I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. On my visits to the US from the UK, I’m always struck by how appalling to food options are in the US. Eating anything that isn’t filled with sugar, and about 3 portions too large, requires some thought, when you’re in the major cities. Outside of those cities, you need to expend real effort to find healthy food options.

Huge portions of the menus you find in many “resultants” in the US simply isn’t legal in EU because quality of food is simply too low.

The UK isn’t exactly know for it culinary expertise, but returning from the US to the UK is like finding water in the desert when it come the quality of food available.

Maybe it's just that I don't eat at restaurants a huge amount in the US and I mostly eat at better restaurants when I do. But I travel to Europe quite a bit and I just don't see the stark difference.

Yes, a lot of restaurants in the US will have a fair bit of filler (potatoes/rice/other vegetables) in a typical main course. But if I have fish and chips or a steak pie at a London pub, I'm probably not going to finish all the chips and other vegetables there either. I'm not sure I've just about ever looked at a main course in Europe and thought to myself "Oh, what a small portion."

And my experiences in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc. are similar.

I do agree that when you get out of major cities in the US, food options can be pretty limited. Even where I live, about 50 miles outside of a major city, there are only a few places I eat at or get takeout from on anything like a regular basis and I wouldn't like to subsist on food from them 7 days a week.

I find food is a lot better on the coasts too. If you're in the middle of the US, unless you're in a large city, the food is pretty abysmal.

That's probably generally true although I've also stayed in smaller towns in places like northern California and meal options were pretty limited there too. A problem is that you can devolve to fast food chains pretty quickly and the local options aren't necessarily any better. A good (pricier) restaurant in a small town probably isn't really supportable by just locals.

For the me the stark difference comes from the plentiful supply is extremely low quality food. At the better end of the food quality scale I think the US and EU are comparable.

But when you look towards the bottom end of the food quality scale, the bar for saleable food is just abysmally low compared to the EU. You simply can’t buy food of such poor quality here. As a consequence the average quality of food in EU is substantial better, not because the EU produces better food, but simply because it doesn’t accept the low quality stuff the US is happy to eat.

That may be the case. I basically never eat fast food aside from the occasional local pizza place or maybe a food truck. This is true whether at home or traveling so I don't really have a comparison scale at the low end.

We’re talking about different national cultures and their approach to food. Your personal preferences aren’t the most relevant.

I split my time between the US and UK. If the food options in the US are "appalling" relative to the UK, it makes me wonder what parts of the US you've been spending your time in.

Food and cuisine in the US is highly regional, and varies immensely. In the part of the US where I currently live (Pacific Northwest), the local food is much healthier than is typical in the UK and higher quality. Portion sizes are not uniform across the US either but I would agree that on average the UK is significantly smaller.

I wouldn't characterize typical food in the UK as particularly healthy, it reminds me much more of the diet you see in the Rust Belt of the US. The relative dearth of fresh, high-quality vegetables in the UK is particularly noticeable for people that have lived on the west coast of the US (which has amazing fresh vegetables generally by global standards).

> I'm French, 1, 3 and 4 are true here too.

I would say that in France (and Europe generally) they are only true as you (unfortunately) move down the socio-economic scale.

My experience of Europe is that people who can afford it generally do eat well.

As for the driving, I'm not sure I agree. For a start, most US cities barely have any public transport, which automatically pushes people to get in the car (either due to laziness or due to distance). Meanwhile in Europe there are normally plentiful public transport options except for the countryside.

What I meant is that the US is always more extreme but we have the same trends here.

Where I'm from if you have the choice you avoid public transport because it's not very practical: buses are crowded and trains aren't flexible enough.

Ah the classic, nobody drives in the city anymore, there’s too much traffic.

Overcrowded busses and trains are pretty strong indicator they’re doing something right.

In the US a “frequent” train service is every hour. In Europe a frequent train service is every 20min. In a major EU city, it’s every 90 seconds.

The US isn’t just an extreme, it’s an entirely different, almost incomparable, ballgame.

Sitting in a bus is still sitting, offering no health benefits vs sitting in a car (arguably, it's even less healthy when crowded). If the topic is health, the opposite here is walking, or (to lesser extent) cycling.

Well, you do need to walk to/from your bus stop. Might be marginal, though.

That being said, I'm in Europe and I typically cycle at least 1h per day from/to work/shopping/etc.

And for the bus you might be standing instead of sitting, you might have to change lines, etc. This is hyper easy to test with a $5 pedometer.

I'm willing to bet $100 that if you buy the pedometer and compare both commutes, the bus commute will mean that you have at least 2x the number of steps when you commute by bus versus when you commute by car (for the actual commute).

It's nitpicking. You can make 500 steps vs 100, and make a headline-like claim that it's five times more. In real life difference is negligible. Your organism requires walking in significant doses, and for you to practice it, you have to live in a walkable space (it includes infrastracture, and safety). A city can be driven by public transport, and not be pedestrian-friendly. A city can be private-car driven, and not be pedestrian-friendly.

> Sitting in a bus is still sitting, offering no health benefits vs sitting in a car

Actually no.

With a car, you get into the car outside your house, and you typically aim to park the car as close to physically possible to your destination.

With public transport, you have to walk to the nearest stop near your house, and you have to walk to your destination from the destination stop.

In addition, with trains you will have the opportunity to walk up and down stairs.

You might also walk to run errands around the local area, for example, walking to/from grocery shopping with a few bags, instead of driving to the supermarket, dumping the bags in the back of the car and only walking/carrying the limited distance between your car and the kitchen.

You might also opt to walk a slightly longer route if for example it takes you through a local park.

Walking to/from bus stop surely doesn't sound impressive. You can practice a smallscale shopping with every sort of transport (it depends more on available shopping infrastracture, and economical reasons). And you surely can walk more by choice irrespective of transport (it depends on available pedestrian-friendly infrastructure). Choice is choice, and sitting is still sitting.

France is going shit in this regard as do most developed countries, that's true, but my friend if you want to equate US and FR when it comes to diet and results on current population, they are not in the same league, heck its a different universe. French are much more conscious about quality of the food, fine taste and other aspects that cheap junk food doesn't provide.

Walk around any french town, you will see crowds of tall, slender thin people with few overweight folks. Sports are a priority and source of pride, alpinism, climbing or paragliding are deemed as national sports, not some extreme fringe stuff for few adrenaline junkies. Do the same exercise randomly in US, and chances are very good what you will see will be dramatically different. That being said, there are (were at least in 2003) many faces of US - I've spent that summer working blue collar jobs in US as part of work&travel programme US was providing, and already LA was exactly as we discuss. Then I moved to rural Maine and it was night & day, I've met maybe 5 fat people in 5 weeks spent there (but its true racial diversity back there was 0, I've seen 1 black guy in 5 weeks and maybe 2-3 of asian origin, rest looked just like they arrived from Scandinavia).

But judging by various articles and feedback from friends that Maine experience was much less common than LA one, and over time even more so. US portions are simply needlessly big and often unhealthy. The logic is to eat till full, instead of just warding off hunger and enjoying few very finely tasting bites.

Because French culture and English culture also gets overburdened by American brands such as McDonald's and Coca Cola.

I like the example of the American pizza. Its not even crunchy, its more dough than anything else. Its pizza with topping, instead of the other way around.