Just on the food thing, the spec a manufacturer has on ingredients makes a massive difference to food taste and quality.
An obvious one is Maccas in the USA versus here. There the burger meat tastes like cardboard, its flavourless and bland. All due to poor quality beef.
An easy way to compare locally though is go to your local Asian grocery store. Korean biscuit makers (i.e. Lotte) basically rip off exactly what the Japanese ones (i.e. Glico) do. Same shapes, designs, flavours, etc. However, the Japanese specs for ingredients are insane, I used to export raisins for one of the oldest candy bars in Japan, and my spec was tougher than most for the local fresh trade, and these raisins were being processed (so you can imagine their demands for fresh produce). The higher spec ingredients gives a much better taste in the finished product.
EU vs USA/AU is similar. EU specs for commodity food ingredients while not as tough as Japan, are tough to protect their local industries. As such, EU cheeses, smallgoods, biscuits, chocolates, and so on IMO tend to be of a better quality to the stuff out of USA for the most part. Buy a Hersey bar, they taste like shit compared to the EU stuff. Again, ingredients. USA go for cheap compound chocolate made with vegie oil, EU more often still use cocoa butter.