Of all our favorite foods that we can't imagine living without, peanut butter is definitely high up on this list. We'll eat peanut butter in PB&Js, of course, but also in noodle dishes, in spicy sauces and straight out of the jar with spoon. A world without peanut butter is a world we don't want to live in, and a country without peanut butter is one we're not sure we want to travel to.
Sadly, many countries don't share America's love for peanut butter. “In many parts of the world, peanut butter is regarded as an unpalatable American curiosity,” Brian Sternthal, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, explains. That fact almost doesn't compute, as we Americans eat more than a billion pounds of peanut butter every year.
Peanut butter is an especially tough sell in most of Europe. American peanut farmers have even tried advertising peanut butter to Europeans to warm them up to what could be a golden export for us, but no one's biting."The average European still eats less than one tablespoon of U.S. peanut butter in an entire year."
Peanut butter might be available in other countries, but it is often extremely hard to find, very expensive and sometimes barely reminiscent of the peanut butter we know in the U.S.
Here are 10 countries where you'll be hard pressed to find peanut butter. Help us out by telling us more in the comments!
France
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Why do the French hate peanut butter? What did peanut butter ever do to them? We know the French have great taste, but this is a serious blind spot.
Italy
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England
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We feel like the Brits should really embrace peanut butter, but it's still too hard to find in Great Britain.
Spain
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Perhaps you're seeing a trend here. Europeans do not eat peanut butter.
Russia
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Peanut butter might be available in bigger cities like Moscow, but you'll be hard-pressed to find it elsewhere in Russia. As
one blogger explains, "The constant search for peanut butter consumes a disproportionate share of an expat’s time here in Russia."
China
Peanut butter isn't very popular in mainland China (although it's not impossible to find in cities like Hong Kong). All that may change soon, however, since Hormel Foods purchased Skippy with the intention of "
seizing opportunities in China."
Sweden
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While you might be able to find peanut butter in the "American food" section of some grocery stores, it's not all that common. There's even a Facebook group called, "
Sweden Needs Peanut Butter."
Czech Republic
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Have you ever searched for peanut butter in the Czech Republic?
Argentina
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There might be an entire aisle in the grocery store devoted to dulce de leche (which we have no problem with), but peanut butter is really hard to come by.
Denmark
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If you're able to find peanut butter in Denmark, it may not taste like the stuff you're used to. There's plenty of Nutella, but not as much peanut butter.
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