The food comment is frankly bizarre. The food you get in Whole Foods is at best similar to what you find in a petrol station in Europe. The US has the worst food in the developed world.
That is not remotely true. Petrol stations in Europe do not sell grass-fed beef, acai bowls and organic produce. They're like 7-11 not Whole Foods. The US has more variety by far.
To the extent that petrol stations are like convenience stores (which they typically are), the ones in my European country sell freshly baked bread, pastries etc. and have deli and hot food counters (and yes the beef they sell there is all grass fed). They also sell fresh fruit and while I don't know what's considered "unorganic" when it comes to this, it's all similar to the so-called "organic" stuff at whole foods. I don't know about variety but that isn't what I was talking about, I was talking about quality.
One time I was in a Walmart Supercenter (or whatever it is they call the huge ones) in Michigan. I had been there a few times but I couldn't find the fruit & veg section any more, they seemed to have moved it and put Halloween candy in it's place. After burning 10-15 minutes searching the whole store, I gave up and asked a staff member where they put it. "Oh we got rid of that sorry". It's literally the biggest supermarket in the city and you can't buy an apple or a banana.
There was a fancier place I used to go to in that city, Fresh-something-or-other. The kind that models themselves after Whole Foods. Everything time I went there, they only ever had green bananas. I mean, totally inedible, days away from being ripe. Every time.
Well, they were responding to a claim that:
"food you get in Whole Foods is at best similar to what you find in a petrol station in Europe"
which is quite absurd. I'm yet to find such gas station in any European country and I've been to at least half of them. Also Whole Foods seems to be quite a bit average even when compared to European supermarkets in most countries.
> The US has the worst food in the developed world.
How did you come to that conclusion? I mean are you talking about taste preferences or about the quality.
Because quality wise it seems that there is quite a bit more variability in the US than in some nicer European countries like France, Spain, Italy and some chains in Britain and other countries (EE OTH is not that great even when comparing to the US...) but in general you can find "high quality" food if you look for it.