> every kind of vegetable, .., every kind of cheese as well.
That's not my experience of American supermarkets in North Carolina when visiting on business ten years ago. Even in supposedly upmarket supermarkets like Harris Teeter the fruit and veg was really not very good and the selection of cheeses (and other dairy products) was downright poor.
I was exaggerating a bit, but by the late 80's the food situation in the USSR had deteriorated to the stage where you would have a meat (if you were lucky), a cheese or a vegetable available at any given store. We would go to the kolkhoz market for vegetables and my parents had a literal backroom deal with a grocery store manager to get beef, but the shelves were conspicuously barren.
Going from this to a country where any random supermarket would have chicken, several cuts of beef, several cuts of pork, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, several sorts of cheese and was not at risk of running out of any position would have been a shock.
That's not my experience of American supermarkets in North Carolina when visiting on business ten years ago. Even in supposedly upmarket supermarkets like Harris Teeter the fruit and veg was really not very good and the selection of cheeses (and other dairy products) was downright poor.