An interesting article popped up on the internet the other day that I read because (1) it was about food, and (2) it was about some other countries that I’ve visited. It was called “20 American Foods that the Rest of the World Just Can’t Stomach” by Jack McKinney.
As advertised, it listed foods that we Americans love but other nationalities find repulsive. I can go along with some of them, like canned cheese, which is probably only served in prisons as a punishment and at football concession stands on the visitors’ side.
I also agree with McKinney that American chocolate is generally inferior to Swiss and Belgian chocolate because our versions contain less cocoa and more wax—yes wax!—than their European counterparts. I know this because I ate as much chocolate as I could digest without passing out in both Switzerland and Belgium and can testify to its finer quality and taste.
But other American foods on the hate list are a puzzle to me. Some nationalities don’t like our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for instance. They say they “don’t understand the strange combination of sweet and salty” of the PBJ. Then, what do their kids eat? And what’s not to like about sweet and salty?
Another American treat the world doesn’t like is Twinkies. The rest of the world is “skeptical,” McKinney says, “of these preservative-laden snacks, as their unnatural shelf-life raises eyebrows.”
Well, when the government induced food shortage comes, the world’s eyebrows will be raised with pure lust when I pull out my Twinkies from my 2020 Covid stash and start chewing right in front of them!
And can you believe the rest of the world turns up its nose at grits? Now they’re meddling. Grits are the South’s national dish! The article said “grits leave foreigners scratching their heads. They question their blandness.”
Well, first of all, no true Southerner would scratch his head over Mama’s table, or he’d get whopped. Second of all, they must assume you eat grits as-is and don’t know you add salt and butter or cheese or shrimp. And I thought foreign chefs were known for their culinary savvy!
Foreigners, by the way, include people in all the states and countries north, east, west and south of where SEC football is played. I wouldn’t count on those people to know much.
They don’t even know enough to fix sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping for Thanksgiving. The article said that many people eat sweet potatoes across the world, “but they say this combination of flavors and textures may not be universally appealing.” I really think these people need to taste sweet potato casserole topped with pecans rolled in brown, sugar, salt and butter, which is my favorite, but they’d complain about the sweet and salty thing again. Remind me not to travel out of the US at Thanksgiving.
And these are the same finicky people who will put a pickled herring right in their mouths! You take a little fish that stinks to high heaven to begin with, then you pickle it? And I’m supposed to eat that? There’s a reason that pickled herring never caught on in America, where we’ve got some sense. And don’t even get me started on anchovies!
Curried dishes are often served in India, but I’m suspicious of curry. They began using it because meat deteriorates fast in India’s warm climate so curry and other spices were added to disguise the taste of early rot. I’m sure that’s no longer the case, but I always give curried shrimp a good sniff before I eat it.
I like steak okay, but the Brits make a pie with steak and kidneys. A kidney filters waste out of some animal’s body. What if there’s some waste left in that kidney before it goes in my pie? Uhn uh, I’m not taking that chance. Besides, pies are supposed to be lemon icebox, chocolate and pecan, but never organ meats.
The Scottish national dish is haggis. The recipe is—“You take a sheep.” So, whatever is in a sheep goes into the haggis, including kidneys and toenails and worse things. None for me, thanks.
The Greeks eat feta cheese, which they’ve shared with America. But its baby vomit smell puts me off to begin with. I tried to like it, but the smell interferes with my enjoyment of the rest of my salad. Feta is one of the reasons I passed up a trip to Greece.
We could go to Japan for the genuine sushi experience, but that puts me off too. A fish is a water resident or a pet, not a food, until it’s fried.
I think this emphasis on food from other countries being better than our food is just One World Movement propaganda. We Americans are supposed to feel unsophisticated for not chowing down on food from places where the people don’t put a lot of thought into what they’re swallowing.
If they gave it more thought, I think we’d be exporting a lot more Twinkies around the world, kidneys would disappear from pies across the globe, and the herring could keep on swimming by.
