That’s what I was going to mention: the enormous cups of soda, and the number of people who drink soda all day long (not just at restaurants, but at work, at home, etc.).
Here in Philly we get Cooper cheese, which is a sharp American cheese (bet you thought that was a contradiction in terms). It seems strangely difficult to locate the company on the 'net.
I have to say, the first time I’d ever heard of deep-fried twinkies, and deep-fried mars bars, etc. they were the product of a Festival stall in Scotland. Then it became sort of a “thing” to find really outrageous things to deep-fry for sale at Fairs in the American Mid-West. The whole thing basically jumped the shark when one particularly entrepreneurial chap found a way to freeze and then deep-fry a stick of butter.
There are some absolutely wonderful American Cheeses; “American Cheese” just isn’t one of them. It’s something people buy to make grilled cheese sandwiches - pure comfort food to soothe the inner toddler.
ETA: Dang, now I really want a grilled cheese with basil tomatoes.
It is a cheese*, at least it begins life as an honest to goodness cheese, made with real cheese methods, then gets melted, mixed with a few ingredients, pasteurized, and sold as a block of American cheese. This is in contrast to many American Cheese style individually wrapped cheese slices that are mostly emulsified fats and separated milk products styled to emulate a regular slice of American cheese.
*It’s generally a rather bland cheese, you wouldn’t eat a chunk of it with a glass of wine. It’s a sandwich cheese, really, adds cheesiness without overpowering the other ingredients, and melts like a dream.
I’m not about to defend the pre-made junkfood that many people eat and I’ve never even seen a Wegman’s, but plenty of US supermarkets have non-processed decent quality domestic and imported cheeses, just not the really good $30/lb artisanal stuff. This includes those bastions of middle-American mediocrity Super Target and Super WalMart, even in culinarily backward places like Oklahoma.
I find that I can’t get enough fluids in general with my meals outside the United States. If I’m having lunch or dinner, I can’t eat without sips of fluid in between. I generally down at least a liter of fluids with a meal. If I’m at home, it will almost always be entirely water. At a restaurant, it’ll be a combination of water and soft drinks.
You gotta have someplace to put all those leftovers from the restaurants! 
We do have more than one type of bread. A lot more.
I am actually surprised that you found them in Bodegas since they usually have a limited selection. I have lived in quite a few states. I have never seen a supermarket that didn’t have a large selection of canned tomatos of many types.
I like American cheese. Not the individual slice stuff or Velveeta. Those are cheese products not cheese. Real American cheese that you buy at the deli counter. Is very good at its job. Which is not to eat alone but to be used in sandwiches and on hamburgers. The mild flavor compliments but does not over power.
It’s also important to remember that those ginormous cups are filled almost completely with ice before the soda is poured. The amount of actual soda in one of them is surprisingly small.
When you say slice stuff, which do you mean? Individually wrapped slices, or the big blocks that are sliced but not separated by any other material? There’s a huge difference.
I have to agree, Duke’s post is in error. When I lived in a rural, agricultural town of 9,000 in central Virginia, you could get a variety of popular cheeses at either of the 2 local supermarkets. For example, Feta, Emmanthaler, Muenster, Chevre, Gouda, etc. These were sold by the vacuum sealed block or pre-sized container. They were expensive compared to local incomes but definitely available.
You could also get homemade farmers cheeses at the Mennonite store, and Mexican varieties of cheese at the 2 small Mexican markets.
Was someone under the impression that the only cheese you could get in America is American cheese? Because I’m pretty glad that I don’t have to go all the way to Switzerland to get swiss cheese.
My memory is a bit fuzzy as it was back in 1996. It was on the road to Northern Carolina, coming from Vermont. So it could have been North Carolina, Virginia or Maryland. It seemed like a trucker stop.
The Hershey bars I ate last week were every bit as good as they’ve ever been. Haters gonna hate, but it’s still definitely the best milk chocolate around.
What I recall about inferior ingredients was how some manufacturer (not sure if it was Hershey or a competitor) was going to be using some “fake” chocolate, but not in their main chocolate bar, just the coating on stuff like “chocolate” covered nougat with nuts or whatever else you might normally cover with chocolate.
That’s why I always ask for “no ice”. It’s almost always plenty cold enough out of the fountain anyway, and that way it lasts longer (less refills) and doesn’t get watered down when the ice melts.
And in Germany I was served more than one dish that was so salty I couldn’t eat it.
This thread is really rubbing me the wrong way. I’ve been served plenty of disgustingly salty, greasy, over-processed, unexcusable foods all over the world.
Yeah I like Hersey too. Nothing wrong with milk chocolate. I like the darker stuff more expensive stuff too. No reason you can’t like both.
Peoples’ different palates are not an indictment of your personal character. I’d chill out a bit.
The major brands have sugar added (and stabilizers and oil). But you can get natural peanut butter, made with nothing but peanuts, and it’s not nearly as sweet. That’s what I buy.
Not exactly something that you’d notice immediately, but high fructose corn syrup is largely used in place of sugar. Almost everybody else uses sugar but the U.S. has an import tariff on sugar and production quotas on domestic sugar, and big subsidies on corn (see Wikipedia).
And as already mentioned, the amount of sodium in many foods (I try to eat low-sodium food, not that I need to for medical reasons, plus they usually use potassium to replace some of the sodium, and some say that the Na:K ratio is more important, and they still taste good to me). That, along with too much sweetener (IMHO, HFCS and sucrose/sugar are basically the same), may be one factor in the U.S. obesity epidemic (i.e. makes food taste better so you eat more).
Oh, portion size is another thing I almost left out, directly tied to the above (people wanting more tasty food).