This was a big disappointment for me in moving to North America — how little variety there is in the grocery stores, and how bland the tastes.

Actually I’m overstating it — there’s lots of variety in engineered food sounds like breakfast cereals (though interestingly not in potato chip flavors) but the fruit and veggie choices in the supermarkets are pretty limited and boring.

Try moving to Norway and then tell me you think that the selection in North America has little variety!

I've "only" spent half a year on SEA, but this is exactly it. I really miss the variety in mangos for example, but also banana, non of the in europe available bananas tastes great compared to average Thai street bananas.

Interestingly enough getting some specific cornflakes was easy and as you said chips and stuff has more variety anyway. On average i had a better selection of swiss chocolate than in neighbooring countries of switzerland.

North America is a large place. There are at least a half dozen different climates. Michigan has excellent variety with apples, peaches and cherries for example, but bananas are limited to Dole or Chiquita's Cavendish. Perhaps the availability of local fruit suppresses demand for banana variety. I've only seen more choices of banana in larger cities and university towns.

In South America you can also get a variety of bananas. I was surprised by how different bananas can taste. I'd really like to be able to buy them at supermarkets (in Germany/Europe), but you rarely get offered any type besides Cavendish and maybe cooking bananas, but that is just the tip of the iceberg of banana variety.

I really enjoyed the bananas when I was in Vietnam. It was a shame to come back to Cavendish bananas at home, I find that they are almost chalky in flavour to me.

When I was in the Philippines, I was shocked by their bananas. Tiny, many to a bunch. But to me, they were very sweet and not like an American banana.