What an oddly written article. ChatGPT? SEO bot? High-schooler?

These sentences don't seem to have a very strong connection with each other:

> Getting black currants banned has been deemed minimally effective for disease prevention. Therefore, some states start reversing the federal ban on this berry. However, Europe still remains the producer of 99% of the world’s black currants stock.

"It is not so bad"?

> Today, these plants are successfully grown in New York, Connecticut, Oregon, and Vermont. Yet, the majority of Americans can only enjoy processed or dried berries. It’s not so bad considering the benefits of eating dry fruits.

Definitely reads like AI. Short declarative statements. No coherent narrative.

(I see what I did there (o;)

The publishing date of the article is 2017, so pre-ChatGPT. Of course there were spintaxes back then, but those articles were way worse.

Either way, the article seems mostly fine to me.

> The publishing date of the article is 2017

I used to predate my blog posts in Wordpress by years. Why would you use todays date? No one reads blogs in order, how pedestrian to follow the old rules.

You can also fool some of Googles date metadata, it's not just the day it's first indexed. Reddit by incompetence screws with it.

But I've never seen a content farm do it.... yet.

Webarchive first snapshot 8th Nov 2020 - http://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://foodtoliv...

The idea there is a pre-AI internet is not true.

AI will go back and change the past. Not even Google/Web Archive can record it all. Is it AI pre-dating or was it missed on Web Archive here? (A: The Facebook comments seem real, so missed by Web Archive, but if Facebook deletes/makes private the data then we are back to not knowing)

Chatgpt wouldn’t write crap like that

Sounds like an ESL writer, 'It is not so bad' is a common phrase I see written by native slavic speakers, it's probably a direct translation of a language idiom.

Why are we talking about it uncontracted, making it sound weird, when the actual quote is 'it's not so bad' which sounds perfectly fluent to me (native BrEng)?

It’s definitely a common phrase but it’s really poor writing here.

I agree, just only really because it's too colloquial/informal/spoken for an article imo, wouldn't be my choice. But not with calling out, and certainly not for not making sense or seeming like a robot or ESL author wrote it.

It reads like it was automatically translated from another language. The grammar is all over the place.

It also answers the question directly in the first paragraph with no fussing around, so I like it better than 99% of articles.

It's badly written, but more on the level of a bad human writer than any AI. The connection between the three sentences in the first example seems quite clear to me. Starting from the second sentence:

1) "[...] some states start reversing the federal ban on this berry [because the ban has been deemed ineffective for disease prevention]".

2) "[Even though some US states are reversing the ban] Europe still remains the producer of 99% of the world’s black currants stock".

Regarding the second example, it is just an excuse to have an internal link to another article on the same site praising dried fruits. "It's not so bad [that Americans can only enjoy processed or dried blackcurrants] considering the benefits of eating dry fruits.". The reasoning is quite crappy, given that the linked article does not imply that dried fruits are better than non-dried fruits, but it is to the level of precision that one might expect from a filler blog on some health-food online store.

the weird aff link in the middle for random berries is the cherry on the top

Pines and black currants both grow here in (Northern) Europe. How come the fungus isn't a problem here?

> Some varieties of European and Asian pines have this innate resistance because they evolved alongside the fungus. However, American trees met this threat too late to develop a workable defense.

So similar to e.g. phylloxera, chestnut blight, “dutch” elm disease, …

Yes most European vineyards are now grafted on American rootstock.

As the article states, European pine has a natural resistance.

This is covered in the article. European pines evolved alongside the fungus so they have a natural resistance to it.

Meh, not a huge loss for Americans IMO. Blackcurrants are probably the berry I could most easily do without.

Redcurrants on the other hand..

Makes an amazing Jam. Surprisingly complex flavour.

Yep - one of my favourite jams - that's how pretty much all my black currents are used.

And they have a naturally high content of pectin (a fibre that is used as a thickener additive / gelling agent).

I didn't like it at first but as some grows in my garden I got used to it. Now eating blackcurrant while working is one of the highlights of summer for me.

You can still get UK blackcurrant yogurt (eg "Longley Farm") in the same little pots I used to get from the milkman in the mid-70s so not all is wrong with the world....

Chokeberries would made an acceptable substitute.

If ever there were a food item that needed a "Chilean Sea Bass" style marketing rebranding, its the Chokeberry.

If you haven't had blackcurrant, seek it out. It's a distinctive flavour, and I love it. Also, while articles on this always highlight specifically blackcurrant, I believe that it also applies to redcurrant (like blackcurrant but milder) and gooseberry (like blackcurrant but tarter).

And there is also josta (or jostaberry), a hybrid of JOhannisbeere (blackcurrant) x STAchelbeere (2 different species of gooseberry).

I've planted two Josta bushes that I hope will produce next year. Haven't even tasted one yet.

Oh my, I don't care much for blackcurrent, but absolutely love redcurrant and whitecurrant. The best one is a pink cultivar.

I tell you, the pines aren't worth it.

Gooseberries don't taste anything like blackcurrant to me (thankfully so, since I love gooseberries and don't like blackcurrants)

Gooseberries are very different. Much more sour, very firm/hard, crisp and very tannin-y. Pickled gooseberries made in India are amazing if you’re okay with it being hot.

Red gooseberry is somewhat less sour than green though.

They become a little less extreme when made into jam; the copious quantity of sugar takes away some of their sharpness. If you like the sharpness, however, gooseberry crumble is the perfect way to serve them!

Are gooseberries grown in India different, or could you pickle, say, British ones to produce the same effect?

Traditionally, the Muslim community in India preferred to make jam out of gooseberries and the Hindus preferred to pickle them.

Don't know about Indian varieties, but in European goosberries the sourness comes from their skins and dissipates almost completely when given time to ripen properly. That is, ripe goosberries aren't sour at all.

I think Indian gooseberries may be different. They’re green, slightly bitter, tannic and sour and the texture is like a raw apple (crisp, hard) and fibrous.

This is the one I’m talking about (Amla)- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllanthus_emblica

Agreed. It's my favourite fruit flavour. It's very distinctive, so I imagine it's a love-it-or-hate-it taste. In the US, there are few domestic products that incorporate blackcurrant, but just about any European-import grocery will likely be stocked with a wide variety. Jams, jellies, syrups, soft drinks, instant oatmeal with freeze-dried blackcurrants, etc. Larger liquor stores will often have (usually imported) cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) as well.

I'm still disappointed that Strongbow never brought their "Dark Fruit" cider to the US. I first tasted blackcurrant by drinking one in London about ten years ago.

... I somehow shouldn't be surprised that industrial snakebite-and-black exists. The favourite drink of UK goths everywhere. I can feel Andrew Eldritch sneaking up behind me. He has a drum machine.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakebite_(drink))

You can make your own authentic British pub-style cider-and-black by grabbing a bottle of Ribena from the 'British' or 'Irish' section of your local supermarket's 'ethnic foods' aisle, and adding a shot to the glass before pouring in your Strongbow.

Another good one of the Berries of Distinctive Flavour is The Elderberry .. the flowers from which one can make a delightful syrup that not only makes for a superb soda, or cocktail base, but can be turned into a fruit-flavoured Liquor, which is .. if you like such things .. probably one of the nicest little schnapps you'll slurp.

(Gotta cook 'em right though, well except the flowers, you just harvest those before the ants do and make a delicious summer soda for the kids ..)

There's also the salmonberry!

The flowers, yes. I grew up on elderflower champaign. Wonderful stuff. I have had elderberry cordial, but not recently. Must seek it out again.

Elderberries make great jelly and pie. Unfortunately the birds keep getting mine before they're ripe, it's hard to find them in the wild on public land, and no one grows them commercially around me. So I haven't had either in years.

It's a little expensive, but if you love elderberries, we order the jams from this online store: https://carmelberry.com/collections/all

You can get all kinds of currants and gooseberries in the US. There are even blackcurrant plants available that are resistant to the white pine blister rust.

How common are allergies? I was surprised to find that it is literally the only fruit I have ever had that caused an obvious allergic reaction, it has gotten me multiple times when used as "natural color" in foods pretending to be fancy.

I hope they don't lose the requirement to at least list it as a distinct ingredient. I hate that part of US nutritional labels, you should never be able to just declare something is "spices".

Oh, so there's no Ribena[1] in the US? Or is it imported?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribena

Basically not available outside of specialty stores, or the occasional supermarket with an import aisle.

Definitely not widely drunk. Nor is Robinson Orange Barley, which is still my fav drink, despite being somewhat older than the typical market.

(Brit in US)

I remember Annapolis MD used to have a store with lots of British biscuits, Marmite, Bovril, marmalade, Ribena etc. - an oasis to the Englishman abroad.

The nickname for them is "BritMart" and tend to be more common in areas with large British expat communities. I remember lots of them when I lived in Florida.

There is a bit of difficulty getting Cadbury's chocolate due to Hershey owning the trademark in the US. They shut down most grey-market importers.

Can you get other (ie non-Cadbury) brands of chocolate that don’t have the butyric acid that (I believe) makes Hershey etc. so grim to most British palates?

I’ve never heard of butyric acid but I’m wondering is that what gives American chocolate it’s plastic taste and even texture? Because I can’t stand it.

Even in Kraft singles…it’s like there’s this similar thing going on there. It’s different but there’s this common plastic tasting thing going on there that I can’t stand either.

I feel bad because my kid loves cooking grilled cheeses and always wants me to try them but I can’t stomach it. At the same time though…it’s so much cheaper, that I still buy it for him. I’m kind of like this with wine- like, I’m not buying the expensive stuff because I already like the cheap stuff and the last thing I’m going to do is develop more expensive tastes if the cheap thing is fine for me right now.

Also crème de cassis - which is basically Ribena with alcohol!

I’m sure you can find them somewhere in the US, but it is definitely not a usual item here. I’ve never encountered it and have only heard of it from some British folk.

I can’t imagine many non-US soft drinks companies try to come to the US and compete against Coke and Pepsi companies outside of maybe niche stores.

Cordial drinks aren't as much of a thing in the US anyway.

I feel Ribena's so baked in to British psychology it's not seen as a cordial. Orange, lime, and blackcurrant cordials are cordials.

Ribena's just Ribena. It's mixed with water almost exclusively, lemonade at a push, but blackcurrant cordial would be used for snakebites or rum+Guinness. Surely I'm not alone on this?

I am with you on this.

To add to mixing... just the right amount of water. Stronger or weaker for a cordial is simply stronger or weaker. But more or less water for Ribena is a question of right or wrong; that's why it's never quite right when going round a friend's house back in the day, or if it is that's uncanny.

> blackcurrant cordial would be used for snakebites

Of the actual snake variety, or are you meaning some kind of drink?

In the UK, it's a 50-50 mix of larger and cider. I guess some people mix in some cordial too.

Both replies mentioned "larger" (and cider) so I googled it and it's just a typo for "lager"

Very common typo, with the way it's pronounced in some english speaking countries. (there's probably a joke in there somewhere about pints vs half-litres)

A drink, larger and cider.

One can have a 'snakebite and black' adding a dash of black currant, also a 'black nasty' being a 'snakebite, pernod and black currant'.

Rum & Guinness sounds like an interesting combination. I have to try it.

I believe they refer to them as "Kool-Aid" drinks, despite being prepared differently

I'm not sure I understand the word "cordial" correctly, but Ribena doesn't have alcohol.

Cordial is a thick juicy syrup added to drinks, but is not alcoholic itself. I think the GP means ‘squash’ or ‘diluting juice’, which sometimes gets called cordial too (though I associate cordial with the thicker stuff)

It's worth noting that Ribena also comes ready made. If I ever buy Ribena, that's what I go for. Especially the carbonated version.

There are alternative blackcurrant cordials for diluting which are much cheaper and taste good. I think every British supermarket has their own brand one.

Probably (or its equivalent) 'grape' flavoured.

Hit and miss for Ribena here in Canada I never even knew about it until last year. The existence of it I mean not the availability here.

Here in Canada we tend to know more about UK stuff than people in the US. We get imports the US doesn't of various products Kinder chocolate/toy eggs for one.

I just had a look when I went out for groceries and for a 750ml Ribena it is $16.

Ribena has been ruined with artificial sweeteners. If this tinkering actually worked I wouldn't mind but Britons continue to get fatter.

When I lived in Scotland (exchange program year in University) I remember asking my roommates "what's blackcurrant?" And they looked at me like I had asked what an apple was.

We actually had to go search online and figure out why I'd never heard of them.

For me, it was Skittles! I traveled to the UK, bought some Skittles, and almost spit them out (blackcurrant instead of grape). Had to look up what it was. Still haven’t tried the real thing, only in candy form.

British food area of your local grocery store may have Ribena, which is a blackcurrant cordial.

Squash! :)

I had the reverse happen in the US (from Australia). Had no idea that the purple/black sweets would taste like grape. Expected flavours were currants, aniseed, or possibly blackberry.

> aniseed

We do have licorice candy, but it will be black, not purple, and it wouldn't be mixed with other flavors of candy, since a large number of people seem to hate it. (Sometimes mixed jellybeans will include licorice.)

Eating too much black licorice (50g/day over a couple of weeks) can have detrimental health consequences for some people. So, moderation. Also some people get palpitations from black licorice.

I stopped into a pub in Dublin, Ireland once and everyone was drinking a pint of Guinness w/ blackcurrant. I had no idea that was a thing.

It shouldn’t be.

Chambord is quite good in Guinness too

Awesome story. If black currants are so much richer than oranges in Vitamin C, why didnt the long distance sailors of the Age of Discovery, like the Portuguese going to India or the Spaniards going to the New World, not carry them? They only carried oranges. Puzzled.

they are very difficult to store in large quantities, and pretty much impossible to store for longer periods than a few days

Probably because the ability to measure Vit C was not invented yet, and you really need a small dose of Vit C to not get scurvy

(Not sure how blackcurrents keep over long distances compared to oranges as well)

or some Ribena bottles

The link between Scurvy and Vitamin C was not established until the early 1900s. Before that, pretty much only experimental evidence was able to establish what helped with scurvy, with various things found to be useful, including certain animal meats for arctic expeditions and sauerkraut, and lots of things that definitely didn't cause scurvy were blamed for it, like bad hygiene, tinned meats, alcoholism, etc.

For the British, things were especially bad. Numerous captains and sailors had personally demonstrated and convinced themselves that scurvy could be prevented with fresh citrus, but were unable to convince the "classically trained" physicians who made Naval policy, who were still pushing things like "you need more air in your tissue". One of captain Cook's expeditions had good results with malt and wort preventing scurvy, so that was official practice even as navy admirals demanded lemons.

The connection between citrus and Scurvy was finally proven in an animal model in the early 1920s, before we even understood what "Vitamins" where.

There is a great article on how the cure for scurvy was found, then lost.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/24149/how-scurvy-was-cur...

Black currants don't keep fresh, the way citrus does.

So you'd need to dry them, which loses something like 90% of the vitamin C in the process.

Seems like an awful lot of work when you can just haul a few boxes of limes, which are a lot easier to harvest anyways then tons of tiny berries.

(Not to mention they didn't even know about vitamin C specifically to begin with.)

It sometimes startles me how disconnected some people are from nature. I can't imagine all our pine trees dying off, it seems utterly horrific. It would be devastating to biodiversity and I would deeply miss the trees themselves. But to the author:

> It might seem extreme, but this measure was necessary to save the logging industry at that time.

And later:

> The situation has turned so serious that it threatened the existence of US pines. As they are the main element of the logging industry, it must have been dealt with as soon as possible.

Harvested raw berries in general don’t travel well, and so there are plenty of instances of berries existing in specific countries. They need processing into something like jam to travel. You don’t miss what you’ve never heard of.

As a Brit in the US losing currents is a shame, and an interesting reason, but there others we get in the US that are much rarer at home.

For example several here aren’t found in the UK (or used to be hard to find): https://gizmodo.com/the-18-tastiest-berries-that-grow-wild-i...

> raw berries in general don’t travel well,

A quick search for bær (berries) on the website of the biggest online grocer here in Norway shows: blueberries from Poland, Italy, and Spain, raspberries from Poland and Portugal, blackberries from Belgium and Netherlands, redcurrants from Norway. Perhaps they only travel well inside EFTA.

You find those modern thick skinned fat blueberries everywhere it seems. But the more delicate berries not so much.

Blackcurrant (Cassis) and redcurrant (Groseille) taste quite different, they are nice sprinkled atop fraisier cake for example.

One of my favorite little berry is the Myrtille. They are tiny little balls, dark purple all the way through, and lovely when cooked on a tart crust. Trader Joe has a frozen berry tart from France that includes it. Yummy!

>But the more delicate berries not so much.

I have a mountain of experience freezing wild maine blueberries and wild strawberries. They both freeze just fine and can be eaten as is after thawing, a little mushy but still clearly the proper flavor profiles.

My grocery has an entire section of frozen berries.

Frozen berries will travel just fine and be delicious anywhere. Most berries don't cross significant borders because A HUNDRED YEARS AGO they couldn't travel well, and so local tastes diverged. Consider, gooseberries are easy to find here in new england when they are in season, but you still wouldn't see something like a gooseberry soda, because that's just not that popular of a flavor.

'Myrtille' is blueberry. The thing is that there are several cultivars and species, so it can be difficult to know which one.

You probably mean the 'European blueberry', Vaccinium myrtillus.

"Vaccinium myrtillus" literally means the "common Myrtille". Which is not blue and doesn't taste like a blueberry. I understand that blueberry is the common North American English word for Bleuet an and Myrtilles. While it's the other way around in France.

Blueberies are called Bleuet in Canadian French. And in France today they are sold with the same two names on the packaging (blueberies, bleuet), but often people will call them myrtille anyways! A point of contention for me as I am alwahs sad to hear Myrtille and be served Bleuet :)

Google says “myrtille” is the English “bilberry”, not blueberry.

Well not so strictly. It says bilberry or blueberry because what is exactly meant is not so black and white.

>Harvested raw berries in general don’t travel well,

Yes, that's why the majority of berries in the US are grown in Mexico. The largest selection of blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries in my local groceries are all from Mexico. There's one specific store that has a really great produce department, and from time to time, they will have local blueberries from a farm in state, but that's only while they are in season.

They travel and store very well if shock frozen, which enables me to buy them all year in bags from 500g to 2000g. Spicing up my Müsli, Yoghurt, sometimes ice cream, and what not else.

Btw. regarding preparation of Müsli with Milk, have you ever tried putting it in the fridge overnight? And wouldn't you expect a soft sludge then?

Not so if you put the frozen berries in! The low temperature in the fridge lets the berries thaw up very slowly, turning it all into a cool slush, which crumbles at the lightest pressure. Can be varied by crushing/mushing the berries for even more taste. Very pleasuring texture!

If we are talking about unknown berries I would like to promote phalsa it grows in India and Pakistan only available in some cities in the month of May and June.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grewia_asiatica

Such a coincidence. I rarely drink Ribena - which is the concentrate made from Blackcurrants (other blackcurrant cordials are available) - but the other day I bought a bottle. I had just made myself a drink of it and sat down and opened Hacker News and this is the first article I see. It’s sad that that are banned over there in the USA and I did know about the issue with pines but the little berries are great in drinks and also for making summer pudding.

I can say as a Brit living in the US, Ribena is increasingly easy to find. I’m the south, pretty much every Publix has it now. They also have Bisto, which I mean, praise Jesus. The latter has been a hit with everyone I’ve shown it to.

I had blackcurrants in things, but I’m not sure that I ever had them fresh in England. But it’s definitely…it’s weird for such a common flavour to be missing here.

I think many Americans are skeptical because of the reputation British cuisine has…but I mean…the packaged goods are different and call be biased but they’re almost always better than their American equivalents.

Now if we could just get the marris pipers here…that’d be great.

I have literally never seen blackcurrant written as two words before. Here in UK it's always a coined single word.

Ditto, and conversely, UK "apple sauce" vs US "applesauce": two nations divided by a common language and all that.

The "author" either recently learned English as a second language or needs to upgrade from GPT-2.

This really should be titled "Why WERE Black Currants Banned in the USA". They are no longer banned in the majority of states as the article itself says. I can buy them at the farmers market in Wisconsin when in season and my garden store sells bushes of multiple varieties of currants.

And just across the lake here in Michigan I cannot grow without permit, and am only allowed a few varieties that are known to be resistant to WPBR. I may try to grow some next season, if I can get seeds _and_ a permit.

https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/mdard/docu...

It's kinda wack cuz right nextdoor in Ontario they're reasonably popular. Same climate, same region.

Also, I have lots of black currants here and some lovely eastern white pines and they seem to get along juuuust fine.

The article says: "Therefore, some states start reversing the federal ban on this berry" and goes on to say "Today, these plants are successfully grown in New York, Connecticut, Oregon, and Vermont." which would explain why I've been growing black currants in Oregon for the last 15 years or so, I guess.

The closest I get to experiencing Black Currants in the US has been Black Currant Ice Cream in Indian Style Ice Cream shops and Duerr's Black Currant Preserve in Cost Plus World Market.

I grew up (in US) thinking blackcurrant was a variety of black tea. I had no idea until I got older that it is a berry.

Similarly, I thought elderberry was just a silly word that Monty Python made up to be funny.

I wonder if young Americans would make the association between elder wood and elderberries, from reading Harry Potter — the Elder Wand is a significant object.

Elderflowers are also used in drinks, both cordials and liqueurs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambucus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elderflower_cordial

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St-Germain_(liqueur)

We have indigenous elderberries in the US, I've got a couple growing in my yard.

Blackcurrants are no longer banned in the United States.

My parents were growing it illegally for years in the US (now its legal in NY) and they got the shoots from their relatives in Jersey who have been quietly farming it for a few decades (going back to the 1950s) for the Eastern European community in the region.

It wasn't really banned too well....

Growing up outside the US, black currant was the third default flavor of ice cream after vanilla and chocolate. Having strawberry fill that role here still seems like a missed opportunity for something slightly more bitter in the lineup of your average tiny one cart ice cream vendor on a beach or similar.

Here in central Europe, I have black and red variants in my garden, from which I've been picking for my daily muesli on the regular for years, and probably have a few bowls' worth in the fridge, as their season is over but my collecting isn't .. they are delightful plants, providing much in terms of vitamin C and other things, such as sugars ..

I think berries (and peas) are among the easier things to grow locally, and I sure wish more people in the cities and things did, we'd have more for the birds ..

Of course, this story is a reason we can't just have 'uncontrolled agriculture' but so, I'd just say let people grow the native species of whatever they can eat and leave us all alone, gardening is a human right ..

Americans are missing out here. Black currants are awesome, especially in e.g. cream-based sauces.

Emphasis on "were banned." They're somewhat commonly grown in New York; I grew up well over a decade ago eating both redcurrants and blackcurrants.

The leaves are also great for a tasty yet mild tea. You can brew it with dried leaves or even with fresh ones. To me it has a mild flavour of smokey black currant.

Blackcurrant leaves are widely used in the pickling liquid for pickles where I live.

Many bakeries put black currants in their scones --maybe not all over the US but I think major metros.

The leaves look a lot like raspberry leaves.

They look quite different from each other in person.

Adding black currant leafs when brewing tea can add wondeful taste!

I'd say it's stronger and more nuanced than mint.

I've got black currant plants growing here in Oregon (the variety is Crandall) - I've grown them for years. You can order them from One Green World near Portland - I don't see anything on that particular page that says they can't ship them: https://onegreenworld.com/product-category/berries/currant/b...

Huh, we were wondering aloud at the farm the other day why they're basically unknown in the USA anymore. TIL.

That explains it. I’ve been here so long I nearly forgot that before moving to Poland I had never heard of black currants.

Heard about this before, but didn't realize the effects of this just hadn't worn off and they were still somehow exotic in parts of the US?

They're very common in Canada. Have a row of them on my hobby farm in southern Ontario. My wife makes a casual $100 or so a year picking them and selling to local eastern European immigrants.

Grew up with currants and gooseberries all the time in central Alberta, where they grow tastier in the more northerly climate, in my opinion.

I absolutely love black currants. I stay in St. Lawrence Marine Park during summer and there are few bushes there with delicious berries I being the only predator. Adding leaves to tea is also very good recipe.

My father in-law is a Blackcurrant farmer in Canada. Had no idea they were banned in the US until recently.

Fascinating insight into the history of black currants in the US! How are efforts to reintroduce them going in your state?