{"id":4747,"date":"2025-06-22T08:18:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T08:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/4747\/"},"modified":"2025-06-22T08:18:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T08:18:22","slug":"how-much-better-is-european-food-really-what-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/4747\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Better Is European Food, Really? What Experts Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was featured in One Great Story<\/a>, New York\u2019s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> to get it nightly.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a type of video young women like to post after returning home from a trip to Europe<\/a>. They want to know why, when they\u2019re in the U.S., eating wheat and dairy makes them bloated and tired<\/a>, but in Europe, they can gorge on pasta loaded with cheese and feel \u201camazing<\/a>\u201d and even lose weight<\/a>. \u201cWhat is wrong with the food we\u2019re eating in the United States?,\u201d they\u2019ll ask.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just study-abroad students who have become fixated on the superiority of European food. Joe Rogan has observed<\/a> that while pizza, pasta, and breads \u201creally wreck me\u201d in the U.S., he can eat those same foods in Italy with \u201cno problem at all.\u201d Gwyneth Paltrow recently admitted<\/a> that on a flight in Europe, she ate peanut M&Ms. \u201cI would not do that in America,\u201d she said. Department of Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. loves to say<\/a> Americans \u201chave around 10,000 chemicals in our food, while Europe has only 400.\u201d He recently invited Vani Hari \u2014\u00a0the activist known as Food Babe<\/a> on Instagram \u2014\u00a0to the White House<\/a> to present a comparison of the ingredients<\/a> in Skittles and McDonald\u2019s French fries in the U.S. and the U.K. <\/strong>\u201cAmerican companies are poisoning us with ingredients they don\u2019t use in other countries,\u201d she concluded.<\/p>\n

With MAHA\u2019s ascendance, claims about the unique horrors of the American diet<\/a> are everywhere. Instagram is full of PSAs that your bread<\/a> is probably causing inflammation and your yogurt<\/a> could be ruining your gut health. You don\u2019t have to consider yourself crunchy to be suspicious of American grocery stores, with their neon-colored breakfast cereals and allegedly pesticide-tainted produce<\/a>. Is it so far-fetched to think that Europe, with its walkable cities and universal health care, might also have purer, healthier food?<\/p>\n

The most ardent believers point to the ease with which they are able to digest wheat while they\u2019re visiting Europe. According to Rogan<\/a>, \u201cWhen I\u2019ve gone to Italy, you eat the pasta, it just seems normal.\u201d He blames<\/a> the fact that in the U.S., it\u2019s common for grains to be fortified with folic acid. Rogan appears to have gotten this idea from Gary Brecka<\/a>, a self-proclaimed \u201clongevity expert\u201d with not one but two undergraduate degrees in biology. Appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience<\/a> last year, Brecka suggested that fortifying grains with folic acid is a conspiracy on the part of pharmaceutical companies to make people sick, because he believes consumption of folic acid is correlated with everything from ADHD to bipolar disorder and postpartum depression. \u201cIt can literally be like cocaine for a 6-year-old,\u201d Brecka said.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no evidence that folic acid \u2014 which is the synthetic form of vitamin B9 \u2014 can \u201cmake your body go haywire,\u201d as Brecka claims. \u201cI\u2019ve looked, and I haven\u2019t seen any good research to suggest that folic acid is negatively impacting people or making grains harder to digest,\u201d says Jessica Knurick<\/a>, a registered dietician who specializes in debunking health misinformation. The CDC agrees, noting that<\/a> even people with an MTHFR gene variant \u2014\u00a0one of Brecka\u2019s favorite talking points<\/a> \u2014\u00a0\u201ccan process all types of folate, including folic acid.\u201d Plus, there are foods that are fortified with folic acid<\/a> in Europe. The U.K. recently mandated<\/a> that refined wheat flour be enriched with folic acid by the end of 2026 for the same reason we enrich cereal-grain products in the U.S.: to prevent babies from being born with neural-tube defects<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another popular claim is that wheat in Europe is easier to digest because they don\u2019t use glyphosate, the herbicide found in Roundup\u2019s original formula. Dave Asprey, the man responsible for Bulletproof coffee<\/a>, says that while he \u201ccannot touch a teaspoon of American gluten or American flour without it wrecking my microbiome,\u201d a loaf of sourdough baked with white flour ordered from France \u201cwith no glyphosate in it<\/a>\u201d caused him no issues. However, contrary to popular belief, glyphosate is not banned in Europe<\/a>. In fact, it was recently renewed for use through 2033. It\u2019s also worth keeping in mind that when people talk about glyphosate residues detected on finished food products, these are incredibly small amounts<\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019re talking tiny, tiny quantities \u2014\u00a0parts per trillion,\u201d says Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist who writes the newsletter ImmunoLogic<\/a>, which is aimed at countering pseudoscience. \u201cFor context, that would be like a single grain of rice in a tractor-trailer full of rice.\u201d There\u2019s no evidence that exposure at these levels will have \u201cany meaningful impact on human health,\u201d Love says.<\/p>\n

Actually, no. The most common synthetic food dyes in the U.S. \u2014\u00a0including Blue 1, Blue 2, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6 \u2014\u00a0are all approved for use in Europe.<\/a> They use different names for them there, which may account for some of the confusion. And there is a lot of confusion: MAHA influencers have been applauding RFK Jr.<\/a> for \u201cbanning\u201d artificial food dyes, <\/strong>but he hasn\u2019t actually enacted any new regulation<\/a> to this effect.<\/p>\n

While there is a lot of fearmongering about food dyes, in reality, they\u2019re strictly regulated in the U.S., says Love. The FDA requires<\/a> \u201cevidence that a color additive is safe at its intended level of use before it may be added to foods\u201d and sets the maximum amount allowed to be used. For a 60-pound kid to reach the acceptable daily intake for Red 40, they would have to eat approximately eight bags of Skittles a day<\/a>, according to Love. <\/strong>The amounts present in food are so small \u201cthat we have never seen negative impacts in humans,\u201d says Knurick. \u201cWhen people are out there saying \u2018these dyes are toxic,\u2019 there\u2019s just no evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some research has shown<\/a> that in a small number of children with ADHD, consuming artificial food dyes may exacerbate their symptoms. A 2022 report<\/a> from the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in California reviewed 25 studies on the topic and found a small but significant association between food-dye exposure and \u201cadverse behavioral outcomes in children\u201d in about half of them, leading the state to ban several food dyes<\/a> in schools starting in 2028. But analyzing the same report, the economist Emily Oster, who writes the newsletter ParentData, concluded that the research was inconsistent<\/a> and that avoiding food dye \u201cshould not occupy significant brain space.\u201d Knurick notes that much of the evidence on food dye and children\u2019s behavior is correlational, which makes it \u201creally difficult to parse out.\u201d Because food dyes tend to be used in ultraprocessed foods that are often high in sugar, like candy or frosting, it can be hard to isolate a single culprit.<\/p>\n

While the research suggesting dyes are harmful is limited, it\u2019s become heavily politicized \u2014\u00a0including in Europe, where since 2010, food products containing <\/strong>certain <\/strong>synthetic dyes have required a warning label<\/a> that they \u201cmay have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.\u201d After reviewing the research in 2011, an expert advisory panel to the FDA concluded<\/a> there wasn\u2019t enough evidence to warrant a similar label in the U.S. In the final days of the Biden administration, the FDA did ban Red 3<\/a>, citing decades-old evidence that it was linked to cancer in rats. Yet it\u2019s worth noting that the amounts of dye present in foods are much lower than the amounts given to rats for the purposes of toxicology studies. Plus, the hormone mechanism that caused cancer in rats does not exist in humans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is true that Europe doesn\u2019t use as many artificial dyes as we do in the U.S.,\u00a0but experts say that comes down to consumer preference, not safety. Food companies claim that Americans actually like their food unnaturally colorful. In 2015, General Mills announced it would voluntarily remove artificial food dyes from its cereals but changed its mind<\/a> two years later when no one wanted to buy Trix dyed with carrots. (Apparently they\u2019re\u00a0about to try it again<\/a>.) Mars \u2014\u00a0the company that makes M&Ms \u2014\u00a0also backtracked on a plan to swap out artificial dyes in its products, noting that<\/a> \u201cwe have found that consumer expectations regarding colors in food differ widely across markets and categories.\u201d Natural food dyes aren\u2019t always a foolproof substitution. They are often more expensive and can also impact food texture and shelf life. Some natural dyes are also less tested for safety, says Love, and they can have other risks. For example, many people are allergic to carmine<\/a>, a natural red food dye derived from insects.<\/p>\n

Online, proclamations<\/a> that American food is making us sick are often accompanied by Food Babe\u2019s signature infographics<\/a>, where she compares the ingredients in similar foods sold in the U.S. and other countries. She typically focuses on foods that no one would mistake for healthy \u2014\u00a0Doritos, Mountain Dew, and McDonald\u2019s French fries \u2014\u00a0and points out that the American products tend to have longer ingredient lists, highlighting the chemicals she deems problematic in red. But according to food scientists, neither the number of ingredients<\/a> nor whether a chemical name is difficult to say is any indication of the safety of a food product. In a recent video, RFK Jr. struggled to pronounce \u201criboflavin\u201d<\/a> \u2014\u00a0otherwise known as vitamin B2.<\/p>\n

Many of Food Babe\u2019s claims don\u2019t hold up to scrutiny. Take her comparison of Heinz tomato ketchup<\/a> between the U.S. and the U.K., the American version of which she claims is \u201cfull of GMOs.\u201d Putting aside the fact that there\u2019s no evidence that genetically engineered crops are harmful to human health, there\u2019s only one in Heinz ketchup, which is the corn used in corn syrup.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that Europe allows fewer GMO crops (though it does grow GMO corn<\/a>). But the fear of GMOs is rooted in the assumption that just because something is \u201cnatural,\u201d it\u2019s automatically better or healthier. In reality, \u201cit makes no difference to your body if you eat a slightly changed DNA sequence versus an original sequence,\u201d says Love. \u201cWe have decades of safety testing to show that the nutrition quality isn\u2019t impacted.\u201d While people often claim that GMOs are \u201cdoused in pesticides,\u201d many genetically engineered crops actually enable farmers to use less pesticide<\/a> than they would otherwise. And anyway, even if it grows fewer, the E.U. still imports plenty of genetically engineered crops<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The main difference between Heinz ketchup in the U.S. and in the U.K. is that the American version contains high-fructose corn syrup and corn syrup, while the U.K. version includes sugar. In the U.S., we subsidize corn, so it\u2019s much cheaper for companies to use corn syrup. \u201cThey\u2019re both sugar,\u201d says Knurick, noting that the metabolic impact is similar. <\/strong>A more useful comparison would be to look at the amount of sugar versus corn syrup in the two ketchups, but Food Babe rarely discusses the amounts of the ingredients she takes issue with, which food scientists say is a red flag, since any chemical\u00a0can be toxic in certain doses.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s RFK Jr.\u2019s claim that Americans have \u201c10,000 ingredients in our food,\u201d whereas Europeans \u201conly have 400,\u201d which, like many things that come out of his mouth<\/a>, is clearly wrong. The 2011 report<\/a> he appears to have pulled the 10,000 from includes \u201cindirect food additives\u201d such as chemicals used in food packaging. And though the E.U. database of approved food additives<\/a> has 412 items, it has a separate list of more than 2,500 approved food flavorings<\/a>. While Europeans do tend to eat fewer ultraprocessed foods<\/a> than Americans<\/a> on average, the idea that those foods don\u2019t exist there is also a fantasy.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and the E.U. do take different approaches to regulating food. In the E.U., ingredients can\u2019t be used in food unless they\u2019ve been approved as safe. In theory, the U.S. established a similar system with the Food Additives Amendment in 1958, but we have a uniquely American loophole<\/a>. Known as \u201cgenerally recognized as safe,\u201d or GRAS, the exemption was intended so that common food ingredients like vinegar and baking soda wouldn\u2019t have to go through the process of getting FDA approval <\/strong>before hitting the market. The problem, says Emily Broad Leib, the director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, is that over time companies have exploited the loophole, which essentially allows them to decide for themselves that a new ingredient is \u201csafe\u201d and begin selling it in food.<\/p>\n

Most food-safety advocates agree that this is not an ideal system<\/a>. You don\u2019t have to look far to find evidence that the lack of FDA pre-market approval can lead to harmful ingredients in our food. For example, in 2022, Daily Harvest began selling \u201clentil crumbles,\u201d<\/a> a vegan ground-beef substitute that sickened nearly 400 people<\/a>, some of whom were hospitalized with liver dysfunction. Eventually, the company determined that the likely culprit was tara flour, an ingredient that it claimed its supplier assured them was \u201cgenerally recognized as safe.\u201d (While Daily Harvest recalled the lentil crumbles, it continues to advertise \u201cclean food<\/a>\u201d delivered to your doorstep and recently partnered<\/a> with Trump\u2019s new surgeon-general nominee, Casey Means<\/a>, on a line of \u201cmetabolically healthy\u201d bowls and smoothies.)<\/p>\n

Because tara flour made people acutely ill, it was easier for the FDA to <\/strong>investigate its safety. But many experts worry about the long-term health impacts of ingredients that bypass the FDA\u2019s food-additive approval process. <\/strong>One of RFK Jr.\u2019s early moves as secretary of Health and Human Services was to direct the FDA to explore closing the GRAS loophole<\/a>, a move that many experts support<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s hard to understand how MAHA\u2019s purported desire to increase food regulations fits in with the Trump administration\u2019s priorities. \u201cGenerally speaking, when we talk about concerns with the safety of our food supply and the safety of food ingredients, it\u2019s often a result of decreasing budget and funding for scientists,\u201d says Love. Experts say the FDA was underfunded long before RFK Jr. laid off many of the people responsible for assessing the safety of food additives<\/a>. It\u2019s also curious that some of the same wellness influencers who express the loudest outrage<\/a> about the GRAS loophole seem to have no issue with the fact that the supplements they sell are also largely unregulated by the FDA. In fact, Mark Hyman \u2014\u00a0a close friend of RFK Jr. with a very lucrative wellness empire<\/a> \u2014\u00a0has been accused in the past of selling supplements that contain the same ingredients he demonizes in food<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When influencers gush about the food in Europe, their observations are full of nostalgia for a simpler time. Who needs synthetic chemicals or preservatives when you can hop on a bike to the local market? \u201cWhen you have milk in your fridge in Europe, it goes bad after two days, that\u2019s supposed to happen,\u201d the influencer Mari Llewellyn has observed on her podcast<\/a>, Pursuit of Wellness. For the record, cow\u2019s milk has a longer shelf life<\/a> due to pasteurization<\/a>, which the European Food Safety Authority also recommends<\/a>. But regardless, preservatives exist for a reason. They make it harder for pathogens and mold and harmful bacteria to grow in food, and they also reduce food waste. \u201cHow often are you able to eat an entire loaf of bread in two days?\u201d says Elaina Efird, a registered dietitian. \u201cSometimes convenience is a good thing. Without it, I think a lot of people would be in for a rude awakening.\u201d<\/p>\n

MAHA has latched onto vilifying particular chemicals in food because these claims spread like wildfire on social media. \u201cIt\u2019s fear-based and easy for people to understand,\u201d says Knurick. But experts say RFK Jr.\u2019s claims that food dyes and other chemical additives<\/a> are primary drivers of chronic disease<\/a> don\u2019t tell the whole story. \u201cI don\u2019t know of any scientific evidence to suggest that banning those ingredients would lead to different health outcomes,\u201d says Lindsey Smith Taillie, a nutrition epidemiologist at UNC Chapel Hill. \u201cThere\u2019s this really big obsession right now with identifying \u2018toxic ingredients,\u2019 but it\u2019s not clear to me that\u2019s really the problem with ultraprocessed foods.\u201d Artificial dyes don\u2019t add any flavor or nutrition \u2014\u00a0they\u2019re solely a marketing tool to make unhealthy foods more appealing, particularly to children. For that reason, many experts think banning them could be beneficial. \u201cBut the actual issues are far more nuanced and far more systemic than just like, \u2018these food dyes are poisoning us,\u2019\u201d says Knurick.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that the U.S. spends more on health care but has worse health outcomes<\/a> than other high-income countries \u2014\u00a0and it would be so convenient if the solution were simply to ban a few ingredients from our food. But there are far more obvious reasons that Americans tend to be less healthy than Europeans. \u201cIt\u2019s really easy to blame the food or the pesticides, and ignore the fact that we have no universal health care, that we have insane health and wealth inequities,\u201d says Love. Ninety-five percent<\/a> of Americans don\u2019t eat enough fiber<\/a>, and we spend more and more of our waking hours sitting down<\/a>. The reason you feel better eating pasta in Europe is probably because you\u2019re on vacation \u2014\u00a0that, and you\u2019re walking a lot more.<\/p>\n

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