I Thought American Junk Food Would Be Better. I Was Wrong

It’s surprising what you miss when you leave Canada. Five years ago, I left Canada’s most annoying city (Toronto) for America’s most annoying city (New York). I had lived in Toronto for a decade, and though I liked it, I’d grown tired of the monotony of waiting for the streetcar and decided it was time to grow tired of the monotony of waiting for the subway. Now, the list of things that make me nostalgic is remarkable if not entirely inane: the ability to order a Caesar in any brunch setting, minimal public grumbling about how cold it is when it’s still above zero degrees (don’t get me started on how much I hate Fahrenheit), small talk under the soothing overhead lighting of a Shoppers Drug Mart. Despite now being mired in aggressive American exceptionalism, I know there are a few things that Canada does better. 

But where my nationalistic pride really kicks in is when I’m compelled to talk about the humble and perfect Aero bar. Like most decent chocolate available in Canada, it is a British invention, but is it ever good. The bubbles melt, the chocolate oozes and, baby, before you know it, you’re making Nestlé propaganda. Perhaps you live near a Loblaws or Safeway that sells high volumes of this chocolate every week. In America, Aero is much harder to find; it’s mostly relegated to specialty-candy stores and curio shops selling garbage with the Union Jack on it. During my first year in New York, you would have found me trudging from bodega to bodega, inquiring about their supply. “Aero?” I’d ask, like a Victorian child asking for a rag to use as a blanket. “Any Aero for me, sir?” No one knew what I was talking about. “A chocolate bar…full of bubbles?” one bodega owner asked me as I clutched three dollar bills. “That doesn’t even sound good.” I left, dejected, with tears in my eyes and a Snickers bar in hand as a pitiful consolation prize.  

The United States is notorious for its excesses, and that’s what I was expecting when I moved here. Some of that has proven true. This remains the only place where I’ve been sold a fountain Coke so big that I couldn’t pick it up, even with both hands. But I thought the U.S. would be the capital of junk food—a place where my feral-rat brain would light up at the sight of so many accessible cheap treats. Like Homer Simpson, I dreamt of running through a fantasyland of chocolate: Twix bars falling like snow, roads paved with marshmallow fluff, electric-blue rivers of Baja Blast-flavoured Mountain Dew.

Life remains unspeakably hard year after year; my little snacks are sometimes my only solace. Why live if life can’t be punctuated by a crunch, a slurp or a slice of something comforting? Immigrating is hard; this was the least I deserved.

And yet! What was I greeted with upon my arrival at the border? Some of the worst snacks I’ve ever encountered in my life. Chocolate that tastes like half-melted wax beads. Chips that are either criminally under-seasoned or so insanely hot that your butt clenches at first bite. Coca-Cola that tastes like it was poured through a battery. For years, I’ve hunted in grocery stores, bodegas and not-yet-legal dispensaries for the delicious and prepackaged. Instead, I’m met with food that tastes like I’m being punished. 

There are countless reasons why American snacks are so awful. Maybe it’s because Canadian candies tend to originate in the U.K., where there are stricter regulations around things like food dyes. Or maybe it’s because American packaged foods have historically been more reliant on corn syrup.

Another answer, of course, is the American need for innovation—or perversion—when the classic will suffice. In Canada, an Oreo doesn’t just taste better than the American version because it is empirically better. It tastes better because it isn’t sold next to six other varieties of Oreos, including Hot & Spicy Cinnamon. (Have you ever wanted to eat a cookie that hurts your tongue?) With every new version of a classic, a snack strays further from the light of God, further from my mouth, further from its purpose of being enjoyed mindlessly and then forgotten. These snacks are so bad that I’m actively remembering them, which is the opposite of what you want from mass-produced snicky-snacks.

When I was 10, my parents took me to India, and I couldn’t believe how much better the food was there. Rice was thicker, chicken juicier, the produce crisper and sweeter. I was full every minute I was there. But one afternoon, my dad took me to a market, and I begged him for some chocolate—a taste of North American life. He handed me a Dairy Milk bar, and when I bit into it, the chocolate turned to ash. The bar was called, in fact, “Dear Milk,” one of several off-brand “choco-sweets” the bazaar was selling, along with “Kit-Kits,” one of which my dad bought for himself. I was shocked by how awful they were—how sour they tasted—given how close they were to the originals in shape and size. These simulacrum sweets were designed to trick the consumer; they were made cheaply with no consideration for taste—only branding. 

Two decades later, I bought what I thought was a regular Twix bar at my local bodega. I’d long accepted that chocolate would never taste good in America, but perhaps I could close my eyes and pretend. I bit into the bar and was reminded of the way the Dear Milk fell apart in my mouth. Spitting the chocolate out, I looked at the wrapper. It was a Twix, but a cookie-dough version, in which all the good parts of the original are replaced with stone-hard filling. 

I still haven’t found an American snack that surpasses the Canadian version. Sometimes Trader Joe’s comes close, but having to find a special grocery store just to eat a non-bilious peanut butter cup takes the pleasure out of the experience. What am I left with now? Actual meals?! I’d rather die! 

Yes, America has everything: plentiful ways to stream shows from MTV’s mid-2000s catalogue, cheap unlimited phone data. But all empires have their flaws, and the U.S.’s, I suppose, is the quality of its treats. Well, now that I think about it, the whole for-profit-health-care thing is also a problem. Maybe that’s worse than how bad their dusty Chips Ahoy are. 

Okay, I’ll be reasonable: It’s a tie.

Scaachi Koul's next book, Sucker Punch, is out March 2025.