I was sort of trolling but not entirely.
I get that it's not ideal to get it out of a can. Something freshly made would almost certainly taste better but then again that's true of everything.
What is interesting to me is the balance of flavors, spices etc. I mentioned that it's a lot less sweet than what we'd expect in America. Jura's response indicates to me that England at least cramming sugar into everything is unusual.
Years ago I was in Paris for about a week on business. I rarely went to the same restaurant twice. Most of the food was not very appealing to me. Beautiful city but it was one of the few out of town trips that I've been on where I actually lost weight.
I suspect that a Parisian visiting America would probably have a similar reaction to our food.
I think the whole of discerning Europe would to be honest.
Ive only visited the US the once, the people we went to see were selling us a hundred grands worth of machinery, so they took us out 3 days in a row to the best restaurants in and around Charlotte and the food was nice, I had some of the biggest prawns Ive ever seen in a rich sauce and I remember a starter called Hush-puppies which were great. The first home cooked meal I ate when I got back though, tasted bland. Sugar is an insidious and unnecessary addition that should have no place in regular cooking.
Take a look at these two ingredients lists, culled arbitrarily from the web, list one is an authentic Italian Bolognese.
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small/medium carrot
1 small celery stalk
1 small onion
10 1/2 ounces ground beef (not too lean)
10 1/2 ounces ground pork
1/2 cup dry red wine
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 1/4 cups tomato puree
2-3 pinches salt
2 dashes pepper
1-2 whole bay leaves
1/3 cup milk (2 % or whole milk)
Apart from having no garlic (WTF?) this is pretty much the way I would expect, the second is called The Perfect American-Style Spaghetti Bolognese
1 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground Italian sausage mild or spicy to taste
5 large cloves of garlic
1/2 cup medium onion chopped
1/2 green bell pepper chopped
1 celery Stalk
oregano (in leaf, not ground)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 small bottle of red wine or 2 Tablespoons good Balsamic vinegar
4-5 Tablespoons of olive oil
1 15 oz. Can Italian stewed tomatoes
1 6 oz. Can tomato paste
2 15 oz. Cans tomato sauce
1-2 tablespoons sugar 1 lb. spaghetti pasta of your choice
4-5 tablespoons olive oil
So, it has the garlic but 1-2
Tablespoons of sugar?
Now I can imagine some poor American being told that their chances of reaching 40 had been severely curtailed the moment they had qualified as a minor planet and to get on a Mediterranean diet and thinking the above qualified much the same as Psychomech probably thinks hes eating like a cave-man by cramming himself full of factory farmed meat on his ridiculous diet, but the devil is always in the detail and if Crouts can go to Paris, supposedly one of the gourmet capitals of the world and be underwhelmed by the food, then Im thinking a damaged palate.
US style on any packaging for food here, usually implies increased levels of fat, salt and sugar, unfortunately people are drawn to it because it hits all the spots in essential but rarer food stuffs in an impoverished palaeolithic recipe book, fat was rarer because your meat ran for its life instead of standing in a shed, that which didn't get away was leaner all the same for trying, salt became the wages of Roman troops (and the roots of the word salary) because it was rare away from its source and sugar was generally available only for a brief time in the autumn when the berries and fruit ripened, but not anymore.