Sugar is cheap calories and cheap "tasty", so junk food will have a lot of it. For me, also an immigrant, lots of US foods are too sweet and some sweets are pla

Sugar is cheap calories and cheap "tasty", so junk food will have a lot of it. For me, also an immigrant, lots of US foods are too sweet and some sweets are plain intolerable for being oversugared (yes, cake or pastry is supposed to be sweet, but not that sweet, there should be a balance!) But sugar is a cheap way to make something feel tasty, especially to an unsophisticated taste, and people get addicted to it. I know because I was a sugar addict once. I drank liters of cola, and ate tons of junk food. And then when my blood sugar started to approach the red zone, I stopped and now I avoid added sugar foods at all, except an occasional pastry once in a while. And it does change how you taste things. The cheap high of added sugar is replaced with rich gamut of actual food taste.