[novok]

When you really dig into the difference it's metabolic health that is driving most of it, and that will be fixed by agricultural and food regulation for the most of it, starting with going with the whitelist system that japan and the EU have for food additives & manufacturing processes vs. the wild west that is GRAS in the USA, and way more strict food quality / inspection standards than you would think.

[paulmist]

This! I flew from Madrid to SF last year and I can't begin to describe the difference in the quality of food. The scale of agricultural industrialization is terrifying - I wish you luck but I don't think anything short of this becoming a major campaign issue will help you.

[hax0ron3]

I think it is possible that the majority of Americans do not know what they are missing. It is difficult to really understand how much better simple things like fruits, vegetables, and bread can taste without experiencing it. It's like The Matrix, you just have to see it for yourself. Well, taste it for yourself. I find that in America even local farm produce at the "farmer's market" often tastes flat and uninspiring. For whatever reason, heirloom tomatoes tend to be good though - they constitute an exception.

To be fair, I was not born in America. So it is possible that it's not that American food is actually subpar, it's just that I became used to particular nuances of how certain foods taste back when I was a child and I do not get that from most American food, and to Americans their produce tastes extremely delicious. I'm pretty skeptical of this idea though. My hunch is that I'm not experiencing some sort of chemical nostalgia, and that American produce actually isn't very good.

RFK Jr. successfully made some of this kind of stuff a minor campaign issue in the most recent US presidential election, so whatever one thinks about RFK Jr., at least it seems that there is some demand for food production reforms in the US electorate.

[sobjornstad]

Lifelong American Midwesterner and I'm also convinced there's a big difference in the taste of some produce between what you get at a typical American grocery store and a farmer's market or my local natural foods store. I get all my produce there, and people who don't normally shop there often comment on how much better my raw vegetables are when they eat at my house.

Someday I should go buy some produce from each store at peak season and try them side by side.