American candy and junk food (as tasted by non-Americans)

Opty · Jul 23, 2013

Not sure how I stumbled upon them, but I was browsing through YouTube vids and found several that were Brits tasting American candy and giving their thoughts.

It was both funny and interesting to watch them. I laughed at how many of them tried Twinkies and seemed to think that all Americans love them (I mean, Twinkies are okay but not anything I've eaten since I was a kid). Also laughed as I watched a girl eat marshmallow fluff straight out of the jar (a big spoonful! lol!)...I guess she thought it was something we eat by itself rather than using it mainly for making desserts and baking with it. She did seem to really like Fruit Loops (breakfast cereal), Pop Tarts (though she didn't toast it first and ate it cold) and Cheetos.

One guy was raving about how much he's fallen in love with Reece's Peanut Butter Cups and Reece's Pieces. Can't say I disagree with him, though I like Peanut Butter M&M's better.

I've yet to travel outside the US (never really had the money and no one to go with. Would it be fun to travel alone?), so I didn't know that many of our delicious treats aren't available across the pond.

Not sure I'd be able to survive in the UK without Kit Kats, Butterfingers, and Ranch dressing (okay, not candy but still vital to my survival

).

Anyway, was just wondering what some of our world neighbors think about our candy and food or if any of you have tried them. Do you like any of our stuff or is it all too sweet, over the top, and repulsive? Haha.

If I ever travel abroad (hopefully within the next year) or can find some stuff over here, what foreign candy or treats should I try?

mirandashell · Jul 23, 2013

If you do travel to Germany, try the chocolate. You will never eat that Hersheys crap again. I promise.

mirandashell · Jul 23, 2013

If you come to Britain, be aware we don't do the salt+sweet thing. People will look at you oddly if you ask.

Sophia · Jul 23, 2013

mirandashell said:
If you come to Britain, be aware we don't do the salt+sweet thing. People will look at you oddly if you ask.

I don't know about that. A while ago, you could buy chocolate-covered mini-pretzels. I'm drooling just thinking about them.

Opty · Jul 23, 2013

mirandashell said:
If you do travel to Germany, try the chocolate. You will never eat that Hersheys crap again. I promise.

I don't really know that many people that eat plain Hershey's chocolate other than the Kisses and those seem to only be popular at Christmas, and really only because of tradition (from slick marketing). The regular chocolate bars are kind of "meh," IMO. Their semi-sweet morsels are decent for baking but I prefer Nestlé's.

Give me a Snickers bar any day. Mmm...

mirandashell · Jul 23, 2013

Even Snickers will be as nothing compared to proper German chocolate.

Opty · Jul 23, 2013

I wonder if the "German chocolate" I can buy here is even anything like actual German chocolate.

My favorite chocolate here is Ghirardelli. I think it's Swiss or Italian? Not sure.

mirandashell · Jul 23, 2013

Unlikely. The German chocolate I can buy here isn't the same either. I don't know why. Maybe the stuff just doesn't travel. Like Guinness.

patskywriter · Jul 23, 2013

What a fun idea! I visited Japan once, and tried lots of treats that I had never heard of. It would have been fun to record a video! My absolute fave was yokan. It's basically a sweet, jellied dessert made from a type of red bean and sugar. When I try to describe it to people, they don't quite get the concept. It comes in the form of a bar, and you slice as you go. I also liked the sweet-potato chips, the mildly sweet rice candies, and the ice cream bars.

The weird thing about the ice bars was that, without the ability to read Japanese (except for "exit" and the names of the train stations), I couldn't tell what flavor ice cream I was picking up. The paper that was wrapped around the ice cream bars was always super-colorful and cartoony and I couldn't tell what was inside. I always wanted chocolate, so I'd choose one that seemed what I was looking for, then take it to the counter and ask, "Chokoretto"? If I was right, the cashier would say, "Chokoretto, HAI!" But the chocolate bars always had a mocha flavor. They were really good, but I never did come across an ice cream bar that tasted like plain chocolate.

Strangely, the only treat I didn't like was Juicy Fruit chewing gum (an American product). Either the USA was sending its rejects to Japan, Wrigley's Japanese manufacturer for that market (if there is one) used a different recipe, or somebody was printing their own Juicy Fruit labels and committing fraud on a wide scale.

mirandashell · Jul 23, 2013

In my office we have a tradition of bringing sweets back from foreign holidays. Always interesting, the different flavours and combinations.

Chris P · Jul 23, 2013

After a year of being out of the US, I think American food in general is overly sweet, salty, or tastes like benzene. I've lost 35 pounds without even trying and the heartburn that's plagued me for 20 years is gone.

Curious phenomenon: When I eat western food now I immediately crave sweets afterward, while Ugandan food doesn't do that to me. Not sure what to make of that.

asroc · Jul 23, 2013

Opty said:
I wonder if the "German chocolate" I can buy here is even anything like actual German chocolate.

My favorite chocolate here is Ghirardelli. I think it's Swiss or Italian? Not sure.

I think it's Swiss. IIRC they belong to Lindt, and Lindt chocolate is excellent. Love Ghirardelli. See's is also good, if you've never tried that. Comparable to the chocolate I had in Germany. (And I had lots!) Btw, if you do ever make it abroad and miss American food, find the closest US military base. The stores in the area will set you up. It was kind of disturbing to go to a grocery store in the middle of Germany and find a bigger selection of Oreos than you'd get stateside.

I think US food gets a bad rap because people from abroad don't shop around. You'll think all American chocolate is terrible if you only know Hershey's same as all American beer would be horrible if there was only Budweiser. But that's not so. There are US chocolate companies that make a quality product without the yucky aftertaste, just like there are plenty of excellent microbreweries if you know where to look.

ETA: Plenty of Americans don't shop around either. I'm probably spoiled.

lastlittlebird · Jul 23, 2013

Recently there seem to be quite a few American candy stores opening here, selling products at outrageous prices (like $5 per poptart). There's been a slow trickle of items appearing over the years anyway. Reeces arrived a few years ago, for example.
Since I spent a couple of childhood years in the States it definitely has a nostalgic factor, but (aside from a decent rootbeer) there's not much I would go out of my way to get... our chocolate is so much better than US chocolate, all my US friends appreciate it when I send them some

To be honest, the thing I could never get used to over there was the sliced bread. It's so much sweeter than I'm used to it was like eating dessert wrapped around every sandwich.

ULTRAGOTHA · Jul 23, 2013

Malteasers. Real Malteasers. Even the Canadian ones aren't as good as the British ones (at least as of 2005).

You will never touch another Whopper again.

Almost all European chocolate I've tried, even the really cheap .50 Euro bars, is better than most US chocolate. We just don't know how to do it right (or, more likely, go for more parafin so it survives at higher temperatures).

firedrake · Jul 23, 2013

I've ping-ponged across the Atlantic a few times during my 50-something years. I find American cakes altogether too sweet, especially Twinkies. The good chocolate is hard to find. Heck, even the Cadbury's is made, under license by Hersheys and I stopped eating their version when I found little wriggly green worms in a Fruit and Nut bar.

.
I agree about the bread too. Sweet and just not nice.
The cheeses are boring.
The butter is tasteless.

On the other hand, if I could run amok in an American supermarket once a month, I'd stock up on: A1 sauce, onion soup mix, green goddess dressing, decent BBQ sauce, rye bread with caraway seeds, cheeseballs (don't laugh, they're gorgeous), cherry poptarts and as many boxes of mac and cheese as I could stuff into a trolley.

sunandshadow · Jul 23, 2013

Chris P said:
After a year of being out of the US, I think American food in general is overly sweet, salty, or tastes like benzene.

What does benzene taste like? Overly sweet doesn't surprise me at all because whenever I taste authentic ethnic foods I find them to be under-sweet, for a wide variety of ethnicities.

Ghiradellis bittersweet is my favorite chocolate, although I do like Hershey's dark chocolate and Hershey's dutch cocoa. Where I live a lot of people prefer Sarris' chocolate, but it is more sugary and pale than average milk chocolate, which makes it the exact opposite of the dark chocolate I prefer.

mirandashell · Jul 23, 2013

Sophia said:
I don't know about that. A while ago, you could buy chocolate-covered mini-pretzels. I'm drooling just thinking about them.

True. But very few people liked them. Which is why they flopped.

Jess Haines · Jul 23, 2013

I can't stand most of the name brand chocolates anymore. I'm spoiled by stuff I found at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.

My favorite by far were the Chocolate Pig truffle bars. No idea what happened to that company or if they're still around. Haven't seen their stuff for a while.

I really like the truffles Trader Joe's carries now. Vosges chocolate is also very good, particularly their caramel bars and the chocolate with bacon bars.

jjdebenedictis · Jul 23, 2013

There's also the flavour differences between a single product sold in various countries.

I was pretty shocked to taste Rice Krispies in the US and discover they're far sweeter than the ones sold in Canada. We share a whopping-big border; you'd think they'd be shipping us the same stuff!

I've heard the difference between American Coke and Mexican Coke is huge, with Mexican Coke being much tastier because they use better vanilla beans.

One of my students grew up in India, and he said the first time he ever tried American Coke, he nearly spit it out. It tasted so completely different that he couldn't believe it was even being marketed as the same stuff.

Some of those differences are easier to understand, however. In France, the locals know good wine, so they keep the good wine for the domestic sales and ship the poorer wine to other countries. The five-Euro bottle of supermarket wine my husband bought in France was better than a thirty-Euro bottle of French wine bought in Canada would be.

I've heard Ethiopia keeps the good coffee for domestic sales too, although I've also heard that the good stuff doesn't ship well, so that may not just be a case of the locals keeping the tasty stuff to themselves.

firedrake · Jul 23, 2013

sunandshadow said:
What does benzene taste like? O.

I don't know about taste, but my ex says it smells like pineapples.

Opty · Jul 23, 2013

firedrake said:
I don't know about taste, but my ex says it smells like pineapples.

Nah, it smells more like soapy liquor or sweet-ish mineral oil...eh...that's the closest I can some to describing benzene's scent.

Ethyl Butanoate smells like pineapple. Only reason I know that is we made that and isoamyl acetate (banana scent...sort of) back in organic chemistry lab and used benzene and methyl compounds a lot. :/

Caitlin Black · Jul 23, 2013

I've not really had American candy, myself, except for a Reece's Peanut Butter Cup thingamabob. Didn't like it. Couldn't taste the chocolate, and the peanut butter used was a much poorer quality than the peanut butter we get down here that I spread on my sandwiches. (Kraft brand.)

However, I've heard of many, many cases of Americans, and even Europeans in some instances, coming to Australia and being blown away by the quality of our chocolate.

Just one other comment... The bread there is sweet?! Eww! We have occasional sweetness in some brands of bread here, and I never enjoy it. Usually it's the white bread that can be like that (though white bread isn't always sweet), so I tend to prefer the wholemeal breads.

patskywriter · Jul 23, 2013

Cliff Face said:
… Just one other comment... The bread there is sweet?! Eww! We have occasional sweetness in some brands of bread here, and I never enjoy it. Usually it's the white bread that can be like that (though white bread isn't always sweet), so I tend to prefer the wholemeal breads.

Many people in the USA's deep South who were of my parents' generation (born in the mid- to late 1920s) didn't use the term "white" for bread or milk. The word they used was "sweet"—sweet milk (as opposed to buttermilk) and sweet bread (as opposed to wheat or whole grain).

Caitlin Black · Jul 23, 2013

I'll pass, thanks. :tongue

Wholemeal multigrain bread will do me fine.

patskywriter · Jul 23, 2013

Cliff Face said:
I'll pass, thanks.

Wholemeal multigrain bread will do me fine.

Same here. It's nice to have a choice, isn't it?

American candy and junk food (as tasted by non-Americans)

Opty

mirandashell

mirandashell

Sophia

Opty

mirandashell

Opty

mirandashell

patskywriter

mirandashell

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred

asroc

Alex

lastlittlebird

avem narrans

ULTRAGOTHA

Merovingian Superhero

firedrake

practical experience, FTW

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal

mirandashell

Jess Haines

Boldly going nowhere in particular.

jjdebenedictis

is watching you via her avatar

firedrake

practical experience, FTW

Opty

Caitlin Black

Wild one

patskywriter

Caitlin Black

Wild one

patskywriter