30 ‘American’ Foods That Are Nasty According To Non-Americans

Ask a non-American what they think of “American food” and you’ll usually get a dramatic eye roll,
a story about root beer, and possibly a rant about orange plastic “cheese.” The viral Bored Panda
list “30 ‘American’ Foods That Are Nasty According To Non-Americans” rounded up exactly that kind
of outrage: people from all over the world reacting to our most beloved snacks and dishes with a
mix of horror, fascination, and a tiny bit of jealousy.

To Americans, these foods are nostalgia on a plate. To many visitors, they’re proof the U.S. is an
over-sugared, deep-fried fever dream. The truth, as usual, lives somewhere between “this is
disgusting” and “I’d like six more, please.” Let’s dig into the foods that non-Americans love to
hate, why they spark such strong reactions, and what they say about American food culture.

Why American Food Gets Such A Bad Rap Abroad

Before we call out specific dishes, it helps to understand why so many foreign visitors find
American food “nasty” in the first place. The complaints tend to fall into a few themes:

• Sweetness overload: From breakfast cereals to salad dressings, American foods often pack far more sugar than similar products in Europe or Asia.
• Artificial everything: Neon orange cheese, blue sports drinks, red frostingbright colors and long ingredient labels are a big shock to people used to simpler recipes.
• Huge portions: A meal that could feed a small village elsewhere is a single entrée here, which makes already-heavy dishes feel downright aggressive.
• Weird flavor mashups: Peanut butter with grape jelly, chicken with waffles, marshmallows on sweet potatoesAmericans love sweet–savory combinations that some cultures find confusing or even offensive.

With that in mind, the Bored Panda list and similar roundups from food and lifestyle sites highlight a
predictable cast of “villains.” Let’s tour some of the most infamous American foods that non-Americans
swear they’ll never eat again.

The Fake Cheese Hall Of Shame

1. Bright Orange “American” Cheese

One of the top complaints from non-Americans is that processed American cheese slices look and feel
like melted plastic. To be fair, even many Americans will admit that the individually wrapped slices
are more engineering project than dairy product.

People raised on sharp aged cheddar or creamy French cheeses are shocked by the texture and color of
American “singles.” Yet for U.S. kids, that same slice is the soul of a grilled cheese sandwich or a
classic cheeseburger. It’s less “cheese” and more its own separate food group.

2. Spray Cheese In A Can

If regular processed cheese bothers people, aerosol cheese sends them over the edge. Easy Cheesea
pressurized can that lets you spray cheese onto crackers, chips, or directly into your mouthis often
held up as Exhibit A in the case of “America vs. Good Taste.”

To Americans, it’s silly, salty fun at a party. To visitors, it looks like someone asked, “What if we
made nacho topping into bathroom caulk?” and then actually did it.

The Great Sweetness Shock: Soda, Desserts, And Sweet Tea

3. Root Beer

Root beer might be the most divisive American drink of all. Many foreigners say it tastes like cough
syrup, toothpaste, or “minty medicine your grandma forced on you.” The wintergreen and licorice notes
that Americans associate with childhood treats are, in some countries, linked to pharmacy counters.

For Americans, an icy root beer float is pure nostalgia. For a lot of non-Americans, it’s a one-sip
experience followed by a very polite, “No thank you, I’m good.”

4. Sweet Tea (With Extra Sweet)

Southerners treat sweet tea as a birthright: strong black tea, sugar, ice, and a tall glass on a hot
day. Visitors, especially those from countries that drink unsweetened or lightly sweetened tea, often
describe it as “sugar water with a hint of tea.”

The shock isn’t just the sweetnessit’s serving a drink that sugary with meals and calling it a
“refreshing everyday beverage.” To many non-Americans, it tastes more like dessert than something you’d
sip all afternoon.

5. American Desserts And Breakfasts That Might As Well Be Candy

A common complaint in the Bored Panda thread and similar lists is that American desserts look gorgeous
but taste overwhelmingly sweet. Cupcakes piled high with frosting, triple-layer brownies, and neon
birthday cakes all fall into this category.

Add in sugary breakfast optionsfrosted cereals, chocolate chip pancakes drenched in syrup, and
cinnamon rolls bigger than your headand visitors start wondering if anyone here eats food that isn’t
dessert disguised as a meal.

Comfort Foods That Confuse Visitors

6. Marshmallow “Fruit Salads” And Sweet Potato Casserole

Fruit salad means something very specific in many countries: fresh fruit, maybe some citrus juice, and
that’s it. Then they see a Midwestern “salad” made with canned fruit, Jell-O, whipped topping, and
marshmallows, and suddenly they’re questioning everything.

The same goes for sweet potato casserole topped with toasted marshmallows at Thanksgiving. For people
who think of sweet potatoes as a savory side dish, adding sugar and candy to a vegetable feels like a
prank that got out of hand.

7. Biscuits And Gravy

Biscuits and gravy is peak American comfort foodfluffy buttermilk biscuits drowning in creamy sausage
gravy. The problem is that outside the U.S., “biscuits” usually means crisp cookies, and “gravy”
usually means brown pan sauce.

So when non-Americans hear “biscuits and gravy,” they imagine something like chocolate cookies with
meat sauce. By the time they see a plate of pepper-speckled white gravy, some are too confused to pick
up a fork.

8. Chicken And Waffles

Fried chicken? Delicious. Waffles with syrup? Also delicious. Put them together and drizzle with maple
syrup or hot honey and you have a soul-food classic that Americans adore.

But many visitors can’t get past the mental block of pairing crispy, savory chicken with a sweet
breakfast starch. It sounds like putting chocolate on tuna to themtwo good things that, in their
minds, absolutely do not belong on the same plate.

Snacks And Sweets That Get Dragged Hard

9. Twinkies And Other Shelf-Stable Cakes

Twinkies might be the most iconic American snack cake of all time, but they’re also one of the most
roasted. Non-Americans often describe them as “chemical sponge cake” or “cake-flavored foam with
suspicious cream.”

In fairness, even U.S. fans don’t buy Twinkies because they seem natural or wholesome. They’re pure
nostalgia: a lunchbox relic with a texture that somehow survived the 1980s, the 1990s, and several
apocalypses in pop culture jokes.

10. Candy Corn

Every October, Americans fight a miniature civil war over candy corn. Some love the waxy, honey-ish
triangles; others insist it tastes like sugary crayons. Non-Americans who try it for the first time
usually land firmly in the “never again” camp.

11. Twizzlers And Red Licorice

Twizzlers are another candy that foreigners often hate on sight and loathe after the first bite. The
waxy texture and artificial strawberry flavor don’t do them any favors with people used to softer,
fruit-based sweets.

12. Poptarts For Breakfast

A frosted pastry filled with jam or chocolate, eaten straight from the foil or lightly toasted, is a
very normal American breakfast. To many non-Americans, a Pop-Tart is obviously a dessert, not
something you grab at 7 a.m. on the way to school.

The real shock isn’t that Pop-Tarts existit’s that they’re marketed as a regular morning option, not
as an occasional treat. From the outside, it can look like the U.S. decided to speed-run dessert
straight into breakfast.

Deep-Fried Everything: State Fair Culture

13. Deep-Fried Candy Bars, Oreos, And… Butter

State fairs are where American food scientists go to ignore all common sense. If it can be battered,
it can be deep-fried: candy bars, cookies, soda, cheese curds, and yes, even sticks of butter.

Non-Americans encountering deep-fried butter for the first time are usually speechless. The idea
captures every stereotype about American excesshuge portions, high fat, sugar everywhereand dunks it
straight into hot oil.

14. “Anything Can Be A Burger”

Outsiders are often baffled by how many things Americans turn into burgers: sushi burgers, ramen
burgers, mac-and-cheese burgers stacked six inches high. The humble hamburger is iconic, but when the
bun becomes a donut and the patty is topped with a full grilled cheese sandwich, even some Americans
start quietly backing away.

Weird Sandwiches And Questionable Salads

15. Peanut Butter And Jelly

For Americans, a PB&J sandwich is childhood in sandwich form. For many people overseas, the
combination sounds wrong on a basic level. Peanut butter is savory, jelly is sweet; in many cultures,
those belong in completely different parts of the meal.

Once non-Americans actually try it, some become converts. Others politely hand the plate back and ask
if they can just have the bread.

16. Lime Jell-O Salads

A recurring horror story in foreign taste-test articles is the retro American “salad” made with lime
Jell-O, canned fruit, and sometimes mayonnaise or even tuna. These recipes date back to the mid-20th
century, when molded gelatin dishes were seen as modern and elegant.

Today, they mostly live on Pinterest boards and in traumatized family memoriesand of course in viral
threads where non-Americans describe them as “crime scenes in a bowl.”

Meats, Mystery Parts, And Regional Specialties

17. Scrapple And Other “Everything Left Over” Meats

Scrapple, a Mid-Atlantic specialty made from pork scraps and cornmeal, gets a lot of hate from both
Americans and visitors. Non-Americans who aren’t used to nose-to-tail eating (or who prefer not to
know exactly what’s in their breakfast) find it especially unappealing.

18. Pig’s Feet

Pickled or slow-cooked pig’s feet exist in many cuisines, but when Americans serve them, they often
get lumped into the “gross American food” category by foreigners who mostly encounter U.S. food
through fast-casual chains. Seeing a jar of pickled feet next to neon-colored sodas is, admittedly, a
bit of whiplash.

Is American Food Really That Bad?

It’s easy to scroll a list like Bored Panda’s and walk away thinking American cuisine is nothing but
deep-fried candy bars and plastic cheese. But that ignores the huge variety of regional dishes and the
growing emphasis on fresh, local ingredients in many parts of the country.

The reality is that every culture has foods that outsiders find revolting. Strong cheeses, fermented
fish, blood sausage, durian fruitpeople fiercely defend the flavors they grew up with and recoil from
unfamiliar ones. American food just happens to be especially visible worldwide, thanks to movies, TV,
and global fast-food chains.

What makes the “nasty American foods” conversation fun is that it forces everyone, including
Americans, to look at their own plates with fresh eyes. Do we eat a wild amount of sugar? Yes. Do we
turn ordinary ingredients into extreme sports events of salt, fat, and flavor? Also yes. But we’re
also the home of incredible barbecue, regional specialties like gumbo and jambalaya, and an exploding
farm-to-table movement.

Real-Life Experiences: Trying “Nasty” American Foods

Beyond online lists and snarky comments, the most interesting stories come from real people who
actually sit down and try these controversial American foods. Their reactions are often more nuanced
(and funnier) than a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

A First Encounter With Root Beer

Imagine a French exchange student handed a frosty root beer at a backyard barbecue. Everyone is
watching, waiting for the “wow, this is great!” moment. Instead, there’s a polite sip, a pause, and a
cautious, “Is this… medicine?” For many visitors, the flavor is so closely associated with cough syrup
in their home countries that it’s hard to taste anything else at first.

The funny part? After a couple of weeks in the U.S., some of those same students quietly buy root beer
at the supermarket. Once the “this tastes like my childhood cold remedies” association fades, the
vanilla and spice notes start to make sense. Root beer becomes less weird and more like a quirky local
specialty.

The Sweet Tea Surprise

Travelers from the U.K. and Europe regularly tell stories about ordering “iced tea” in the American
South and discovering it’s essentially liquid candy. One British visitor swore her first glass of sweet
tea was “like drinking jam over ice.” She didn’t finish itbut later in the trip, after long, humid
days of sightseeing, she admitted that a heavily iced, super-cold sweet tea suddenly made a lot more
sense.

That’s a common pattern: the more time people spend in a place, the more certain foods that once
seemed outrageous start to fit the climate, culture, and cravings of everyday life.

PB&J: From “Absolutely Not” To Midnight Snack

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches inspire some of the best conversion stories. Plenty of visitors say
the idea of combining a thick, salty spread with sweet grape or strawberry jelly sounds deeply wrong.
But they’ll eventually try one out of curiosityor because it’s the only snack available on a road
trip.

Fast-forward a month, and you’ll catch those same skeptics making PB&J in their hostel kitchen at
midnight. The softness of the bread, the stickiness of the peanut butter, and the hit of sweetness
from the jelly somehow become incredibly comforting, especially when you’re far from home and jet-lagged.

State Fair Culture Shock

Stories from American state fairs could fill an entire book. One German tourist described walking past
stalls selling deep-fried Oreos, fried pickles, and a stand advertising deep-fried butter. His first
reaction was pure disbeliefhe even took photos to send home, convinced no one would believe him.

Eventually, he gave in and split a basket of deep-fried Oreos with friends. His verdict: “It’s not
food; it’s an experience.” He wouldn’t eat them regularly, but as a once-in-a-lifetime treat in that
loud, colorful fairground setting, they made weird sense.

Why These Experiences Matter

These little food adventures do more than just give people funny stories. They highlight how strongly
our expectations shape our taste. When you grow up with certain flavors, they feel normaleven
comforting. When you drop into another culture’s comfort foods with no context, they can seem extreme
or even disgusting.

That’s why lists like “30 ‘American’ Foods That Are Nasty According To Non-Americans” are best read
with a sense of humor and a bit of humility. Yes, Americans eat some truly over-the-top dishes. But
so does every culture in its own way. The real fun starts when we’re willing to try each other’s
“weird” foods, laugh at our own, and maybejust maybeadmit that even spray cheese has its moment.

Final Thoughts

American food is easy to mock, and honestly, sometimes it deserves it. Some dishes are sugar bombs.
Some snacks seem to have more lab work behind them than farm work. But these “nasty” foods also tell a
story about creativity, convenience, nostalgia, and the way Americans like to push flavor (and nutrition
labels) to the limit.

Whether you love or hate Twinkies, root beer, or chicken and waffles, they’re part of a broader food
landscape that’s constantly changing. Today’s meme-worthy monstrosity is tomorrow’s beloved classicor
a cautionary tale we laugh about for years. Either way, it’s never boring, and that might be the most
American food trait of all.