The Taco Bell meme afaik isn’t about food poisoning at all, it’s that it’s a lot of oil-rich beans, which can have a certain effect.
Regarding food poisoning, I think you’re right that it’s worse in the USA, but the EU is not without food poisoning. My suspicion is that the media attention is different in part because food in Europe tends to come from smaller farms, whereas in the USA it tends to come from larger farms (is my understanding). So, an outbreak at a farm in the USA is bad because it potentially affects a huge number of people, whereas in the EU it may be a smaller farm with less of an impact (so any individual outbreak is less impactful). Just a guess, and it’s in my opinion good to strive for lots of small farms rather than a few big ones.
And many folks have headless setups — raspberry pis, home servers, VPSs, etc. It’s kinda overkill to install a desktop environment on a headless box if the only reason you need it is so you can VNC into it for a simple task that could be done over ssh.