Holy milk products (by Panu's request)

The phenomenon is not news to me, but the extent of it is:

Russians abroad tend to believe that Russian food tastes better than the same kind of food in whatever country they live it. This is understandable, people often like what they are accustommed to. This is very understandable in the US, where many basic foods taste very differently from the Russian ones, and less understandable in Finland, where the food is a lot more similar to the food of the nearby Russian regions, but understandable nevertheless.

What I can't understand is that many Russians apparently believe that Russian food, especially milk products, is somehow healthier and more pure than foreign food. When questioned on this subject they become afflicted with rage that I would more normally associate with a devout Moslem's reaction to a suggestion of bombing both Mecca and Medina. With barrels of pork, no less.

Lately I've participated in a conversation on this subject in a Russian forum where people behaved a lot more peacefully than Russians on average but reflected the same attitudes. Since we were talking about importing food from Tallinn the subject revolved around Estonian rather than Russian food, but the opinions were the same.Their claims were:

- All the milk products in Estonia taste better than similar ones in Finland
- Estonian sour cream is delicious and pure, the ones sold in Finland are full of god knows what additives. (To that I quoted the ingredient list on the jar of sour cream that I had in the fridge and that said "pastoroitu kerma, hapate".)
- Estonian butter is delicious and unsalted, and here there are these disgusting margarines with god knows what additives. In the end they had to concede the point that there is butter here, including unsalted one, and that it tastes the same as Estonian butter.
- All of the above is much more expensive here. (Surprise?)
- And the most common and funniest argument: "ALL FINNISH FOOD IS FULL OF CHEMISTRY!". I decided not to upset them by mentioning that there might be some physics, too.