If you sort the index by "Quality and Safety", which sounds like the most appropriate for this context, the US comes in 3rd place, behind only Canada and Denmark, which I actually found to be quite surprising.

On the other hand, what we perceive as the low quality of food in the US might be more geared towards the "healthiness" of that food and not its safety. For instance, I will often eat fast food for a couple days while recovering from food poisoning because I feel it's generally safer than fresh food. That thing is absent of any nutrition, but it's also almost sterile.

Interesting link! That seems to be the overall ranking, though, not the one for the category "Quality and Safety". Food safety is a subcategory of that, and "relevant food safety legislation" a sub-sub-category.

The US scores a (perfect?) 100 in that sub-sub-category. It also scores 100 in nutrition labeling, which I found suprising, because my impression was that the nutrition and ingredient labels in the US are pretty subpar compared to the EU. But what do I know.

https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-sec...