Wait. What? Americans don't put butter in their sandwiches?

[GoodOldEmmaNess]

How can this make sense? That's what butter is - the thing that goes in sandwiches. Can I take the blue pill and forget I ever read this?
https://www.theguardian.com/food/commentisfree/2023/sep/20/why-dont-americans-put-butter-on-their-sandwiches

I only butter jacket potatoes never a sandwich. Butters just slimy why would I want a slimy sandwich 😅

We have half and half in the fridge (half heavy cream and half whole milk). I never use it for coffee - I prefer skim milk but I'm Irish and that is what I was brought up with. I rarely try frothing coffee drinks but one of my DDs finds the half and half works fine for that.

A lot of people use 'coffee creamer', which is basically oil and milk solids, with a lot of sweetener. I know a woman who uses this in tea, bleurgggh.

We have a moka pot, a French press, a flame proof pot for pour-over coffee that can be kept warm on the hob, and we use the same funnel and filters for making a single mug of coffee. We used to have a Bunn drip coffee machine but it died after about 20 years of heroic service. I use Lavazza espresso in the moka pot and Yaucona (Puerto Rican) ground coffee in everything else. I have instant coffee in the pantry and use it for baking a favourite Russian black bread recipe.

I do but my kids don't. Weirdos

You could try making your own , it is very easy .
1 lt of double cream makes about a pound of butter .
using a electric whisk beat the cream until it splits drain of the liquid butter milk ( use this for baking with )
Break the solid part into bits about 2x the size of a golf ball and in very cold water rinse of as much of the butter milk as you can , squish it between your fingers to get rid of all the butter milk .
Allow it to drain,
Keep doing this until you have rinsed it all ,
Flatten it out to as thin as you can between two sheets of clingfilm of baking paper and pat it dry ,
Now you can add your salt , pepper , herbs , chilli , mushroom etc sprinkling the flavouring on thinly fold in half add a bit more flavouring then fold again .
fold and kneed it until all the flavour is distributed. ( you may need to put it in the fridge every now and then during this process to keep it firm )
Go Easy on the flavour to start with , you can always add more latter .

It is slightly sweeter than shop bought butter but very nice imo .
it keeps well for about two weeks too

I was doing some shopping today and thought I would share some pictures of the dire cheese department of my supermarket in the suburbs of NYC. It's quite an assortment of fake cheese. The first picture also shows a selection of posh rubbish butter.

@MissConductUS Speaking for all the US "real" cheese lovers, thanks for that!

You don’t know what you’re missing out on! Nothing better than chips and vinegar!

This, I live in NZ and when you buy Fish & Chips they never have vinegar on them.

American bread is different to British bread and usually quite sweet.

I think their butter is also not quite the same as ours.

So a sandwich would be a different experience there with or without butter really.

I'm American, and honestly, we don't really eat a lot of sandwiches and they tend to be massive and fatty enough that they probably don't need butter in addition to the mayo.

That said, dh is British and does not butter his sandwiches. Oddly, the only sandwich I've ever seen him put butter on is peanut butter and jam. Like a slice of bread, butter, then peanut butter over top the butter, and then jam over the butter and the peanut butter, then second slice of bread. I actually quite like butter on sandwiches, but this just freaks me out. It's the layering of the spreadable things that just gives me the ick. 😂

Yes, I'm aware it's possible to get excellent and different kinds of bread in the US just as much as you can in the UK. But your bog-standard supermarket loaf in the US contains a lot more sugar than it does in the UK. So when you're talking about an average sandwich that an average person might make, it's likely to taste different anyway, with or without butter.

There's a huge variety of sliced pans in the US.

@Boomboom22
What's your beef with melatonin? Just because the British medical establishment has some strange and completely unwarranted aversion to it (despite years and years of observed use in the US in people of all ages)?

(And it is in the 'supplements' aisle, not the 'vitamin' aisle where I live.)

I can't stand butter.

I've never understood the British aversion to melatonin. Your brain produces melatonin. It's found in bacteria and cows. Substances that your body produces naturally are rarely dangerous or harmful. Asprin is far more dangerous.

Weird argument. Your brain and pituitary gland produce all sorts of neurotransmitters and hormones, are any drugs containing these ok?
Dopamine? Serotonin? Adrenaline?
Melatonin affects your circadian rhythms. Maybe useful for shift workers but available for kids?

Have there been millions of fatalities or brain injuries associated with melatonin use in the US? Hundreds of thousands? Tens of thousands? Thousands? Hundreds? Fifty?

Years and years of opportunity to observe and measure and come to the conclusion that melatonin use benign but continued refusal to ok its availability otc isn't an example of the scientific method in action.

Meanwhile, caffeine and alcohol = "we're fine with those".

We don't give caffeine or alcohol to children, 16 and 18 respectively usually though.
And America 21 for alcohol.

They are both freely available to children, to judge from scenes I witnessed on my last visit to the UK, and nobody seems to be too bothered.

Ditto Coca Cola and Pepsi, containing a lot of caffeine (and also a lot of sugar).

Because of this maybe:

• Headache
• Dizziness
• Nausea
• Daytime drowsiness

Other, less common melatonin side effects might include:

• Vivid dreams or nightmares
• Short-term feelings of depression
• Irritability
• Stomach cramps
• Diarrhea
• Constipation
• Decreased appetite
• Urinary incontinence at night
• Increased risk of falls
• Increased risk of seizures
• Confusion or disorientation
• Mood swings
• Reduced alertness

Because melatonin can cause drowsiness, don't drive or use machinery within five hours of taking it. Melatonin supplements can interact with some types of medicine, including:

• Medicine that slows blood clotting
• Medicine that prevents seizures
• Birth control medicine
• High blood pressure medicine
• Diabetes medicine
• Medicine that suppresses the immune system (immunosuppressants)
• Medicine that is broken down by the liver

Please can we get off the name calling and mud slinging .
@GoodOldEmmaNess started a interesting thread about how butties are made differently in in the usa & uk .
There is no need to rip each others food or habits to shreds .

But I’m not feeding that every night to my kids!

I think you can safely assume Americans don't let their small children drive after taking melatonin.

Seriously though, do people here really believe melatonin has such serious side effects that it shouldn't be available? That it does harm to hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of people all over the world?

Every drug, vitamin, supplement, food, and beverage you take has side effects. Some are mild, some are more severe. Not everyone taking a certain item will get any or even some of the side effects.

At this point in time, the continued prescription only stance on melatonin in the UK seems very strange given that it is used with no issue at all by so many millions of people elsewhere. It's as atrange as if the British medical establishment insisted on prescriptions for aspirin.

It’s clear that there has not been enough research about the long term effects of this drug.it’s become very fashionable in America to prescribe it for children with sleep difficulties for parents wanting that perfect ‘fix’…there is a worry that it can affect puberty related hormones. As a short term fix it may have its place but I would certainly not want my child to be on it for any length of time, just as I would not want my child taking paracetamol long term, or any medication unless absolutely necessary.