"American", "anaemic" and "anodyne" all begin with "a", come to that. Coming from the nation that wished MacDonalds' cardboard-burgers upon us, that is maybe just a little rich.

When I lived in France back in the mid-1970s, I was taken out one night to eat the hottest merguez (sausages) in Marseille. My Provençal friends were expecting a laugh at the expense of the poor Briton, accustomed (as they blithely assumed) only to bland food. They didn't know about curry, of course. I got respect that night.

It's perfectly true that cheap British sausages are made mostly of cereal and various undistinguished rubbish, and taste of not-very-much. During the war, and the post-war years, little else was available. That sort of thing can be habit-forming; the cost of living in the UK is higher than it is in the USA, and wages are lower. Many people are still obliged to put up with food that is far from ideal (and, like others, are fooled into eating fashionable shit peddled by foreign multi-nationals); but times, as other people have already pointed out, are changing.