I wonder if it has anything to do with lack of enforcement making weed effectively decriminalized long before the official legalization went through. Official legalization was more of a “government and their buddies want in on the lucrative market”, ignoring that weed was only as expensive as saffron because of the legal risk (or illusion of one) that went along with trading it.
Saffron is expensive because each plant grows 1-4 flowers, and each flower has two yellow and two red stigmata, and saffron is the two red ones. A whole acre of it will yield less than a kilo IIRC.
Weed, on the other hand, is aptly named because it is happy growing pretty much anywhere from swamps to dessert mountains. Only real complication with it is the whole determining the sex of the plant ASAP to remove/separate the males before they pollinate the females and then watch for hermaphrodites. Though, even then, it only affects the quality of the final product, as fertalized females still produce bud, it just has seeds in it (at a surprisingly high density if you’ve never gotten seedy bud before) and doesn’t mature the same. Still works fine for extracts.
If done properly, you can get the whole yield of an acre of saffron from a single weed plant.
America does have its own style, though. Or rather a set of styles, just like any other region.
I would say that one aspect of “American-style” cooking (and “American” here includes “Canadian”) is avoiding cooking. There’s so many options when you don’t really want to cook. Just stack some premade elements onto the premade bread and you’ve got a sandwich. Or stick a frozen dinner in the oven (with entire sections of grocery stores dedicated to the options). Or boil some premade dried pasta and mix with heated up premade sauce. Or just get someone to bring you warm food made by someone else.
Or for actual cooking, there’s each of the variants in the OP meme. So many things that people complain about not being authentic, when it’s actually just being cooked American style. Might be due to what ingredients are easier or cheaper to get, which style is easier to make, or just preference.
Pizza is a great example. I’ve had pizza that was described as “authentic italian” and personally I find it to be soggy and floppy compared to the pizza I normally eat. It’s not bad, but I prefer the American style by far. At least in general, a poorly executed American pizza can still be gross, and a high end Italian pizza will probably still be more enjoyable than a mid end American pizza, but all else equal, I like pizza with crust that isn’t saturated with sauce to the point of no structural integrity and toppings smothered in cheese.
Curry is another one that varies quite a bit by style. I like the Thai style (the curry is more of a soup than a sauce) the best personally, but don’t think I’ve ever tried a curry I didn’t like. It’s a dish where you need to be more specific than “curry” to say what you have in mind.
The reality is that the vast majority of people have had as little to do with how their culture’s cuisine has developed as anyone else, so the bragging or competitive comparisons don’t really make sense. Same thing if there’s any shame with being from one of the less prominent or made fun of cultures. I’m Canadian and while I love a good poutine, I had nothing to do with their invention.
Whether or not the dishes were invented in North America, I’d say that the following all are North American dishes (mostly based on my own upbringing in Southern Canada):
Today, my culture includes things like sushi and curry, too. Not to say I have any kind of ownership or special connection other than I enjoy eating them and make an effort to do so from time to time.