Are retail products of inferior quality in Hungary?

I came back from Asia recently and I can safely say that tomatoes here are fantastically tasty compared to the ones there.

Don't get me started on Asian cheese.

The fruit and vegetables in Hungary  are delicious 😋.
I suspect that electronic items are not the best,  phones and vacuum cleaners don't seem to last as long but maybe that is a general trend.

Tomatoes are a summer vegetable, I grow my own and they are tasty. Now the ones that I have in the winter and have been produced anywhere in Europe have been effectively forced produced with artificial light and heat, they have no taste.

Such a lot of what we buy comes from China these days and they probably have the same (low) standard of quality for all markets (anyone want 4 faulty DVD players?).

One thing I have noticed is that a lot of meat products like sausages have water in the packets. This was effectively outlawed in UK some years ago on the basis that you should not be paying a certain price per kg of meat but getting a smaller weight plus some water.

I find nearly all apples in Hungary taste very bland. This includes ones from my own garden, which I generally just leave to rot. If I had been better organised I would have brought some apple trees from UK, including cox and bramley.

There are things I don't like much such as Hungarian cheese but I don't know enough about cheesemaking to tell if the quality is inferior.

House materials and workmanship do seem inferior to UK and some products do not seem to exist. I wanted wetwall panelling for the bathroom but can't find it anywhere in Hungary. I wanted vinyl silk emulsion for the kitchen but could only get matt. In fact, some of the paint they sell for walls is limewash so is not even washable.  I have done quite a bit of rewiring and have found things like switches, sockets and the associated mounting boxes to be poor quality. Obviously the design of these items is quite different to what we use in UK but the quality of new stuff is generally inferior to the old stuff I'm removing.

fidobsa wrote:

.....This includes ones from my own garden, which I generally just leave to rot. If I had been better organised I would have brought some apple trees from UK, including cox and bramley.

I have grapevines in my garden and the grapes on the vines are terrible.  Mrs Fluffy and I decided to chuck in the towel and keep the one and only decent looking plant left.  It's because it's got quite interesting red toned leaves for some reason.

I brought some tomato seeds several times from the UK and they grow really badly here.  I tried them in the ground and in pots. Absolutely awful.  Yet the MIL's toms do really well.

I also would like some decent apple trees but I think the climate is against them surviving - too hot and then too cold.  That said, I wouldn't mind some Braeburn or just plain old Granny Smiths.

Interesting discussion.

But..... Do read the article. It has nothing to do with gardening or raw fruits and vegetables, or electronic goods.

It was about "ingredients" in processed food and household goods (such as detergent).

I planted a granny smith apple tree last year so I am hoping that it will have a few more apples this year. The old hungarian apple tree in my garden is half dead but does still produce some tasty apples. The apricot trees produce the most tasteless apricots I have ever tried but I put them in a chutney with other fruit and veg and pickled up no one would know.
In terms of manufactured food I find some items have far more fat and salt than I am used to. I also prefer UK cheese and some other products. I'm not fond of Hungarian bakery items either but I'm sure it's more to do with preferences rather than taste. If you go to any large supermarket in a multi cultural area people tend to buy different products.

anonymous wrote:

Hungarian bakery items

I know I am myself a notorious offtopicer. But let's not go 180 degrees in the other direction.  That is, this topic not about Hungarian made goods nor their quality (interesting points, but please then start another topic), but about "inferior" food and products being shipped to Central Europe, including Hungary, from other EU countries while those other EU countries are getting "better" products.

So, for anyone maybe too busy to read the entire article to fully inform themselves before feeling the need to post a comment, some cherry picked snips:

"The countries of Eastern and Central Europe have long bridled at being treated like the poor cousins of the European Union family."

"But now that sense of resentment — of being treated as second-class citizens by more prosperous neighbors — is reaching even into the region’s refrigerators and cupboards. "

"Last month, the leaders of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic went so far as to ask the European Commission to investigate the complaint, which has been backed up in recent years by several studies, though not exhaustive ones."

"While rumors that inferior food is shipped to the East have swirled for years, only in 2011 did the Slovak Association of Consumers conduct a comparison of a basket of products purchased in Austria with the same products bought in Slovakia.

In all but one case, the products in the East were inferior, the group concluded."

Hope this helps direct future considerations for comments. Consider it a bit of "citizen science", to confirm or refute the "not exhaustive" studies mentioned in the article.