Is American food really unhealthier? How pasta sauce, peanut butter and even Big Macs stack up to their British counterparts

So much for happy meals.The quality of ultraprocessed American fare — especially President-elect Donald Trump’s beloved Big Macs — is receiving new scrutiny thanks to Trump’s nomination of Robert F.Kennedy Jr.

to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.Kennedy has made headlines for calling legal food additives “poison” and criticizing the ingredients in Froot Loops, but long before he campaigned for president, sites like Food Babe were highlighting alarming differences in American ultraprocessed foods versus their overseas counterparts.The Post took its own look at the nutritional labels of three US food staples — baked beans, tomato sauce and peanut butter — comparing their ingredients, calories, fat and salt content to similar UK products to see if we’re getting royally screwed.We also put the nutritional info for McDonald’s Big Macs and Pret A Manger’s egg salad sandwich side by side — and shockingly, even the seemingly identical products weren’t quite the same.Darin Detwiler, an assistant teaching professor of food policy at Northeastern University, told The Post he’s unable to eat certain US foods like bread because of the processing it undergoes.But he has no problem noshing the bread in Amsterdam and other parts of Europe.Travelers have noted on social media that they have lost weight visiting Europe, even while eating seemingly “unhealthy” foods like bread and cheese.

And while it may be that they are walking more on their vacation — or eating smaller portion sizes — many have speculated that the difference comes down to the quality of the food they’re served.So is the American diet really that bad compared to other countries? Detwiler calls it “different.”“American companies tend to make food that is fit for the average healthy American adult, whereas we have many vulnerable populations — the very young, the elderly, those with a compromised immune system and those who are pregnant,” Detwiler sai...