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Can you share a link to what you were reading?

It really bothers me that something like 10% of US GDP is just the amount we over-pay for healthcare compared to peer states. It's basically a privatized tax that buys us nothing (or, to stave off pedantry, certainly nothing remotely worth 10% of our GDP) but we count it as something good.

I worry sometimes about just how much of our GDP is actually fake productivity like that (see also: the significant multiple more that we pay for most infrastructure compared with peer states). It would help explain why a lot of "poorer" countries reportedly don't feel poorer to live in, for a normal family, than the US.

The arithmetic mean is one of the great tools of statistical lies. You can sweep so much sample variance under the rug with this baby!

I protest. They are cutie pies.

As an American I also have not gone to any of those restaurants.

The thing is, America is the China of food[0]: we make shittons of unsafe, dangerous product and foist it onto the market by burying the market's pricing mechanism under a mountain of garbage until nobody else can compete and we dictate the price.

People will note that China makes plenty of safe, normal products too. The same applies to American agriculture, but that doesn't matter. The problem is mainly that the industry has absolutely no standards. If they can go a few cents cheaper, they will.

[0] And, prior to this century, we were also China in general - a lot of our manufacturing was stolen from Britain and ran for far cheaper.

> how slowly do the other chickens grow?

Here in Norway the two largest producers are moving[1][2] from Ross 308 to Rustic Gold[3]. They live roughly 40-50% longer. The third largest has already moved[4] to the hybrid Hubbard JA 878, with similar growth.

However it's also easier to get the slow-growing chickens larger without health issues, roughly 25% according to this[5], so it turns out you might need fewer chickens to produce the same amount of meat. And thus the economics might not be as bad as it looks at first glance.

That's for Norway though, perhaps it's different elsewhere.

[1]: https://www.nortura.no/b%C3%A6rekraft-i-nortura/omsorg-for-m...

[2]: https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/pressemelding/18709900/coop-tra...

[3]: https://aviagen.com/eu/brands/rowan-range/products/rustic-go...

[4]: https://dyrevern.no/landbruksdyr/kraftig-velferdsloft-for-no...

[5]: https://www.norsklandbruk.no/den-vanskelige-okonomien-i-a-by...

> Most lay opinions I can find online claim the fast growing birds to have inferior meat quality. I wonder if I could distinguish in a blind taste test.

It’s easy to distinguish.

The fast growing birds are much larger, breasts at least 2x the size of normal chickens.

The larger breasts you notice when cutting them when raw, they often have a tough texture and meat inside like strands. When cooked and chewing it’ll have a hard chewy texture, sometimes feeling raw/uncooked. This is called woody breast.

If you have a standard small chicken breast, the texture feels much more pleasant when eating, like chicken.

I always try to avoid large chicken breasts and get the smallest possible but it’s virtually impossible now unless you live near high end low volume butcher with their own independent supplier.

> I wonder if I could distinguish in a blind taste test

I find it genuinely baffling that that would be the point.

Maybe it is not a big deal? Chicken goes through withdrawal period and level of residue is tested in end product, supposedly..

has it ever not been inedible?