Wanna Cookie?

Tracing the connections between EU food labels, data privacy, and a society that values informed consent over capital gains.

The first time we visited The Netherlands, William and I executed my traditional “hotel grocery” run. It’s part of the routine I honed during my years of living in hotels while touring in the theatre. Sweeping all the “hotel crap” off the surfaces into a drawer is followed by procuring in-room snacks, usually red licorice and Honey BBQ Frito Twists, because it is a truth universally acknowledged that an equal measure of sweet and salty snacks will curb hanger and/or cure insomnia.

On our first trip to SPAR in Amsterdam a few years ago, I selected pink frosted cookies and paprika flavored potato chips—a vice I discovered on our trip to Spain. I remember being disappointed to see that my “roze koekjes” (and most everything else that seemed appetizing for hotel snacks) were labeled with a red E, noting they belonged on bottom of the nutritional scale on the packaging.

I’ve heard of shame-based eating…but helping me choose healthier food?

Since we’ve been living here, I’ve come to understand the scale is part of the EU regulations banning hormone-laden meat and GMO produce: measures to better inform consumers about what it is they’re going to put into their bodies. The Dutch scale swaps out the American grading’s F for the properly sequenced alphabet (they like things in ORDER!)…and the “no sugar added” muesli I bought scores a beautiful green A.

How much nutrition is in a Nutrigrain bar?

I’ve remarked more than once about the difference in the grocery shopping here—and I will keep doing so because this isn’t the right place to expound on how odd it is to see eggs next to the tinned vegetables instead of in a fridge with the milk. Besides the curious differences, the sticker shock of seeing affordable essentials has not worn off.

When was the last time you saw a freshly baked baguette for $0.99? For me, it was yesterday. In the US, prepackaged white bread is more affordable and, while you could surely get a Twinkie for under a dollar, I don’t think you could get a fresh baked roll anywhere. It has been a wonderful change to see the fresh produce and baked goods at lower costs, reframing our spending habits to pay more for convenience foods like frozen pizzas.

A little digging revealed the pricing is actually part of the Dutch social safety net: tax subsidies help keep the cost of essentials low, ensuring equity of access to balanced nutrition. It turns out you can pay less for eggs through your taxes more easily than by screaming about them on social media…

And the consumer productions don’t stop with solving the mystery of what’s hiding in your food!

The 2002 “cookie law” and the 2016 GDPR standards mean when you’re online, you’re not unknowingly feeding a mysterious algorithm that will later predict the next time you need deodorant and suggest you’ll be less socially awkward with the scents of Lion Pride Old Spice streaming from your armpits.

For the less technically inclined who don’t know what a “cookie” means in the context of a website, boy have you picked the wrong blog. While I’ve worked in software development, my understanding of user cookies is more “knows enough to be dangerous” than “able to teach.”

As an example of what a cookie does, let’s say you walk into a cafe and order a latte (which Dutch literally call “wrong coffee”) from the barista. In doing so, you’ve given them a bit of data that they’ll use to serve you what you want. Add your exact number of pumps of sugar-free syrup, your preferred pastry, and asking for the WiFi password and that barista has a pretty reasonable picture of your visit to their establishment.

When you leave the cafe and the barista ends their shift, that data’s gone…unless you’ve been flirting for a while, I suppose. If you’re a regular at the cafe, you might treasure the relationship with someone who remembers your preferences, but you wouldn’t otherwise expect total strangers to catalogue that kind of information about you since it is meaningless to their lives (again, unless you’re flirting).

While out shopping in Gouda, the sales clerk asked for my email and said that she could give me 15% off on that sale if I provided one…which normally wouldn’t sway me because I spent all of 2024 unsubscribing from everything I could. But then she explained that if I didn’t confirm my email address when they sent me something, they wouldn’t be able to send me any further messages. What!?

I knew the grocer Albert Heijn offered a “bonus card” but I was hesitant, not having a Dutch phone number and not wanting more junk email. Many of the self-checkout stations have random bag checks and when I told the cashier I didn’t have one, she handed it to me. I didn’t need to provide any identifying information for them to let me save on yogurt…but somehow every website in the US needs to collect my birthdate?

As we prepare to shop for a new apartment (we’re going with upholstered instead of furnished) I have been fascinated by the banners that appear when you visit a website and I mean every website, including ones I used in the US as often as daily. Using one as an example, I was dismayed to discover close to eighty different vendors who were being fed data about me.

Not unlike the terms and conditions so long we don’t read them, these lists of “interested parties” are frighteningly dense, and I had never before been given the choice about whether or not I wanted to share my information. Reviewing the different categories ranging from validating content performance to marketing trackers, I’ve made a habit of declining everything except for the mandatory ones the site requires to function because my gut says a great many of the same “partners” are shared across sites, providing an increasingly full picture of my habits and interests…to whom?

Looking at it that way, it’s rather easy to see how your phone seems to know what you’re going to shop for before you do, isn’t it?

It’s also no wonder why US companies lambaste European privacy regulations as stiff and overbearing when they became obligated to explain what information they’re storing about their users…and forced to provide a clear opt-out. Much like the packaging my hair shaver in waxed paper instead of plastic, why would websites harvest (and share) all of that data about their users if they can function without it?

Searching for something as everyday as a pair of socks in the US quickly leads to decision fatigue because there are at least four hundred options. The top results are paying to be closer to the top—saying nothing about their quality, only their interest in your wallet. You’re soon lost in the whirlwind of seemingly important questions: are these socks for him? For her? Are they cozy, fuzzy ones or are you needing no-show for summer? Perhaps you need socks for running which must naturally be different from the ones you need for hiking? One search and you’ll see sock ads for weeks, eventually branching out to recommend socks for your pet or retro sock monkeys from Etsy.

In our local branch of the grocer Dirk, you will not find a whole aisle of different nuts that have been buttered. You’ll see only a few peanut varieties: smooth, crunchy, and perhaps one with low salt. At the larger locations, there are options for those whose throats close at the scent of the notorious legume, but it is still nothing like the entire side of an aisle you’d find at a Walmart or suburban supermarket.

Being used to seeing that kind of variety, I first felt limited as though I was missing out on “selecting my favorite product;” however, after buying a jar of a brand we’ve never heard of, I realized it wasn’t an overcomplicated selection process that I was after: it was the salty taste of roasted peanuts.

Of course, I still get ads on websites here but they’re generic and recommend useful things like umbrellas, bicycles, and cheese (three of the most quintessentially Dutch products I can imagine). Mind you, the ads aren’t selling me an over-featured Sharper Image umbrella or the most sophisticated of mountain bikes…instead, they’re more like “buy some cheese because cheese is good”—a slogan with which I dare anyone but the lactose-intolerant to disagree!

Rather than comparing a thousand socks, the Dutch approach suggests that you buy some so that you can put on your shoes and get on with living your life.

These were €1 at the drug store and say “faster than my shadow.” Please don’t post this to WikiFeet…

As an American, I used to buy into the misconceptions about the higher tax rates in Europe, fearing a smaller take-home salary and wondering how I might meet the expenses of living. Shame on me to discover companies subsidize employee transportation passes and the taxes go to make sure you can actually eat.

As David Sedaris noted, no country’s motto is “we’re number two,” but the constant bombardment by newer, better, faster, shinier objects creates the myth that America is the best: the land of freedom, of choice…though current events suggest that might be false advertising. Rather like being taught to view high insurance premiums paid to for-profit companies that later deny you life-saving care as a better alternative to a tax payment that funds services you can actually use...

If you didn’t know, the United Staes is one of three countries where your tax liability is determined not by residence but by citizenship,¹ meaning when William and I begin to earn money in The Netherlands, we will owe taxes in both countries. Think about that for a moment: imagine you were born in California and expected to pay taxes there for the rest of your life, even if you choose to move to Nebraska.

As Americans living abroad, we will file taxes in the United States as long as we retain our citizenship. It is, however, rather unlikely we will make so much money that our US tax liability will be greater than what we’ve already paid into the Dutch system by the time we reconcile everything. Whatever the rate we pay, I have no compunction about funding social goods like low cost food and the transportation network that makes the city (and country) accessible without buying a car. What I appreciate about the Dutch system is that it treats essentials like food and privacy as rights to be defended rather than luxuries to be gamified for profit. In fact, I think I might prefer that to taxes that fund the military-industrial complex and the weaponizing of misinformation...

Yesterday, I was on FaceTime with my brother and his family. While I made silly faces with my nieces (did you know the Memoji unicorn has a glittery tongue?), William was preparing our dinner: an avocado and barbecue chicken salad with ranch dressing. Both ranch and BBQ are tastes of home that I learned to make before leaving, in case they weren’t commonly found here. Another example of my overly-conditioned American thinking: we easily found familiar brands of both on the shelves—even in our smaller neighborhood market.

Our time in this temporary apartment has been a strange flux between the treat-laden “hotel living” and whatever “real life” is supposed to be. We’ve had plenty of junk food (paprika Pringles) and always pick up a new snack (chocolate covered galette wafels), but even those items have been healthier than what we lived off in our last week in an American hotel. We’ve been here a month and so we have begun to make “proper dinners,” though we are limited to things that can be prepared in a kitchen that looks like it belongs in a break room.

Improvised steaming broccoli using a colander and oven-safe plate…

I didn’t think too much of the bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s when William brought it home, but my sister-in-law was interested in the differences. After bragging that I’d made the ranch (honestly, mine is better: one part mayo, two parts Greek yogurt plus chives, dill, black pepper, and a splash of water), we compared the ingredient lists between two versions of the “same product.” Theirs listed more than one kind of high fructose corn syrup while ours contained only cane sugar. After the call, I looked into it further and, while there aren’t that many shocking differences, the variation in materials and the order in which they are listed provide some…food for thought.

You don’t have to have children to crack dad jokes!

Even though I am certain that there are things I will come to miss about my home country the further we wander into this new life in The Netherlands, as of right now, I believe I will miss the chemical additives in my food about as much as the eerily personalized advertisements: meaning not at all.

When we enjoyed the salads, I will be honest that I didn’t notice the barbecue sauce tasting any better or worse than what I’m accustomed to having…but smug self-satisfaction has a delightful mouthfeel and no aftertaste.

If you’re only subscribed to the Expat Files, you might miss my other content. In order to not spam your inbox, I’m putting you in charge of the notifications Substack sends you. If you’d like to check them out, click below:

• My Fiction newsletter will include flash fiction, chapters from my published books and anything that’s too far from the truth to be considered anecdotal

• My Playlists newsletter will occasionally send links to playlists of songs that have come my way, served to inspire me, or are just a darn good bop

• My Odds & Ends newsletter is where I’ll put the things that don’t fit into any of the above but struck me as something about which to write

If you create a free Substack account, you’ll be able to subscribe to all of my different content feeds in addition to latest from the Expat Files (see here for help). If you go one step further and join me on the Substack app, you’ll see notes and fun things like cat pictures pop up!

If you enjoy my work, please help me grow!

1. The other two countries are Eritrea and North Korea.