The quality of American produce is surprisingly mixed. For a lot of it, you've got to shop around and maybe pay a little more to get the same as baseline normal

The quality of American produce is surprisingly mixed. For a lot of it, you've got to shop around and maybe pay a little more to get the same as baseline normal quality in large parts of Europe. I don't know why, but that's how it is. OTOH we have lots and lots of very cheap, kinda bad produce. So there's that. It's also possible to live among wheat fields and not be able to buy good bread for anything less than insane luxury food prices here. All I can figure is our ovens cost more to run? I mean I know it's not that but I can't figure out WTF else could be the problem. Decent cheese is also a lot more expensive—but again, we have lots and lots of fairly bad but very cheap options. And the cheaper end of our wine market is (much) less consistently good than in, say, France.