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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

That's super reductionist. Balancing salty and umami with sweet is so common that you should be surprised that it took so long to realize that adding it directly to the fries makes sense.

BBQ sauce is full of sugar. Ketchup too. People dip their fries in ice cream. Chocolate dipped pretzels work on the same principle. As does candied bacon and apple grilled cheese. Your Thanksgiving Honeybaked Ham is glazed in a sweet sauce. Turkey and cranberry sauce are a match made in heaven. Bacon and maple syrup were practically made for each other.

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He's not incorrect about there being sugar in many things in the US, though. I've had to start reading labels a lot more after moving to the US, since some of the products I've used at home actually do have sugar added in the American version.

For example, this pasta sauce has sugar in the American version (https://www.classico.com/product/00041129077023/italian-saus...) but not the Canadian one (https://www.kraftwhatscooking.ca/brands/classico/product/cla...). The funniest thing about it is that the Canadian version still says "Product of USA" on the jar, they just cut out the sugar for that market.

Some of the local foods in the US also have off the charts levels of sweetness, such as southern sweet tea and sweet potato casserole with marshmallows. Bread and pizzas also tend to be on the sweeter side in the US.

Those sauces are just different, though similarly named. The calories, sodium and fibre values are different, one contains cheese where the other doesn't.

Sugar is not uncommon in commercial pasta sauce, even in Canada.

> Murica. Everything has sugar in it.

> That's super reductionist... [list of American foods (or foods that aren't american but are extremely popular there, as in ketchup) with sugar added to it]

You didn't do much to dispell the idea that this is an American thing.

Maybe salted caramel pralines. But sour and sweet is a common flavour trope in much of the world. e.g. lemon + sugar e.g. in cannoli; tamarind and cane sugar in SE Asia and Mexican recipes; Chinotto.

Prosciutto e melone, brie en croute, fruit and cheese/cured meat in general, duck a l'orange, pad thai. Sweet + salty/savoury foods are definitely not uncommon throughout the world.

Sure, you can find this flavour combination anywhere, but I don't know of another country that uses sugar to the extent America does. I ordered a fried breakfast in an American hotel and they put icing sugar on the sausages! It's bizarre.

Did the breakfast come with pancakes or waffles? Maybe the sugar was intended for those but some missed. I don't doubt there are people who enjoy sugared sausages, but for a restaurant to sugar their sausages unasked is something I'd expect most Americans to find odd as well.

Overspray from something else on the plate would have been obvious. Maybe it was overspray from someone else's plate.

But after a few days in America I wasn't that surprised. It was just another thing with added sugar for no reason.

> I ordered a fried breakfast in an American hotel and they put icing sugar on the sausages!

That is not normal, and it isn't fair to extrapolate your single experience to be so.

I ordered a fried breakfast in an American hotel and they put icing sugar on the sausages!

I've had hotel breakfasts in 48 states. Nobody puts sugar on the sausages.

You probably had pancakes on the plate and some of the sugar got on the sausages during sprinkling.

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