Slowtrain's point about how food in Britain has been "derided as bad since well before industrialisation" is exactly what I want to examine a bit further. I'm asking whether the average English peasant say, 300 years ago, ate any worse a diet than his French counterpart. Given how notoriously poor and oppressed the working class were in France - they still had an absolute monarchy at the time, remember, while England/Britain had at least an early form of parliamentary democracy - I'd say it's unlikely, perhaps even the reverse to an extent. Which may have something to do with how horses are regarded in this country as either pets, sporting accessories or a charmingly obsolete mode of transport (oh, and tools of riot control) whereas in France they're fair game for the table.
AFAIK, France's famous Cult of Cuisine dates mainly from the 19th century and has always been centred around upmarket restaurants in Paris. Traditional French farmhouse food has always been about doing tasty, generally fairly simple things with local meat, game and fish and seasonal fruit and veg, and then you've got the traditional cheeses which are delicious as they are.
I could be talking out of my arse here but I think English rural food was probably much the same around the same time, whereas it was in the cities that convenience, longevity and low cost of food became very important during industrialisation and so low-quality, mass-produced, processed foods (Spam, Primula, custard powder etc.) came into being. Conscripts from inner city areas were notably shorter, scrawnier and generally less healthy than those from rural areas in both world wars, I seem to remember if GCSE History hasn't forsaken me entirely. In fact it was the appalling health of young men conscripted from Britain's cities that was the main impetus (or one of them, anyway) for the creation of the NHS and the welfare state as a whole, IIRC.
