I don't know what to make of that statement. It is arrogant, at least. Are you trashing just the 340 million people in the US with this comment, or everybody not-Swiss?

Similar thing with orange juice. The producers add 'flavor packs' to adjust the taste for different regions of the US.

My son and I travel all over the US for various competitions, and there are certain regions where he refuses to get OJ because of the flavor differences.

To be fair, Louisiana, for all its talk of culinary tradition, really doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of variety, compared to other states that I have lived in.

This state is a backwater shithole that reminds me of a war-torn Eastern European country, even in New Orleans (which to be fair, is quite small) I wouldn't let it be a typical example of the kind of variety you can find in a modern American city.

>grab a slice of processed cheese (looked like a standard individual plastic packaged slice to me)

Kraft makes a plastic wrapped slice that is "cheese food", however they also make an American cheese slice that is actual cheese. I suspect you saw the latter.

https://www.kraftheinz.com/kraft-deli-deluxe/products/000210...

> there's no cheese market large enough and rich enough to pay them what their top cheese is worth

That sounds like the market expressing the collective opinion that their cheese is not miles better than what other people make.

On a related note, the best seems to be considered Emmentaler AOC, and it does not seem especially difficult to purchase outside of Switzerland.

> because their garbage cheese is still miles better than what other people make, [...]

Some other people, maybe. But not all other people.

That's how I felt about eggs after visiting Japan. American eggs are bland and tasteless in comparison. Backyard eggs are a general exception to that rule.

I am quite fond of Appenzeller; I presume we're getting the good stuff-the price certainly reflects that!

Averages and means are of no significance in this equation. What matters is which market has the most customers who can afford your product.

Luxury goods are sold worldwide even to hell hole countries, because there's people there who can afford them.

> Southern Europeans export their tasteless tomatoes to Northern Europe because people there don’t value tasty tomatoes that much. So southern Europeans keep the good vegetables for themselves.

It's the other way around. The problem is that mass-market tomato varieties have been selected and bred for a long shelf life - which led to them losing taste because breeders didn't care about taste, only about durability [1]. And the flavors aren't the only thing that went away, the second breeding focus on yield led to tomatoes that don't have as much sugar any more because there's only so much sugar a single plant can make.

So if you want to ship tomatoes to Nothern European countries that actually last a few days of display time on the shelf before going bad, you'll want to breed varieties with less taste. If you were to ship tasty tomatoes, probably half the shipment would go bad before ever reaching the store.

And that's not just valid for tomatoes, it's valid for all sorts of agricultural products - including meat. You're only going to get the truly good stuff if you go local and pay the surcharge for varieties and breeds that are "less efficient" to grow but yield more flavor.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/why-tomatoes-got-bla...

>What you are describing holds true only if the buyer values the higher quality, which is true for coffee.

what I describe holds true because I didn't fall into the trap you are trying to dig me out of.

I said: the sellers profit maximize. What you are saying only makes a difference in who they sell to... in order to, as I said, profit maximize.

Fun fact: The Netherlands exports tomatoes to Spain and Italy!

Southern European summers have become too hot to grow tomatoes, so during the summer they have to be imported. The native ones are only available during the winter - when they are indeed exported back up as well.

I always found Emmentaler bland and boring compared to many others in Switzerland, I wish the immigrants brought something better.

Emmentaler is a cheese originally from Switzerland, though many other countries now make a cheese that they call like that.

"Swiss cheese" is supposed to be similar to Emmentaler (or inspired from it?). But the fact that Swiss Emmentaler counts as Swiss cheese does not mean that Swiss cheese counts as Emmentaler, or is from Switzerland at all.

I am so confused as to why everyone is talking about Switzerland, the country, acting in unison when it comes to exports. That's not really how it works... Some Swiss companies are more export focused, others are more domestically focused. There's no single central agency that goes around the country and grades cheese manufacturers and creameries and forces some to export, and others to sell to local grocery store chains...

I heard it from a Dane, but obviously your taste buds have allowed you to take a statistically meaningful sampling, that's pretty lucky.

The reason why I might give it some credence is twofold

1. I would suppose travel from point X to point Y might lead to degradation of quality and thus the top quality leaving at X might be passable when arriving at Y.

2. I suppose there are different income levels involved, Danes are pretty parsimonious.

I don't think most of them actually care about having the best, they care about having passable quality which is of course much better than a middle class person will have access to in the U.S, but perhaps they export the best and premium because obviously with a world wide market there would be enough really upper-scale rich buyers to make it worthwhile to do so.

I have to say I don't really care much, but I think there may be scenarios in which a large portion of the best quality of a nation's produce gets exported (obviously not all of it, but a large portion) and am interested in that as how economics works.

As far as anecdotes however, my Italian ex-wife said the best Italian food she ever had was at a fancy restaurant we went to in Prague. I thought it was good but I don't much care past a certain point, so I didn't notice. My favorite was a small restaurant in Vomero that just made the same two dishes all day long and all the workers came to eat there. I like Danish pork, but generally stuff like flæskesteg, which historically was yes, a luxury good, but a luxury good for peasants. So I think probably not the best.

Yes definitely anything I have eaten in Danish or Italian dishes in their homeland was better than what I ate in those culinary traditions in the U.S or England, but I doubt that was because I had a great sampling to choose from and could decide what was what based only on my experience.