According to folklore, Europeans have always treated their food with reverence, eating grandma's slow-cooked stews concocted with farm-fresh ingredients while Americans wolfed down the genetically modified, chemically preserved junk symbolized by burgers and fries.
Over the past two weeks, however, Europeans have watched an unfolding meat fraud scandal expose a multinational network of traders, factory owners and marketers for whom food is a stateless commodity that can be hashed up, frozen and shipped around the continent to be profitably passed off as genuine cuisine to Swedes, Italians, Czechs or French alike.
So much for grandma.