American Reacts to US vs UK Food Standards - Why Are They So Different? 

Simplistically - you can put anything in US food unless it’s proven unsafe. In Europe, you can’t put anything in food until it’s proven safe.

As a Brit - there is no being smug watching this - it is truly very sad. Innocent people (inc. kids), literally being poisoned due to lack of regulation - hard to watch.

I work in the food industry in the EU. We literally had an American client asking us to wash vegetables with peracetic acid. We had to tell them that here in Europe decontamination of the food with peracetic acid is banned. You can use it to clean the equipment, but not directly on the food. This is one of the reasons I don't ever want to eat food that's made in the USA.

In Europe you can't say there are strawberries in something if it doesn't contain strawberries.

C'mon. If American food was safer, "Healthcare" would never make the billions clearing up the mess.

In the UK, organic means no pesticidal chemicals at all. It takes years of soil prep, before a farmer can even call his produce organic. This is fiercely monitored by the government body.

As a Brit who worked in the U.S. for six months this video is so spot on. I was horrified at what was being put in the food in the U.S. Very little food from the U.S. is permitted in Europe. An example is your beef, it is raised in horrifying intense conditions and full of hormones. I'm so pleased channels like this is flagging this up. For all of that our food industry puts crap in our food too.

Here in Iceland McDonald’s had to leave because they refused to use local ingredients. You can see the last happy meal purchased, it’s under glass, it’s 10 years old and looks the same as it did 10 years ago. What hellish preservatives are they using?

American Bread is banned in the UK and Europe as there is so much sugar in it it's classed as cake.

I'm in the uk and was recently watching a comparison short of an american woman who had traveled through europe. She lost weight doing the same level of exercise and eating a similar diet and the scary one for me was her menstrual cycle completely changed due to the lack of added hormones in the European food. Ive heard multiple accounts of the same thing. If the U.S is adding enough chemicals and hormones to disrupt a person's natural production then thats truly frightening.

Many moons ago I was in the States and was so surprised at how much sugar was in normal food. Bread was the thing that surprised me the most. It was like eating cake.

I went to Florida for 2 weeks a few years ago for a holiday (I'm from the UK). At first everything tasted amazing because nearly all the food I was trying had ingredients that were banned where I'm from, it was so addictive. I became so ill after about 5 days and my body was literally begging me to eat something different. I spent the rest of my time in America just eating salads because I felt the processed food was actually doing damage in such a short anount of time. Thanks for making this video and bringing awareness, hoping things start to change for you soon!

Hi Steve, I have friends and family from the USA visiting here in Ireland. The older guests are always amazed at the freshness and flavour of our meat and vegetables here, whether it's in a restaurant or bought from the shop to cook at home. However, not all our American friends get it, especially the younger American visitors prefer fast food and struggle with it because it appears bland and doesn't taste like what they're used to in the States. In other words their palette has been destroyed by American food. It's very sad indeed.

Its funny how amercians say british food is bad

Honey 🍯 One thing that blew my mind was when I found out that in the USA, honey doesn't have to be 100% honey to be labelled as honey.

Being from Ireland and seeing this, is shocking. No bit of wonder I had severe stomach cramps when I visited the states a few years back. Absolutely crazy.

I always remember Cadbury's chocolate when they got taken over by Kraft. It went from a gorgeous treat to some gloopy sickly tasting mess. Why? Because they changed the recipe to include cheaper ingredients - even if they were safe, they were cheaper and it lost the taste. Not eaten it in years now. Why couldn't they be happy with a nice product and make slightly less money? Nope, maximum profit and to hell with the customer. :(

My grandmother came to stay with me for 6 months, when she went back to America she became very sick from the food. Her body had adjusted to British food that it couldn't handle the food in America and took a little while to readjust to American food.

The more comparison videos I watch, the more obvious it is that the US government just doesn't care about its people. The low award wage, the slack gun laws, the ridiculous medical charges, and the list goes on - including the lack of regulations on what goes in your food etc. I really feel for you guys - you deserve much, much better - love from Australia.

I spend 6 weeks in college in the USA, i was horrified at how long the bread lasted- it was so full of preservatives that i never got mold! It was also strangely sweet!

The simple fact is that consumer protection legislation is far stronger and widespread in the UK and EU, than it is in the US.

Tap water in the UK is better than bottled water and is already cold and tastes fresh and clean.

I recently spent 6 weeks in the US for work. I had a reasonable diet, mostly eating out. Wearing an Apple Watch, I could actually see my health my health trends deteriorate during the period. I genuinely attribute it to the things you speak of on here. After going home, my health markedly improved.

All packaging in Australia has got all warnings, ingredients with percentages and doses, where the ingredients come from and what percent of ingredients are Australian grown and supplied. Health warnings also are on the packaging so you get to choose which items that you want to purchase with ingredients that your happy to indulge in and feed to your family.

Members of my family went to the USA on holiday and ended up with constipation and nausea. They were glad to get back to the UK . They said the bread tasted of sugar.

The scariest thing about life in the USA isn't the shootings, the litigation, the unaffordable healthcare - it's the food.

I live in Paris France. I never eat anything from a can or a package. I buy bread from the bakery which has no additives. I buy fresh meat from the butcher, cheese from the cheese shop, fruit and veg and fish from the farmers market which is open every Tuesday and Saturday. AND it's the same price as packaged food from supermarkets. I go to the bakery and squeeze my own orange juice from the machine. I drink coffee from the café across the street. A popular thing to say here is that food digests, and chemicals never leave your body. Also a popular joke: Why don't Americans eat snails? They prefer fast food.

Hi, I left Virginia to come to France in 1983. The most shocking thing I could see as a kid was: no soft drinks. They drink soda's as well, but parents forbid kids to drink sodas. It's a treat, kids drink water, maybe a bit of sugar and mint, stuff like that. Since the 2000 kids drink more sodas than before and guess what? French doctors are concerned about the population getting fat, especially kids are getting obese.

Thank goodness for the FOOD STANDARDS AGENCY 🇬🇧

when i visited america for a month, i ate everything i ate at home in the uk, cooked most of my own meals etc, and i was SO ill, had a dodgy tummy for weeks after

Here in Ireland, 'Frosties' is the name of the real Kellogg's brand cereal. I've seen 'Frosted Flakes' used as a more generic name for the supermarket own brand versions of the cereal.

I'm from the UK and remember having a Fanta orange while on a European trip, I had one from the ferry and a friend had one prior to getting on the ferry back to England and hers was a paler orange colour than mine. Which shows a difference even between UK and European food standards. I also remember as an older teenager having American Pop Tarts (which had a warning label about the E-numbers) and they gave me a headache and made me feel erratic, so I got rid of them.

The other thing he didn't touch on are hormones and antibiotics that are controlled for use in animals in Europe but not in the US resulting in massive impact on human health as they pass down the food chain.

The real kick in the teeth is that food appears so much more expensice in the US, going by some of your recent vids!

Went on holiday to the US a couple of years ago, when I went into a convenience store for a soft drink and it was like walking back into the 1980s. Synthetic colouring as far as the eye could see, even in the juices. Crazy.

There’s a professor of oncology in the UK, that’s written a paper of a link between Oats and non Hodgkins Lymphoma. He recommended to eat only organic Oats as normal oats is normally grown in rainy, cool climates and needs to be dried. A chemical is used to assist in drying the oats to speed up the process and he’s seen a possible link of this chemical to cancer. Organic oats is more expensive for a good reason as it’s dried in kilns only. I’ve switched to as many organic foods as possible, though for many people the cost of doing this is prohibitive 😕

In the UK products saying ingredients in the name, but not being present is illegal. This is covered in the UK food legislation.

its like pet food, petfood in the uk has stricter guidelines and rules than the USA's HUMAN food, as pet food in the uk MUST be fit for human consumption and made to human hygeine standards.

Brit here and the conversation about additives in foods specifically for children is a huge one and has been a huge topic for 20+ years. Things have changed here as in the public mood and parents really don't like to give their children something filled rubbish. Two things come to mind and one is Sunny Delight and chlorinated chicken, the first was a hugely popular drink a couple of decades ago and then the scandal hit the headlines and people stopped buying it and even after a rebranding and fewer chemicals, we still would not buy it. As for the chicken, well we were threatened that after brexit we would have chlorinated chicken from the states and there was an uproar.

I'm amazed at the length of the ingredient labels in US products as compared with the UK and Ireland (we sell many of the same brands here in Ireland as in the UK and the US). It shows how many additives there are in US food products. Benzines are banned or have warning labels here in Europe.

We spent 6 weeks Rving around Florida. After two weeks we all started to feel bloated and suffered belly ache. After four weeks we felt dreadful, and gave up eating out, and started to make all our own food. This improved our situation a little, but due to all the crap sprayed onto fresh fruits and veg, we were still feeling rough. By six weeks we all felt sick with belly ache, bloated, wind, diarrhea, and generally feeling like crap. It took the best part of a month for us to recover once we got home. Although I love the USA, I will never travel there again due to what they put in their food.

I hope things change in America soon. You guys deserve to be treated like human beings when it comes to food. These big companies shouldn't be allowed to put profit over people's health

We have a friend from NC who comes here to Wales every year because she loves our country. But she also calls it 'detox' because of the quality of our day to day food.

Ive also heard that bread in the US tastes more like cake than actual bread because of the horrifying levels of sugar in it.

It's literally true that there are stricter rules around the manufacture of pet foods in the UK & EU than exist for foods intended for human consumption in the US!

That was an eye-opener and, once again, I wonder why US voters put up with a government that ignores such an important issue - the health of it's citizens.

I will tell you a secret: in the US those toxic chemicals are allowed because you pay for health insurance. Just check who owns big pharma and big food companies, who spends money where and how it is a vicious cycle. There was a great book talking about the way food gets around the world, modified and sold in some countries, maketed as healthy, but I can't remember it's name. I will edit the comment if I remember.

When I visited the US for the first time I was amazed to find that bread there was more like cake than bread! I know that the US allows a lot more additives in food than we do in the UK. We can't be complacent though. I think we ALL need to be much more aware of what is being put in our Food!

The thing is, we (uk) have a national healthcare system that is paid for by the government via our taxes. If you give the population unhealthy, sugar filled, chemical filled, cancer causing ingredients via every day foods, made by capitalistic companies (this includes your hospitals and insurance that profit off of these companies to) that don’t give a shit about what it does to their consumers as long as it’s cheaper for them to make, addictive (where possible) and makes them more money. It will end up costing the government way more money and overwhelm the already stretched healthcare system. So you’ll find, any country that has a decent healthcare system will generally have better standards of food, so their citizens are healthier and need less care, hospitalisation or medication.

I've lived in the Uk (Wales) for years and years now, and whenever my US mother comes to visit, she's gobsmacked for nearly a week everytime over how different everything tastes. AND it's not just food! she's a smoker and smokes menthol cigarettes, which are banned in the UK! There's so many different things that are just unthinkable outside of the usa

We visited family in Seattle a few years ago, amazed going into a restaurant/bar place, my parents ordered a chicken sandwich, as it was the only non fried or heavy processed thing on the menu. My family suggested they only order 1 to share. Literally it came out and it was grilled chicken salad on bread, perfectly fine, however it was literally an entire baguette cut in half, tasted sweet sickly sugar bread, so much sweet dressing and sauce, fries drowning the whole plate too. between the 2 of them they couldn't finish it and didn't want to, the portions were so crazy.

I'm so proud to be British!!! We actually campaigned for less salt and sugar in food. It's great. Having said that, they ruined baked beans!!!! 😂

If I lived in the US I’d be extremely concerned with all those chemicals in the food

Maize is the British name for what you call Corn.

Same thing with medicine. As a singer, I loved the product Buckleys's Cough syrup. It would clear a cold of your vocal cords with one teaspoon. In winter and fall I would rely on the stuff. It tastes like Petroleum, but it does the job. It has been banned from Europe for decades, but North America can still get it. Probably really has petroleum in it :D

Sadly, food standards in the UK have significantly dropped since Brexit. Especially in the big supermarkets where a proportion of goods comes from other parts of Europe. Now that it takes longer to clear customs etc. The food arrives 1-2 days later. That means you miss the first few days of it being fresh, best before dates are being removed from a lot of fruit and veg. Where it would have say a 4 day shelf life before being removed, it may now only have 2 days and a lot of food is now being put out to waste as a result. Or, food that wasn't frozen previously is now being short-term frozen to accommodate the prolonged journey. The real kicker is we now have to pay more for a worse product.

I am just happy to see an American with sense. Very rare. Great videos Steve.

Even in the UK, we pale in comparison to the diet eaten in many Asian countries. My friend retired last year to Thailand. He lives in a rural area and mostly buys his food from the local market. Fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, and meat. Since then, his health has improved beyond measure. All skin issues have disappeared, his breathing has improved, and he's much sharper mentally. Sadly , most of us are living with a chemical filter over our bodies that's caused by additives in the West.

my Mom had a gastric bypass about a decade ago, and afterwards she could not eat SPESIFICALLY, red, blue and green candy that had artificial colours in them. if she did she got very tired and basically just fell asleep for a few hours, it was almost like she took a sleeping pill. it was crazy!

Your love for corn syrup is insane, It's in EVERYTHING from what I have seen.

On the issue of colourings, here in the UK it is very rare for me in my usual shopping (including kids candy) to see any colouring that is not natural vegetable extracts. The main ones are beetroot, carrot, spinach and spirulina. It is something I just don't have to really think about before giving food to my kids which I am thankful for.

"your body protects itself from chemicals by putting on extra weight". Too true. That and the triple helping of extra fries !

Absolutely love your stories and videos Steve! I am from the tiny country of New Zealand - let me tell you, even in USA it is very easy to grow your own food. A tiny garden can produce so much that is healthy. Keep up the great work! Thanks

We have overweight and unhealthy people in the UK too, but the US is on another level. Yes the food is a huge factor, but driving everywhere doesn't help either.

And to think in the UK we’d wince at some of those ingredients still. Makes it all the more crazy how expensive food has gotten in the US despite the low standards.

I am British but I spent 10 years living in the USA. The food there had me gaining so much weight - there's even sugar additives in the milk and bread! I had SO many stomach issues and was on so much meds in the USA, but when I moved back to the UK all of those issues went away and I no longer take all the meds. All that is left is a hernia I developed and the reflux it causes.

We don't have to wash our fruits and vegetables over here in the UK unless it's covered in dirt as we've bought it from a farmshop 😅

I have been to the states a number of time's and the first thing that I noticed apart from the sizes of potions is how sweet everything is. When at breakfast the taste of the bread was so sweet. There are a number of videos on RU-vid on how much sweeter American bread is. Even the American bread in Canada has been changed to have less sugar.

Funnily enough my cousin has just returned from living in the states for the last decade. He says the food tastes completely different, real and not synthetic. Although he's not got used to fizzy drinks yet (or sodas as he now calls them 🙄) as they're not packed with sugar and corn syrup.

As a UK farmer, the pesticide thing shocks me the most. Over here, pesticides have to only be effective for a certain amount of time. A while after application, soil bacteria breaks them down and they stop being toxic. Also, pesticides will have a period where you’re not allowed to harvest your crop for a certain number of weeks after application. This allows time for the pesticide to be broken down. This is especially important with fresh produce, which will be only stored on farm for a few days at most before being shipped out. The cereals that we grow are non-perishable if kept dry so can be stored on farm for months. We and several other farmers in the area have a grain trader who will wait until prices are favourable before selling. I don’t know what the regulation is in the US, but it sounds like it’s much more of a problem for the end user.

Back in 2019, following Brexit here in the UK there were trade talks between the UK & US governments looking towards having a free trade agreement, but these negotiations stalled as the UK refused to adopt US food standards which was a red line as far as the US was concerned.

Its like Fanta Orange. In the US there is NO orange in there. The flavouring is a chemical concoction and then the colouring is also from chemicals. Off the top of my head it is Red40 and Yellow5. In the UK Fanta containts Orange and the colour is taken from Carrots and pumpkins. This is why UK fanta looks like orange juice and US one looks like a nuclear reaction.

I find it very interesting that in a video from a few days ago you said that Americans wouldn't like their government to give them to many rules and regulations (it was about the traffic regulations in London). But here you can clearly see what can happen if you let people - or companies in this case - just do whatever they please. The government should protect their people.

How to read a sign: - Shape - Color - Symbol For diversion: Small square, usually on the side of direction signs. There are notices when a diversion is in place, along with the associated symbol For the triangle's with roads, keeps the arrow for the main road with the stumps being minor roads

When the governments were trying to get trade deals with food imports from US, one of the commissions said it would be UNFAIR for supermarkets to put a label on food to let Brits know that some foods were imported from the US. I wondered why until seeing this?

I have always believed that the amount of crap that goes into American food is what makes so many of them so violent.

I can’t wait for you and your family to visit. I’m not always proud of Britain, but we certainly take our food seriously. I’m not vegetarian or vegan, but we have so many healthy options available in supermarkets and restaurants, I often choose veg options without even thinking about it because they look/ sound so tasty. So many of my non-veggie friends and family also eat veggie a few days of the week.

Main omission here is these are NOT UK regulations, they are standardised EU (European Union) regulations. Although the UK has now moronically left the EU, all these still currently apply in the UK. The UK government is now touting the idea that they may loosen some regulations in line with US and other markets that do not prioritise consumer health. You mentioned grapes grown in the UK, although this was true during the Roman occupation of England which ended 1700 years ago, grapes are currently not grown commercially in the UK apart from a few very neich producers. This is primarily due to the weather being wetter and colder than it was 2 millennia ago.

I am in 🇨🇦 Canada and so checked out our Strawberry and Cream Ingredients. For myself I was happily surprised to see 10 ingredients. Oats, Sugar, Dried Strawberries, Dried Cream, natural flavour (?), dry milk, sea salt, dry vegetable juice and tocopherols (?) with the last ingredients stating “used to preserve freshness”. I have noticed when I go to the states the food tastes so different. I had no idea until I found your channel that it was so very different. Please do some videos comparing Canadian vs US foods. (I apologize if you have and I don’t know) this is my first video of yours and it was very interesting. Thank you

Having spent holidays in the US i can say that US Mountain Dew doesn't taste the same as Mountain in the EU/U, now i know why. We have very high food regulations over here but we still have some very highly processed foods which can become addicting and need looking in to in my opinion. Food isn't something any of us can abstain from so Its really scary that more control isn't in place for your food products in the US.

I remember when I was a kid, it was a big selling point that your product didn’t have artificial colours and flavourings. I don’t hear it as much nowadays because everyone doesn’t include them (99% of the time).

I've just returned home from an amazing holiday on Florida. I honestly couldn't believe the amount of products that contained "high fructose corn syrup". Vile.

We had high streets full of cafe's and restaurants, where people went for a sit-down meal, prior to the US cultural contribution of "fast-food" outlets.

Having gone across to the US a few times, I wouldn't blame Americans saying our food is blander or duller. A lot of natural ingredients dont have the intensity of flavour that concentrates or artificial flavours have, and obviously "bursting with flavour" is an excellent marketing slogan.

First time I ever went to the USA I was shocked how bad some basic every day food tasted stuff like bread and cheese just made me feel awful.

A massive Quaker oats factory, is not to far from where I live. When the wind blows in the right direction, the aroma is out of this world... Best wishes from the UK. 🇬🇧

Hi from England! My 'once in a blue moon' evil treat is a pack of Irn Brew (iron brew). It's got some eyebrow raising ingredients and a 'may affect attention' warning on it, but it's sooo good! 😋

Food poisoning rates are also much much higher in the US than Europe. Due to underfunded health and safety departments.

I don’t really think it’s the amount of food Americans eat, it’s all the chemicals and food dyes that are banned over here. And I believe that is why so many children are diagnosed with this and that is because of chemicals in the food. Just my opinion 😮

Just to point out, you can see and taste the difference easily. Come up and shop in Canada, we have the majority of the same food regulations as the UK. A lot of that we buy taste better then American foods.

I am a Brit and now that we have left the EU, I am worried about the food standards going down the tubes. We will have no protection once we rubbish the EU laws. I have been looking at additives since when my children were little, they became ill with some of the additives. Great video, thanks.

I’ve live in the UK and my girlfriend came here from Lithuania. She was shocked when I showed her what ingredients goes into our food, on the side of the packaging. She was shocked by how few E numbers we have in our food and drink, compared to what’s on offer in Lithuania. Suffice it to say she doesn’t eat very much Lithuanian food anymore. When she goes to visit her family in Lithuania she always takes some of the foods you’re allowed to travel with over with her.

Steve! After watching all your videos and enjoying all your content, I think it's time mate. You need to think about relocating to the UK. Looks to me like you'd fit right in.

I've never visited the US but have a friend from the US who lives here in Ireland, citizen as well now. She was telling me that an organic farm - which here and in the UK has to be x distance away from any fields that use regular sprays in order to take account of wind drift etc (they also have some issues with bees which might spread problems through pollination) but in the US she was saying that an organic farm can be right up against a non organic farm and any spray from that farm can be blown on the wind over the organic crops and settle, yet they are still allowed to call them organic. Given she is definitely a fan of organic produce, even here in Ireland, I'm guessing she knows what she is talking about which basically means organic foods in the US are slightly better than non organic but probably not by much.

Where I live in Europe the water that's coming out of the tap can also be sold as springwater. So there is no need to buy bottled water, because it is the same only a 1000 times cheaper.

I have family in America, and the first time my sister-in-law visited the UK she actually brought over some American food with her as she had become so addicted to the additives they contained, that she actually did not like the taste of the equivalent food in the UK. I must admit at the time I thought she was being a little obsessive, to be honest, but the more I hear about what addictive chemicals that are, deliberately, added to American foods I am now not surprised by her behaviour.

Several American food items were introduced here and really struggled. Oreos, for example. Mountain Dew as well. Both of them were marketed here and failed miserably on the first go due to the flavours/textures not meeting UK tastes. I recommend Tom Scott's video on how Coke completely botched their attempt to sell Dasani water here. It's hilarious. (actually, watch all the Tom Scott videos. He's brilliant.) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wD79NZroV88.html

That's why European version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre would have to feature an electric chainsaw - got to keep out the petrol fumes from the hitchhikers limbs.

Really good video, Steve. America is truly the Worlds Biggest Food Test tube.

Back before the pandemic I worked with American Airlines. The crew _loved_ British KFC (there's one in the terminal) they were always arriving at the plane with it. We asked them about it and they said it's "miles better [here]" than in the US. Oddly I've not had the chance to have US KFC (had literally everything else) to compare.