Eating your veggies

realitista@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 844 points –
37

Now I just say to my kids, "there are starving children in the US that wish they had this food". The turntables.

Never understood the veggie hate, even as a kid. My brother still avoids them and he's 30. I'm genuinely surprised he hasn't contracted scurvy.

I can explain. My parents just made bland, steamed vegetables. Idiots never learned to season and make vegetables tasty. Like it's so easy.

Steamed vegetables are great. You're just supposed to do more than steaming it. And not to oversteam.

Relevant Mr lovenstein

For me personally growing up, everyone just steamed them into a wet tasteless mush. This is not the way. Almost all of them are good sauted or baked, even brussel sprouts with a bit of salt and a dash of oil

Part of it, too, is selective breeding (aka genetic modification, but that's a dirty word).

https://www.bhg.com/news/brussels-sprouts-less-bitter/

Edit: I may be misinformed. I thought selective breeding was technically considered GM, but it sounds like only editing outside of breeding might be what qualifies. Didn't mean to make this post about technicalities, just meant to point out that genetics has also played a part in arguably more palatable plants.

Children are generally adverse to bitter tasting things. Hunter gatherer poison defense. Some folks are just more acutely sensitive to it.

Usually it's brassicas that cause that yuck reaction. Cabbage, broccoli, cale.

My wife insists that broccoli is disgusting.

I like it. It's not like super flavorful or anything, but I'll roast and salt a little broccoli for something to add to my fettuccine. She always passes and refuses to even try it.

More for me.

Broccoli is, like, one of the least disgusting vegetables.

Anything that tastes vaguely like soap, however, ruins a whole dish for me.

I recently discovered adding red pepper flakes to broccoli and holy shit it is delicious.

It's weird for me then because I loved vegetables as a kid but I still hate bitter things. I don't enjoy beer or coffee. Can't get enough broccoli or asparagus though.

Beer and coffee you can aquire pretty easily if you want to, because of the drugs. I'm fat enough without beer though, so it's still nasty to me. I speak with such confidence because I aquired a taste for campari which is about as bitter as Satan's asshole. I hated it at first, just putting it on my tongue was an exercise in torture. Now I like it.

Most people are already hitting their nutrients, which reduces vegetables down to empty mass. They have very little caloric value, so eating them is a waste of time and of stomach capacity. And the human body knows this fact, so it reacts to the taste of vegetables the same way it reacts to sawdust.

I see you got your food science degree from Trump University.

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Never understood how me eating stuff was supposed to help children in Africa

I blame lazy parents. The message is meant to be “You shouldn’t be picky, you should be thankful that you’re fortunate enough to have access to such quality food. There are people in much worse conditions than you, which much worse food security, who would gladly eat this broccoli/peas/whatever.” But most parents just say “there are starving children in Africa” and leave it at that.

Even with the first part, me eating or not eating the food doesn't wouldn't have done anything for the Africans.

Well selling things in the west is more profitable. Our demand and food waste means that supply could have gone somewhere else. If a distributor knew our market was full they should gear to sell somewhere else. Either way its a macro argument that doesn't mean much.

The message isn't "eat this to help starving kids" the message is "you could be a starving kid so get over yourself and eat the food you have abundance of"

I ate mine for China. Later I married one of those hungry Chinese children (now an adult) that I had eaten steamed broccoli for and she's still hungry. I think it's a genetic thing?

I have always liked vegetables. Even broccoli and Brussels sprouts. A friend once got in trouble with his mom for giving me his Brussels sprouts when I came over for dinner.

I never got that one. Just tedious punishment if I refused. For some reason my mother never hit me for that one.

My parents used to say that argument for me to finish my plate.

Until I found a better argument and never heard that phrase again.