I already posted this link today in the thread about salad cream. It’s an article in the NY Times (registration may be required) about Marmite. This should answer this question:
Specifically,
and
An American ex-boyfriend of mine insisted that our chocolate bar/candy selection was different here than down there.
He claimed to have never seen “Smarties” – which look like M&M’s or Reese’s Pieces but with sweet chocolate inside. He said they had something called “Smarties,” but they were more like tangy candies wrapped up in plastic.
I was in shock.
Everybody else’s guess is as good as mine.
Ya, vee svedes only eat pickled herring, gravlax and reeyyndeer meat. :eek:
Corn on the cob? Watermelon? Tangerines? Blueberries? Truly, only in America, huh?
I should f*cking invite you to the pit for your geocentric ignorant ways.
Back to the OP:
Countries with a stronger domestic food cuture might lack fodd that’s ‘Americana’, notably France, Italy and Greece. All Scandinavian countries, Holland, Belgium and Germany will have most of the stuff you’re used to from the US. Sometimes I need to go a little of my way. Skippy is found in any well stocked grocery store, but the crunchy type is a little harder to find. Root Beer is only found in the larger cities. Their website seems to be a little slow, but there is a chain of foodstroes in Sweden, specialising in American stuff. Paul Newman Dressing, anyone?
Something you can’t get here is Entenmann’s Ch. Chip Cookies, since they’re always sold fresh. Oreo’s and what have you is no problem. We’re also void of what American’s call coffee, and for a good reason too.
Most American candies are available here, sometimes under another brandname.
Remember: Because of trade wars between US and EU, imported Goods from the US tend to be pricey. I pay around $3 for a small pack of 8 oreo cookies.
Yes, Smarties in the US are wrapped in clear plastic rolls about 1" long and are small, circular tart fruit-flavored candies…same concept as SweeTarts, only smaller.
Belgian chocolate may be good, but I don’t think you can get it in the combinations that American candy bars come in.
Oh yeah, here’s the root beer I get at Asda: Carters Root Beer
How about cans of Cranberry sauce? Since something like 90% of cranberries are grown in MA, I doubt there’s much of it overseas. Oh, and Marshmallow Fluff. Assuming that your friends would know what that is. I explained fluffanutters to some people from the west coast, and they all seemed horrified for some reason.
Nice one The Gaspode; you know what rutabaga is, don’t you? it’s that thing we call ‘swede’ here in the UK; made me laugh, that did.
AHunter3: sorry chum, but that really was an amusingly terrible selection (unless you’re whooshing us?); I’m growing butternuts and sweetcorn on my allotment this year (the harvest will, of course, coincide with the time when it’s £1 for 10 cobs by the roadside. Butternuts are pretty expensive year round though)
Blueberries are available, but expensive (probably costing about £3 per pound) but not many people here in the UK either have a taste for them or know what to do with them and they end up being used like a garnish for sundaes, pavlovas and cream desserts.
We do have bilberries though; these are the local wild relative of blueberries and they are very good (I picked two pounds of them on Saturday while out walking) - smaller than blueberries but with a more intense and tart flavour.
elfkin477; I can get fresh cranberries here in time for Christmas or frozen ones any time, ready-made cranberry sauce is available in jars, but only really sells at Christmas. Cranberry juice drinks are quite popular.
American ‘Smarties’ are little fizzy sherbert tablets or something like that aren’t they (like Love hearts?)?
Equipoise
What? gotta be pulling your leg I would think; you mean ‘big’ as in popular? - I can’t imagine how anybody could say “strawberries aren’t popular in England” and keep a straight face.
Well if we redefine “America” for this thread to include foods of just the Western Hemisphere, two-thirds of all foods in the world are “American” in origin. 
Source: Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas transformed the World.
You know, after I posted that, it nagged at me that maybe I was wrong. Since the minute she said it we knew we wouldn’t be able to bring her any, I forgot about it immediately. Obviously I am misremembering. It was some fruit. Raspberries or blackberries, perhaps?
Kal, thanks for the tip about Golden Nuggets.
Eq
First, no longer are most cranberries grown in MA. Wisconsin passed us a few years back 
Second, Fluff is a product of Lynn, Mass, and to my shock, isn’t sold west of the Mississippi, or so. Sick, isn’t it?
Marshmallow Fluff isn’t sold west of the Mississippi? You are sorely misinformed, Flymaster. I used to eat that stuff all the time when I was a kid (Fluffernutters, mmmmm). And I hail from Orange County, CA. Lots of people ate it. You can make some incredible fudge with it.
Nah, blackberries grow wild everywhere abundantly and are much loved, raspberries are slightly less common in the wild, but are widely grown, bought and consumed (although are less popular than strawberries, I think).
It might have been blueberries or cranberries, both of which are available but neither are particularly popular (although they have grown remarkably in popularity in the last five years or so)
I saw the grin, but hey: Potatoes, tomatoes and maize and some peppers. Sure. Tobacco too. But that’s hardly 2/3 of all the food in the world. I do believe we had, wheat, oats, pork, beef, grapes, onion and a zillion other things before 1492.
Just coming in to blush and take my lumps. The corn on the cob and the squash thing I was specifically told about by a person whom I shall no longer regard as a reliable source.
It may be that the person is simply waaaay out of date or something; some of those things have been available for a long long time here in the UK but squashes and pumpkins have grown in popularity a great deal in, say, the last ten years, blueberries were probably as good as unavailable that long ago.
The corn thing may have been a mixup with creamed corn/grits or something like that, which I have heard a lot about but never seen for sale here.
Could it be when she said strawberries weren’t big, she meant as in size that they were small ones there not the big juicy ones we know and love?
One thing I absolutely need that I can’t get in Japan is a decent lab notebook. The big kind with brown covers and 1/4-inch ruled yellow paper. I get regular shipments from my relatives in the US. And I have a stock of spare Hewlett Packard calculators because RPN calculators are hard to find here. I have a colleague who hates the Japanese ballpoint pens - they’re all ultra-fine point. I think he gets thick ballpoint pens from his UK colleagues, so I guess it’s not a problem in Europe.
I used to miss American style cookies, but now that Starbucks has invaded Japan it’s not a problem. Subway sells them too. Rhubarb pie and Reuben sandwiches are impossible to find - I used to know one “American restaurant” that had both on the menu, but they stopped making Rhubarb pies. And their Reuben sandwich doesn’t use rye bread with caraway seeds. Fig Newtons are also hard to find, but I think I’ve seen them in a specialty store. (The same store has Spam, claiming it’s a popular American delicacy.) I also miss nachos and Buffalo wings.
This is a bit obscure but no bicycle shop in Japan sells helmet- or eyeglass-mounted mirrors! I have to buy them from US mail-order shops. Actually I’ve bought whole bikes from the US because recumbent bikes are virtually unknown here, or was until the past year or two.
Hey, you Swedes can’t get real M&Ms because of the colorings, right?
Eh, stick with ze lobster zat ze svedish chef makes.