I believe that us, Americans are pretty good at bending international food to our limited ingredients, our own favorite chemicals, sweeteners (corn syrup in everything), our flour and butter (good luck to make pastries like in Europe, with our poor flour and butter).

So I get it when Italians get offended by our poor rendering of carbonara... and feel that what we get here is off.

You are silly. In the US, if you choose to do so, you can get the same ingredient or higher quality ingredient or food stuff that you can get anywhere else in the world, barring a few banned items like the various European maggot cheeses.