Huh?

https://xkcd.com/963/

Fortunately I haven’t had to open it in a very long time.

Pretty good track record with videogames too.

the production of highly processed foods

Source?

The US congressional research service thinks EU subsidies are more spread out among all types of crops, including fruits and vegetables, whereas US policy focuses more on grains, sugars, dairy, and oil seeds: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46811

That’s not a direct subsidy of food processing of course, but the crops the US chooses to support ends up incentivizing it.

And this paper also makes it sound like subsidized crops in the US end up in processed foods: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2530901

So we were talking about supply, not consumption. But regardless, yes americans choose to eat processed foods more on average. So?

Cultural factors are a thing but I think they’re used far too often to explain away trends at the population level and the effects of public policy.

The US has lower rates of food contamination from e.g. Salmonella or E coli, which I think is what that study is measuring. However, I think food in the EU generally has superior, better tasting, ingredients. There are two reasons I believe this to be the case. The first one probably has a smaller impact than the second.

The first reason that in the US an ingredient must be proven to be harmful before the FDA is allowed to ban it. In the EU an ingredient must be proven to be safe before it is allowed in commercial products.

The second reason is that while both the US and EU have farming subsidies, the way these subsidies are structured means that in the US they tend to incentivize the use of high fructose corn syrup and the production of highly processed foods while in the EU highly processed foods tend to be more expensive and “whole foods” tend to be cheaper.

As a result people in the EU tend to eat less processed food as a percentage of their caloric intake:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34647997/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8921104/

The SSN system is one of the more moronic things the US does, which is really saying something.