8 ms·

Yup. I'm a "trailing spouse" for an American diplomat, and this is so true. One thing that always, always, always happens to Americans when we repatriate is th

Yup. I'm a "trailing spouse" for an American diplomat, and this is so true. One thing that always, always, always happens to Americans when we repatriate is the "grocery store freakout". At some point, you will go to a grocery store, and freeze. "Man..." you'll keep saying, "Americans really love breakfast cereal..."

NegativeLatency 10y ago
I experienced a bit of this when I moved from SF to a less populated place. I imagine it would be more shocking moving from another country.
rhizome 10y ago
"Man..." you'll keep saying, "Americans really love breakfast cereal..." Though it's true to some degree, I wouldn't go that far. My sense is that the higher the margin on a product or product-line, the more money the manufacturer and distributors have to purchase shelf space. Cereal, Chips, Crackers, Ice Cream, Mayonnaise. The last time I was at the store I counted 21 separate varieties of Triscuit, 10-12 flavors over three sizes. Don't freak out, it actually is weird.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  That explains too much... why aren't high-margin products in other developed nations' grocery stores treated the same way? Or, if they are, why isn't breakfast cereal one of them? Perhaps because Americans really love breakfast cereal?
  - Rapzid 10y ago
    It's possible the margins are not as high, or they are not as high vs other more popular products. It could be a combination of multiple factors at play. Certainly if nobody was buying cereals in the US the high margins would not be enough to sustain shelf-space spending, so that's a valid point.
  - golergka 10y ago
    I suspect that US producers have higher margins on sugary products because of corn subsidies.
    - hawkice 10y ago
      I'd say you're correct, but in a slightly more indirect way than many might assume (they might read it as, gov. gives money to company, therefore company has more money -- but they still compete with each other on price, so that doesn't totally make sense). But because corn is subsidized, the food is cheap on a $/calorie basis, which means customers can be less price sensitive, because it's all easier and cheaper than eating a non-corn-based meal. We see this reflected in the fact that cereal (a very generic term for a certain type of staple) is emphatically _not_ a commodity. People have types they like more -- so they can compete on something other than price, which lets profits go up. A good line of research to verify is to compare cereal demand elasticity to e.g. meat, where there are variations people like more than others, and it's semi-interchangeable, but because of price people treat it largely as a commodity.
  - KJP191 10y ago
    My theory is milk. Breakfast cereal is designed to be covered in milk, but compared to North America and Western Europe, milk and milk products are far less popular in most of the world. I think I remember reading that there's even a biological reason, ethnic Europeans have some enzyme for digesting milk (and cheese etc) that others lack. This would imply that other milk-drinking Western countries would also eat a lot of breakfast cereal. And indeed it's something I notice when I go back from China to Belgium or the UK. (Disclaimer: I haven't been to the US, so perhaps Americans like breakfast cereal even more than Europeans)
    - thatcat 10y ago
      Yes, Scandinavian genetics are more likely to express code for lactase and so less likely to develop lactose intolerance. US also subsidies milk production to keep prices reasonable, which may have a side effect of increasing the amount consumers will pay for associated products like cereal.
    - bane 10y ago
      American here, I grew up on breakfast cereal (for better or worse). Cereal seems to be one of those things that exploded in variety and marketability in the U.S. I've never seen anything like an American cereal aisle in any of the other countries I've been to anywhere in the world. What I find really interesting though is how that's slowly starting to change as other countries start to adopt more of the quick-eat consumerist culture similar to the U.S. What's more fun is that the local solutions to snacks and cereals are usually very interesting and designed for local tastes. The first time I went to Europe, 20 some odd years ago there really was a slim selection, mostly variants of Muesli mixes. When I was in Russia in the 90s, I really wanted some breakfast cereal and there was a big effort to get milk and some corn flakes. In Germany I had more selection, but not hugely. The first time I went to Korea about 15 years ago it was the same. More recently I notice the amount and selection of breakfast cereals is exploding on those countries. Most of my experience has been in Korea, and there are now full-on cereal aisles with an entire list of different products. Not as many as the U.S. but definitely getting there. So what's fun it that not only do I get to eat all the American varieties, but as other countries add other cereals to their cultural inventories, I get to try and enjoy those as well.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Huh. That's a really good point. More of the value in a breakfast cereal is in "intellectual property" and less is on the inputs and labor that produces the marginal next box. I hope that's true, because it's a neat little explanation.
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  Cereal has been pushed for decades by big corporations. It is cheap, easy to make in the morning, and keeps well. It is also unhealthy, but after such a long time of demonizing fat it still has a big following. For some reason it has somewhat dodged the bullet that soda took.
xapata 10y ago
Sometimes it's a big smile, "Man, there are so many options!" Well, that's how it is when I'm just wandering around the store for fun. If I want to pick a toothpaste, it's frustrating that I need to make a tough choice for something so trivial.
- stevesearer 10y ago
  Reminds me of when Boris Yeltsin visited a Texan grocery store: http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/ http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-...
gloverkcn 10y ago
Coming back from India and going to Walmart. so much space with nobody in it. Everything you need to live under one giant roof. There's 4 people at 4 registers and no line for any of them.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  I enjoy visiting India (I'm an anglo American) but I always know I'm back in the US when I arrive into Houston and there's a fifteen-foot-tall banner advertising donut ice cream in the food court inside the airport.
  - bandrami 10y ago
    I dunno... India is no slouch when it comes to absurdly sweet desserts. I used to get fresh custard apple covered in condensed milk as a "snack" in Mumbai.
    - pm90 10y ago
      Hehe, no question about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_sweets_and_desserts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_sweets_and_dess...
- ethbro 10y ago
  > There's 4 people at 4 registers and no line for any of them. We are definitely not going to the same Walmart. EDIT: To clarify, I know this is one of Walmart's strengths, but it doesn't improve my experience.
  - ourmandave 10y ago
    At my nearest Walmart, the 12-items-or-less "fast" lane is also the exclusive tobacco products lane which totally defeats the purpose. Buying cigarettes is also a recursive game of 20 Questions about brand, size, filter, we-don't-have-that-do-you-want-this-instead? Okay, brand, size, filter... (And I see you'll be paying in pennies.) </rant>
hbosch 10y ago
A relevant scene from The Hurt Locker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgbNQU3cYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgbNQU3cYo In this scene, the character has just returned from a tour in Iraq defusing IEDs. The movie portrays him as a total pro in the battlefield, but stunned and anxious as he returns to civilian life. Great movie not just about war, but about the psychology of war and purpose. Edit: here's a better dissection – http://www.cinemablography.org/supermarket-scene.html http://www.cinemablography.org/supermarket-scene.html
seanmcdirmid 10y ago
I just recently returned to the USA from living in China for 9 years, and damn, I think I have PTSD. One night while I was asleep, there was a clap-clap-clap next to my window at 3 AM in the morning. I just assumed it was some old guy exercising early in the morning by clapping and walking backwards...not a weird thing in Beijing. I ran outside ready to confront whoever it was, and it was just...water drops hitting a leaf.
55555 10y ago
Very true! In the same vein though, the selection at places like Whole Foods is one of the best parts of coming home (from the third world). One of the hardest things for me to adapt to is how "liberal" America has become. It's not an objectively bad thing, but I feel like I went into a coma and woke up 20 years later in a world I can barely relate to. As an example, I'm thinking about stuff like Miley Cyrus' performance. And a lot of the social justice stuff -- I really just missed a whole lot of it and I've literally had to learn tons of new words and concepts to catch up and not appear bigoted. Living abroad in a more "conservative" culture and then coming back and adapting with a snap of the fingers is tough. The weird thing is that I was considered "very liberal" when I first left the US. The hardest thing of all is perhaps how violent and aggressive and loud and rude Americans can be (in public, to strangers). It can be downright frightening, coming from Asia. Edit: Also, I can't stop bowing to people. Asian Americans probably sometimes suspect I'm racist.
- wtbob 10y ago
  > One of the hardest things for me to adapt to is how "liberal" America has become. It's not an objectively bad thing One wonders, if the rest of the world is more cautious about this sort of thing, if maybe it's America that's in the wrong. Maybe other cultures deal with these things more sensitively or more rationally or just better. My experience travelling abroad is that people seem more comfortable in their skins, which is sad given that America is supposed to be the place where anyone can make it.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - astrodust 10y ago
    > My experience travelling abroad... Try doing that with a disability, being a visible minority, being a woman, etc. America is far from perfect, but it's at least accommodating. In other countries they don't hesitate to throw people to the curb. It's the little things: The wheelchair accessible stores and streets, the effort made to deal with vision impairments, institutions that are fighting for women's rights and so on. There are some places in the world where people with disabilities do not seem to exist, they're always hidden away.
kasey_junk 10y ago
I have that experience going to a store less than 30 minutes from my house. In my local stores there are feet of cereal aisle that all seems largely overkill. When I go to a suburban grocery store there are yards of it. I'm always baffled.
CalChris 10y ago
But when I lived in Geneva, it was the opposite. They had an entire freaking shopping aisle for bricks of chocolate. I'd never seen a brick of chocolate before let alone an entire aisle of it. Trader Joe's has these bricks now.
- bandrami 10y ago
  Fair, and in Scandinavia you'll find a similarly huge selection of fish pastes, or in Sri Lanka of tea. But having been to many countries in the world, I don't think even the largest grocery store I've been to outside of the US is the size of even a normal suburban Giant.
icefox 10y ago
A very unexpected reversal of that was upon returning I quickly realized that the various candy and snack food I had come to enjoy while living abroad in Norway just flat out don't exists in the U.S. While there I would pick up random stuff now and then and over time found favorites. While there is 100 feet of cereal it is only a few big companies and each individual choice is even given sometimes 3 feet of space. So I realized to my sadness (except brown cheese which I found in the little "international cheese" case) that while the American grocery stores give the impression of choice that is not as true as it seems.
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  I've noticed that the more skilled I've gotten at cooking, the less useful the 90% of the store that isn't raw vegetables, meat, and grain is.
- pm90 10y ago
  If you look around enough, you may find many "international stores" that stock on foods sourced....Internationally. Of course, the Indian/Chinese stores are a class in themselves, but you can also find the odd store that stocks products imported from Turkey or Germany etc. This is MUCH easier in a big city of course. Houston is surprisingly good in this regard: not only can you find all kinds of groceries, but the restaurants serving different cuisines are absolutely terrific.
  - vegardx 10y ago
    Scandinavians living abroad are known to visit IKEA to get a taste of home. It's almost impossible to get any of the products abroad. Which makes sense, there's not that many of us.

NegativeLatency 10y ago

I experienced a bit of this when I moved from SF to a less populated place. I imagine it would be more shocking moving from another country.

rhizome 10y ago

"Man..." you'll keep saying, "Americans really love breakfast cereal..." Though it's true to some degree, I wouldn't go that far. My sense is that the higher the margin on a product or product-line, the more money the manufacturer and distributors have to purchase shelf space. Cereal, Chips, Crackers, Ice Cream, Mayonnaise. The last time I was at the store I counted 21 separate varieties of Triscuit, 10-12 flavors over three sizes. Don't freak out, it actually is weird.

jessaustin 10y ago
That explains too much... why aren't high-margin products in other developed nations' grocery stores treated the same way? Or, if they are, why isn't breakfast cereal one of them? Perhaps because Americans really love breakfast cereal?
- Rapzid 10y ago
  It's possible the margins are not as high, or they are not as high vs other more popular products. It could be a combination of multiple factors at play. Certainly if nobody was buying cereals in the US the high margins would not be enough to sustain shelf-space spending, so that's a valid point.
- golergka 10y ago
  I suspect that US producers have higher margins on sugary products because of corn subsidies.
  - hawkice 10y ago
    I'd say you're correct, but in a slightly more indirect way than many might assume (they might read it as, gov. gives money to company, therefore company has more money -- but they still compete with each other on price, so that doesn't totally make sense). But because corn is subsidized, the food is cheap on a $/calorie basis, which means customers can be less price sensitive, because it's all easier and cheaper than eating a non-corn-based meal. We see this reflected in the fact that cereal (a very generic term for a certain type of staple) is emphatically _not_ a commodity. People have types they like more -- so they can compete on something other than price, which lets profits go up. A good line of research to verify is to compare cereal demand elasticity to e.g. meat, where there are variations people like more than others, and it's semi-interchangeable, but because of price people treat it largely as a commodity.
- KJP191 10y ago
  My theory is milk. Breakfast cereal is designed to be covered in milk, but compared to North America and Western Europe, milk and milk products are far less popular in most of the world. I think I remember reading that there's even a biological reason, ethnic Europeans have some enzyme for digesting milk (and cheese etc) that others lack. This would imply that other milk-drinking Western countries would also eat a lot of breakfast cereal. And indeed it's something I notice when I go back from China to Belgium or the UK. (Disclaimer: I haven't been to the US, so perhaps Americans like breakfast cereal even more than Europeans)
  - thatcat 10y ago
    Yes, Scandinavian genetics are more likely to express code for lactase and so less likely to develop lactose intolerance. US also subsidies milk production to keep prices reasonable, which may have a side effect of increasing the amount consumers will pay for associated products like cereal.
  - bane 10y ago
    American here, I grew up on breakfast cereal (for better or worse). Cereal seems to be one of those things that exploded in variety and marketability in the U.S. I've never seen anything like an American cereal aisle in any of the other countries I've been to anywhere in the world. What I find really interesting though is how that's slowly starting to change as other countries start to adopt more of the quick-eat consumerist culture similar to the U.S. What's more fun is that the local solutions to snacks and cereals are usually very interesting and designed for local tastes. The first time I went to Europe, 20 some odd years ago there really was a slim selection, mostly variants of Muesli mixes. When I was in Russia in the 90s, I really wanted some breakfast cereal and there was a big effort to get milk and some corn flakes. In Germany I had more selection, but not hugely. The first time I went to Korea about 15 years ago it was the same. More recently I notice the amount and selection of breakfast cereals is exploding on those countries. Most of my experience has been in Korea, and there are now full-on cereal aisles with an entire list of different products. Not as many as the U.S. but definitely getting there. So what's fun it that not only do I get to eat all the American varieties, but as other countries add other cereals to their cultural inventories, I get to try and enjoy those as well.
tptacek 10y ago
Huh. That's a really good point. More of the value in a breakfast cereal is in "intellectual property" and less is on the inputs and labor that produces the marginal next box. I hope that's true, because it's a neat little explanation.
mixmastamyk 10y ago
Cereal has been pushed for decades by big corporations. It is cheap, easy to make in the morning, and keeps well. It is also unhealthy, but after such a long time of demonizing fat it still has a big following. For some reason it has somewhat dodged the bullet that soda took.

xapata 10y ago

Sometimes it's a big smile, "Man, there are so many options!" Well, that's how it is when I'm just wandering around the store for fun. If I want to pick a toothpaste, it's frustrating that I need to make a tough choice for something so trivial.

stevesearer 10y ago
Reminds me of when Boris Yeltsin visited a Texan grocery store: http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/ http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-...

gloverkcn 10y ago

Coming back from India and going to Walmart. so much space with nobody in it. Everything you need to live under one giant roof. There's 4 people at 4 registers and no line for any of them.

wavefunction 10y ago
I enjoy visiting India (I'm an anglo American) but I always know I'm back in the US when I arrive into Houston and there's a fifteen-foot-tall banner advertising donut ice cream in the food court inside the airport.
- bandrami 10y ago
  I dunno... India is no slouch when it comes to absurdly sweet desserts. I used to get fresh custard apple covered in condensed milk as a "snack" in Mumbai.
  - pm90 10y ago
    Hehe, no question about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_sweets_and_desserts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_sweets_and_dess...
ethbro 10y ago
> There's 4 people at 4 registers and no line for any of them. We are definitely not going to the same Walmart. EDIT: To clarify, I know this is one of Walmart's strengths, but it doesn't improve my experience.
- ourmandave 10y ago
  At my nearest Walmart, the 12-items-or-less "fast" lane is also the exclusive tobacco products lane which totally defeats the purpose. Buying cigarettes is also a recursive game of 20 Questions about brand, size, filter, we-don't-have-that-do-you-want-this-instead? Okay, brand, size, filter... (And I see you'll be paying in pennies.) </rant>

hbosch 10y ago

A relevant scene from The Hurt Locker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgbNQU3cYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgbNQU3cYo In this scene, the character has just returned from a tour in Iraq defusing IEDs. The movie portrays him as a total pro in the battlefield, but stunned and anxious as he returns to civilian life. Great movie not just about war, but about the psychology of war and purpose. Edit: here's a better dissection – http://www.cinemablography.org/supermarket-scene.html http://www.cinemablography.org/supermarket-scene.html

seanmcdirmid 10y ago

I just recently returned to the USA from living in China for 9 years, and damn, I think I have PTSD. One night while I was asleep, there was a clap-clap-clap next to my window at 3 AM in the morning. I just assumed it was some old guy exercising early in the morning by clapping and walking backwards...not a weird thing in Beijing. I ran outside ready to confront whoever it was, and it was just...water drops hitting a leaf.

55555 10y ago

Very true! In the same vein though, the selection at places like Whole Foods is one of the best parts of coming home (from the third world). One of the hardest things for me to adapt to is how "liberal" America has become. It's not an objectively bad thing, but I feel like I went into a coma and woke up 20 years later in a world I can barely relate to. As an example, I'm thinking about stuff like Miley Cyrus' performance. And a lot of the social justice stuff -- I really just missed a whole lot of it and I've literally had to learn tons of new words and concepts to catch up and not appear bigoted. Living abroad in a more "conservative" culture and then coming back and adapting with a snap of the fingers is tough. The weird thing is that I was considered "very liberal" when I first left the US. The hardest thing of all is perhaps how violent and aggressive and loud and rude Americans can be (in public, to strangers). It can be downright frightening, coming from Asia. Edit: Also, I can't stop bowing to people. Asian Americans probably sometimes suspect I'm racist.

wtbob 10y ago
> One of the hardest things for me to adapt to is how "liberal" America has become. It's not an objectively bad thing One wonders, if the rest of the world is more cautious about this sort of thing, if maybe it's America that's in the wrong. Maybe other cultures deal with these things more sensitively or more rationally or just better. My experience travelling abroad is that people seem more comfortable in their skins, which is sad given that America is supposed to be the place where anyone can make it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- astrodust 10y ago
  > My experience travelling abroad... Try doing that with a disability, being a visible minority, being a woman, etc. America is far from perfect, but it's at least accommodating. In other countries they don't hesitate to throw people to the curb. It's the little things: The wheelchair accessible stores and streets, the effort made to deal with vision impairments, institutions that are fighting for women's rights and so on. There are some places in the world where people with disabilities do not seem to exist, they're always hidden away.

kasey_junk 10y ago

I have that experience going to a store less than 30 minutes from my house. In my local stores there are feet of cereal aisle that all seems largely overkill. When I go to a suburban grocery store there are yards of it. I'm always baffled.

CalChris 10y ago

But when I lived in Geneva, it was the opposite. They had an entire freaking shopping aisle for bricks of chocolate. I'd never seen a brick of chocolate before let alone an entire aisle of it. Trader Joe's has these bricks now.

bandrami 10y ago
Fair, and in Scandinavia you'll find a similarly huge selection of fish pastes, or in Sri Lanka of tea. But having been to many countries in the world, I don't think even the largest grocery store I've been to outside of the US is the size of even a normal suburban Giant.

icefox 10y ago

A very unexpected reversal of that was upon returning I quickly realized that the various candy and snack food I had come to enjoy while living abroad in Norway just flat out don't exists in the U.S. While there I would pick up random stuff now and then and over time found favorites. While there is 100 feet of cereal it is only a few big companies and each individual choice is even given sometimes 3 feet of space. So I realized to my sadness (except brown cheese which I found in the little "international cheese" case) that while the American grocery stores give the impression of choice that is not as true as it seems.

jschwartzi 10y ago
I've noticed that the more skilled I've gotten at cooking, the less useful the 90% of the store that isn't raw vegetables, meat, and grain is.
pm90 10y ago
If you look around enough, you may find many "international stores" that stock on foods sourced....Internationally. Of course, the Indian/Chinese stores are a class in themselves, but you can also find the odd store that stocks products imported from Turkey or Germany etc. This is MUCH easier in a big city of course. Houston is surprisingly good in this regard: not only can you find all kinds of groceries, but the restaurants serving different cuisines are absolutely terrific.
- vegardx 10y ago
  Scandinavians living abroad are known to visit IKEA to get a taste of home. It's almost impossible to get any of the products abroad. Which makes sense, there's not that many of us.