My thoughts, mostly for LW:
First, a bit of a disclaimer here. I rarely buy American products. On my trips back from the States, the only thing I brought back food-wise was some coffee which a friend gave me to replace a gift we used while staying at her house. I've had friends offer to send care packages or bring me back stuff from their trips, and I literally have a hard time thinking of anything that I miss. I say this not because of any sense of superiority, but so the assumption (and LW seems to have a lot of them) that people are just defending bad habits or cultural ignorance isn't valid with me (not that it is valid with others). I do occassionally pick up some A&W if I am in Sloane Square, usually when my husband, a native born Londoner, picks up some American sweets he misses from his time living in the States. Maybe I should get on him about getting with the local food culture.
Most of the people on this board are immigrants. Immigrants usually either bring their native foods in the form of recipes they modify with locally available/affordable ingredients (Italian American is an example of this, but it's not the only one), whole foods which begin to be imported that weren't commonly used or known in the local cuisine, manufactured ingredients, manufactured finished produces, or (usually) a combination of all these things. To set Americans as something different has a twang of something very unprogressive.
Where I live in London, there are countless Polish and Eastern European shops. I'd post a lint to a directory, but it wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface. On the street near us there are two right on the corner, and if you walk the length (it's a sort of mini-high street), there are no fewer than 5. Going to walking distance, I can walk to several, including a Polish restaurant. Words have actual meanings, and continental foods and imports are not local foods. For some countries, it would be really stretching it to call them regional. Why is it something different for Americans?
Chinatown, curry houses, fish and chips, any of the countless places you can get goods from or catering to people from countries worldwide (from Scandinavia to South Africa, from Brazilian to Japan), this is all because of immigration.
No American here is eating from American import shops exclusively. Trust me, they'd go bankrupt first. No one is going to be able to exist in this country without having their diets changed by British food or even totally altered. Also, no one is going to get obese from eating ribs and collard greens moderately any more than anyone is going to get obese from eating dim sum, curry, fish and chips, or French bread moderately. I'd actually have an easier time eating ribs and greens moderately than the other things I listed as the other things are like crack to me.
I don't think you're snobby. I think you're being a bit elitist about very middle class, middle-brow things and making a lot of huge assumptions about what people from this board know, what they cook from day to day, and what it's like to actually live somewhere long term, indefinitely, or permanently. Stop assuming things about your fellow posters, please. If you spent time with people of all walks of life in the UK and other places you've visited and taken the time to actually understand what people eat on a day to day basis, I'd doubt you'd wax so poetic about it.
I really hope you stick around the board, and if you do end up immigrating, I'd love to see you enrich our community with your experience. Laughing your ass off about people's comfort food isn't enriching anyone, no matter how much you justify it with claims that you're just trying to open people's eyes. I don't know anyone who doesn't know what Cool Whip or processed cheese is. Maybe you should enter a conversation with the assumption that people are at least as informed as you are, and go from there.
