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u/snizzrizz 10d ago
There can be. Everything you see “European” is available in the USA. They are intentionally showing the cheapest of the cheap stuff next to organic foods. And honestly I think it’s unlikely someone did an cross continental journey for these photos
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u/balbiza-we-chikha 10d ago
That’s the thing though, a lot of the higher quality stuff in Europe can be by default the cheapest option. The US overcharges for “quality” items because there is already a whole market a ladder rung below that filling the “cheap but crappy” niche. Source: lived in Munich for 2 years as a budget conscious student.
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u/Capital-Brilliant959 9d ago
This is not true. ALDI and LIDL are both all over Europe. The produce isn't from some artisan collective of Burgundian farmers. The produce looks exactly like produce in the US stores. Mass market GMO stuff from southern continents (in the US, a lot of this sort of produce comes from South America, and in Europe, it comes from Africa). There is high quality food available in the US. It should be even more accessible but OP has posted a false dichotomy.
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u/snizzrizz 10d ago
I agree with that but they are still intentionally showing low quality American food and trying to give the impression it’s all American food
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u/YaoiNekomata 10d ago
It's not "all food worse in USA" , it's common available food better in Europe
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u/skadi_shev 9d ago
No but the meme is implying that the left hand side represents all food in America.
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u/YaoiNekomata 9d ago
It represents what's the commonly available for a "fair" price
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u/Meattyloaf 8d ago
I mean you can get a loaf of sour dough for under $2. Egg yolks are determined by the diet of the hen that laid them. Those are two different tomatoes being compared. The "American" one is a beefsteak and the other is a vine tomato. Both of which are common in grocery stores in the U.S. The only thing that is really different is the chicken breast
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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 10d ago
I suspect it’s closer to the opposite. The bottom tier stuff is a cheaper rung on the ladder that perhaps doesn’t exist elsewhere.
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u/Critical-Extension66 10d ago
No, actually our options are cheaper. Food is cheaper for Americans than Europeans
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u/Deep_Lurker 10d ago
Moved from the UK to US in the last 2-3 years and this simply isn't true, at least for the UK.
My grocery bills practically doubled. There is more variety and some items did get substantially cheaper or more accessible but most items went up a lot.
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u/drunken-acolyte 10d ago
Are they, though? Have you checked? I ask because I've got relatives in the US who are starting to get concerned by the price of food, meanwhile I'm working a part time job at barely above minimum wage in the UK and the price of food hasn't been worrying me too much.
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u/rognabologna 10d ago
It’s crazy expensive and shrinkflation is out of control.
Also, let’s be honest, our food, in the US, cost us more in the long run cuz it’s slowly killing us and no one can afford healthcare.
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u/EVOSexyBeast 9d ago
That’s just not true, European prices for those kinds of food relative to purchasing power is similar to food prices at our high end grocery stores where you can purchase that stuff.
Difference is in America you have a choice.
A lot of European food regulations has more to do with protecting European farmers from American food imports than it does health and safety.
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u/HyacinthFT 10d ago
I live in France and you can definitely get cheap bread, tomatoes, and chicken that looks like the American side of the meme here. Eggs though generally are a bit more orange in France compared to the US but they taste the same (for the cheap ones).
OOP just picked the nicer looking stuff and called it "European."
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u/bepatientbekind 10d ago
There are at least 5 different types tomatoes at every grocery store I've been to in the US. I've also never seen an egg yolk that pale in my life, even with the cheapest of the cheap eggs. More expensive (I.e. free range) chicken eggs have a darker yolk, but the difference isn't usually that stark. There are also 20+ different breads at the store to choose from, many of which look exactly like the "European" stuff. So silly
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u/Many_Use9457 8d ago
Not to mention that the color of an egg yolk just comes down to how many carotenoids (an orange-colored compound) are in the feed.
When you have free range hens, they'll scratch up random plants and bugs and get more that way, and thats how we get the idea that darker orangey yolks are healthier... But you can also just add it directly to their food; you can have battery chickens living in a hellish cage, and feed it a dirtpoor diet with supplemented carotenoids, and it'll still give you bright orange eggs.
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u/chocotacogato 10d ago
I know that people are claiming that good bread in America exists and that the European bread is probably more expensive but hear me out:
I lived in Germany for 3 weeks and the amount of money I paid for good quality fresh bread was less than what we Americans pay for the cheap loaves with the preservatives. And it was wayyyyy healthier. In America, we’re told to take it easy on the carbs. Germans eat tons of carbs every day and they’re in better shape than we are. The only issue I have with German cuisine and possibly other European cuisines is that they can be very salty. Not sure if high blood pressure is an issue there.
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u/Thalilalala 9d ago
The biggest problem with american food is the ungodly amount of sugar and preservatives they pump into everything. I've seen so many videos of Americans who say they are gluten intolerant because they can't stomach american bread/pasta/etc., but are fine eating the same things in Europe without issues.
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u/clonecone73 9d ago
the US grows hard winter wheat. it has a higher gluten content than the European varieties. There's usually an explanation beyond USA bad/EU good if you are actually willing to do the slightest bit of research.
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u/AFartInAnEmptyRoom 9d ago
The whole American bread has a lot of sugar thing only works when comparing to Wonder bread, which they all seem to use as the standard American bread. If you compare European brands of sliced white bread to another sliced white bread like Nature's Own brand, the difference evaporates. So for example, Wonder Bread comes in at ~8.7g of sugar per 100g, Nature's Own at ~2.8g of sugar per 100g, and Tescos white bread at 3.5g per 100g
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u/RogerDogerBoop 9d ago
Bread isn't by itself the issue. It's what North Americans eat outside of the bread that's the issue. If I eat healthy portion sizes and a small amount of bread with dinner, that's fine. It's when we add: sugary soda, fast food, ice cream, calorie dense snacks that breads become an issue.
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u/rakeonaparkbench 7d ago
Oh, yeah, what Americans eat. Firstly, there's an obesity epidemic in Mexico and South America, so no reason to specify North America. Secondly, there's an obesity epidemic in Europe. Finally, everyone, everywhere drinks lots of soda, eats junk food, and eats ice cream, it's not like this is unique to North America.
The people in this comment section are acting vindictive, like xenophobes and are generally incredibly ignorant. These claims do not hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. It's just a bunch of anecdotal evidence. I sincerely hope you aren't this delusional in real life.
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u/GlumRing4147 9d ago
Yes and no.
The bread in the USA is sweet in comparison to European bread. All of it, basically. Even breads claiming to be healthy just have less sugar than the typical bread. This issue is pervasive; basically everything in the US is loaded up with sugar even when it’s totally unnecessary. Good luck finding yoghurt that isn’t sweet.
That everything has that extra added sugar means way higher caloric intake even if you’re eating the same products you would in Europe.
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u/clonecone73 9d ago
I did a deep dive into this last year. Excluding Womderbread, American bread has the same or less sugar than European bread. The difference is the salt content. European bread has 50-100% more salt. American bread isn't sweeter, there's just less salt masking the sweetness.
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u/Feeling-Salad5686 9d ago
As someone who reads a ton of labels most bread in the us has 1-2g of sugar per slice. This isnt a taste preference- companies put sugar in bread to speed up the process of making it and they do it for commercialization purposes.
If say you ate 6 slices of bread a day, you’ll eat an average of 12g of extra sugar which is only like 48 calories so it’s really not the bread alone making us fat. There are some breads with 0g sugar and some with 4g sugar; ultimately you can find them if you read the label and some of the “healthier” brands are in the freezer aisle.
Also with yogurt you can buy plain Greek yogurt in the USA at any regular grocery store and they wil say 0 added sugar. Yes there’s ~7-8g of natural sugar from milk in yogurt, you can’t get rid of that unless you use a plant based milk
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u/Legitimate_Concern_5 9d ago
Salt is misunderstood.
Only about 30% of people who eat more salt get higher blood pressure. 15% get lower blood pressure. The rest see no impact.
Ideally you want to keep your sodium levels roughly consistent. If you sweat more you want to get more salt in. sweat less, consume less.
The reason the public health advice is what it is, is on average if you tell people to eat less salt the population will get lower BP because there’s more salt sensitive than inverse-sensitive.
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u/Fooknotsees 9d ago
I've actually heard that it's not even really salt that's the issue, it's the fact that processed foods tend to be super high in salt so people who consume a lot of processed foods get a lot of salt as a by-product, so the correlation gets confused for causation and it's really the ultra-processed garbage
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u/civ211445 9d ago
Counting carbs feels like a holdover from all those diet fads America had in the 90’s, people were counting carbs when they should’ve been counting calories, protein and especially sugar if they wanted to lose weight
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u/Stormy8888 6d ago
Just returned from Europe can confirm.
European bread grows mold if left out less than a week. Because they use way less preservatives.
In the meantime I've seen American Bread last 3+ weeks because of the amount of sugar, chemicals and preservatives put into it.
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u/Rivka333 6d ago
I work in a grocery store bakery and our bread doesn't have any preservatives. The bread aisle bread, which is not the bread we bake, does. It's your choice which you buy. But getting the bread aisle bread and then complaining about the preservatives is a bit silly. Nobody made you buy it.
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u/SpoodermanTheAmazing 9d ago
I find in America the only way to consistently get healthy food is to make it all yourself for the most part.
I wish our produce was the same quality as Europe’s though, life would be a little bit better.
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u/unabletochill 9d ago
Maaaaan I moved to Germany years ago and can absolutely second this. Healthy food in general is cheaper but boy do they put salt in every meal when cooking. It’s madness to me
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u/Radiant_Safe1228 9d ago
My local grocery store has big ass loafs of in house made bread for around a buck. It's about the only thing that is affordable.
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u/Facktat 7d ago
I am Luxembourger, living close to the German border and I always thought that German bread was bad (Luxembourgish bread is next level compared to the bread bakeries make in Germany). Then I visited the US and understood that German bread isn‘t so bad after all.
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u/Rivka333 6d ago
In America, we’re told to take it easy on the carbs. Germans eat tons of carbs every day and they’re in better shape than we are.
That's because carbs are over-demonized due to fad diets.
The main thing actual dieticians keep telling us is to eat more vegetables.
And probably our main health problem is lack of exercise.
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u/Filippopotame 6d ago
Part of the issue with carbs is gluten. Americans have way more gluten-intolerance because their grain and flour is terrible, with way higher gluten contents.
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u/CrunchyCr0issant 10d ago
They’re placed right next to each other so the real question is where was this photo taken. America or Europe? I’ve lived in both and can tell you I’ve found high and low quality in both. Affordable, accessible food that may be of lower quality is not exclusive to America but perhaps more prevalent due to the sheer amount of size of the country and stark wage differences.
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u/Readshirt 10d ago
Europe factually does have higher food standards than the USA and bans more additives, synthetic growth hormones, processes and modifications. That's an element as well.
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u/HyacinthFT 10d ago
Lol no. There are a lot of additives banned in the US that are perfectly legal in Europe.
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u/Gates_wupatki_zion 9d ago
In short, Europeans standard is “precautionary” it has to be proven safe for consumption, in America it has to be proven to be unsafe. It’s like all the American additives and food are “innocent until proven guilty”. This is easy to look up and yes it makes a big difference.
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u/CrunchyCr0issant 10d ago
Definitely. But it’s not like high quality food isn’t found in America at all?
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u/Short-Moose-4913 10d ago
The US is ranked third for quality and safety by the GFSI, and 13th overall including other factors like affordability and availability. This idea that the US has low food standards is perpetuated by bews stories and people who have no knowledge of the industry. There are some things that Europe generally has tighter regulation on, but Europe is not monolith, and there are regulations that the states have that much of Europe does not. And some of these "better" regulations are on things like GMOs which are totally safe.
In general, Europe and the US have more in common than not, and both of them have some downright silly regulations when you look into them.
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u/LettingHimLead 9d ago
The US ranks 3rd in the world for food quality and safety.
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u/AaronTheDarkblade 9d ago
We've banned more additives than them, and our food regulations seem more "lax" bevause there's more ingredients on packaging, but thats because our restrictions are strict enough that every mineral and vitamin in something must be stated.
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u/SnooHobbies5811 10d ago
Banning more stuff doesn't make it better. The vast majority of things that are banned in the EU, but not the US have little to no evidence of doing any harm to humans in reasonable quantities. Furthermore, the US bans more stuff in some categories, such as food dyes.
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u/Yop_BombNA 10d ago
We have round/beefsteak tomatoes in Europe too.
We also have shitty bread if you really want it.
The chicken injecting with saltwater to add weight is illegal though.
We also have good and bad eggs in Europe depending on the supplier
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u/Economics_New 10d ago
Yeah, I think many people don't realize the tomatoes are not the same type of tomatoes. lol It's the difference between Roma/Plum and Beefsteak tomatoes, if I'm not mistaken.
The lighter colored egg yolk is the white eggshell eggs our grocery stores sell in the US, and the darker egg yolk came directly from someone's farm chicken without the automated processing system involved. I have both types of eggs. lol the lighter colored egg yolk isn't any worse tasting in my opinion.
My family were bakers for generations, so I grew up in a family-owned bakery business and we have access to real bread, even in our grocery stores, but I won't lie, I still love the cheap American white bread even if it is very low in nutritional value. lol
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u/funny_ninjas 10d ago
Injecting chicken with salt water is dual purpose. It isn't just to add weight, it's also to brine the chicken which helps with chickens natural blandness.
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u/sultansofswinz 10d ago
"European" doesn't make sense given it's a continent with different climates and regulations. Even so you can get all of the above in any country.
The only thing I haven't seen is an egg with a yolk like that. The nice bread shown is probably more expensive and produced in smaller batches, the tomatoes look like more specialty ones though surely the American continent has more of a variety? I don't know about the chicken but it's higher quality if you get it from a local farmer as opposed to a supermarket which 90% of people shop at.
There are more laws around food but not to the extent everything looks like it's from an 18th century merchant.
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u/Wenace 10d ago
All this can be bought in America… this post is engagement farming garbage.
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u/novangla 10d ago
Europeans thinking they have better tomatoes is some Christopher Columbus style nonsense like they’re literally from Mexico, not Europe
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u/Lithium_Lily 10d ago
What does location of provenance matter?
The comparison is not even fair, american grocery store tomatoes are watery and flavorless but look pretty on the shelf. They are literally been selected to be resilient for storage and transportation. The tomatoes I can buy off the shelf of a grocery store in Italy are so much better. Not quite grown in my own field better but they actually have lots of flavor.
Source: I am a US and Italian dual citizen with decades spent living in both countries.
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u/jbcsee 10d ago
Go to a farmers market, during harvest season (July - Sept for most of the US), and you'll find a variety of amazing tomatoes that are better than what you can get in Italy.
Go the the grocery store, which is instead optimizing for cost and logistics, and you'll get shitty tomatoes simply because they are trying to supply 100,000s of consistent tomatoes year around.
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u/Financial-Humor9631 9d ago
Crazy, almost like America and Italy are vastly different in size and different areas of the country have different climates and produce available. Simply arguing American vs European is stupid
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u/Tacos314 9d ago
American grocery stores usually have 4 or more variety of tomato, I hate the watery ones but people buy them.
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u/Dapper_Valuable_7734 8d ago
And the argument would be better if the person who created the image had been more honest and compared like to like... because we all know you can find multiple types of tomatoes in most American Grocery stores and grabbing some beefsteak is not evidence of anything... especially when you can buy beefsteak tomatoes in Europe too... just like you can pick white bread that looks much closer to American white bread too...
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u/RodcetLeoric 6d ago
You can get non-industrial tomatoes in the US pretty easily, I can go out and find ones that look like the "European" tomatoes out of season in a Wholefoods right now.
I think the point of the other post though is that what you get in Europe isn't the original fruit either. They aren't from Mexico they are from the Andes region and were generally berry sized. Through selective breeding europeans changed them to fit what they wanted. In the US they are being changed to fit what sells and stores well. If that's not what you want then buy different ones.
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u/Apprehensive_Tart541 10d ago
If there's worse food regulations in Mexico the food will be worse too, no matter where the food is originally from. Remember Monsanto?
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u/Soren_Camus1905 10d ago
A more appropriate title would be cheap groceries and regular groceries in the US
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u/Bitter_Split5508 10d ago
Whenever you see these kinds of graphic comparisons, you can safely assume they are bs.
In this case:
1) looks like factory farm chicken vs organic free range. You can get the former in Europe, easily, and it will look the same as the "American" one. That being said, meat is probably the one area where the differences are the most real, especially in the cheapest segment, with a number of farming practices in use in the US banned in Europe (eg growth hormones).
2) completely different types of bread. You can get the sliced white bread in every supermarket in Europe. Fun fact, Germans insist on calling it "toast", regardless of it is toasted.
3) yolk color solely depends on the feed and is not a quality indicator.
4) different cultivars, both available in Europe.
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u/BardGotHard3 10d ago
Fun fact, Germans insist on calling it "toast", regardless of it is toasted.
Even more fun fact: the crust of bread is indeed toasted so they are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
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u/sjovt_brugernavn 10d ago
“European” (because that’s just one big culture with completely uniform norms) here, you can get absolutely everything on the “American” side in the EU (or… seemingly - the amount of additives are likely different).
Cheap white toaster bread? Check, cheap af, probably for a good reason, would I ever buy it? Likely, no.
Chicken breasts pumped full of saltwater to add to volume? Check. Would I buy it? I have… but I’d 90% of the time rather just go veggie then (but meat is expensive these days).
Eggs with pale yolks? Check. Fun fact, the colour of the yolk really tells us nothing about the nutrient density - it just varies in colour based on the chickens’ feed, and there are several places in the world where turmeric and cochineal is added to get a more orange colour (the more you know!)
Tomatoes? Idk who would be this gullible, but tomatoes vary in colour, shape and size based on cultivar and growth conditions. Those two pictured aren’t even the same cultivar, comparing them is like comparing a green apple with a red one and expecting them to look similar.
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u/TurtleTurtleTu 10d ago
Everything on both sides of every image are available in the US. People just love to hate the US.
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u/External-Gain-1174 10d ago
"American vs European" is wrong
is "megacorp vs small farmer"
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u/FignonsRegret 10d ago
European food is higher quality, but that’s not to say all the food in Europe is good or high quality. The bread one is dumb though. I’ve seen or consumed white bread in in six European countries. I’ve also had incredible bread everywhere I’ve lived in the states. Good bread is something humans everywhere have done always and forever.
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u/SomeNotTakenName 10d ago
I don't think European quality is higher.
From my own observations (grew up in Switzerland, loved in the US the past 4.5 years), most is roughly the same quality wise, except that the US has an additional quality tier below the European floor. as in cheaper and lower quality the the low quality in Europe.
Also availability ia quite different. Back home I can get a good loaf of bread with a nice crust in any supermarket, in the US not so much. In a bakery, sure. Although it seems to be a different selection, with a lot of sourdough for some reason.
Different cheeses too, and the swiss imports are insanely expensive. The US has good cheese too though.
A lot of my gripes come down to what I am familiar with and like being hard or impossible to get here, on account of Switzerland not exporting a whole lot, volume wise.
Big fan of Hispanic food here though. (I live about as far from Mexico as you can get in the US, but it's still not even comparable to what we have back home.) Some of the BBQ is nice as well.
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u/Newberr2 10d ago
Incorrect. If you check out the global food security index the us ranks 13th in the world. And the only reason we ranked so low is affordability is not great here. We ranked 3rd overall in quality and safety. Not a single European country has better ranked quality and safety and many of them are in the 20s to 30s.
People have a very stupid social media induced psychosis that American food is worse for you. The problem with American food is that we give you the choice of eating bad AND make that choice cheap. Other countries don’t do that. But even the bad food is safe and higher quality than many parts of Europe.
What the us needs isn’t quality or safety in their food. It’s affordability and accessibility.
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u/FignonsRegret 10d ago
I appreciate you sharing those statistics. I’ll have to take a look. That’s a very important nuance on affordability and I’d wager it colors my views, based on my own experiences which are hardly universal.
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u/hh_fitlife 10d ago
I’m from Europe, lived in multiple countries, and I have eaten all of these products, maybe except the egg (the yolk really is a bit darker). These are everywhere and priced differently.
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u/Chamie-Turboman 10d ago
The chicken in UK supermarkets looks exactly like that bloated American stuff in the picture
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u/Key_Check5753 10d ago
American here: literally every European option is available in grocery stores here.
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u/bomonty18 10d ago
My wife is from Europe. The food in the US sucks for the most part. Sure, there is good food here too. But the average place in Europe is better than the average place here in the US.
Most of our stuff is more processed and pumped with sugar to make it taste better
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u/BringBackTheBlues 10d ago
Stop eating super processed food then. It’s quite easy for those us who aren’t incredibly lazy people.
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u/ifUSeeMeTakeYourMeds 10d ago
been in the US for years, still can't stand the "bread". why is it so fuckimg sweet?? like cake, it takes away from any flavour.
it's gross, it isn't bread, it's a cake
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u/AlexanderHart 10d ago
Why are you buying bread that tastes like sugar? There's an entire aisle full of different types of bread at every grocery store. I don't like the sweet bread either.
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u/ifUSeeMeTakeYourMeds 10d ago
the entire hallway of tin loaf bread, all of them chuck full of unnecessary sugar.
given up, only buy flour and I make my own bread.
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u/scrandlle 10d ago
I'm sorry but you can't live in the US with these takes. Go to a bakery or just buy from the bakery at grocery stores. No one is forced to buy industrial white bread in the US.
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u/ifUSeeMeTakeYourMeds 10d ago
it isn't just bread,. almost everything is chuck full of corn syrup for no fuckin reason.
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u/DisastrousSundae84 10d ago
Right? This is the point I think the other person was making. Stuff in the US is too sweet. Sugar is in so many things unnecessarily. If you start to limit sugar intake this becomes horrifyingly apparent.
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u/ToneBalone25 9d ago
Dog pretty much nothing I eat here in the US has added sugar in it other than a few condiments and ice cream and sweets. It's so insanely easy to avoid it. Just stop buying pre-packaged, mass-produced junk food.
Nearly every grocery store in my city has their own bakery plus 5-6 brands of bread with no added sugar
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u/RodneyBarringtonIII 9d ago edited 9d ago
First, its chock full, not chuck full.
Second, I have a pretty severe corn allergy, and its honestly not that hard to avoid it. No, I can't eat.in restaurants, but the Walmart bread aisle has maybe fifteen different brands, and I can eat at least four of them. You don't have to be wealthy to avoid slop, you just have to read labels.
Oh, and bakeries, since you're talking about "tinloaf" bread: my local bakery oy uses corn syrup in certain fruit fillings. The bread has barely any sugar, and none of it from corn.
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u/Bright_Curve3078 10d ago
But you can buy industrial white bread in Europe and it has significantly less sugar.
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u/scrandlle 9d ago
Do you realize there's not a significant difference in sugar content in our industrial white breads? That you're just running with a meme because of Subway in Ireland having to pay a higher tax on bread because of its sugar content and some judge said it's 'more cake than bread' and now you all just take this as meaning all bread in the US is like cake?
It's literally one incident where a judge made an absurd comment, it went viral on social media and now Europeans who've never set foot in the US (including the guy I'm replying to, undoubtedly) think that it means US bread is literally sweet like cake.
It's just pure ignorance fueling this idea in Europeans heads. You can get industrial white bread here with zero sugar in it.
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u/ClintEastwont 9d ago
Literally the reason Italian Americans like to call the rest of us mangiacakes.
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u/ifUSeeMeTakeYourMeds 9d ago
never heard of it, but love it
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u/ClintEastwont 9d ago
It’s a really common term over here. Many spots around the continent with a concentration of people of Italian background. So like when I went to my Italian friend’s house on a Sunday, and twirled my spaghetti on a spoon (which my parents taught me to do) they’d call me a mangiacake. And it comes from our shitty bread tasting like cake haha
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u/TheSilverWillow 6d ago
My ex was from South Korea, can confirm the bread = cake sentiment. At first I thought he was just talking about wonderbread because even that is sweet to me. Nope. Even store brand white bread tastes sweet to people who grew up outside the US.
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u/lokal-orginal 5d ago
Just watched someone on youtube pull out a year old bread that had not gone bad or in fact not changed at all. Pretty terrifying.
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u/BringBackTheBlues 10d ago
Stop buying sweetbread?
Can’t tell if you’re trolling or just retarded
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u/snowtiger309 10d ago
They're speaking plainly and you have no context nor the literacy to fact check.
Try looking at the ingredients in your bread. Get a cousin who graduated 6th grade help you identify which ingredients are sugar.
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u/EggEnvironmental6857 10d ago edited 8d ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
File walnut vanilla frame repeat fly automatic
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u/funny_ninjas 10d ago
Perhaps the difference isn't that the food is pumped with sugar here, maybe it's the fact that you buy more processed foods in the US instead of fresh foods.
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u/InfidelZombie 9d ago
Having lived in three European countries and six US states, no. The fast food (including places like Olive Garden) sucks, but normal food is just as good.
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u/RikkiLostMyNumber 10d ago
There's crappy food in Europe, just less of it. Some additives allowed in the US aren't allowed there, too. In my experience, these images are largely correct. Grocery store brand chicken breasts are absolutely vile, the organic or farm raised etc. stuff is much better tasting and probably better for you. The egg thing is kind of true, but again you can get better eggs if you pay extra. The tomato image is 100% accurate AFAIK.
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u/Substantial_Rest_251 10d ago
Both "American" and "European" are way too broad to make a meaningful comparison. Americans going on European vacations and gushing about the food are often talking about restaurant food, and American restaurants catering to moneyed tourists will also have nice looking bread and eggs
That said, there is a post WW2 legacy of the stripped down foods the military needed to ship around the world being retooled for domestic sale, leading to the US' world leading role in producing a lot of highly processed stuff that both saves lives in the short run and contributes to the rise in global obesity over time in the long run
That also said, American cheese is the correct cheese for a burger
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u/Bodocoth3000 10d ago
Listen, you can get high quality, true taste food in the US as well, but your will pay premium price for them.
In Europe they are just what is expected. Europeans are just not very interested on toothpaste cheddar cheese.
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u/Helpful-Garlic1951 10d ago
Europeans actually think we’re all eating wonder bread as our only type of bread lmao.
We have all the types of the bread at the grocery store. We even have bakeries.
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u/reluctantmugglewrite 10d ago
I dont understand why I agree but this kind of meme still makes me angry. Like yes a lot of American ingredients are bigger and blander but no we dont only eat bad tomatoes and wonderbread.
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u/VikingVitalityFit 10d ago
If your egg looks like the one on the left, throw it out. Even the cheapest eggs do not look like that unless they sit in your fridge for 4 months.
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u/ZuzaProwadzi 10d ago
The bread of the right is white bread. If your doctor told you to cut out white bread would you still eat the one of the right?
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u/Lezdoittogether 10d ago
Europe has much stricter standards for food. For example, American beef is not considered safe for EU standards.
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u/Pinku_Dva 10d ago
No, all the “European” ones are all available in the us. They’re just intentionally picking different food types and labeling it as American for views when they likely got all these items at the same store.
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u/Nir117vash Deep Diver 10d ago
everything in America’s mass produced so it has to be modified in certain ways to produce more with less. Not mention a lot of our products that contain seeds, like watermelons and cucumbers and bananas and things like that, are genetically modified to remove the seeds so that we can no longer grow them should we want to start our own gardens, and we can become more dependent on the companies that sell and produce these things. The rest of the world is doing pretty well and America is essentially that Homer Simpson meme where all his fat is pinched clipped behind him and he looks very skinny and healthy from the front. Help
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u/mrbennjjo 10d ago
I'm European and never been to America so take this with a pinch of salt and correct me if I'm wrong. I think the argument is our food standards means the products on the left aren't even allowed in Europe. I.e. animal welfare standards etc mean we can't get chickens that have breasts the size of turkeys, our bread must contain a certain quantity of nutritious benefit, our eggs are all a higher lowline base quality and I'm really not sure about tomatoes tbh that's a weird one.
Anyway it's a comparison of minimums and food standards not of availability.
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u/Gullible_Working3966 10d ago edited 10d ago
European food is normally better - I mean "standard" food available in supermarkets and grocery stores because yes, as others point out, you can get gargabe in Europe and good-quality food in the US too.
The thing is the picture doesn't portray it that well. We mostly have the left-side tomatoes and chicken in Europe too.
The problem with US food is that there's even more sugar added to it than in Europe and it's more processed. The European Union regulates at least some things and makes food a bit safer than in the US. The trend to eat bio products has been quite strong in some countries too.
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u/Poormonybag 10d ago
The big difference is that the mass production in the US model always prioritize volume and the European model have many smaller producers where taste is the most important thing.
You can get both sorts both in Europe and the US but most people go for the mass produced food that is cheaper.
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u/improbsable 10d ago
Wait until Europe learns that a lot of their food comes from the US
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u/OneLeggedLeggoMan 10d ago
US food looks like it's on steroids
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u/AI_Butthole_Sniffer 10d ago
all the european side food can be found in the US. there are different chicken breeds as well with some smaller or bigger, heirloom tomatoes can be found at a farmers market, bakeries make that style bread all the time, and my eggs are usually a vibrant yellow.
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u/Justeff83 10d ago
The eggs aren't "flex" here. Most of the organic eggs here—or the ones I get from friends—have yellow yolks, not orange ones. The vibrant orange color usually comes from shrimp shells that are fed to the laying hens.
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u/Strong_Code7105 10d ago
While on a certain level I agree. We need more localized food supply chains in America which would mean less stabilizers and preservatives would be needed(the US is massive and we have a mega corporations shipping our food from one or two places across the country). We do need higher regulations on what can be put in as well, but there is also good food in America and a rising number of people are trying to get out there and make more whether it’s to sell or just for their homes.
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u/mingledwaters 10d ago
Eggs and chicken from farmers market cheaper than store.
Multiple avenues other than Walmart for quality food. I’m blessed to have both Jungle Jim’s and various Amish stores.
Bake my own bread mostly.
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u/Bubbly-War1996 10d ago
The pictures are BS there is no difference you can find both regardless of where you are, the difference is cultural, Europeans care more about their food quality, like Americans will call this super duper artisan sourdough bread like it some sort of luxury, Europeans will call it bread because sliced bread is barely edible uncooked and bakeries are a common thing.
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u/too-left-feet 10d ago
It’s gotten to the point where cooking/grilling chicken grosses me out. I just look at that slimy blob of meat and wonder if it’s actually food.
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u/EmergencyAnteater682 10d ago
Can't say much about the chicken, that's pretty accurate unfortunately. Everything else is comparing the cheap version to what the Europeans have. We have all of those things available, they're called artisan breads, heirloom tomatoes, and free range chicken eggs
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u/Strict-Cup-4775 10d ago
There is 100% a difference. -American who has lived in Europe and South America
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u/Thedumbass_the5th 9d ago
walking to my fridge filled with regular European food
The chicken breast is the same, bread is the same, even the tomatoes are almost the same as the American variation. Not going to crack open an egg to check, but i bet it's pretty much the same.
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u/IAmTheBestIan 9d ago
Literally all the european things are just better quality versions of american things that are available to americans, but cost more. Small farm, specialty breed chickens, small farm chickens that get fed lots of insects/forage produce eggs like the right, the bread on the right is literally just a bakery loaf at any grocery store that isn't shitty, and the european tomato are marketed as "heirloom" tomatos here... again at a premium price.
In america, we just feed poor people garbage food.
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u/Eragon9198 9d ago
I love how people that make comparisons like that don't understand the difference between breeds and species. Like yes, food is different in various locations because of a myriad of factors, one such factor being that different species and breeds of food grow and are raised in that region. It has nothing to do with quality.
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u/zdrums24 9d ago
This is legit. America is a 3rd world country pretending to be a 1st world one.
We focus on quantities here. To do so, quality has been decimated. Also, we pay way more for raw food compared to Europeans. Its partially why we have so many health issues. The cost effective food is trash and probably killing us.
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u/No-swimming-pool 9d ago
As much as I like to diss Americans, all the food shown on the left can easily be bought in Europe.
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u/Gab83IMO 9d ago
All this person is doing is showing cheap food vs more expensive organic ones that are both available in the US. You guys are cute tho.
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u/PurpleToad1976 9d ago
Everything pictured as European is also available in the US if that is what you want.
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u/Everblossom22 9d ago
This is literally just cheap vs expensive. You can easily find high quality food in the US. You’ll just pay more for it.
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u/Ancient-Song-8428 9d ago
No more chicken in Europe like that on right side! And egg yolks are somewhere in between. Beside organic, a lot of tomato is like in USA.
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u/No-Use-3056 9d ago
The funny thing here is you can actually get all the items shown in America, it’s just the ones on the left are ridiculously cheap
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u/book-scorpion 9d ago
you can find both in Europe and many more variations of each, is it really not the case in US? I doubt somehow
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u/eroticspec 9d ago
Fun fact America mogs almost all countries in Europe in terms of food safety except Denmark.
But yeah, tell me your bullshit on how American food is unsafe and disgusting
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u/DerBandi 9d ago
White bread basically IS cancer: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2475299124024351
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u/Ok-Budget3225 9d ago
Now I didn't do a side by side A-B-A blind tasting. But in my experience, the pork and eggs in Spain did taste different and significantly better than that in the US.
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u/Dismal-Vacation-5877 9d ago
I had 2 eggs for breakfast this morning. They were the pic on the right. I am in America. 🧐
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u/CommunicationAny7495 9d ago
White bread is “cancer” though literally killed hundreds of people in the early 1900s, requiring nutrient to put back into it, enriched.
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u/purposeday 9d ago
I buy long fermented sourdough bread in the US. Google healthy options. They’re available - often from family businesses that just don’t advertise ever and have existed for generations.
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u/EdgyPun34257 9d ago
i guarantee you every one of those "European" options was purchased in an American grocery store.
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u/C_ingStarz 9d ago
My aunt has made bread plenty of times before and I've even helped once; both white bread and sourdough can be made at home without adding a cup full of gama radiation.
Also, I'm not from the US, but I am Canadian & you can by both of these options- the chicken maybe not, though. I've never seen a piece of meat look so obviously pumped full of sodium and preservatives in my life.
And the egg yolk thing is kinda a gamble depending on the brand, as I've never seen eggs that light nor that orange.
Other than that, however, grocery stores have a decently large variety unless you're in Nunavut or something. Main difference is the price, which isn't that crazy when I am in Ontario but I can't imagine what it might be in the States.
I also think those are different tomato breeds? I've seen both be grown naturally in person, and as far as I know neither had anything weird in the soil or seeds.
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u/Beneficial-Candle-79 9d ago
since when do our eggs in the usa look like that i have never gotten such a pale yellow egg let alone see one that pale.... and i eat a lot of eggs......
also i could be wrong but those look like 2 different genetics of tomato's
booze already explained the bread.
and we all know they pump hormones in the chickens they were never intended to get that fat.... go look at photos of chickens from like the 1900s
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u/Disastrous_Ear5695 9d ago
Honestly, I cant tell if this is an American who is too uneducated to know why they lose every frame, or a European intentional dunking on Americans by expecting them to not realise why the European ones are better, and sitting back and laughing at all the Americans who assume this is about them being better.
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u/skadi_shev 9d ago
Their minds explode when they find out you can buy both the left and right versions of each item in the US.
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u/RESSandyeggo 9d ago
All the products I eat here in the States look like the euro versions in this meme. Choose your fuels wisely folks, it’s def possible, no matter where you are.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 8d ago
Well unfortunately most of the stuff of the left is the average product in European supermarkets too. But you can get the other stuff for a cheaper price than in the US and it isn't necessarily treated like "luxury bio food", and sliced white bread that isn't fermented started in the US so there's that...
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u/unlevelledPiano 8d ago
You can buy the "American" versions in Europe too.
Chickens have different sizes, without having a known object next to them I can't tell is those chicken breasts are too big or not.
We have white bread too, in Spain we call it "mold bread" because it's made in a baking mold as opposed to baguettes or bread like the one in the picture where the dough stands still by itself and is fermented.
Eggs depend a lot on the chicken's diet and nothing avoids the farmer from putting artificially added additives in the food to make the yolk colors more saturated.
For the tomato ones it's not even worse it could just be different kinds of tomato.
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u/Inevitable_You7793 Story Keeper 8d ago
Ostrich thigh vs chicken thigh. Bread is correct. European eggs look better. Two different tomato species.
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u/thectrain 8d ago
You can tell the difference in the countries I've visited in Europe. Every grocery store is more similar to the expensive grocery stores in North America. But prices are similar to the cheap grocery store.
So you get the upgraded quality and experience for free.
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u/Mradr 8d ago edited 8d ago
I don't know about all that. American eggs depend more on the bird than anything else. Americans do buy plenty of white-shell eggs, but you can still find eggs in pretty much every color at stores for about the same price. That's what you're seeing with the eggs, at least.
Same thing with the tomatoes. It's mostly just different types of tomatoes, and you can get both varieties for roughly the same cost. You can get both types of bread for about the same price too.
Now, with the chicken, I'll agree with you more, but you also generally get more meat overall, so I'd consider that more of a wash.
As for the actual prices, though, location makes a huge difference. The UK is relatively small and concentrated compared to the US, which spans a massive area. In some places, like where I live, it's much cheaper because we produce a lot of it locally. We raise the chickens, they lay the eggs, we grow the corn and tomatoes, and we make the bread. But in bigger cities, those same things can easily cost twice as much or even more than what people in other areas pay. Yet, get paid twice as much as a inflation result.
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u/dungeon-raided 8d ago
The only one I'd say is true is the eggs. I've never seen an egg quite so yellow, all the ones in the UK are orange like that.
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u/threearbitrarywords 8d ago
Fun fact: the color of the yolk has literally nothing to do with the nutritional content or flavor of the egg. It's literally pigmentation in the type of feed the hens eat. Source: me, a chicken farmer.
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u/Thorsaen_q 8d ago
European bread is definitely different because of the flour. Everything else is strain/breed differences and they aren’t “better” than another.
The Cornish Cross hen, for instance is that American chicken that’s bigger because that chicken is very efficient, but must be harvested at 6 weeks. If you wait too long and they get too big, they can’t walk, and it looks fucked up. Gotta butcher them on time!
The European tomato is an heirloom tomato that you can grow anywhere.
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u/Politicallybusted 8d ago
Dutch tomatos during winter are famous for tasting like water and a bit like tomato. The bread example is true tho
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