Living in Germany, we eat fresh most of the time. I rarely fry anything, and when I do, we use a glass spray bottle that we fill up with good quality rape oil, and probably use 2 sprays, which is less than a 1/10th of a teaspoon.
I am currently on a diet and eat little red meat, and, recently, I’ve been eating pretty much vegetarian, with the influx of vegetarian products from high quality vendors at reasonable prices (around 10% more expensive than the meat equivalent), but with a quarter of the calorific and fat content, I can eat more volume in vegetable for the same number of calories.
A typical shop is around 2 bags (that is about all I can carry teh short distance (about 2/3 of a mile) from the supermarket to the flat) and about half of it is fresh vegetables and fruit, which is generally cheaper than buying processed foods, the rest are vegetarian cold cuts, fish and milk products, like Skyr or fresh, natural joghurt and now and then some mixed nuts (without salt) or Student Food (mixed nuts with raisens or cranberries).
I don’t know what US retail is like, but in the UK, when I lived there, and Germany when you walk into the supermarket, the first thing you see is rows and rows of fresh fruit and vegetables, after that you get the fresh bread counter, before moving onto the packaged bread, spreads etc. then fresh meat, refrigerated, if there isn’t a butcher on site. Then you get baking ingredients, pasta etc. Only once you’ve been through all of that do you start to get to the conserves (tinned and bottled vegetables and meat), then finally the snacks and freezers full of convinience products.
Every week, on Friday, we have a local market, where you can get fresh fruit, vegetables, cheese and meats. On Saturday there is a bigger market in the near-by city, which we sometimes ride over to.
At work, I generally walk to the local mini-market a couple of times a week to get fresh produce and bread to make lunch at work.
On the weekends, we often walk to the local bakery (we have 4 within about 10 minutes walking distance of the flat) for fresh rolls.
Fresh food should be the norm. We have deep frozen pizza for emergencies - I think the last time I ate a frozen pizza was probably November last year - as well as some organic meals, made with all organic ingredients, you just need to add some water or a table spoon of milk, when you warm them in the frying pan, but, again, I think I’ve eaten 2 of those this year.
Only when I travel for work do I end up having to eat out in the evenings. The hotel breakfast offers a lot of fresh joghurt, healthy cereals (E.g. musli), fresh fruit, fresh bread rolls and cold cuts.
I went to an IT show at the Köln (Cologne) football stadium and the menu had Bratwurst and other foods, but also fresh salads and other healthy options.
It is nearly impossible to go anywhere in Europe and not see fresh produce on nearly every street corner. Germany’s most loved fast food, Döner Kebap, uses a fresh, light and fluffy pitta bread, filled with fresh salad and grilled lamb or chicken and a joghurt and garlic sauce.
You have to go out of your way to eat processed food, ignore all the reasonably priced fresh products (E.g. cucumber for 69c, 10 fresh organic eggs for 2.60€) as you walk past them, until you reach the convenience products.
It sound like the US system is very broken.
I’ll admit I didn’t know about the “original” name until not that long ago, when doing research on types of oil and market share, etc. Here in Canada, and probably also in the USA, I think the canola branding really took hold.