Quite a lot of my fridge is taken up with random jars that I'll probably never eat. A bigger fridge would just enable more of those.
And also actually food in US does somehow seem to last for longer, as probably the manufacturers anticipate this need and optimize for that (as there's no free lunch, likely at the expense of other factors); I'd never ever buy a half-gallon of milk in a single container in EU because it would start to go bad by the time I get to the end of it, but in USA that was fine.
Maybe something about vastly different food quality standards between the sides of the pond.
Probably taste, at least anecdotally - every single person from my side of the world that visited the US that I talked to, mentions the food there tastes just bland in general - and that's both veggies and highly-processed foods.
Sadly, you're right. It doesn't.
In my experience, american fridges contain products that do not perish as easily. Lots of frozen goods and processed foods. Even the fresh foods seem to last longer out here. Milk lives for 2 weeks, their bread is unkillable and longer lasting greens (Kale) are more popular.
where I live the groceries are in the next town over and most people I know go once a week. At the end of the week you have improvised casserole to get rid of anything that is on the verge of funkiness. Always keep some amount of frozen and shelf stable in reserve as well.
I also do canning out of my garden and that stuff will last for ages.
What I don't remember (as someone who left North America) is how we managed to have so much food without wasting all of it.
Seeing the cars was most shocking thing for me when visiting US.
Then, some stupid person fills their car completely with groceries, can’t see out the back window, and backs into you. So, you get a still bigger car, so they can’t possibly help but see you, and then you crash into them, and it goes back and forth until we are driving around in these land-ships.
How are y'all getting decent bread and milk?
Funny but it seems more complicated : https://youtu.be/oOttvpjJvAo?si=1KfRQYKZLdg4d5Bo
At some point you just have to accept that there are certain things the Americans have gotten right, and we haven't. Family-sized fridges, laundry machines which are roughly colocated with clothes storage and (arguably) sink-based garbage disposals are examples of that.
