One big reason we retired to Europe was the food. I mean this in the sense that food quality is far healthier in Europe than in the US. The US corporate culture has resulted in a food quality that is so unhealthy it is dangerous to eat. We settled in Hungary which still farms the traditional ays. Animals are all free range and there are no GMO’s permitted at all. Pesticide use is limited to only short acting so not present on products. If you buy bread, cheese, milk etc. it is going to expire in a few days not weeks or months as in the US because there are no preservatives or chemical additives. I will add that I worked as a cook professionally before becoming entering the military and becoming a PhD microbiologist so have a wealth of experience on the inside of US food preparation. I also commanded food inspection units in the military so know the quality issues from inspecting local procurements at various places around the world. I also have experience working with food engineers who design food products such as in store baked items in the US. Believe me you wouldn’t eat any of this stuff if you knew what was actually in them. Restaurants buy the cheapest quality they can get away with. In the US it is all about profit and nothing about health. I believe this is the reason for the obesity epidemic in the US and the restaurant industry is a large contributing factor. It is better in Europe but we believe that we can control this aspect of risk by cooking everything ourselves.
That said, both my wife and I are excellent cooks and we eat out maybe 3 times a year usually by invitation from friends. The best restaurant is our own home and we enjoy cooking for each other. That is not to say there aren’t excellent and cheap restaurants here. We simply prefer to eat at home. We have raised our levels of cooking expertise to high and because my wife is Russian and spent many years performing professional expeditions to monitor chemical pollution, pesticide levels etc. in what are now former Soviet Republics (the ‘stans). I also spent roughly 5 years working in some of the same places although I spent some time in South America and 6 years living in Germany, all part of the military. Anyway, we both have our own preferred cuisines to cook. I cook German, Irish, American, Japanese, Indian, Thai, Italian and Chinese. She cooks Russian, Georgian, Central Asian and British. Sometimes it is difficult to get ingredients here such as cilantro but we have found ways to get around the issue.
Another big thing we do is make our own fermented products which include sauerkraut, pickled tomatoes (which we grow in our garden), pickles, yogurt, and some cheese. My wife also loves to make jams and because in Europe fruits and berries are still seasonal when the time comes and a particular product such as strawberries or raspberries we buy them up and can as much as we can. We also have sour cherry, apricots, sweet cherries, and black currant in our garden and our neighbors have apples, etc. so we get an awful lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. Our region is a major wine production area and produces excellent wines and many of our neighbors bottle small home grown vintages which we get as gifts.
Because Hungary (as in all former Soviet countries who are now a part of the EU) is considered not equal to others in the EU, there is little export anymore so the government here subsidizes farming to keep the farming at a traditional (and healthy) level. The benefits are we have excellent food quality and very little is brought in from the larger countries like Germany, Netherlands, etc. When you see this stuff it is at dumping prices and Hungarians avoid it as much as possible. We see nothing at all from the US. The same situation exists in Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, and Latvia none of who have benefited from membership in the EU with regards to exporting food products to other partners in the EU. It varies a bit from one to the other but in general these countries have healthier food products because fo these restrictions. We get a lot of tourists from Germany and the Netherlands who rave about the quality of the food.
