Most Americans have a childhood that sounded a lot like this: eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during lunch, snacking on cereal while watching Saturday morning cartoons and having corn dogs at the fair. These staples of American cuisine are nostalgic to their very core… and guess what? Most foreigners hate them.
There’s something about this all-American fare that has other countries wrinkling their noses. I don’t understand it (after all, I love my mom’s meatloaf), but it’s just a fact. To other countries, we’re total weirdos.
1.) Cereal: Many popular cereals are loaded with sugar, processed carbs, and horrible nutrition. (Okay. It’s no wonder they hate this stuff.)
2.) Red Velvet Cake: This American dessert classic is so tasty… but is disliked abroad because it’s often packed with chemicals and food coloring to give it the distinct reddish hue. Many think that is tastes bland and that the only flavor coming through is the artificial coloring taste.
3.) Biscuits and Gravy: There is nothing like a creamy sausage gravy with soft buttermilk biscuits. However, this southern comfort food is definitely not a staple in most other countries. Foreigners find this breakfast has too much sodium and they cannot stomach the thought of sausage, flour, and milk together.
4.) Meatloaf: Many Americans grew up on this comfort food and it’s certainly easy to find in most family-style restaurants across the U.S. Though variations have popped up around the world, the traditional American meatloaf cannot be stomached by many foreigners.
5.) Corn Dogs: A staple of American carnivals since the 1920’s, this dog doesn’t get much love outside the US due to the cornmeal batter and high sodium content.
6.) Peanut Butter & Jelly: One all-American, kid-friendly food that foreigners love to hate is peanut butter. Now add jelly to that (as most of us do) and you have a double whammy of hate. Many Europeans strongly dislike the combination and don’t understand why it is such a popular lunch staple.
7.) Spray Cheese: This imitation cheese is a cheaper, lower quality version of traditional cheese and those from other countries would never dream of using it. It may be gross, but we love it.
8.) Grocery Bread: Wanting fresh bread all the time, foreigners think US breads are too sweet as they often contain loads of sugar and high fructose corn syrup. They prefer freshly baked loaves and baguettes.
9.) Bacon and Eggs: Finding the bacon to be too greasy, and the entire combination just not suitable for breakfast, you won’t find this on their tables. (But somehow an English breakfast with eggs, beans, hash browns and grease is okay.)
10.) Grits: Commonly found in the South, they’re made from water and ground corn. In the foreigners’ defense, if you’re not from the south, you probably don’t like this either.
11.) Chocolate: Unbelievably, many foreigners do not like the taste of chocolate in America. For example, some of them claim that our chocolate has a processed taste, is not sweet enough, and can be dusty, similar to old chocolate that has gone bad.
12.) Casseroles: Many folks from other countries are used to eating many dishes at every meal and just one dish doesn’t cut it. Others are turned off by the soups we use in them to help bind them. These soups are full of sodium and by the time you add crackers and crushed chips, it is a salt explosion.
(H/T: Answers.com)
It’s hard to understand (and especially like) the customs and cuisines of other cultures, but it seems criminal that foreigners hate these simple foods. There is one thing for certain, though: Americans LOVE our sodium. Maybe it’s time to revisit some of those classic recipes…
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