When Europeans say Americans don't know geography, do they just mean we don't know European geography as well as they do? Like, would they do any better placing US states or countries in South America, Asia, or Africa than us? I feel like we tend to know the things that are relevant to our lives.
@collin Cadbury’s (a famous chocolate brand in the UK) opened a factory stateside confident in its innate superiority of their chocolate recipe. They assumed that American’s would flock to their chocolate given the choice of real chocolate. The factory soon closed after disappointing sales.
@collin This happened in 80’s l think… more recently Cadbury’s were brought out by Kraft in the 2010s so l wonder whether that explains greater availability in the US
@RobW That's what I think. I can name the most significant (to me) European countries, but would probably miss some of the small ones. I'd kind of expect that to be the same with Europeans and American geography.
Another thing that confuses me is the "Americans have sugar in their bread!” Like, do people not know how yeast works? If you're making fluffy sandwich bread, you need a tiny bit of sugar in there to feed the yeast to get that texture.
That is going to be true if you are buying that kind of bread anywhere in the world.
@collin don't know how much sugar you have in bread but I do remember that it was striking for me how sweet everything is, not just bread - ham and cheese too. Then the things that are sweet by definition are just more sweet in the US, from what I remember. Every visit in the US would add a couple of kilos to my body w/o changing my eating habits.
@collin I think that is not what they are talking about… American bread is often sweet to the taste (with sugar added in addition to the yeast “fuel”). It’s like the differende between wine that has had sugar added to it and…all other wine (in which sugar plays a role).
@jonmsterling I'd be interested in finding the equivalent style of sandwich bread in a European supermarket and comparing how much different it is. I think maybe a lot of Europeans just eat less of that kind of bread than Americans, where it's kind of the default?
@Wharrrrrrgarbl Even the same kind of bread? Like if you get a loaf of fluffy white sandwich bread, they're significantly different? If you compare that kind of bread to another, I'd expect it to be different, but that's true anywhere. I could be totally wrong here.
@collin one slice of Dutch “White” bread has 0.3 grams of sugar. About 6x less than a slice of Wonderbread. One sample. But as a Dutchie living in Canada I can tell you that I greatly miss Dutch bread. Or bakeries. It is 99% “factory bread” in Canada.
@collin Also, it is not just sugar that is added in North America. It is usually high fructose corn syrup. Check the labels of your foods .. it is in soooo many products.
Add comment