So where does the milk and the steaks come from?
I know allot of the beef is actually OX… I assume this too is imported because I dont think I have seen any cow / ox pastures anywhere on this island.
Enjoy
come on… impossible 20 cows at most on some private tourist trap ranch are producing enough for the population of Taiwan. :roflmao:
Saw a bunch of yellow cattle after getting off Highway 3 at Hsinchu the other day. They were hidden behind a bunch of trees, but there were at least 6 of them.
There are a bunch of farms where there are cows. You can even milk them yourself at some of those farms.
It’s certainly not the cattle ranch in the scale of Norcal or Texas style ranches, which is a good thing. The earth looks pretty barren at those ranches.
I’ve seen loads of cows, especially down south.
I’m pretty sure the ox/water buffalo tales are a myth, they are too valuable as beasts of burden, if they were made into burgers nobody would be able to afford them.
There are plenty of cows at ranches all over Taiwan… but not enough to make milk prices cheaper, apparently.
At the risk of getting banned but you deserve it:
Most of it comes from usa and australia.
Powdered, sterilized milk (26 year shelf life), UHT from all over the world. You name it. Oh, fresh milk mixed with powdered, gets you more, cheaper!
I was referring to the beef meat; of all imported beef about 50% comes from the USA.
Regarding ox meat as opposed to cow/veal meat: Back in Spain, I used to favour ox meat instead of cow/veal. It is less tender, but it has more muscle and less fat. And it is not that expensive, compared to veal maybe 1-2€/Kg more expensive, but that’s it.
There are cows in Taiwan. It’s just that there are not enough cows (neither many other things) for feeding the population here.
Taiwan is a rock emerging from the sea, plagued with humans, concrete and tin. What is not already covered with people or junk, has a good reason for that: it’s mountain. Yeah, there are crops, of course. But the ratio of farm land to mouths is not like the one in other countries.
This, and that the food market here has been traditionally a monopoly, make prices be ridiculously high. Every time I visit the fresh market or a super market I feel like if it were a bad joke. Two bell peppers for how much? seriously? do these tomatoes have gold seeds? three mini apples for a Euro? do you dare to call that BEEF?
I just noticed recently that bananas are more expensive in Taiwan than US. When in US, I buy them in Costco. In Taiwan, I buy them from corner fruit stands. Maybe that is the difference. But Taiwan used to be called “kingdom of bananas”. What happened?
That’s because they’re imported.
They quit growing them here (on any meaningful level) in favor of higher-margin crops.
Same like sugar cane.
Come on bro. Food is expensive here in the USA too. I bet same thing in Europe and Australia?
Just bought two bell peppers are trader joes tonight. 1.15 each !
i blew 100 bucks on groceries tonight and there really wasn’t all that much stuff.
Red delicious apples work out to be about a buck each. Same for a large peach (in season now for 1.59 a pound, wintertime bout double that).
Milk is cheaper at bout 2 bucks a half gallon, but most people like organic so double that to 4 bucks.
Corn is bout 2 for a buck.
I can go on and on.
Bananas are cheap in the US because of companies like Chiquita that monopolized banana industries in several South American countries to bring you dirty cheap bananas at the cost of workers’ rights.
If you are not familiar with how farmers are being oppressed, you can get a sense of it from the US chicken industry, which replaces armed militias with lawyers and debt collectors.
taiwanese dont eat that much beef/meat or drink that much milk or use that much dairy to warrant raising a lot of cows. chinese/taiwanese/asian food usually consists of dishes with small cuts of meat cooked with lots of veggies. there’s no eating huge hunks of heart disease inducing steaks and burgers and cheese and butter and dairy like in the west. which is why white western americans and europeans are so fricking fat. of course many black americans are too eating a high-meat high-protein high-fat american diet. which is why a lot of them are fat too. even asian americans are getting fat. so americans have to raise a lot of animals - cows, cattles, pigs, etc. - to feed their insatiable appetite for meat. i was watching american news channels and they were all reporting on the kim davis situation in kentucky. and also hillary clinton visiting iowa. HOLY SHIT not to sound mean but those people in the south and midwest are really fat!! many men and women are they size of 2 or 3 taiwanese people. and these are white people not even blacks!! it’s just getting worse, man. 
LOL
That’s not mean, it’s the truth.
This sentence will make any American cringe. I think it’s the word “blacks…” it just sounds very pre-1950s.
I’m sorry to say that this sounded pretty retarded.
No, not everyone in the west eats burgers all the time, and no, to eat beef and other meat is not bad at all. Even more, it’s not necessarly anything to do with weight; I’ve seen already many vegetarian people in different countries who had weight problems. It’s not even the fat (may be it’s more the type of fat) what makes you fat, it’s your whole diet, gens and life style.
And yeah, I agre that in USA (not America, but USA) there are way too many cases of people with overweight. Again, diet and life style. And not just “meat” or “fat”.