[simonsarris]

> many Americans would be shocked by the cost of food if workers were paid higher wages

How do you explain why its so much cheaper to buy quality food in European countries?

When I am in France or Austria, quality butter, eggs, fresh egg pasta, salami, and milk are all very inexpensive. Quality cultured butter in the US is especially expensive. (Mache in the US is also extremely expensive compared to France but that's a demand thing afaik. I don't remember the price diff of spinach.) Even Switzerland had better prices than the US when I was there for quality animal products.

[knz]

This was the first Google result I found - https://www.vox.com/2014/7/6/5874499/map-heres-how-much-ever...

In 2014 the US was spending ~ 6.5% of household expenditure on food, on the lower end compared to the listed European nations (Germany, France, Italy, and Greece in particular).

There are many other links with a similar premise.

My own travels have taken me to Spain, Denmark, France, Germany, England, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, and Canada - other than Vietnam I've always found prices to be comparable or greater than in the US. Obviously the cost is influenced by what you are buying, what is in season, and where you are a shopping. YMMV though!

[burfog]

I looked up cultured butter to see what it is. Eeew. Cultured butter is butter that has a strep infection.

If you buy products that normal Americans do not wish to buy, they will of course be expensive. I think your definition of "quality" is something like "as sold in Europe" or possibly "organic".

Stores seek to offer both affordable products and aspirational products. If there is no legitimate way to offer a better product than the standard one, some nonsense will be created. You'll get a fancy wrapper, arbitrary restrictions on how the product is made, and so on.

For this reason, you can get specially marked non-GMO salt. It's salt. Of course it doesn't contain genetically modified organisms! You are still welcome to pay extra for it.

[taejo]

Eeww, yoghurt. Fermented dairy products may be more popular in Europe than the US, but not hugely so