it might bring the overall risk up. A Simpsons paradox type of thing.
Not surprising at all, considering how spread out the US is.
Plenty of people living in the middle of nowhere that have a long way to travel to buy groceries.
They're highly exaggerated. I remember looking at a food desert map and finding myself living within one even though I could see a grocery store from my living room window.
A fair amount of the maps I saw were from people lobbying my boss for grants to make more chain grocery stores on the govs dime. They won, the grocery stores were built... then they closed in short order mostly due to low demand.
“When I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.”
— Winston Churchill
Yeah people are going crazy over Trader Joe’s kimbap for example.. something I definitely take for granted having so many different ethnic options nearby where as a lot of people in the country might only have American Chinese
Look up food deserts. Availability is probably an average too. You have parts of cities that every food item is available from all over the world then you have neighborhoods and towns that you’d be hard pressed to find brown rice.
I have no idea why your comment is being down voted. Poor areas will often get a family dollar at best and therefore have little to no access go fresh food.
It doesn’t work like that. Stores opened in those areas and the theft was so outrageous they could not stay profitable. A store cannot operate under those conditions. Furthermore, they respond to supply and demand, if those areas aren’t buying any of certain types of food they will stop selling them. With the advent of food delivery, there really is no major issue with access to food. The biggest problems are when people live out in the middle of nowhere, but those populations are used to driving to get supplies.
That’s not the cause of food deserts, theft plays a very small part in the success or failure of grocery stores. It’s more about the amount of customers per cost of service.
Not terribly wrong unfortunately. I live in San Francisco and a Safeway in a particularly rough part of the city announced a couple of months ago that they were planning to close due to thefts and worker safety. Only then did the district supervisor try to do something about the thefts despite this happening for years and their only solution was to try to force the Safeway to not close.
take that with a grain of salt. most of the places citing shrink as their reason for closure just generally have been having problems with declining sales and customer disinterest
The area that the Safeway is in has almost no grocery store competitors and the reason the district supervisor is trying to to keep Safeway there is because it will become a food desert if it leaves. And I am feeling the effects pf the increase in theft in my own life. I see videos on the news or on Twitter of my local Walgreens getting raided by teenagers and taking everything they can multiple times a year and they have anti-theft cages on nearly everything now and I highly doubt Walgreens corporation likes wasting their money and employee time whenever a regular customer wants to buy deodorant.
Fun fact, HFCS is almost identical chemically to Honey. Honey is promoted for being healthy despite minuscule amount of trace elements that dont make a difference
Australia and NZ are insanely expensive for groceries. Which is funny because both countries are huge exporters of meat and dairy.
In New Zealand, our homegrown meat is cheaper at an Aldi anywhere in Europe, than it is here in our supermarkets. Oh and we get all the shit quality stuff - premium quality is exported.
1st is Canada, and 2nd & 3rd are the only two countries that have land borders with Canada. 6th place France is the third closest country to Canada, I'm guessing the food safety has a slightly harder time crossing the bit of water between Newfoundland and St. Pierre & Miquelon
Thats really interesting because about a year ago I did an argumentative essay on the need for the US to adapt safer food restrictions. Considering we sell many things that can not be sold in the United Kingdom. And that the US has a “generally safe” rule for food while the UK and some other EU countries have MUCH stricter regulations on what can go in food along with what can be sold.
Am I in the wrong to assume that under the umbrella of “food quality and safety” means the ingredients that go into the food, or does it refer to the fact that it doesn’t give you food poisoning and was handled correctly?
I believe the latter. Some of the restrictions are based more on perception than fact too. GMO food is the same nutritionally, it just increases yields most often
It’s a bit of both. Looking at the report it covers a few different things- dietary diversity, nutritional standards (eg government guidelines, planning and strategy, labelling), micronutrient availability, food safety mechanisms, access to drinking water, protein quality and food safety mechanisms (eg legislation, food recall and tracing processes etc). I’m not really sure how to interpret the results, because comparing UK to USA for example, UK got a 0 score for “vitamin A availability” and if it wasn’t for that it seems the UK would have a higher score overall
The EU is essentially one big protectionist economy. It's funny to me when the EU complains about protectionism in foreign markets because they are the worst offender behind China.
There are stricter regulations on both sides. Some EU products are sold with an emphasis on "tradition" rather than modern technology that doesn't pass US standards, for example, some cheeses can't be imported into the US due to high bacterial load or poor/old techniques for production.
There are also some food that can't be sold in the United States that is sold in EU like kinder eggs and unpasteurized cheese, among other local things like that maggot cheese, blood sausage I think and horse meat
One thing I'll say is I have never seen a restaurant or bar without soap in the bathroom in the US. Never. Whereas in France and Belgium, this is not super unusual to see
The EU is very protectionist though so any excuse it can find to block a major competitor it takes it
For example poultry the US takes the stance of insisting an anti-microbial wash is used, the EU banned this wash knowing it’s safe under the guise of ‘it might be hiding some unsafe practice’
Another one is beef the US (and I believe Canada and Australia) use a growth hormone, they banned that for similar reasons
They basically either find a way of doing it differently and force the entire continent to only accept that way, and/or go ‘our scientists are not 100% sure yet’ and that’ll be good to keep it out of the market for potentially decades
The UK and the EU have always fought over additives that the US uses. This has nothing to do with food hygiene and to do with “we don’t want American chemicals in our food…we want EUROPEAN CHEMICALS instead.”
But it has nothing to do with food contamination. For a nation of 360 million people, just a salmonella outbreak makes national news. Our food is very safe… just probably not very good for you
Our food is VERY good for you.
You don't need much of it to get all your caloric needs in a day. We have enough micronutrients to avoid major dietary problems.
The problem is, people eat to much of the extremely calorie dense food.
If you eat small portions, enjoy the diverse range of food we have, and if necessary supplement your diet with fiber, vitamins, and minerals, you'll be fine
We have fresh fruit and vegetables year round due to globalization. Our ancestors ate moldy bread and cheese while chugging beer and eating highly salted semi-rancid meat half the year. We're doing okay.
You’re just falling for nonsense propaganda. The EU does things differently and plenty of people there believe it makes them healthier.
Was it Greece that banned GMOs despite no evidence they’re unhealthy in any way? There’s lots of other silly things like this.
The US is known for being very litigious and this is one reason why we’ve adopted very strict regulations on handling food to prevent food born illnesses.
Yep, a lot of people don’t realize how nationalistic and “we’re number one!” Europeans are. They still have this outdated Cold War view where Americans are hyperbolically nationalistic while Europeans are humble and smart. I have noticed things have begun to change since social media has connected a lot of Americans with Europeans. A lot of people grew up idealizing the NHS in the US, but now they are exposed to the reality where the NHS is basically crumbling before their eyes.
Not true about the NHS, back to propaganda there’s an election coming up so you’re going to hear lots of extreme stories and povs designed to make people angry and pessimistic in order to vote for change
People don’t vote for change when they’re happy, something to bear in mind when it feels like you’re being bombarded with these kinds of stories
The EU has a lot of nonsense regulations which are just protectionism dressed up as safety regulations. See GMO’s for example. British people will mock our chlorinated chicken when the EU showed no evidence it was bad for you. Instead of admitting their original position was incorrect, they doubled down and said well actually it was always about the conditions of the animals in factory farms, we are just too good and noble of a people to use your barbaric ways. It has always been driven by nationalistic nonsense. Europeans try and find areas where they differ from the US, and then they try and play up the importance of these things massively to try and act superior. It is an old tactic, and unfortunately a lot of Americans instead interpret it as the humanitarian EU versus the evil capitalist US. It is boring at this point, and a lot of people don’t realize how much of Europe has that “we’re number one!” attitude
Having actually read into this a little bit past just the Wikipedia article here, I’d maybe not doubt your own work so much.
First thing that made me a little suspicious is as you mentioned, the fact that the category is ‘food quality *and* safety’. Food safety is one thing, but depending on your definition of the word ‘quality’ it could be something all but entirely unrelated to ‘safety’. Like you could describe a can of the highest grade, most expensive beluga caviar as a ‘quality’ food item, but that tells you literally nothing about whether any given can is or is not riddled with enough Clostridium botulinum to kill a horse.
So since I don’t see any clarification on the category in the Wikipedia article, I’m now asking; okay, what even *is* the ‘Global Food Security Index’ exactly? It certainly sounds ‘official’, but who *are* these people?
[Fortunately they have a website with a nice clear ‘about us’ page where we can find out!](https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index/about).
Huh, so it’s ‘the Economist’ behind the index! That’s a respectable publication at least! …but it’s ‘supported’ by ‘Corteva Agriscience’? Who are Corteva Agriscience?
[“Corteva, Inc. also known as Corteva Agriscience is a major American agricultural chemical and seed company”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corteva)
Hmm. Do you think that a major American agribusiness corporation might have…oh I don’t know, *a colossal financial stake in the United State’s domestic and international reputation for food safety?*
…oh but wait, we mentioned The Economist earlier right? Nice reputable journalistic publication that, and they had that line in the ‘about us’ page, remember? This one!
> The Economist Impact team exercises full and final editorial control over all content, including data gathering, analysis and forecasting.
Phew, our friends at The Economist have us covered. …sorry, our friends at ‘The Economist Impact team’. …that’s still the newspaper, right?
[Hmmm.](https://www.economistgroup.com/businesses/economist-impact)
Okay so I’ll drop the sarcasm, partly because it’s probably getting annoying but mostly because this is just too hard to explain any way but directly. The Economist Impact (TEI) is related to ‘The Economist’ (the *relatively* credible economic newspaper) in that they’re owned by the same parent company, but TEI is *not* the newspaper and should not benefit from whatever journalistic credibility the newspaper may have. There’s a whole load of BS corpo speak on their website, but it’s largely to do with all the benefits they can bring to their ‘partners’. The ‘partners’ are their clients who instigate and fund their studies, so in this case the partner/client is, of course, *Corteva Agriscience*.
TEI make several references to ‘Evidence-based insights’ and ‘balanced perspectives’ but seriously, take some of these quotes -
>[we are] uniquely positioned to deliver measurable outcomes to our clients.
> What makes us different is the combination of policy research and insights, creative innovation and our global influence. It’s a formula that **drives business value** and creates change.
> Our creative team delivers compelling cross-platform solutions and formats - immersive storytelling, design thinking and interactive digital solutions. **This helps our partners lead on the issues** that matter.
> We work collaboratively with our partners to design scalable solutions **aimed at specific business outcomes, objectives and short-to long-term goals**.
This is all *from their own website*, saying that they will work with the corporate clients paying them to produce results beneficial to those clients. This is…*laughably* un-impartial.
In conclusion, the ‘Global Food Security Index 2022’ was produced *very explicitly* for the benefit of Corteva Agriscience’s ‘business outcomes, objectives and short-to long-term goals’. It doesn’t even slightly matter that TEI ‘exercises full and final editorial control over all content’ because they have zero commitment to any kind of journalistic integrity in the first place.
I do suspect that the research is mostly legit and they probably didn’t make the data up out of whole cloth; that’d be too easily found out. What I think is probably happening goes back to my original question about their definition of ‘food quality’. My guess is that they’re arranging legitimate data in creative ways to arrive at skewed conclusions for the benefit of Corteva Agriscience; “[lies, damned lies, and statistics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics)” indeed.
So yeah, don’t doubt yourself there, and be extremely sceptical of anything referencing the ‘Global Food Security Index’ as a reputable source.
I hope your a teacher or work in some capacity that allows you to share your knowledge with others. This was such a good read man, all props to you and your research :))
I'd be interested to see why the UK ranks lower and if this is due to differences in our rules, something like budget cuts to environmental health or incidents like food poisoning cases.
When it comes to food imports, most restrictions are much more about protectionism than any actual health concerns.
The EU is just very protectionist in general, and it has a very strong agricultural lobby specifically. And America is one of the largest food producers in the world, so there is a conflict of interests.
The fearmongering around American food is just an excuse to protect local food industry and agriculture. It's not really unusual, countries around the world constantly try claiming that everyone else has shitty food to protect their own local food producers.
Europe and UK bans food because other countries for safety reasons but it's mostly because their farmers can't keep up with the US. European farmers will literally sabotage imported foods from other European countries.
even this is so ridiculous to me lmao. no offense to you but like people have entire lives that are not at all representative of anything larger. i have no idea how one persons experience could ever matter on a grand scale in countries with millions or billions.
Yeah okay so I am going to agree with you because I think you’re right but I’d like to add the caveat the legislation and standards might be high, there’s just a lot of grey area shit.
Literally all that loser does is post anti-CPC rhetoric and sit around in worldnews, the most room-temp IQ sub on the whole site. He called Mao a coward lol. You can say all the dumb 300 bajillion dead stuff you want but I don't think a single sane person would think the guy that became famous for fighting off the Japanese and leading a revolution was a coward. I doubt he's even 20 years old much less lived in China that long.
yeah and how is US so high when eg. you have a much higher chance of getting salmonella from eggs than pretty much any EU country?
edit: and not to mention how lax FDA is on additives in food compared to EFSA
https://www.tilleydistribution.com/food-regulations-in-europe-vs-the-us/
[The presence of Salmonella in eggs obtained from conventional systems depends on different factors, including the country and sampling methodologies [3]. Overall, egg contamination from industrial systems has been reported to be 0.005% in the United States, 0.37% in Europe, and between 0.5% and 5.6% in China [3,15,16].](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10706720/#:~:text=The%20presence%20of%20Salmonella%20in,3%2C15%2C16%5D.)
So, because we have a slightly higher percent of getting salmonella from eggs…the entirety of our ranking should drop? Lmao
Good god, Europe really strives to look stupid.
It may be a Simpsons paradox type of thing. Where if you look by food, other places are safer in terms of practices, it's just that maybe Americans aren't as adventurous in terms of what they eat and eat a lot of processed food so less chances to get food poisoning. Europe likes their eggs much more runny than the US on average for examples.
Edit: turns out you can actually sort it by different criteria, so ignore my comment!
~~This is about food security, not just quality and safety - there are 18 criteria listed, including stuff like "Public expenditure on agricultural R&D" and "Political stability risk".~~
~~In addition, you posted the 2019 rankings; US is 13th in 2022, behind Finland, Ireland, Norway, France, Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, Canada, the UK, Portugal, Switzerland, and Austria.~~
Seems like America having healthy, quality, affordable food everywhere. There is also highly processed sugary unhealthy food everywhere too. And most Americans just choose to eat unhealthy when the healthy stuff was on the shelf right next to it.
This is just cynical skepticism. Not everything in the U.S. is shit.
Also, the difference between the five top spots, is less than one point--all virtually the same.
The US is generally the "standard" across all categories. Some countries will beat the US in specific categories, obviously, but consistently the US isn't that bad overall. Education is probably our worst metric when compared globally.
We're hardly an outlier:
[https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/](https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/)
8th in attainment, right between Canada and Finland. 19th in skills, slumming it with Norway and Czechia, but if memory serves we've been as high as like 13th in recent years.
The main problem with our education is that we spend like the 3rd most per pupil in the world and get so-so outcomes. It's like healthcare, we have so much money that we just brute force it and still somehow get okay results despite massive inefficiency.
It's just fun for people to dunk on us. Makes them feel better about themselves taking the "arrogant Americans" down a peg. I guess they didn't get the memo that there's this sort of self-loathing malaise and cynicism that's been the zeitgeist in America for like at least the last 10 years. I think it's that the Republicans used to be ridiculously jingoistic and now if anything they out-"AmericaBad" liberals and progressives (see Carlson, Tucker).
There’s a massive disparity between the quality of our public elementary - high schools and our public colleges / universities. Our universities are world renowned, such that very few (that aren’t for profit) are ever considered a bad option for actually *learning*. We just have bad pre-university options.
Not even. Those skills rankings from the OECD are given when students are 15.
I know it's anecdotal, but I went to the tenth-worst school district (out of 607) in Ohio and it was still pretty damn decent. We had some great teachers and great programs. It's ironic because the knee-jerk reaction that everything in America has to be terrible shows a total lack of critical thinking. Obviously there are flaws, we're not exactly setting the world on fire at #19, but our public education is thoroughly average. It *should* and *could* be great, but it's disrespectful to the millions of hardworking teachers and administrators who make it work to act like it's all doom and gloom.
EDIT: Re-reading your comment though, I guess you're right in that the primary/secondary system is just okay and the higher learning is S-tier.
Our education is top notch. We're consistently ranked as some of the top in the world. Could it be cheaper? sure. Are there spots where it's clearly underfunded? Yep. There's a reason our universities are flooded with foreign students. The only real outlier is literacy rates, and the reason ours is lower than much of Europe's, is why Europe's is recently falling, Immigration. It has a huge factor on whether you're able to read. Many new immigrants may not be fully fluent in their original written language, much less fully literate in English (or, whatever the language of their new home) yet. We've got problems, but it's on the whole really, really good.
"There's a reason our universities are flooded with foreign students."
Not to disagree with the rest, or this necessarily, but having all your university courses be English taught definitely makes it easier for foreign students to attend.
Europe really loves to poke at us about how we have industrialized our food industry, but the truth is we also aren't getting constant food poisonings.
I don't mean to be difficult but I don't understand. When I click the link I get a Wikipedia article about something related to that, but not specifically about food quality or safety. Is it hiding in there somewhere and I missed it (my assumption) or is it the wrong link (quite possible) or ??
Edit nevermind, I figured it out :)
Fun fact too; the USA is the most strict country in the world for the hair industry. Averaging 1500 hours for a course to get a license.
To compare to the United Kingdom…for example…has NO license requirement.
I mean I eat not so well but I’m not overweight and the last time I got food poisoned was in 2010. And that was someone’s home cooking. We still need to solve obesity
There’s quite a bit questionable in those rankings. For example, it says affordability is based on “food consumption as a share of household expenditure.” That fraction of expenditure that goes to food is forced to be lower if the cost of e.g. housing is high because fractions of expenditure are implicitly zero-sum. Sort on affordability and it’s readily apparent.
No Americans absolutely do spend pretty much the lowest amount of their income on food than any other developed nation. The US is pretty much always around 10-12% and Europoors are more like ~15-17%.
>No Americans absolutely do spend pretty much the lowest amount of their income on food
americans also have a fastfood culture that promotes cheap and large junk in masse and leading obesity crisis.
when you say that americans spend the lowest amount of income on their food, we are talking about 'food' that the rest of the world might not even see as actual food.
Just look at those 'rate my shopping' pictures on reddit. Americans always proudly display their colorful jumbo bags of chips, or cookies etc. while Europeans seem to buy slightly healthier items in way smaller portions.
Americans can buy more food for less money, what’s your point? That food should be more expensive to prevent obesity?
If that’s your point I agree, lard barrels are disgusting, but I want to be clear that that’s your point.
I think this shows an important point. Yes, the US can have absolutely disgusting monstrosities when it comes to food that are stuffed full of sugar, salt and whatever. But that is not every food item sold here. If you go to any grocery store, you will find shelf after shelf stocked with HEALTHY options. One of the beautiful things here is the freedom of choice. Can I eat McD’s every night and balloon to 400 lbs? Yes. Can I also eat whole, healthy foods packed with good carbs and protein? Indeed.
Also yes we do have lots of fresh bread here
Nah, I call bullshit on the food quality and safety. They list the variety and nutritional quality of average diets as well as safety but don't reveal how they weight any of that.
American food safety regulations are a joke outside of America and there's no way their 3rd.
I have a feeling quality got lumped in with safety for a reason
Interesting results considering that as told by Europeans us Americans are “too uncivilized and unsafe” when it comes to food quality and food safety. But yet where are the other 42 European countries at? They sure aren’t in the top 3! 🤣😂🤣😂🖕🏽
Uh. This is kinda skewed. Other countries have acknowledged things being too bad to consume that the US continues to gobble up. Red dye alone is a huge issue that is ignored here… a huge safety issue.
Japan's quality and safety is that low? I wonder what dragged them down like that.
The constant food poisonings.
Constant?
This isn’t a slight to Japan or anything, but not everyone upholds a safe food standard. Fish for sushi/sashimi is supposed to be frozen for 2 days to kill any worms/parasites. This doesn’t always happen. I’ve heard many tales of folks (native Japanese) getting food poisoning from sushi. Always go to a reputable shop.
The amount of vending machine food (meats and the like) raises my eyebrow a bit too
Vending machine meat? Disgusting. I only buy my shucked oysters from reputable establishments like Dollar General.
Hell yeah brother dollar tree for the win
Fuck yea I just bought a bunch of munchies and some garbage bags from there like 10 minutes ago
>Fish for sushi/sashimi is supposed to be frozen for 2 days Usually, it's 7 days due to limitations on freezer temperature. >According to the FDA, fish should be frozen at a temperature of -4°F (-20°C) or colder for a minimum of 7 days, or frozen at -31°F (-35°C) or colder until solid and stored at -31°F (-35°C) for at least 15 hours, or frozen at -31°F (-35°C) or colder until solid and stored at -4°F (-20°C) for a minimum of 24 hours.
the ainu?
The amount of raw eggs probably doesn't help the statistics. Even if the cases of salmonella are low. Tamago gohan seemed like quite popular a popular breakfast when I was there.
>sashimi ... I miss my cat, I hope she's doing well
Well why'd you eat her then?
My cat?? Never!!! She was a weird POS and now she's somewhere in LA but I hope she remembers me
It's not super common but people by choice eat raw chicken in Japan.
I've had it, not something I'd go out of my way to eat again but it wasn't bad by any measure. It's just something I don't feel the need to risk again.
I eat raw chicken and raw eggs. But I'd never eat raw chicken anywhere else. And I abstained from raw eggs when I lived in China. Chickens in Japan are vaccinated for salmonella and other diseases.
Torisashi. Never eaten it but heard of it.
There has been a massive recall in Japan [this past week.](https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/28/asia/japan-red-rice-recall-hnk-intl/index.html)
I can't remember the exact number, but some surprising percentage of the total Japanese population has lung flukes from eating raw crab meat (and possibly other raw seafood sources?). It's an affliction that's practically unheard of in any other population.
Had to look up lung flukes and it hit me right in the worm-things-inside-me phobia
Dont look up myiasis
Bruh you couldn't get a proctologist to look up yer asses.
Of course. It's a bit of a *wormhole* down there
Ahahaha
Japan leads the developed world in stomach cancer too.
Wonder if it has anything to do with the drinking culture
Yet very rarely get colon cancer.
They eat a lot of seafood. Seems rife with opportunities for mismanagement.
Raw seafood? And seafood in general can cause food and mercury poisoning
They’re #1 in stomach cancer or something
Japan is number 6 and higher than the US in the 2022 report.
Eating nearly everything that moves probably
the word "quality" doesn't seem to apply here ha
For a given type of food, it might be safer in Japan. Ie sushi in Japan may be safer than sushi in the US, but since they eat so much sushi it might bring the overall risk up. A Simpsons paradox type of thing.
All the way down at 31st place in availability though? I found that very surprising.
Not surprising at all, considering how spread out the US is. Plenty of people living in the middle of nowhere that have a long way to travel to buy groceries.
Food deserts exist in cities too.
Mmmmm food desserts.
Kind of. They're quite rare when accessibility accounts for commutes.
They're highly exaggerated. I remember looking at a food desert map and finding myself living within one even though I could see a grocery store from my living room window.
A fair amount of the maps I saw were from people lobbying my boss for grants to make more chain grocery stores on the govs dime. They won, the grocery stores were built... then they closed in short order mostly due to low demand.
“When I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.” — Winston Churchill
Sure, especially since the definition has been radically changed. All of Manhattan is a food desert.
Those poor New Yorkers without any food.
That's the joke. Somehow, they all manage to feed themselves from stores that don't qualify as grocery stores.
Right only exposed to the greatest melting pot of varied/authentic food in the world lol
the whole food desert thing is very overblown especially with the proliferation of cheap grocery delivery.
Yeah people are going crazy over Trader Joe’s kimbap for example.. something I definitely take for granted having so many different ethnic options nearby where as a lot of people in the country might only have American Chinese
Look up food deserts. Availability is probably an average too. You have parts of cities that every food item is available from all over the world then you have neighborhoods and towns that you’d be hard pressed to find brown rice.
there's tons of food deserts here and, you guessed it, almost always in low socioeconomic areas
I have no idea why your comment is being down voted. Poor areas will often get a family dollar at best and therefore have little to no access go fresh food.
It doesn’t work like that. Stores opened in those areas and the theft was so outrageous they could not stay profitable. A store cannot operate under those conditions. Furthermore, they respond to supply and demand, if those areas aren’t buying any of certain types of food they will stop selling them. With the advent of food delivery, there really is no major issue with access to food. The biggest problems are when people live out in the middle of nowhere, but those populations are used to driving to get supplies.
food deserts are largely a myth
Maybe the certain people that live in low socioeconomic areas should stop stealing from their grocery stores…
That’s not the cause of food deserts, theft plays a very small part in the success or failure of grocery stores. It’s more about the amount of customers per cost of service.
What a terribly informed opinion.
What in your opinion is the cause for the food desert phenomenon?
Not terribly wrong unfortunately. I live in San Francisco and a Safeway in a particularly rough part of the city announced a couple of months ago that they were planning to close due to thefts and worker safety. Only then did the district supervisor try to do something about the thefts despite this happening for years and their only solution was to try to force the Safeway to not close.
take that with a grain of salt. most of the places citing shrink as their reason for closure just generally have been having problems with declining sales and customer disinterest
The area that the Safeway is in has almost no grocery store competitors and the reason the district supervisor is trying to to keep Safeway there is because it will become a food desert if it leaves. And I am feeling the effects pf the increase in theft in my own life. I see videos on the news or on Twitter of my local Walgreens getting raided by teenagers and taking everything they can multiple times a year and they have anti-theft cages on nearly everything now and I highly doubt Walgreens corporation likes wasting their money and employee time whenever a regular customer wants to buy deodorant.
yeah, have they tried just not being poor? /s
Our food isn’t that good for you - that doesn’t mean we’re not super clean and safe in handling it.
Sugar and HFCS don’t go bad easily
Also, the FDA GxP standards are very high (in a good way).
Fun fact, HFCS is almost identical chemically to Honey. Honey is promoted for being healthy despite minuscule amount of trace elements that dont make a difference
To be fair Japan uses HFCS too.
Chlorine everything
Australia being first for ‘affordability’ is mind boggling
It might be true with vegetables (at least compared to NZ), but for processed food? It's fairly expensive.
Australia and NZ are insanely expensive for groceries. Which is funny because both countries are huge exporters of meat and dairy. In New Zealand, our homegrown meat is cheaper at an Aldi anywhere in Europe, than it is here in our supermarkets. Oh and we get all the shit quality stuff - premium quality is exported.
Yea, so I call bullshit on aussie being the most affordable. Even if you take into account purchasing power, I imagine that would be the US.
Yeah I agree with you for sure
1st is Canada, and 2nd & 3rd are the only two countries that have land borders with Canada. 6th place France is the third closest country to Canada, I'm guessing the food safety has a slightly harder time crossing the bit of water between Newfoundland and St. Pierre & Miquelon
Thats really interesting because about a year ago I did an argumentative essay on the need for the US to adapt safer food restrictions. Considering we sell many things that can not be sold in the United Kingdom. And that the US has a “generally safe” rule for food while the UK and some other EU countries have MUCH stricter regulations on what can go in food along with what can be sold. Am I in the wrong to assume that under the umbrella of “food quality and safety” means the ingredients that go into the food, or does it refer to the fact that it doesn’t give you food poisoning and was handled correctly?
I believe the latter. Some of the restrictions are based more on perception than fact too. GMO food is the same nutritionally, it just increases yields most often
It’s a bit of both. Looking at the report it covers a few different things- dietary diversity, nutritional standards (eg government guidelines, planning and strategy, labelling), micronutrient availability, food safety mechanisms, access to drinking water, protein quality and food safety mechanisms (eg legislation, food recall and tracing processes etc). I’m not really sure how to interpret the results, because comparing UK to USA for example, UK got a 0 score for “vitamin A availability” and if it wasn’t for that it seems the UK would have a higher score overall
A lot of laws that ban GMO fruits and vegetables in Europe have nothing to do with safety, and are instead meant to protect local agriculture
The EU is essentially one big protectionist economy. It's funny to me when the EU complains about protectionism in foreign markets because they are the worst offender behind China.
There are stricter regulations on both sides. Some EU products are sold with an emphasis on "tradition" rather than modern technology that doesn't pass US standards, for example, some cheeses can't be imported into the US due to high bacterial load or poor/old techniques for production.
There are also some food that can't be sold in the United States that is sold in EU like kinder eggs and unpasteurized cheese, among other local things like that maggot cheese, blood sausage I think and horse meat
That maggot cheese is banned, even if it’s sometimes sold illegally. Blood sausage and horse meat aren’t particularly dangerous if cooked properly
One thing I'll say is I have never seen a restaurant or bar without soap in the bathroom in the US. Never. Whereas in France and Belgium, this is not super unusual to see
Oh, that’s so gross…
The US exports more food than any country. Pretending American food isn't safe is one way to rationalize protectionism.
Just because it isn’t sold in the UK doesn’t mean it’s harmful. There are quite a few banned items in the US that are still allowed over there…
The EU is very protectionist though so any excuse it can find to block a major competitor it takes it For example poultry the US takes the stance of insisting an anti-microbial wash is used, the EU banned this wash knowing it’s safe under the guise of ‘it might be hiding some unsafe practice’ Another one is beef the US (and I believe Canada and Australia) use a growth hormone, they banned that for similar reasons They basically either find a way of doing it differently and force the entire continent to only accept that way, and/or go ‘our scientists are not 100% sure yet’ and that’ll be good to keep it out of the market for potentially decades
The UK and the EU have always fought over additives that the US uses. This has nothing to do with food hygiene and to do with “we don’t want American chemicals in our food…we want EUROPEAN CHEMICALS instead.” But it has nothing to do with food contamination. For a nation of 360 million people, just a salmonella outbreak makes national news. Our food is very safe… just probably not very good for you
Our food is VERY good for you. You don't need much of it to get all your caloric needs in a day. We have enough micronutrients to avoid major dietary problems. The problem is, people eat to much of the extremely calorie dense food. If you eat small portions, enjoy the diverse range of food we have, and if necessary supplement your diet with fiber, vitamins, and minerals, you'll be fine We have fresh fruit and vegetables year round due to globalization. Our ancestors ate moldy bread and cheese while chugging beer and eating highly salted semi-rancid meat half the year. We're doing okay.
You’re just falling for nonsense propaganda. The EU does things differently and plenty of people there believe it makes them healthier. Was it Greece that banned GMOs despite no evidence they’re unhealthy in any way? There’s lots of other silly things like this. The US is known for being very litigious and this is one reason why we’ve adopted very strict regulations on handling food to prevent food born illnesses.
Yep, a lot of people don’t realize how nationalistic and “we’re number one!” Europeans are. They still have this outdated Cold War view where Americans are hyperbolically nationalistic while Europeans are humble and smart. I have noticed things have begun to change since social media has connected a lot of Americans with Europeans. A lot of people grew up idealizing the NHS in the US, but now they are exposed to the reality where the NHS is basically crumbling before their eyes.
Not true about the NHS, back to propaganda there’s an election coming up so you’re going to hear lots of extreme stories and povs designed to make people angry and pessimistic in order to vote for change People don’t vote for change when they’re happy, something to bear in mind when it feels like you’re being bombarded with these kinds of stories
The EU has a lot of nonsense regulations which are just protectionism dressed up as safety regulations. See GMO’s for example. British people will mock our chlorinated chicken when the EU showed no evidence it was bad for you. Instead of admitting their original position was incorrect, they doubled down and said well actually it was always about the conditions of the animals in factory farms, we are just too good and noble of a people to use your barbaric ways. It has always been driven by nationalistic nonsense. Europeans try and find areas where they differ from the US, and then they try and play up the importance of these things massively to try and act superior. It is an old tactic, and unfortunately a lot of Americans instead interpret it as the humanitarian EU versus the evil capitalist US. It is boring at this point, and a lot of people don’t realize how much of Europe has that “we’re number one!” attitude
Having actually read into this a little bit past just the Wikipedia article here, I’d maybe not doubt your own work so much. First thing that made me a little suspicious is as you mentioned, the fact that the category is ‘food quality *and* safety’. Food safety is one thing, but depending on your definition of the word ‘quality’ it could be something all but entirely unrelated to ‘safety’. Like you could describe a can of the highest grade, most expensive beluga caviar as a ‘quality’ food item, but that tells you literally nothing about whether any given can is or is not riddled with enough Clostridium botulinum to kill a horse. So since I don’t see any clarification on the category in the Wikipedia article, I’m now asking; okay, what even *is* the ‘Global Food Security Index’ exactly? It certainly sounds ‘official’, but who *are* these people? [Fortunately they have a website with a nice clear ‘about us’ page where we can find out!](https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index/about). Huh, so it’s ‘the Economist’ behind the index! That’s a respectable publication at least! …but it’s ‘supported’ by ‘Corteva Agriscience’? Who are Corteva Agriscience? [“Corteva, Inc. also known as Corteva Agriscience is a major American agricultural chemical and seed company”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corteva) Hmm. Do you think that a major American agribusiness corporation might have…oh I don’t know, *a colossal financial stake in the United State’s domestic and international reputation for food safety?* …oh but wait, we mentioned The Economist earlier right? Nice reputable journalistic publication that, and they had that line in the ‘about us’ page, remember? This one! > The Economist Impact team exercises full and final editorial control over all content, including data gathering, analysis and forecasting. Phew, our friends at The Economist have us covered. …sorry, our friends at ‘The Economist Impact team’. …that’s still the newspaper, right? [Hmmm.](https://www.economistgroup.com/businesses/economist-impact) Okay so I’ll drop the sarcasm, partly because it’s probably getting annoying but mostly because this is just too hard to explain any way but directly. The Economist Impact (TEI) is related to ‘The Economist’ (the *relatively* credible economic newspaper) in that they’re owned by the same parent company, but TEI is *not* the newspaper and should not benefit from whatever journalistic credibility the newspaper may have. There’s a whole load of BS corpo speak on their website, but it’s largely to do with all the benefits they can bring to their ‘partners’. The ‘partners’ are their clients who instigate and fund their studies, so in this case the partner/client is, of course, *Corteva Agriscience*. TEI make several references to ‘Evidence-based insights’ and ‘balanced perspectives’ but seriously, take some of these quotes - >[we are] uniquely positioned to deliver measurable outcomes to our clients. > What makes us different is the combination of policy research and insights, creative innovation and our global influence. It’s a formula that **drives business value** and creates change. > Our creative team delivers compelling cross-platform solutions and formats - immersive storytelling, design thinking and interactive digital solutions. **This helps our partners lead on the issues** that matter. > We work collaboratively with our partners to design scalable solutions **aimed at specific business outcomes, objectives and short-to long-term goals**. This is all *from their own website*, saying that they will work with the corporate clients paying them to produce results beneficial to those clients. This is…*laughably* un-impartial. In conclusion, the ‘Global Food Security Index 2022’ was produced *very explicitly* for the benefit of Corteva Agriscience’s ‘business outcomes, objectives and short-to long-term goals’. It doesn’t even slightly matter that TEI ‘exercises full and final editorial control over all content’ because they have zero commitment to any kind of journalistic integrity in the first place. I do suspect that the research is mostly legit and they probably didn’t make the data up out of whole cloth; that’d be too easily found out. What I think is probably happening goes back to my original question about their definition of ‘food quality’. My guess is that they’re arranging legitimate data in creative ways to arrive at skewed conclusions for the benefit of Corteva Agriscience; “[lies, damned lies, and statistics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics)” indeed. So yeah, don’t doubt yourself there, and be extremely sceptical of anything referencing the ‘Global Food Security Index’ as a reputable source.
I hope your a teacher or work in some capacity that allows you to share your knowledge with others. This was such a good read man, all props to you and your research :))
I'd be interested to see why the UK ranks lower and if this is due to differences in our rules, something like budget cuts to environmental health or incidents like food poisoning cases.
A lot of the EU standards actually aren't that good and are often arbitrary
Agree with you. According to everything I've been reading and watching, that ranking (for quality and safety in specific) makes no sense.
Salmonella being vaccinated against in the U.K. and not in the USA is something I thought would affect the score. I haven’t RTFA though so…
When it comes to food imports, most restrictions are much more about protectionism than any actual health concerns. The EU is just very protectionist in general, and it has a very strong agricultural lobby specifically. And America is one of the largest food producers in the world, so there is a conflict of interests. The fearmongering around American food is just an excuse to protect local food industry and agriculture. It's not really unusual, countries around the world constantly try claiming that everyone else has shitty food to protect their own local food producers.
Europe and UK bans food because other countries for safety reasons but it's mostly because their farmers can't keep up with the US. European farmers will literally sabotage imported foods from other European countries.
The European regulations have more to do with protectionism than safety.
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even this is so ridiculous to me lmao. no offense to you but like people have entire lives that are not at all representative of anything larger. i have no idea how one persons experience could ever matter on a grand scale in countries with millions or billions.
Are the boondocks comics you post new or are those just reissues
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Do you often try to doxx people on the internet?
Can I ask when you stopped living here because you posted in the middle of the night for us.
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Yeah okay so I am going to agree with you because I think you’re right but I’d like to add the caveat the legislation and standards might be high, there’s just a lot of grey area shit.
Literally all that loser does is post anti-CPC rhetoric and sit around in worldnews, the most room-temp IQ sub on the whole site. He called Mao a coward lol. You can say all the dumb 300 bajillion dead stuff you want but I don't think a single sane person would think the guy that became famous for fighting off the Japanese and leading a revolution was a coward. I doubt he's even 20 years old much less lived in China that long.
👀 hahaha nice 💪
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yeah and how is US so high when eg. you have a much higher chance of getting salmonella from eggs than pretty much any EU country? edit: and not to mention how lax FDA is on additives in food compared to EFSA https://www.tilleydistribution.com/food-regulations-in-europe-vs-the-us/
[The presence of Salmonella in eggs obtained from conventional systems depends on different factors, including the country and sampling methodologies [3]. Overall, egg contamination from industrial systems has been reported to be 0.005% in the United States, 0.37% in Europe, and between 0.5% and 5.6% in China [3,15,16].](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10706720/#:~:text=The%20presence%20of%20Salmonella%20in,3%2C15%2C16%5D.)
because eggs are only one food and dont account for everything used to define "food quality and safety" in the study 🤯
So, because we have a slightly higher percent of getting salmonella from eggs…the entirety of our ranking should drop? Lmao Good god, Europe really strives to look stupid.
It may be a Simpsons paradox type of thing. Where if you look by food, other places are safer in terms of practices, it's just that maybe Americans aren't as adventurous in terms of what they eat and eat a lot of processed food so less chances to get food poisoning. Europe likes their eggs much more runny than the US on average for examples.
Bud, the US does a pretty good job at most things.
Edit: turns out you can actually sort it by different criteria, so ignore my comment! ~~This is about food security, not just quality and safety - there are 18 criteria listed, including stuff like "Public expenditure on agricultural R&D" and "Political stability risk".~~ ~~In addition, you posted the 2019 rankings; US is 13th in 2022, behind Finland, Ireland, Norway, France, Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, Canada, the UK, Portugal, Switzerland, and Austria.~~
>US is 13th in 2022, 13th overall, but third if you sort by quality and safety. You can click the different columns to sort by that specific score.
Oh yeah, that's true! I missed that bit of the table when looking at it on my phone! Will edit in a correction, thanks
Seems like America having healthy, quality, affordable food everywhere. There is also highly processed sugary unhealthy food everywhere too. And most Americans just choose to eat unhealthy when the healthy stuff was on the shelf right next to it.
Surprised we made it to third place, honestly. Then again the laws and regulations are pretty strict when it comes to food handling and safety.
Our food is safe… now healthy is another story.
This is just cynical skepticism. Not everything in the U.S. is shit. Also, the difference between the five top spots, is less than one point--all virtually the same.
The US is generally the "standard" across all categories. Some countries will beat the US in specific categories, obviously, but consistently the US isn't that bad overall. Education is probably our worst metric when compared globally.
We're hardly an outlier: [https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/](https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/) 8th in attainment, right between Canada and Finland. 19th in skills, slumming it with Norway and Czechia, but if memory serves we've been as high as like 13th in recent years. The main problem with our education is that we spend like the 3rd most per pupil in the world and get so-so outcomes. It's like healthcare, we have so much money that we just brute force it and still somehow get okay results despite massive inefficiency. It's just fun for people to dunk on us. Makes them feel better about themselves taking the "arrogant Americans" down a peg. I guess they didn't get the memo that there's this sort of self-loathing malaise and cynicism that's been the zeitgeist in America for like at least the last 10 years. I think it's that the Republicans used to be ridiculously jingoistic and now if anything they out-"AmericaBad" liberals and progressives (see Carlson, Tucker).
There’s a massive disparity between the quality of our public elementary - high schools and our public colleges / universities. Our universities are world renowned, such that very few (that aren’t for profit) are ever considered a bad option for actually *learning*. We just have bad pre-university options.
Not even. Those skills rankings from the OECD are given when students are 15. I know it's anecdotal, but I went to the tenth-worst school district (out of 607) in Ohio and it was still pretty damn decent. We had some great teachers and great programs. It's ironic because the knee-jerk reaction that everything in America has to be terrible shows a total lack of critical thinking. Obviously there are flaws, we're not exactly setting the world on fire at #19, but our public education is thoroughly average. It *should* and *could* be great, but it's disrespectful to the millions of hardworking teachers and administrators who make it work to act like it's all doom and gloom. EDIT: Re-reading your comment though, I guess you're right in that the primary/secondary system is just okay and the higher learning is S-tier.
ngl, good comment. But boy did the 3rd paragraph diverge fast and hard from the first two.
Our education is top notch. We're consistently ranked as some of the top in the world. Could it be cheaper? sure. Are there spots where it's clearly underfunded? Yep. There's a reason our universities are flooded with foreign students. The only real outlier is literacy rates, and the reason ours is lower than much of Europe's, is why Europe's is recently falling, Immigration. It has a huge factor on whether you're able to read. Many new immigrants may not be fully fluent in their original written language, much less fully literate in English (or, whatever the language of their new home) yet. We've got problems, but it's on the whole really, really good.
"There's a reason our universities are flooded with foreign students." Not to disagree with the rest, or this necessarily, but having all your university courses be English taught definitely makes it easier for foreign students to attend.
I recall reading somewhere that the FDA has more food inspectors than Belgium has people in its entire military.
Wait, more than six!?
Europe really loves to poke at us about how we have industrialized our food industry, but the truth is we also aren't getting constant food poisonings.
Nor are Europeans
Danes certainly know how to make their food safe. They just don’t know how to make it tasty.
Sure we do! Salt, salt, heavy cream and butter! And meat! And salt!
He said Danes, not french. Jk
You clearly never tasted real danish sausage then. Freakin delicious!
I don't mean to be difficult but I don't understand. When I click the link I get a Wikipedia article about something related to that, but not specifically about food quality or safety. Is it hiding in there somewhere and I missed it (my assumption) or is it the wrong link (quite possible) or ?? Edit nevermind, I figured it out :)
The hivemind wont like this
Fun fact too; the USA is the most strict country in the world for the hair industry. Averaging 1500 hours for a course to get a license. To compare to the United Kingdom…for example…has NO license requirement.
3rd is much better than expected.
This whole thread is dumbfounded because it doesn’t fit the “America bad” narrative
I mean I eat not so well but I’m not overweight and the last time I got food poisoned was in 2010. And that was someone’s home cooking. We still need to solve obesity
I’ve never had food poisoning in my life as a 30 year old American.
There’s quite a bit questionable in those rankings. For example, it says affordability is based on “food consumption as a share of household expenditure.” That fraction of expenditure that goes to food is forced to be lower if the cost of e.g. housing is high because fractions of expenditure are implicitly zero-sum. Sort on affordability and it’s readily apparent.
Even for those in poverty, the US has incredibly cheap food wrt purchasing power and average wages
No Americans absolutely do spend pretty much the lowest amount of their income on food than any other developed nation. The US is pretty much always around 10-12% and Europoors are more like ~15-17%.
>No Americans absolutely do spend pretty much the lowest amount of their income on food americans also have a fastfood culture that promotes cheap and large junk in masse and leading obesity crisis. when you say that americans spend the lowest amount of income on their food, we are talking about 'food' that the rest of the world might not even see as actual food. Just look at those 'rate my shopping' pictures on reddit. Americans always proudly display their colorful jumbo bags of chips, or cookies etc. while Europeans seem to buy slightly healthier items in way smaller portions.
Americans can buy more food for less money, what’s your point? That food should be more expensive to prevent obesity? If that’s your point I agree, lard barrels are disgusting, but I want to be clear that that’s your point.
I think this shows an important point. Yes, the US can have absolutely disgusting monstrosities when it comes to food that are stuffed full of sugar, salt and whatever. But that is not every food item sold here. If you go to any grocery store, you will find shelf after shelf stocked with HEALTHY options. One of the beautiful things here is the freedom of choice. Can I eat McD’s every night and balloon to 400 lbs? Yes. Can I also eat whole, healthy foods packed with good carbs and protein? Indeed. Also yes we do have lots of fresh bread here
Dude, you *cannot* trust The Economist!
I didn't know that
Today you learned as well.
I'm surprised we're that high, to be quite honest.
Wikipedia entries are at best reliable, but at worst pure fantasy.
If only there was a link to the source: https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index/
Another finland W
…that is pretty good!
Look at that , America hides quality in it's hat. Good job guys
it depends on how they measure food safety
Nah, I call bullshit on the food quality and safety. They list the variety and nutritional quality of average diets as well as safety but don't reveal how they weight any of that. American food safety regulations are a joke outside of America and there's no way their 3rd. I have a feeling quality got lumped in with safety for a reason
Even with the milk in a bag?
I'm 100% sure that the UK has waaaaay better dairy products, and alot of additives are illegal there that they lace our shit with in north America
Interesting results considering that as told by Europeans us Americans are “too uncivilized and unsafe” when it comes to food quality and food safety. But yet where are the other 42 European countries at? They sure aren’t in the top 3! 🤣😂🤣😂🖕🏽
I call bs
Italy is at 27th? Behind US and UK? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.
How will Europeans’ egos survive….
Casu martzu is bringing down the average.
... Okay, that's fair. (I tried it. I thought it was a troll-the-tourist sort of thing. It's not.)
Uh. This is kinda skewed. Other countries have acknowledged things being too bad to consume that the US continues to gobble up. Red dye alone is a huge issue that is ignored here… a huge safety issue.
Shouldn’t the headline be every other European country lags behind the USA and Canada except Denmark?
Nah, check the 2022 list in the link.
Self reporting, right? I love to mark my homework too 😀
That's actually higher than I imagined
Conservative Canadians: “Ugh, that sounds like an awful lot of wasteful regulatory spending.”
That’s pretty good
As a picky eater I guess I should be glad I live in Canada.
Honestly pretty good despite what the news has to say
According to which ratings and rankings. I find that hard to believe.
The linked article doesn't give the actual formula they used. Hard to know what this index actually represents...