American food is not poison.
Whenever people tell me that America's food is, in and of itself, "poison", or that it is -- for reasons that have literally zero basis in actual evidence -- completely different than the food you get in other parts of the world, they're usually trying to explain why America has a big problem with obesity.
Their explanations are usually nonsense, unfortunately.
They tend to imagine that there's something horrible about "GMO" crops that decades of studies have never demonstrated. They may blame pesticides, fungicides, modern farm machinery, etc., or they'll simply blame the government and say that Europe has regulations that ensure their food is of higher quality.
None of this is actually true, however.
The biggest difference between Europe and America's food -- in terms of the raw ingredients themselves -- is that the US labeling regime requires a complete breakdown of chemical names for every component, and the EU does not. So while in the EU, you can buy a loaf of bread, and it will just say "flour, water, salt, sugar, yeast", and then list a handful of letters and numbers at the bottom pertaining to additives, in the US, companies have to explicitly spell out all the additives and the components of each ingredient by their scientific name.
For instance, if some food contains the food dye, Yellow 5, you'll probably see that listed in America as Tartrazine.
Scientific-sounding words scare people who have been told that "If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't eat it," which is about the dumbest advice in history.
But in Europe, that additive will just be labeled E102, which is way less scary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number
American's generally don't realize that it's the same thing. But it is.
In any case, if you're looking for a VASTLY more rational explanation for why Americans, on the whole, are a lot fatter than people in Europe, I'd implore you to consider this chart instead.
We consume WAY more calories than anyone else in any other part of the world. Somehow only the Irish consume more calories per day than Americans. But also...
Most Americans live incredibly sedentary lives relative to Europeans. We sit in cars. We sit at our desks. We sit in front of the TV. We rarely walk places or bike places. On the other hand...... We also don't live in 800 year old cities that have street widths designed for horses, nor do we have the kind of usable public transit that incentivizes walking.
And this is the only thing I'll generally accept as a major food-related issue: Our diets are just radically different.
It's not that the food itself is different, but Americans consume a hell of a lot more sugar and our palette tends to favor much sweeter food than much of the rest of the world, and we're bad at moderation.
That's a cultural problem, not a food supply problem though.
In any case, I get tired of the weird conspiracy theories and fact-free assertions. I'm much fatter than I should be, and it's not because there's something "wrong" with the food I'm eating. It's because I eat too damn much and don't exercise enough.
In other words: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.