Yes, there are corn chips, but they only became common in recent years and usually they are marketed as somehow “American”. As far as I can tell there is much less corn-based food in general. However people eat corn in salads or corn cobs and it’s not that unusual. Complaining about the “animal food” is certainly not so common, but OTOH it sounds exactly like something my grandmother could have said.
Another problem with corn cobs is that eating them with knife and fork is difficult. That disqualifies them for all even remotely formal occasions.
Yes, we really eat pizza with knife and fork, at least in public.
I know many people who hate peanut butter. I like it, but I hate corn.
You guys put KETCHUP on french fries! :eek:
The whole world knows that the only possible sauce with french fries is mayonaise, you Huns. 
And **Larry Mudd ** nailed it: the sheer size of a portion. Everything comes in four sizes: Dietpetite, Extra Large, Whaddareyounutsputthreequartersofthatback, and Nauseating.
And kind of on the corn chip thing, one idea I may eventually act on is opening a good Mexican food place in Sweden. Every member of my wifes family and every friend of hers from Sweden that has visited us goes nuts for burritos, enchiladas, huevos rancheros, etc. They have mex food in Sweden obviously, but all of it is like Taco Bell crap.
Huh? It’s a tasteless porridge or gruel. How is it disgusting?
Jews probably find cheeseburgers disgusting.
Gruel is what peasants ate in the middle ages, and what was given to prisoners until quite recently (I believe). It is not really considered suitable food for people other than in the dierest extremes of poverty. The idea of eating something that is so tasteless when you don’t have too is quite gross really. Porrige is fine, since oats have quite a lot of taste, but wheat and hot water is not much more than wallpaper paste.
Wouldn’t it be more ‘illegal’ (religiously) than disgusting. Unless the cheese actually was made from the burger-calf’s mother’s milk, in which case it seems kind of gross even to me.
The non-Americans in my lab say we put sugar in EVERYTHING. They can’t stand American bread because of it.
Mayonaise on french fries is even more disgusting than having it on a sandwhich, or anywhere else for that matter.
Eating mayo is just marginally better than starving to death.
My wife cant stand most american bread (basically anything like Wonder bread) because of the amount of yeast they put in it to make it so poofy and moist.
Oh yeah, one other thing she finds revolting, which I love; sourdough. Ive been told they have it a little in Sweden, but Ive never seen it there. I dont remember seeing it in Britain either, but they certainly might have it. Clam chowder is another thing they dont have in Sweden, suprisingly.
French fries - I’ll grant that the UK has the right idea on that one - you put malt vinegar on fries. You don’t have to call them chips, though.
Mayo doesn’t belong on anything. It’s acceptable as a base to make potato or macaroni salad. Ketchup doesn’t even serve that much purpose. Hot dog or hamburger condiments include mustard, onion and pickle relish.
Re corn: it occurs to me that corn meal mush came back over here from Italy putting on airs and calling itself “polenta”. And grits is a regional thing in the US - a lot of non-southerners find it just as foreign as foreigners.
As mentioned in the similar IMHO thread about this, many Asians (eastern Asians moreso than those from the subcontinent or the west) are lactose intolerant. Our heavy consumption of dairy products is “icky” mostly because of what would happen to them if they did likewise. Consumption of dairy by someone with lactose intolerance can lead to nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, severe diarrhea and then severe dehydration, so it’s no wonder that someone with it would be skeeved out by the volume of dairy consumption that goes on in the States, and our (somewhat baffling) stance that milk is a health food.
(I’m lactose intolerant – like a large number of other African-Americans, btw – and I understand this completely. I see those ads for the low carb milk replacer where the people are going nuts to try to drink some milk and my stomach literally flip-flops.)
In Japan, where very sweet things aren’t part of the cultural norm, Nabisco sells Oreos without the filling. A Japanese friend chose not to even try a sample of my wedding cake, covered in buttercream frosting with roses and leaves and whatnot, When she saw it, her eyes bugged out of her head.
You are dead to me.
Do not disparage the good name of grits. Unbeknownest to most, grits are an ancient food, known in antiquity as “ambrosia”. They are reputed to bestow good luck, excellent health, and an incredible sex drive. I like mine with just a dab of butter and salt & pepper.
Coke (and Pepsi) is extremely popular in China. Amazed your friend would say that.
Chinese generally think that cheese is pretty disgusting, but that attitude has changed a lot over the past 20 years. Nothing like McD’s and PizzaHut to make cultural inroads.
Lot of cultures think putting ice cubes in a drink is disgusting.
Where are they from?
I ask because the food in Australia tastes incredibly sweet to my palate. Savory stuff (spaghetti sauce, other sauces, meat dishes in restaurants & at friends’ houses) tastes like sugar has been added. Stuff that’s supposed to be sweet (cookies, cakes) tastes like it’s been made out of pure sugar…enough to make my teeth ache. I hardly ever eat out and make almost everything from scratch instead of buying prepared stuff, because it just doesn’t taste right to me.
My in-laws had the opposite problem when they visited us in the U.S. They said they couldn’t eat the food because of all the “spices” we added. My MIL actually said, “You know, that spice you use there.” I have no idea what she means, but apparently they felt that everything in the U.S. was spicy and inedible. They were also pissed off that the hotel rooms didn’t have electric kettles and tried to convince one poor hotel manager to go buy one for their room. :rolleyes:
Grits aren’t made made from wheat… they’re made from hominy, which is dried corn that’s been soaked in lye. Of course, considering the European aversion to corn, that might be one reason to dislike them but I doubt anyone outside the South is aware of what they really are.
Also, you don’t eat them plain. You add butter, salt, bacon, sugar, syrup, jam… whatever it is you want to them. Grits are a hundred times more versatile than oatmeal is.
While they are delicious, they’re also tasteless without butter and either salt or sugar, whichever you prefer. I prefer the latter, myself, as does any Southerner that has not managed to avoid the senseless brainwashing they are subjected to at such young and impressionable ages.
I’ve also heard that dairy-consuming people tend to have a, well, “distinctive odor.” Noticibly different from people who don’t consume dairy products. I’ll try to dig up a cite…
Yeah, but American cheese is particularly gross.
I’m a big fan of good cheese, and in Australia and the UK even the generic branded cheddars often have decent flavour. But here in the US the supermarket shelves are piled with that disgusting yellow/orange crap that looks nothing like chyeese and has no flavour at all.
There is some excellent cheese made in the US, but you have to make an effort to get it. Regular supermarket cheese here is orders of magnitude worse than anywhere else i’ve ever lived.
Gotta agree with this. In fact, it was my first thought on reading the OP. I’m a pretty good eater, but the size of portions here in the US totally freaked me out when i first moved here.
Things that frighten and disgust foreign folk
peanut butter
ice in drinks
mayonnaise as a condiment
huge portion quantiies
awful lightweight bread
“off” taste (to them) of some pasturized diary items