Mate, the 7-Eleven Big Gulp, the Walmart 5-gallon bucket of Snickers and the giant Costco bulk bag of peanut butter M&Ms blows my present day European mind, let alone someone from 1900.
Most grocery stores will have a few dozen chocolate bars in their candy aisle that actually say a percentage on them. Not only does this tell you what's not sugared to death, but companies that do this tend to make higher quality chocolate anyways. Anything 70% and higher tends to be tasty.
I find European chocolate tastes sickeningly sweet, so to each his own.
I don't think it does taste like vomit, but it does smell like it.
There are a lot of great chocolate makers in the US.
Ghirardelli are decent, but I've been relatively hard-pressed to find decent American chocolatiers otherwise. In general, European chocolatiers are in a different league.
Walgreens/CSV literal buckets of medicine like Advil and whatnot were some of the scariest things I've seen, and worst of all, people DEFENDING them.
This whole "too many painkillers are prescribed" thing really annoys me. It leads to cancer patients suffering because of the risk they could become addicted. So f-ing what?
Anyway, it's a cultural thing, other countries seem to be able to manage this at comparable levels with a fraction of the spending and without chucking these into every store:
https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-ibuprofen-200-mg... (1000 pieces)
Instead having something like this:
https://moncoinsante.com/mcs/en/ibuprofen/3173-nurofen-200mg... (30 pieces)
I'm trying to figure out consumption rates for the first one. I think Ibuprofen should expire in max 2-3 years after it's opened, so that would be... 700-1000 days. That's at least 1 pill per day for the entire period.
I'm not against them being available per se, but last time I was in a CSV they were all over the place (and other similar ones with huge quantities numbering in the hundreds, at least), which means that there is demand and widespread usage like that.
I highly doubt most people buying them are using them correctly (either overdosing, taking them when they're not actually needed, or taking them past their expiry date).
Hints: any medicine expires, any medicine has side effects. I understand that there are some contexts where selling literal kilos of medicine are valid but MASS selling is just stupid. Nobody, not even somewhat large families, should be popping even Advil such that they need to consume kilos of it within the 1-2 years until it expires. And Advil was just an example, I saw those buckets for stronger stuff with more side effects. Medicine should be used like a laser, only where it's needed and sparingly.
And if many people really need to be popping even Advil like candy, it's a symptom of healthcare system failures.
See, sometimes silly things hide much deeper problems, and just because you're immersed in the culture you can't see it.