Snus doesnt really count but boy be we addicted to it, besides that probably Kaffe. There would be an absolute uproar in Sweden if any of those two vanished☕🇸🇪
Feels like cheating to say something that is actually addictive. So for Sweden would I, based on Fäbojäntan and Kikki Danielsson, probably say falukorv.
Mett – raw minced pork (it’s safe because there are lots of systematic health checks all along the production line)
Also Germany has a weird obsession with (white) asparagus. Every spring all restaurants have special offers, and even outside of supermarkets temporary stands pop up everywhere, just to sell fresh asparagus (and strawberries). That just doesn’t happen for any other vegetable.
🇵🇱 Kabanosy- thin smoked sausage sold in various flavours (chili? Cheese? Bacon? Sure!). Adverts everywhere, I see kids snacking on it on the way home from school, I see old ladies snacking on it when they’re on their way to…wherever.
Looking at Poland as an immigrant my answer isn’t probably what you’d expect.
It’s not beetroot, it’s not cabbage and it’s not even cucumber.
It’s mustard. It feels like you open a cupboard or fridge in someone’s house and they’ll have between six and ten different mustards all with a specific purpose.
Coffee! Really, basically all Nordics are heavily addicted to coffee and can barely function without it, especially in winter. A lot of Nordic people are also very addicted to licorice candy.
In Germany : coffee ! Most people drink it every day and many people all day. Sparkling water too because unlike most countries we usually drink sparkling water still water is not as popular. Maybe also bread we love bread
By wikipedia – is a fermented milk drink similar to a thin yogurt or ayran that is made from kefir grains, a specific type of mesophilic symbiotic culture. It is prepared by inoculating the milk of cows, goats, or sheep with kefir grains.
No match anywhere in the world, superior. I drink it almost everyday.
Also – draże korsarze. Just go to Poland, try them and fall in love.
Hm, unique, and easy-to-eat things that we eat (comparatively) a lot… perhaps kabanos? (dried snack stick-sausage)
Also I’ve heard an observation of one naturalized American (who lives here for like 20 years) that his friends keep snacking a lot on sprats (fish) and it annoys him a lot, cuz he dislikes the smell.
…also: vodka-drinkers like pickles as a snack to the drink
Crisps. Sometimes called potato chips! So many different flavours here compared to all of Europe and the US (apart from Ireland of course!) Totally unhealthy and unfilling but a very nice snack
Pasta. When I travel aboard with my parents, I know they cannot stay more than a couple of days without eating pasta or risotto. I had to look for a pizza place in Lisbon…
not all-year-round but in season: cherries and strawberries in any form (such as pasta with strawberries or rise pudding with strawberries or pierogi with strawberries)
Traditional answer would be salo (salted pork fat), realistic answer would be coffee. In the past decade availability of coffee machines made it far more popular than before.
Zacuscă
It’s a super popular vegetable spread. It’s made with roasted eggplants and red peppers, tomato paste and onions.
My grandma makes it every year in ginormous quantities. It can be stored in sterilized and airtight jars. Can last up to a year if stored in a cold place.
Olive oil, bread, cured meats, we also eat eggs (fried, potato omelette, scrambled) very often compared to other countries. Depends on the region too. In Mallorca we love salty crackers like from the brand Quelitas.
Black rye bread. Other countries don’t even know what a black bread is. They call black all shades of beige or brown. And they are tasteless. Ours is dark, dense, very tasty. People who live abroad have the right kind delivered by couriers or friends bringing it when visiting.
Food: “TÚRÓ RUDI”: cold Cottage cheese bar covered in dark chocholate – it is a desert. I read it a few years ago, that Hungary consumes every year billions of this product. And the population is only 9,6 million.
Pasta, of course, because stereotypes often come from something true…
2022 data estimate that each Italian consumes an average of 23,5 kg of pasta every year, which is more than double the second country of the list (Greece with 12,2, followed by France 9,1).
Hackepeter (raw minced pork on a roll with some raw onions and a pickled cucumber) some call it Mettbrötchen, but “Mett” is just the old northern German word from which the English derived the word “meat” and it just means meat, too.
Döner Kebap (a sandwich with salad, red cabbage, onions, cucumber, tomatoes, veal thinly cut from a vertical rotary spit and garlic, herb and hot sauces)
Not a food, but omnipresent:
Club-Mate (a yerba mate iced tea, originally introduced when we still had an emperor)
Basically, buttermilk with sugar and eggs (sometimes a bit of lemon juice), topped with little bland cookies. Served cold, of course. We don’t eat hot food other than barbecue in the summer.
(Italy) focaccia. it’s specific from my region and people outside here don’t really eat it and you cannot find even decent focaccia outside of here but it’s s o addicting, i would say kid eat it at least once a day as afternoon snack and adults at least once per week or more in generally every single time you go to a bakery
🇬🇧 Ready meals: In city centre supermarkets often the majority of produce is ready made slop. I always found them inedible.
Since moving to Europe – Portugal 🇵🇹 then Poland 🇵🇱, I literally never see them except a small shelf in convenience stores but not really in proper supermarkets, people here cook with raw ingredients and you can see it in the people, so much more fit and healthy.
Same goes for plastic. In the UK almost all the vegetables seem to be wrapped in plastic right down to the cucumbers which come individually wrapped. Unheard of here.
Olive oil defined us since ancient times, to this day we are the largest consumers of olive oil per capita by far leading everyone else at ~24 liters per year per capita.
Koldskål. Its a summer dessert and people literally eat it for breakfast here in the summer. Funnily enough I actually think that the stuff you can buy in the supermarket kind of tastes like puke, whereas the homemade version (which isn’t hard to make at all. It’s five ingredients and takes 12 minutes) is literally my favourite dessert of all time. Supermarket koldskål is a 2/10 and homemade koldskål is 10/10
For Denmark the obvious one is rye bread, but I think that remoulade is also something Danes can’t live without. You can’t really get it anywhere else abroad (at least the product that Danes associate with the word remoulade). It is one of those things, along with rye bread, that some Danes will pack in their suitcase when they go abroad on holiday
The order will vary from person to person. I know only a handful of people who don’t consume all three daily, and all of those are because of medical reasons (IBS, lactose intolerance, heart problems etc.).
Bolachas maria (marie cookies) I was thinking of something else but ffs this is close up there with codfish! There is no portuguese person who did not grow up eating them as a sandwhich with jam or nutella. Heck, i have even seen my younger cousin eating them with BUTTER once. Also, there are many deserts made here which include it, namely bolo de bolacha (cookie cake) or doce da casa and even mcdonalds has decided to chime in, bc here they really try to connect to our traditions bc portuguese ppl love eating out but we have way more confidence in things tat are more connected to traditions, specially when it comes to food (although young ppl love to go eat out fast food): they had for a limited time this year a sundade doce da casa (home´s sweet). When you go to a restaurant here, something “da casa” (of the house) is a speciality and the wording is used in a “homemade with love” type of underlying meaning.
Also, ppl give bolachas maria to one year olds, bc they cannot eat cakes yet but one of these does not hurt hahaha
Comments
Snus doesnt really count but boy be we addicted to it, besides that probably Kaffe. There would be an absolute uproar in Sweden if any of those two vanished☕🇸🇪
I assume you mean in a joking, snack-y kind of way?
Dragee Keksi advertise themselves with the slogan “if only I could stop”…
Feels like cheating to say something that is actually addictive. So for Sweden would I, based on Fäbojäntan and Kikki Danielsson, probably say falukorv.
Salty licorice, something we share with at least Sweden and Finland.
I would guess cheese. There are so many cheeses. People love slices of whole wheat bread with slices of Dutch cheese.
Mett – raw minced pork (it’s safe because there are lots of systematic health checks all along the production line)
Also Germany has a weird obsession with (white) asparagus. Every spring all restaurants have special offers, and even outside of supermarkets temporary stands pop up everywhere, just to sell fresh asparagus (and strawberries). That just doesn’t happen for any other vegetable.
🇵🇱 Kabanosy- thin smoked sausage sold in various flavours (chili? Cheese? Bacon? Sure!). Adverts everywhere, I see kids snacking on it on the way home from school, I see old ladies snacking on it when they’re on their way to…wherever.
Personally not a fan 🤷♀️
Ādažu čipši, salty chips made in Latvia, my favorite are the dill flavoured ones.
Edit: a word, am on mobile
Looking at Poland as an immigrant my answer isn’t probably what you’d expect.
It’s not beetroot, it’s not cabbage and it’s not even cucumber.
It’s mustard. It feels like you open a cupboard or fridge in someone’s house and they’ll have between six and ten different mustards all with a specific purpose.
Coffee! Really, basically all Nordics are heavily addicted to coffee and can barely function without it, especially in winter. A lot of Nordic people are also very addicted to licorice candy.
In Germany : coffee ! Most people drink it every day and many people all day. Sparkling water too because unlike most countries we usually drink sparkling water still water is not as popular. Maybe also bread we love bread
Kefir produced by Krasny Staw.
By wikipedia – is a fermented milk drink similar to a thin yogurt or ayran that is made from kefir grains, a specific type of mesophilic symbiotic culture. It is prepared by inoculating the milk of cows, goats, or sheep with kefir grains.
No match anywhere in the world, superior. I drink it almost everyday.
Also – draże korsarze. Just go to Poland, try them and fall in love.
Crisps. Give us the crisps.
Potatoes generally actually, chips (fries), roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, potato waffles, potato scones (tattie scones), cottage pies/shepherds pies, baked potatoes, hash browns… we luv.
Rye bread. I know some people who go away on holiday but carry their own bread with them because they cannot stay even a week without
The humble Spicebag
Hm, unique, and easy-to-eat things that we eat (comparatively) a lot… perhaps kabanos? (dried snack stick-sausage)
Also I’ve heard an observation of one naturalized American (who lives here for like 20 years) that his friends keep snacking a lot on sprats (fish) and it annoys him a lot, cuz he dislikes the smell.
…also: vodka-drinkers like pickles as a snack to the drink
Pepsi Max, Grandiosa (local frozen pizza), Taco (not so Mexican), coffee and Snus…
Crisps. Sometimes called potato chips! So many different flavours here compared to all of Europe and the US (apart from Ireland of course!) Totally unhealthy and unfilling but a very nice snack
Covridog – everyone is eating from this bakery/pastry shop. It’s a hotdog wrapped in pretzel dough and baked. We loved it here in Romania.
Lupine beans, conserved on slighty salted water and served has samll snacks usually with a cold beer.
As funny as it sounds, probably boiled potatoes. As a daily food they’re a side to everything.
Pasta. When I travel aboard with my parents, I know they cannot stay more than a couple of days without eating pasta or risotto. I had to look for a pizza place in Lisbon…
not all-year-round but in season: cherries and strawberries in any form (such as pasta with strawberries or rise pudding with strawberries or pierogi with strawberries)
Traditional answer would be salo (salted pork fat), realistic answer would be coffee. In the past decade availability of coffee machines made it far more popular than before.
Coffee, as well as other nordics.
Salmiakki (salty liquorice)
Asparagus in season and bread would be the obvious German choice
Zacuscă
It’s a super popular vegetable spread. It’s made with roasted eggplants and red peppers, tomato paste and onions.
My grandma makes it every year in ginormous quantities. It can be stored in sterilized and airtight jars. Can last up to a year if stored in a cold place.
Olive oil, bread, cured meats, we also eat eggs (fried, potato omelette, scrambled) very often compared to other countries. Depends on the region too. In Mallorca we love salty crackers like from the brand Quelitas.
Aromat. Swiss put it on boiled eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, bread, vegetables, fries and everything else.
Bread. One week into a vacation to a country with “no real bread” (aka every country that’s not Germany) and Germans lose their mind.
Fries!
Most Belgian go to the Frituur/friterie once a week. Often you eat it right before you leave on holiday and/or the first thing when you get back
Does wine count? We drink 61.1 Liters per Capita per year. Highest consumption in the world.
All time high of 111 L per capita in 1971… Other than that I guess bread or olive oil would also be suitable candidates…
We go through like 25L of Olive Oil per year at home (3 person household). Often more, but I do have an olive grove so there’s that ahah.
Black rye bread. Other countries don’t even know what a black bread is. They call black all shades of beige or brown. And they are tasteless. Ours is dark, dense, very tasty. People who live abroad have the right kind delivered by couriers or friends bringing it when visiting.
Mayonaise
Belgians can’t eat without it.
We. Eat. Everything. With mayonaise
Borrelhapjes, bitterballen, frietpan and borrelnootjes.
Who can give a good English translation? But this is 100% Dutch, even used to take it abroad on my travels for work
Hungary 🇭🇺
Food: “TÚRÓ RUDI”: cold Cottage cheese bar covered in dark chocholate – it is a desert. I read it a few years ago, that Hungary consumes every year billions of this product. And the population is only 9,6 million.
Bevarage: home made fruit brandy – Pálinka.
Pasta, of course, because stereotypes often come from something true…
2022 data estimate that each Italian consumes an average of 23,5 kg of pasta every year, which is more than double the second country of the list (Greece with 12,2, followed by France 9,1).
Kremska mustard – love it . Always buy multiple jars when I visit Czechia
Hackepeter (raw minced pork on a roll with some raw onions and a pickled cucumber) some call it Mettbrötchen, but “Mett” is just the old northern German word from which the English derived the word “meat” and it just means meat, too.
Döner Kebap (a sandwich with salad, red cabbage, onions, cucumber, tomatoes, veal thinly cut from a vertical rotary spit and garlic, herb and hot sauces)
Not a food, but omnipresent:
Club-Mate (a yerba mate iced tea, originally introduced when we still had an emperor)
Sweden, jam.
All kinds of jam, lingonberry, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, cloudberry, blackberry, etc.
And we have it with everything, meatballs, blackpudding, pancakes, princesscakes, meatloaf, swedish hash, etc.
It’s truly an addiction.
Smash!
Salted maize-cones dipped in chocolate. Sweet, salt and crispy.
Φακές or lentil soup , with bread I could eat that every day
In the summer, “Koldskål” with “Kammerjunker”.
Basically, buttermilk with sugar and eggs (sometimes a bit of lemon juice), topped with little bland cookies. Served cold, of course. We don’t eat hot food other than barbecue in the summer.
(Italy) focaccia. it’s specific from my region and people outside here don’t really eat it and you cannot find even decent focaccia outside of here but it’s s o addicting, i would say kid eat it at least once a day as afternoon snack and adults at least once per week or more in generally every single time you go to a bakery
Someone mentioned mustard, I’ll mention mayonnaise.
I don’t know a house that doesn’t have it stocked up to at least three unopened jars somewhere stored and one open in the fridge.
And better don’t ask a Pole which mayo is better. You’ll start a civil war.
🇬🇧 Ready meals: In city centre supermarkets often the majority of produce is ready made slop. I always found them inedible.
Since moving to Europe – Portugal 🇵🇹 then Poland 🇵🇱, I literally never see them except a small shelf in convenience stores but not really in proper supermarkets, people here cook with raw ingredients and you can see it in the people, so much more fit and healthy.
Same goes for plastic. In the UK almost all the vegetables seem to be wrapped in plastic right down to the cucumbers which come individually wrapped. Unheard of here.
Olive oil defined us since ancient times, to this day we are the largest consumers of olive oil per capita by far leading everyone else at ~24 liters per year per capita.
Koldskål. Its a summer dessert and people literally eat it for breakfast here in the summer. Funnily enough I actually think that the stuff you can buy in the supermarket kind of tastes like puke, whereas the homemade version (which isn’t hard to make at all. It’s five ingredients and takes 12 minutes) is literally my favourite dessert of all time. Supermarket koldskål is a 2/10 and homemade koldskål is 10/10
That would probably be Vegeta. It’s a mix of spices and vegetables and it’s literally in everything.
A lot of people have a vegetaphobia of how much Vegeta we use.
Shawarma, we really love it (and so do I)
There are literal feuds on which shawarma restaurant is the best.
For Denmark the obvious one is rye bread, but I think that remoulade is also something Danes can’t live without. You can’t really get it anywhere else abroad (at least the product that Danes associate with the word remoulade). It is one of those things, along with rye bread, that some Danes will pack in their suitcase when they go abroad on holiday
Where are the Croatians?? I want answers from them.
Banitsa
..and boza (I don’t like boza, but legend has it it makes your boobs grow so there’s that)
Coffee.
Cheese.
Bread.
The order will vary from person to person. I know only a handful of people who don’t consume all three daily, and all of those are because of medical reasons (IBS, lactose intolerance, heart problems etc.).
Sunflower seeds. It’s crazy, you can’t stop once you’ve started. Very good for those who are trying to quit smoking, too.
Cottage Cheese by Luxlait – often sold out or not much left
Bolachas maria (marie cookies) I was thinking of something else but ffs this is close up there with codfish! There is no portuguese person who did not grow up eating them as a sandwhich with jam or nutella. Heck, i have even seen my younger cousin eating them with BUTTER once. Also, there are many deserts made here which include it, namely bolo de bolacha (cookie cake) or doce da casa and even mcdonalds has decided to chime in, bc here they really try to connect to our traditions bc portuguese ppl love eating out but we have way more confidence in things tat are more connected to traditions, specially when it comes to food (although young ppl love to go eat out fast food): they had for a limited time this year a sundade doce da casa (home´s sweet). When you go to a restaurant here, something “da casa” (of the house) is a speciality and the wording is used in a “homemade with love” type of underlying meaning.
Also, ppl give bolachas maria to one year olds, bc they cannot eat cakes yet but one of these does not hurt hahaha
bread and olive oil, i think, but maybe other portuguese will say different.
Probably beer 🍺 Even the non-alcoholic beer is extremely popular in the Czech Republic.
Yoghurt, Bread and Tea
If I remember correctly, Turkey even has the highest number of Yoghurt, Bread and Tea consumption per capita (annually)