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6 Things That Surprise Americans in Grocery Stores Abroad

By Michael Nordine
Read time: 3 minutes
April 3, 2026
Updated: April 3, 2026

6 Things That Surprise Americans in Grocery Stores Abroad

By Michael Nordine
Author
Michael Nordine
Michael is a staff writer for Daily Passport and film critic who writes the weekly newsletter Movie Brief. His writing and criticism have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Variety, and the Washington Post, among others. A native Angeleno, his favorite countries to visit are Norway and Japan.

Culture shock comes in many forms and from many experiences, including just the simple act of walking through a grocery store in another country and being surprised by just about everything there. (Or by what it’s called: Peanut butter, for example, is called pindakaas, meaning “peanut cheese,” in the Netherlands.) If you know what to expect, however, you’ll be better prepared to navigate the Lidls, Tescos, and Ito-Yokados of the world. Even so, the following six things might surprise you about grocery shopping in another country.

Bagged Milk

Bagged milk for sale in grocery store
Credit: © Cole Burston/Getty Images News 

Though especially common in Canada, where you’ll sometimes hear the unfortunate nickname of “milk bladder,” bagged milk can also be found in the U.K., Israel, India, and parts of Eastern Europe. Bags are cheaper to produce than cartons and more environmentally friendly than plastic jugs, but their nebulous shape tends to be off-putting to first-timers. To open a milk bag, you can use scissors to cut a small hole at a 45-degree angle in the top corner — many Canadians keep a special device called a Snippit in their kitchens for this purpose — and store the bags in reusable hard plastic milk pitchers.

Premade Pancakes

Bag of premade pancakes
Credit: © Steven Robinson Pictures—Moment/Getty Images 

Why go to the effort of actually cooking pancakes when you can buy them premade? That’s a question our friends in France apparently found themselves asking at one point, and the answer can be found in the products offered by companies like Bakerly. They may not be as tasty as their made-from-scratch counterparts, but there’s no doubting the convenience of pancakes to-go. When wandering a French grocery store, you’ll typically find individually wrapped mini pancakes in the snack aisle, but more traditional crepes are also often available premade in the refrigerated section.

Coin-Operated Grocery Carts

Coin-operated grocery store carts
Credit: © ltyuan/stock.adobe.com

Unless you frequently shop at Aldi, which originated in Germany and has a very European sensibility, seeing a coin-operated cart in another setting besides an airport probably sounds jarring. The practice is common not just at Aldi, but at many grocery stores in Europe, and is meant to ensure that customers return their carts rather than leave them in the parking lot — or even take off with them.

Unrefrigerated Eggs

Egg cartons on grocery store shelf
Credit: © ltyuan/stock.adobe.com

Though it might sound counterintuitive, the reason eggs don’t need to be refrigerated in many parts of Europe is because they aren’t washed first. Washing them removes a natural protective coating known as the “bloom,” which makes them shelf-stable for up to two weeks. Eggs in America are required to be washed, however, which means they also need to be refrigerated — once the bloom is gone, so too is the protection against salmonella.

“American” Aisles

Packaged snack foods in grocery store aisle
Credit: © Alexandre Rotenberg/stock.adobe.com

If you’d like to know what other countries often think of American food, just check the dedicated aisle at some of their grocery stores. It’s there that you’ll typically find all manner of packaged and processed foods, from Oreos and marshmallow fluff to soda and Cheetos — all of it delicious, none of it good for you.

Related: 7 American Foods Banned in Other Countries

Unrefrigerated Milk

Shopper holding milk jug in grocery store
Credit: © Oscar Wong—Moment/Getty Images 

As with eggs, milk doesn’t always need to be refrigerated. It depends on how it’s pasteurized, and much of the rest of the world opts for the ultra-high-temperature (UHT) method, which kills all bacteria and allows for a longer stable shelf life. America primarily uses HTST (high-temperature short-time) pasteurization, which kills fewer bacteria and requires refrigeration. Both are perfectly safe to drink, but the unrefrigerated variety might take some getting used to.