Irish Court Says Subway Bread Is Too Sugary to Be Called 'Bread' (foodandwine.com) 313
According to the Subway Ireland website, the chain's six-inch and footlong subs are available on six different kinds of bread, including nine-grain multi-seed, Italian white bread, Italian herbs and cheese, nine-grain wheat, hearty Italian, and honey oat. And, according to the country's Supreme Court, all six varieties are too sugary to legally be called "bread" at all. From a report: The court case itself is a slightly confusing one unless you're well versed in Irish tax policies, but it started when a Subway franchise owner challenged the tax authorities' decision not to issue a refund for value-added tax (VAT) on some takeout foods. Galway-based Bookfinders LTD said that it shouldn't have to pay VAT on hot coffee and tea, or on the hot sandwiches that weren't eaten inside the restaurant.
Its argument was that since the sandwiches contain bread, they should be considered a "staple food" and shouldn't be taxed. But the five Supreme Court judges countered by suggesting that those sandwiches aren't served on "bread" at all, at least not under the "statutory definition of bread." According to the Irish Independent, the judges ruled that Subway's bread is not a staple food because its sugar content is 10 percent of the weight of the flour in the dough; the Value-Added Tax Act 1972 stipulates that sugar, fat, and "bread improver" cannot add up to more than 2 percent of the weight of the flour. (Those limits are in place to prevent things like pastries and other sweet baked goods from being labeled as "staple foods" and exempt from being taxed.)
Its argument was that since the sandwiches contain bread, they should be considered a "staple food" and shouldn't be taxed. But the five Supreme Court judges countered by suggesting that those sandwiches aren't served on "bread" at all, at least not under the "statutory definition of bread." According to the Irish Independent, the judges ruled that Subway's bread is not a staple food because its sugar content is 10 percent of the weight of the flour in the dough; the Value-Added Tax Act 1972 stipulates that sugar, fat, and "bread improver" cannot add up to more than 2 percent of the weight of the flour. (Those limits are in place to prevent things like pastries and other sweet baked goods from being labeled as "staple foods" and exempt from being taxed.)
Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Let them eat cake!
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Subway's problem is that they have to pay VAT on cake.
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Boo hoo. Pass me the tiny violin.
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The comments on various articles all say "added sugar makes it cake or biscuit"
This isn't entirely true.
Bread isn't supposed to have "added" sugar, but it needs sugar for the yeast to make the bread rise. So if there is enough sugar added to it to disqualify it as bread, then it's not really bread is it?
A correct bread recipe has a 1:1 yeast to sugar ratio. Anything else added (Eg cheese) has to be real cheese, not "low fat" cheese, because low-fat cheese replaces milk fat with either vegetable oil or strai
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
A correct bread recipe has only flour, yeast, water, salt.
Everything else is an adulterant. I make bread with only flour, yeast, water and salt. It's great. People need to stop eating sugar.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the basic recipe anyway, and so easy to make that even i do it.
But there is something to be said for variants and additions that aren't just more sugar.
Sugar is an American obsession. Commercial food makers have discovered that if you stuff more sugar in anything people buy it and it becomes very profitable. Bread, condiments, meat, cereal -- foods that don't even need sugar. Unlike other countries there is no regulatory system to stop them.
No sugar recipees are (Score:4, Interesting)
Sugar added to bread makes it moister, softer, fluffier and increases how long it stays fresh.
If you do not add any sugar, you get a harder, drier less fluffy bread that goes detectable stale in a day, unless you refrigerate.
If you do not like the taste, you can simply add more whole grains. And stop thinking that someone your personal preferences for certain tastes are somehow morally superior to others.
If you think the lack of sugar is somehow healthier, any diabetic will laugh in your face and tell you the starch in bread is converted into sugar in about an hour.
All mammals convert carbohydrates into sugar, regardless of whether they come from vegetables, fruit, grains, or any other source. We use it to power our bodies so ALL of us need sugar. Our health issues are about excess not type of carbs.
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"All mammals convert carbohydrates into sugar, regardless of whether they come from vegetables, fruit, grains, or any other source. We use it to power our bodies so ALL of us need sugar."
It's technically true that all of us need sugar, for our brains. But our bodies make enough for them to function even if we eat no carbohydrates at all.
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While starches are slowly converted to sugar in the body, it *does* make a difference how rapidly that happens. Faster is worse in many ways, and better in only a very few.
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1st thing :
No, we don't need sugar intake.
Your body has two modes for getting energy and can live without sugars, namely using proteins and fat.
If you have trouble picturing that, tell me what sugars are powering the bodies of the Inuit or other arctic tribes on the ice cap ?
Look up ketonic diet for details.
2nd :
Not all sugars are digested by the same organs, and having to manage a pike of sugar in the blood is extra work for your body.
Thus, adding sugar (which one btw ? there are several types fructose, sa
That's not how digestion works (Score:3)
Sugar digests much faster than the digestive system's time constant, so causes over-injection of insulin to compensate. Hence the sugar rush before compensation, and the hunger some time later after the over-compensation.
We're designed for carbohydrates bound up with fibre so they digest much slower and don't cause the overshoot issue.
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A similar effect can be achieved by adding a little oil to the dough. The resulting bread is softer and retains water longer, preventing it from going stale for many days.
The bread I usually eat is made traditionally like that, with about 50g of oil for 1Kg of flour.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
People need to stop eating sugar.
To be clear people need to eat less refined sugar. Stop eating sugar is a technical impossibility and an unhealthy one at that.
But that "adultery" is actual food science. You may think yourself as some kind of purist, or that people use sugar just because they are addicted to sweat things, but the reality is sugar has a variety of purposes in both cooking and baking completely changing textures, how binding agents work and often at a concentration low enough to not affect the taste of the final product. Hell just go look up what sugar and yeast do together.
Add some science to your cooking and less religion.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, people need to eat less (no) refined sugar.
Sugar is added to most commercial bread because it is a cheap way to make it taste better. Subway adds way to much sugar and they are (rightly) paying the penalty.
If you're a commercial food chemist, sugar is an essential ingredient. If you're a home bread baker, leave out the sugar.
Re: Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Baking us not an ingredient
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There is at least some difference in the usage of "recipe" on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. I don't know where mspohr is posting from, but I've encountered people using "recipe" as "list of ingredients" on a few occasions in England and Scotland. They differentiated "the recipe" from "the directions". The recipe was the thing you took to the store as a shopping list.
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So is kneading and proofing, etc. I think we all understood that the poster was just giving the ingredient portion of their recipe. I get that you were just being super-pedantic because they were being pedantic to begin with, but it might be possible to take that a little bit too far. I've definitely been guilty of that myself on a number of occasions
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That's also a great way to "break" the yeast. Yeast is a simple beastie, it wants one food source or another; if it wakes up to an abundant supply of simple sugars, it won't be all that excited about the starches in the flour, even after it runs out of the sugar.
There's really no need to prime the yeast anyway, it's pretty voracious. Give it a warm water/starch environment, it'll do it's job just fine.
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Yeast does not digest long chain starches fast enough to rise dough, because it nibbles bits of the ends of the long chains. In sourdough culture, there are bacteria that hack right into the long chain starch molecules, and then the yeast can get to work.
In my early days of bread making, used to use packet dried yeast and add sugar to provide food for the yeast. If you choose the right unprocessed flour, you can get a sourdough culture going just by adding water to some flour to create a slurry, and letting
Re: Simple solution (Score:3)
My grandparents were gluten intolerant, you insensitive clods!
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Bread isn't supposed to have "added" sugar, but it needs sugar for the yeast to make the bread rise.
Yeast does not need sugar to activate. This is an old wives tale, which at one time was partially true for old yeast which wasn't preserved well. People still believe it because sugar will make yeast bubble up more so people think it is doing something useful (and because old wives tales linger a long time).
But it is silly to say a 9 : 1 flour to sugar ratio makes bread into a cake or biscuit (which I assume Ireland means what the US calls a cookie). A standard sugar cookie has closer to a 3 : 2 flour to su
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I think you're confusing "the US" (corporations mass producing food) with what people do on their own. I can't vouch for what the mass producers do, but probably they do use a lot of sugar.
I don't eat "cake" by most definitions of the word, never made it, never will. But I have used sugar in some bread recipes (some kinds of dinner rolls, etc.). I agree, it seems unrelated to yeast activation, flour has sugar in it naturally. Depending on what you're doing though, you may still want to vary the quantity.
I'm
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More than 10% of the weight of dry flour.
It's funny . . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Bread in southeastern Europe, one of the few places I've spent time in outside the U.S., was flour, water, yeast, and maybe a tiny bit of salt. That's it. No sugar, and usually no oil. And it was great.
Most "bread" here in the U.S.: literally so sweet I can't eat it and not get sick. Mostly a mixture of bleached brominated white flour and high-fructose corn syrup, apparently blown into some sort of foam, then dried, then baked only just enough to form a disgusting crust, so gross that even Water White of Breaking Bad fame was kind enough to cut off so that his captive "Krazy 8," whom he later killed, wouldn't have to eat it.
Only specialty and artisanal bakeries seem willing to sell anything resembling what I consider bread, and, being made by hand in small batches, that costs a great deal more than the garbage in grocery stores. But, IMO, worth every penny, on the rare occasions I can afford it.
Re:It's funny . . . . (Score:5, Funny)
You may be describing "Wonder Bread", but I think saying "most" U.S. bread is that way is a gross exaggeration. But with a name like "Joey Vegetables", I guess I should trust you on nutritional matters.
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You may be describing "Wonder Bread", but I think saying "most" U.S. bread is that way is a gross exaggeration. But with a name like "Joey Vegetables", I guess I should trust you on nutritional matters.
Yeah, you can buy any kind of bread you want. Some people just really like to bitch about the extremes though. He probably also says that all cars in the US are V8 diesel 4x4 trucks.
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I don't think my grocery store has (Score:2)
Also they hide the portions. A poster on one of my other forums said they came from Europe and were giving their kid these snacks that they were crazy for but appeared healthy with only a few grams of sugar added.
Of course the way they did that was by making a 'serving' like 3 small pieces of the
Re:It's funny . . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, unless your awareness of nutritional matters is at least equal to mine, you probably should trust me on them. Or, better yet, do a little reading on your own. It's a pretty important topic, that most people ignore, to their own significant detriment.
I stay apprised of developments in the field of nutritional medicine, because I have to.
I have congenital health conditions that require me have more than the usual person's awareness of what's inside the food I eat.
And, yes, "Wonder 'Bread'" is maybe the grossest of the grossest, but all I ever see at grocery stores around here are variations on the same theme, maybe made with a little wheat flour instead of all white, maybe made with honey instead of HFCS, maybe swimming in fake "butter," maybe sprinkled with oat flakes. Still, variations on a theme. Airtight bags of mostly sugar, flour, preservatives and other chemicals, and, seemingly, usually in about that order.
As for my user name, I was forced into veganism for health reasons in my early teens. I don't subscribe to most parts of the left-wing religion as do many other vegans. I have however learned to not only accept but enjoy a plant-based diet. The very thought of dead, decomposing, factory-farmed, rotting, almost-but-not-quite-artificially-preserved animal carcasses is pretty disgusting to me.
So, yeah, I eat mostly vegetables, without apology, and I recommend that most people eat a lot more also, and a lot less factory-farmed animals and dairy, but, if you want to endanger your health by letting Big Agra control your diet, well, it's a free country, and that's your choice. It just isn't mine. At least, not while I still have that choice.
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Well said. I came back to read the resulting flame war, but your response was entirely appropriate and well-worded.
What has the world come to when attempts at trolling are met with genuine answers and not seething hatred?
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Thanks, you do sound credible. I think I've eaten Wonder Bread once in the past 20 years, purely for nostalgia, but yeah, I do eat some of the "compromise" breads regularly. There are other (expensive) choices though, at least in my supermarkets. Most days, I wish I had enough mental health to afford to eat better.
Processed food is cheap (Score:2)
I eat a mostly vegetarian diet (cheese, a little fish and eggs) and I blow though $300+/mo on just me. Vegetables aren't subsidized the way corn, sugar and meat are. Vegetables look cheap until you compare dollars per calorie. They're also much, much harder to cook.
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Yeah, it's definitely the cheapest and most popular bread in the USA, but I grew up calling it "sissy bread."
It's not appropriate for anything except bittersweet nostalgia regarding my early days trying to make it as a new adult with a young family. It's yucky.
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Go ahead and find me brand name bread devoid of sugar or HFCS. I'll wait. You want real bread you have to visit a bakery. Even the stuff baked at my local supermarket is full of preservatives and things like soybean oil. That means the dough they use is mass produced and no better than Wonder Bread.
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Nice rant about the US but you seem to have missed that the article is about bread in Ireland.
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Re: It's funny . . . . (Score:3)
You'd find the same wherever you went. US bread is a horrible sugary mess compared to bread from anywhere else I've experienced. in fact most US recipes are overly sugared in my experience.
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Most "bread" here in the U.S.: literally so sweet I can't eat it and not get sick.
If you get sick because bread is sweet, you have a specific medical problem. The rest of us don’t.
We don't need your help choosing our food. We won't choose your foods either. You should talk to your doctor about what foods are best for your medical problems.
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I get sick because it tastes gross to me. I'm quite aware of what is or isn't safe for me to consume. I wouldn't be here otherwise.
Also, the insane rates of obesity, heart disease, hypertension, and cancers in the U.S. and many other post-industrialized countries suggest that most people could use a little bit of truthful information about the effects of diet (and exercise) upon health. Information they are surely NOT going to get from big government, big media, or big pharma. Probably not at all, unles
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I get sick because it tastes gross to me. I'm quite aware of what is or isn't safe for me to consume. I wouldn't be here otherwise.
Also, the insane rates of obesity, heart disease, hypertension, and cancers in the U.S. and many other post-industrialized countries suggest that most people could use a little bit of truthful information about the effects of diet (and exercise) upon health. Information they are surely NOT going to get from big government, big media, or big pharma. Probably not at all, unless they seek it out.
Dishonest exaggeration then. We don't need advice based on hype from fabulists. We can make our own choices. We will use information. You can keep using hype and exaggeration and conspiracy theories to make your personal choices if you want.
Both exaggerations are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
To this day I still can't get anyone to explain to me how I'm supposed to get to the USDA daily recommended values of vitamins & minerals without a supplement. It's not mathematically possible. But I've never had a doctor or dietician tell me I needed to take a supplement unless there was a specific reason (like how I take magnesium for a mild heart condition).
No, gov't is not bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone telling you blanket "government is bad" is trying to rule over you. They want you to refuse to participate in government so that you will cede control of it to them.
You will always have a large, powerful central government. That's because you need a big military to protect your land from thieves and you need a big civilian government to protect your land from that big military you just made.
The question is never, "will there be Big Government?" and always "will you participate in it?".
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Without sugar, where does the yeast get glucose from in order to cause the bread to rise?
I mean, I suppose it's POSSIBLE to just wait for it to rise without sugar, but then wouldn't you be looking at waiting times upwards of a day just to rise, instead of, for example, only a few hours?
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You can make bread without sugar. Yeast can consume the starches in the flour, albeit, generally, more slowly than they would sugar.
You also can calculate the amount of sugar needed by the yeast to rise at the desired rate, such that there won't be more sugar than what you want, or possibly any at all, in the finished product. That makes sense in a commercial environment, and is also what I do at home, since I don't want the bread to take hours and hours to rise if it doesn't have to.
I am assuming that th
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I do find it interesting that here in the US we're basically taught that yeast can't do its job without sugar, while in reality it gets along just fine processing the carbs in flour, it just moves a little more slowly. It seems systemic here. I heard it from everybody growing up from grandma to the TV chefs.
It makes me wonder if it was somehow shoe-horned into our collective psyche by the sugar industry, or if impatience just lead to more sugar use in baking in the states and eventually people forgot that
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I have good news for you. Making bread of the sort you are describing is easy and cheap. 10-15 min of prep time, 5 more after its risen, and 35min of bake time. Little clean up after you have had some practice.
If you are willing to settle for an only a slightly inferior result you could get one of those counter top bread machines. That has the advantage in that if you have to leave for work or something you don't need to do anything after the bread has risen the machine will just shift to bake and you can
Re:It's funny . . . . (Score:4, Funny)
I make bread quite often and a little sugar is a normal ingredient. If it's still there are baking there's something wrong - the only reason it's there is as yeast food. The little devils love the stuff. Then they fart out CO2 that makes your bread rise. They'll eat flour if they have to, but I like them too much to make them do that.
Couldn't you just buy a breadmaker? (Score:3)
I don't bother making bread but I regularly make pizza dough. It does take several tries to get it right though. Recipes are never exactly right. I'm not sure if it's because of regional differences in flour, water or climate but if I follow the recipe I don't get dough so much as flour soup
Just make your own (Score:3)
Why would people put all of this crap in bread of all things?
The real thing tastes better and basically costs nothing more than a few minutes of manual labor to make yourself.
Two separate issues here (Score:3)
I agree that anything called bread should not be 10% sugar. On the other hand, unintended shit happens when the govt combines aggressive tax policy with social engineering.
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No, it's not even a food purity law.
It's a taxation issue: at under 2% sugar, it is bread for the purpose of being exempt from taxation as a basic foodstuff.
Past 2%, it's taxed like anything else.
hawk
Interesting, but why is this here? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is apparently what msmash considers "News for Nerds" or "Stuff that Matters". Can we get some editors that actually care about technology and don't just shovel whatever crap they read about on the Yahoo front page because that's what they
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What does a story about a fast food company and bread have to do with a technology focused website
Slashdot isn't a technology focused website. It's news for nerds. Nerds love Subway sandwiches, and also love debating fine legal issues, tax avoidance, and getting into arguments over nutrition, and just checking it appears to be the second most commented on story on the front page with the most commented story being posted many hours earlier.
So yeah, not only does msmash consider this worthy of interest, the site readership does as well. It would seem your interests don't gel with those of the rest of Sla
Headline, as usual, is bogus. (Score:5, Informative)
The issue isn't whether the bread used in Subway sandwiches is bread or not, it's whether it should be exempt from tax or not. Bread with less than 2% sugar (sugar mass compared to flour mass) is considered a staple, and thus exempt from their sales tax. Bread above that is taxed like everything else.
We have the same thing in Canada. Standard milk is not subject to taxation, but chocolate milk is. Unsalted peanuts are not taxed, salted peanuts are. Basically healthy, necessary food is not taxed, where as snacks and less healthy food/deserts are.
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I wonder if there is a way to make good sandwiches from honest bread. I love a good hard wheat bread, but a sandwich made with two slabs of that is a chore to eat, hides the meat and veggies, and takes a lot of washing down. (I know, I know, spoiled lazy American doesn't want to chew his own food...)
To-Go Tax? (Score:2)
or on the hot sandwiches that weren't eaten inside the restaurant.
Wait, so sandwiches cost more if you get them to-go?
Reinheitsgebot (Score:2)
Food purity laws are not only a feature of the modern regulatory state. Bavaria enacted a law regulating beer ingredients in 1516. Here [wikipedia.org].
Carbohydrates (Score:2, Informative)
Bread is 50% carbohydrates .. so you have to ask have these idiots bothered to look at the structure of carbohydrates? It's on google for free that carbohydrates ARE sugars too, they are basically a bunch of sugar molecules strung together.. in fact they get cut up into sugars whether you eat them. Whether you're eating a complex or simple sugar is only a problem if you care about the useless-unless-you're-diabetic "glycemic index" fake-for-anything-else health metric. All carbohydrates including simple sug
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You think the effect of complex and simple sugars is only important to people who already have diabetes?
Aw, isn't that cute! Here's a "for dummies" version of why you're wrong.
https://atlasbiomed.com/blog/carbs-vs-sugar-what-is-the-difference/
Subway is really strange (Score:2)
When you order a Subway sandwich, you're offered about 21 types of bread. And they all taste like crap. The same statement can be applied to most of the ingredients that go inside that bread. This is why I stopped eating at Subway about a decade ago and switched to Jimmy Jones. JJ has only two types of bread (white and whole wheat) and both taste delicious. JJ bread is so good that they actually sell it.
Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They only care when Subway is trying to say their food should be tax-exempt, because bread is tax-exempt.
However, the law that grants that exemption also explicitly says 'no more than 2% sugar', so they are out of luck, but it's funnier to say it isn't "bread" than "subway denied tax exemption".
Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow.... (Score:4, Insightful)
10% sugar - its not bread - its an assassination attempt!
Actually it's a wholesome American breakfast best served with a large soda.
Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Informative)
If you "haven't heard" you haven't been paying attention. This has been a thing world wide for decades, and includes the USA. Here are the US FDA guidelines for ice cream [fda.gov], for example.
Re:Wow.... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually there are quite a few laws like this around Europe, although a lot of them are more focused on ensuring that if a product is marketed as being a genuine or traditional product, it retains the original recipe or is made in the traditional geographical area. One example would be champagne - only sparkling white wine produced in the Champagne region can be labelled as champagne. Sparkling white wines produced in other regions can use other names, but they cannot be labelled as champagne.
The most similar case to this "Irish bread" issue is that Sweden had a case quite a while ago where their "Falukorv" sausages, a very traditional sausage in the mining area around the city of Falun, were reclassified as a "cereal" because the percentage of meat in the recipe had declined so far, and been replaced with grains and breadcrumbs, that it no longer met the definition of what passed for a sausage under law. That meant higher taxes unless the manufacturers adjusted their recipe.
Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Informative)
...never heard of a country having a national or local law that actually defines what a particular food is.
Really? In the US, we have tons of such laws:
Most Parmesan Cheeses In America Are Fake, Here's Why [forbes.com]
How The FDA Defines Breads and Rolls [bakerpedia.com]
What the USDA Organic Label Means [usda.gov]
Is soy milk really 'milk'? [latimes.com]
The problem is that people are lying assholes. Most "pre-grated parmesan cheese" you can buy is mostly non-cheese fillers. People love to throw adjectives like "organic" on things which are only organic in that they contain carbon compounds. Before the FDA regulated the meat industry, you really don't want to know what was in ground beef. (You may still not want to know now, but at least there is a lot less rat.)
If you want to distinguish "bread" from "doughnuts" for tax purposes, well, sweetner-ratio seems like a fine first-order attempt.
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A serving of Kraft grated parmesan has 0g fiber ... so less than 0.5g. Meanwhile it has 2g of protein and 1.5g of fat. It's nowhere near mostly cellulose, which is not purely a filler to begin with.
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See also the requirements for a whiskey to be a Tennessee Whiskey:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The problem is that people are lying assholes. Most "pre-grated parmesan cheese" you can buy is mostly non-cheese fillers
What I love is when they say something like "100% grated parmesan cheese" on the label, and the consumer is clearly meant to read that as "100% ... parmesan cheese", but if they were ever called on it, they would say that it's clearly "100% grated" just like it says on the label.
The classic job of the FDA was always to make sure that what it says on the label matches what's in the container. To do that, they have to have definitions for various foods and drugs so that the sellers can't say "but your honor,
Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Informative)
Do they also have legally definition laws for meat, cheese, milk, cola, coffee...etc?
You can bet they do.
eg.
When you buy "bangers" in a UK supermarket it's not the marketing department being chirpy, it's because they're not legally allowed to call them sausages (not enough meat).
When you buy cheez in the USA it's because they're not legally allowed to call it cheese (it's probably vegetable-fat based).
Dairy in general? Here ya go:
http://www.milkfacts.info/Milk... [milkfacts.info]
Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Informative)
Legal definition of bread in the US: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov... [fda.gov]
Meat: https://definitions.uslegal.co... [uslegal.com]
Cheese: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov... [fda.gov]
Milk: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov... [fda.gov]
(Insert cost of living allowance joke here, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer)
Coffee: https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]
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Yep. Gotta be careful or Velveeta would be "cheese".
Re:Wow.... (Score:4, Funny)
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Is it because you live in a small tribe in the Amazon rain forest? Seriously, this is super-common, even in the U.S, and need not have anything to do with taxation. For example, to be labeled "beef gravy mix," a mix must contain a specific percentage of ingredients originating from beef (15% dried beef), otherwise the legally-compliant labeling is "beef-flavored gravy." The ultimate USDA document
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...never heard of a country having a national or local law that actually defines what a particular food is.
A bread law?
Do they also have legally definition laws for meat, cheese, milk, cola, coffee...etc?
Yes, most countries in Europe have low, or zero, tax on essential food items. This requires definitions of what those food items are.
In addition, food safety [europa.eu] is a big deal over here. For example, a number of food additives [nytimes.com] commonly used in the US are banned in Europe on health grounds.
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"...never heard of a country having a national or local law that actually defines what a particular food is."
There are many, many ...
"A bread law?"
Sure, unlike in the US, you can't just add some burnt caramel to bread to darken it and sell it as 'dark' or 'black' bread.
"Do they also have legally definition laws for meat, cheese, milk, cola, coffee...etc?"
Sure, not only WHAT it is but from WHERE, Camembert has to come from the Camembert region, Cognac from Cognac, Espelette pepper from you guessed it, Espele
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Yes because otherwise you'd have this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] I'm happy that something advertised as bread is actually mostly bread.
Yes, actually this is very common everywhere (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, yes, and not just Europe. This is very commonin every country including the United States and Canada. For example, chocolate can't be called chocolate without the use of cocoa and certain percentage of cocoa butter. Hershey's has been lobbying for a change to this for decades, they want to be able to use other (cheaper) kinds of fat rather than cocoa butter and still call it chocolate. Ice cream can't be called ice cream without a certain amount of milk fat. Remember the old DQ commercials that would say "made with ice milk" because they can't call it ice cream. Cheese is especially complicated, with many kinds of cheese not being able to be called by name without meeting certain requirements for milk fat, protein, and water content. There is a local dairy that makes a good cheddar but they can't call it cheddar because the moisture content is too high. Whipping cream has to have a certain percentage of milk fat.
These are consumer protection laws, generally, to make sure people aren't getting ripped off. And they are necessary because without them, vendors would try and label plastic as cheese and sell it. It's easy to take water, thickeners, and flavourings to make something that feels like cheese but which has almost not protein or dairy. Tax laws are involved too, because as the article points out, they often want to give a tax break to staple foods but not include luxuries and snacks in that break. I remember court case where tomatoes were under a vegetable tax category and someone wanted them under fruit because that was taxed less in that instance, and botanically they are fruit. The case was thrown out because they are used as a vegetable, but it shows food classification laws and litigation can be complex.
Now, I think this is a bit of a red herring. The real takeaway here for me is why on earth does Subway bread have sugar content in excess of 10% of the flour weight?
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...never heard of a country having a national or local law that actually defines what a particular food is. A bread law?
You're probably American, so you won't have travelled at all, but food laws are really common in Europe.
This one goes back to 1516, for instance. [alumniport...chland.org] Oh, and tell someone in Naples about that stuff you can get in New York that you guys call pizza, go on, I dare you.
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But, mostly unlike the US, they also try not make the tax burden too overwhelming for the poorest of the poor.
You are describing a progressive tax system.
You are claiming a VAT tax, for some strange fucking reason, is progressive.
Who the fuck are you trying to convince? It sure as fuck aint us, because duh its fucking obvious that a VAT tax is the exact fucking opposite of progressive,
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Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes aren't coerced any more than restaurant food is coerced. You use the product, you pay the tab. If you don't want to pay the tab, don't use the product. You don't need to sign an explicit contract with the restaurant that you will pay after you eat. And if you don't pay, those nasty "men with guns" will come and take your freedom away! Oh no! Because the restaurant is protecting their property. And we, the tax paying citizens, are protecting our country, our collective property like streets, when we "force" you to pay your taxes. If you use the service but do not pay, you are initiating violence. You broke the agreement.
If you don't like it, there are plenty of failed states that don't collect taxes. Move to one of them and shut the fuck up. Just like, if you don't want to pay the restaurant, you can go to a soup kitchen.
Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if you realize Milton was talking about people like you, who only want license do as you please. You don't know the first thing about freedom, because you won't accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions.
Re:Wow.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I already explained, you consent to taxation the same way you consent to paying the restaurant for the food you ate: by accepting and using the product. It's dishonest to claim that taxation is collected without consent.
Most people grow out of any libertarianism they picked up in college no later than their thirties. You appear to be cognitively challenged in that regards, and a bit... slower than your peers.
The dangers of... leftism? Everyone to the left of you is dangerous?
Your overly florid language attempts to mask a distinctly inferior intellect, and an inability to argue in good faith. Please do refrain from conversing with me in the future, there is no point, your closed mind simply won't open with any reasonable argument.
You aren't the logical person you think you are. Your whole post reeks of entitled, emotional, self centered solipsism.
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And yet, you have utterly failed to present more than an ad hominem response to my restaurant argument. As we all should have learned from Monty Python, mere contradiction is not an argument. And no, merely calling an argument 'dumb' is not in fact, a rebuttal. Do better. Unless, as I suspect, you actually have no better argument and are merely basing your beliefs off of gut feelings and what you wish were true because it makes you feel better about yourself.
In that case, fuck right off.
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So... tax law exactly like the US. "Necessities" are likewise not taxed in the US, however Subway is taxed because it is a 'prepared meal' in a restaurant.
The US tax code does not contain definitions for every product out there though, such as bread, milk etc. and cannot stop people from using their free speech, unlike the EU. If you want to call a cake a bread, the US has first amendment protection, people don't have to like it or agree and can loudly and actively oppose those ideas, unlike in the EU where
Re:Wow.... (Score:4, Informative)
So... tax law exactly like the US. "Necessities" are likewise not taxed in the US, however Subway is taxed because it is a 'prepared meal' in a restaurant.
That varies state to state, some states charge sales tax on essentials too.
Re:Wow.... (Score:4, Informative)
you cannot legally claim to have a better product because those protections are based on whether or not you belong to a certain race/nationality.
Don't be silly. Most of these protections are akin to brand names, like "cognac" or "gorgonzola". There are a few different protections: in some cases you can only use the protected name if you produce the product in the region of origin... but it's perfectly fine for a Dutch farmer in the Champagne region to call his booze "champagne", no requirement for him to be French. In other cases there is no restriction on the region, but you must use the right ingredients and/or the right (traditional) method of production in order to use the protected product name. In still other cases it is purely about quality and ingredients: you can't call something "chocolate" if it doesn't have enough cacao in it. And as the article points out, there are limits on the amount of crap you can put in bread before you have to stop calling it "bread"
These protections exist so that when people buy these products, they know what they are getting and can expect a certain quality. You are free to improve the product and sell it, but if your methods fall outside of the established rules for a product name, you cannot use that name.
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But, mostly unlike the US, they also try not make the tax burden too overwhelming for the poorest of the poor.
In many of the locations in the US, the they do try to reduce the burden of sales tax on the poor, but they use a much simpler approach than Ireland: If you buy food at a grocery store, it's a staple (even if it's candy or a bag of pure sugar), and it's tax-free. If you buy pre-prepared food at a restaurant, it's a luxury, and it gets taxed.
At any rate, as I understand it, your body has enzymes that convert the starch in bread to sugars within minutes of eating it. So the subway bread really isn't that much
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It depends on the state. MN used to have rule if the first ingredient was water or a sugar it was taxable.
Personally I don't have a problem with 'progressive taxation' implemented like that, where the rules are simple enough that anyone can navigate them. It does not matter if you Daddy Warbucks or Peter Pauper, you both pay the same rate on the same activities.
Its progressive in that by making the tax exceptions things like food, transportation fuel, heating fuel, etc it might excuse a larger portion of P
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From a biological standpoint, that is largely correct. Bleached white flour isn't something I'd recommend consuming very much of. But eating other semi-healthy things along with it does at least reduce the rate at which it is absorbed, which helps it to be metabolized via healthier pathways.
In Ohio, where I live, most grocery store purchases are untaxed, but with some exceptions, such as alcohol, soft drinks, and non-food items. Restaurant purchases are taxed if eating in but generally not if ordering fo
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Hi. I see you're a moron.
The Irish definition of "bread" here is perfectly normal in civilized countries (and Ireland, ha ha). And like all civilized countries, they have a legal definition because if they leave it to the "free market" then people will be served poisonous food if it increases the short-term profit of the person doing the serving.
If you don't like governments "micromanaging" stuff like "murder" and "poisoning", you could always fuck off an live on an island somewhere.
Tit.