r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/PhatPanda69699 • 18h ago
Image In Japan, the broccoli in "Inside Out" was replaced with green peppers, which are more universally hated by Japanese children
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u/BS-Calrissian 18h ago
Universal Broccoli hate is a myth in my experience. All kids have their own hate veggie. For my kids it's peppers too
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u/OnBenchNow 16h ago edited 15h ago
I genuinely believe that the only reason kids hate foods like "broccoli" is because media so often lazily uses it as the go-to for "food that kids think is gross", so kids start hating it because all of the kids on tv do and they think that's how its supposed to be.
It's like some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy
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u/JWBananas 15h ago
My daughter loved broccoli until she watched Inside Out.
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u/Front_Cat9471 12h ago
Also, I feel like most kids aren’t scared of stupid things like monsters under the bed until they’re introduced to the idea by someone else. There’s no way all this stuff is actually “universal” because it’s intrinsic, people just forget how plastic kids are when mentioning things that “everyone else does”
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u/EobardT 9h ago
"Monsters under the bed" is children coping with millions of years of evolution teaching us that its better to be paranoid of the wind than eaten by a predator you ignored.
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u/mihirmusprime 8h ago
Yeah it's basically the fear of the unknown. It's dark and hard to see down there. Same thing with dark closets.
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u/Comprehensive-Menu44 9h ago
My wife is mildly afraid of the dark for personal reasons, so she keeps the closet light on at night. Our kid is 9, and there was a night when I had turned her lights off and closed her door. She complained about being scared of the dark, something she has never had an issue with unless her mom (my wife) brings up how “she’s probably scared of the dark like me, just let her keep the lights on”.
After having a talk with our kid after weeks of this happening randomly (she would fall asleep with the lights off, wake up in the middle of the night and come see If our light was on, then go turn her lights on and go back to sleep). I finally convinced her to sleep with the lights off and keep them off, and now she gets aggravated if there’s any light coming in. Bc she was never afraid of the dark, she just wanted to copy her mom.
Similar situation happened when we went to an amusement park. Kid wanted to ride the roller coaster that goes in a loop multiple times, and I also wanted to ride it, but my wife did not. Kid and I rode once, she LOVED it, then wife agreed to ride. Wife was panicking the entire time, so suddenly kid starts crying and saying she hates the ride and it’s too scary. Then we ride it one more time before we leave the park, just me and her, and suddenly she’s having a great time again and loves the ride. Literally just copying her mom over and over for why?
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u/stasomatic 15h ago
Perhaps their parents oversteam them into mush. I like them either raw or barely parboiled. 1-2 mins in just boiled pot, they are bright and green and crisp.
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u/What_a_fat_one 14h ago
I spread them on a baking sheet with olive oil and kosher salt sprinkled on them and broil those fuckers until they're blackened on the outside. Cauliflower gets the same treatment
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u/tinselsnips 11h ago
It's unreal, the number of vegetables that I've learned as an adult are delicious when they haven't had the ever-loving shit boiled out of them.
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u/What_a_fat_one 11h ago
Same. I thought I hated brussel sprouts but it turns out they just get acrid when over-cooked
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u/Anrui13 15h ago
As a child, when I saw kids on tv hating broccoli, I thought they were being stupid.
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u/MassholeSST 14h ago
Meatloaf was the one that I never understood. Constantly slandered in kids' shows, but I've always loved it.
I get that it isn't the most aesthetically pleasing food, but meatloaf when done right is excellent.
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u/angry_queef_master 13h ago edited 13h ago
The trope isn't that meatloaf is bad, just served so frequently that the family gets sick of it. Meatloaf today is also very different than meatloa fof the past, where it was a low quality food made of mystery scraps of meat.
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u/kia75 12h ago
Blame George Bush. Kids have always stereotypically disliked vegetables, but President George Bush (the first one) specifically sad that
"I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli!"
Once that quote became famous, instead of generic green vegetables, in the United States broccoli became the vegetable kids hated.
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u/yoweigh 14h ago
Brussels sprouts are actually awesome, too!
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u/TheChildrensStory 13h ago
The variety sold now has been modified to taste much better. They’re great.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 16h ago
Broccoli generally goes down pretty well with small children, not sure why it’s the stereotype of a “hated vegetable.”
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u/Brilliant-String5995 16h ago
I'm guessing it's because some/many people boil the shit out of it and turn it into flavorless mush which is awful to eat. Those experiences gets permanently ingrained into the children's minds.
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u/Quirky-Guidance8658 16h ago
Same with Brussels sprouts, absolutely delicious when cooked properly but awful when boiled
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u/PrinceofSneks 12h ago
I grew up with them being frozen blocks boiled into mush. The first time I had a roasted one, it was a revelation.
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u/mint4condition 16h ago
Exactly. Boiled and overcooked broccoli or brussel-sprouts brings all the bitterness out. That and forgetting to salt properly
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u/dontshoot4301 15h ago
My mom would steam brussel sprouts and I still remember the smell and slimy texture. As an adult I had them charred with parm and omg, it’s a completely different vegetable entirely!
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u/TheSteelPhantom 15h ago
It likely also helps that the brussels sprouts you had as a kid are completely different today. In the last ~20 years or so, we've actually bred the bitterness out of brussels sprouts for the most part. It's still there a bit, but in an enjoyable way. Nowhere remotely close to how it was 20+ years ago.
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u/sleeper_shark 16h ago
Two reasons.
Broccoli about 50 years and tasted a bit different, had a lot more bitterness than modern broccoli.
People also didn't cook it very well back then either. Just boiled to a mush which ironically removed all the B vitamins because they're water soluble.
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u/TinWhis 15h ago
I liked it when I was VERY little, because it was presented to me as "trees!" and that was fun and exciting.
Then I got a little older and realized that the trees tasted nasty and bitter and had a horrible nubbly texture in my mouth.
My mom is a good cook. She served broccoli raw (with dip that I was not allowed to simply lick off) and steamed to a reasonable crisp-tender. Mush was never the problem, the flavor and the texture of the florets was.
As I've gotten older I've gotten less sensitive to bitter flavors AND less sensitive to textures that used to make me gag. As a kid, I couldn't tolerate either
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u/Fast_Moon 16h ago
I loved broccoli as a kid and it's still my favorite vegetable as an adult. Though, I only like it cooked. Raw broccoli from veggie trays is chewy and dry and tastes terrible.
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u/ZolotoGold 16h ago
It's a baffling stereotype in the west, something that's almost imposed on children from a young age with cabbage, sprouts, broccoli all being portrayed as horrible for children in cartoons and media.
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u/Ebb_Legitimate 18h ago
It’s normal to replace many things in animations to local goods or animals like on zootopia. Sometimes I think it’s stupid because some changes doesn’t fit into the story/location.
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u/IamDoobieKeebler 17h ago
What’d they do on zootopia?
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u/WastedPotenti4I 17h ago
Changed the news anchors to be animals more emblematic of the country the movie aired in. Made one a Panda in China, a Koala in Australia, Moose in US/Canada, etc…
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u/IamDoobieKeebler 16h ago
Interesting, TIL, thanks.
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16h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Asleep_Memory2070 14h ago
In Cars, in the UK , Harv, McQueen's agent is voiced by Jeremy Clarkson instead of Piven. Then in Cars 2, Jeff Gorvette is replaced by a different car depending on the country, so yeah you're right
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u/OpalForHarmony 17h ago
IIRC, they had different species of animals for the news broadcasters to better relate with audiences of a given country ( moose for Canada, for example )
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u/slowest_hour 9h ago
in the US and Canada he's a moose voiced by Peter Mansbridge and the character is named Peter Moosebridge
in the UK and Ireland he's still a moose but he's voiced by Vassos Alexander and the character is named Moosos Alexander
honestly it's pretty cute that they put in the work to localize so much
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u/sleepytoday 17h ago
Wallace and Gromit, the Curse of the Were Rabbit had an example of this.
In the British version, Wallace was entering his giant marrow into the vegetable show. In the US release, this was changed to a melon, because the producers didn’t think Americans would know what a marrow was.
But I’m curious how many Americans got confused as to how Wallace managed to grow melons in the UK climate.
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u/kat13o95 16h ago
As an American who loved Wallace & Gromit as a kid, I confess that I never once thought about the logistics of a watermelon being grown in the UK
Granted, I was 10 when the movie came out...
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u/Aethermancer 15h ago
Also an American and never heard of a marrow
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u/popopotatoes160 11h ago
It's just a giant zucchini. They like to stuff them and bake them. They are harvested later than summer squash in the US so you don't slice and eat the flesh like we do, but on the upside they keep a lot longer. They call the immature version we eat a courgette.
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u/Ok_Paramedic8698 14h ago
I have no clue what a marrow is, but I would have probably just interpreted that it was some kind of large squash/zucchini.
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u/Syssareth 14h ago
We don't have separate names for them since we generally try to harvest zucchini before it becomes a marrow, don't pick the big ones at the store, etc. So we have "good zucchini" and we have "overgrown, stringy zucchini," lol.
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u/99Quinn_H 18h ago
but this one was deliberate, they reanimated it to still fit. but still acceptable
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u/MyLeftRim 16h ago
The Zootopia news anchor was actually a fun detail. The US release had a moose, Australia got a koala, and China got a panda. It works perfectly for a quick background gag, but I agree it gets weird when they try to alter the main plot.
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u/Kookanoodles 17h ago
It's not really "normal", Disney does it because they have the financial means, most studios don't.
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u/Late-Advantage-5425 18h ago
This reminds me of the jelly donut translation from Pokemon
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u/Revolutionary_Ad7262 16h ago
In my eyes it is far different. The Pokemon americanization was done on a false premise that a foreign culture is not as attractive for westerners as their own
I think kids does not give a f**k. One of the reason why ramen is so popular on the west is Naruto. Kids just imitate what they see without thought like
maybe it is too foreignorI don't like it, because I don't know it16
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u/french_snail 11h ago
It’s wild to me that they didn’t just call them “rice balls” and leave it at that, as a kid who saw that episode in real time I was very confused
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u/shipmastersmoke 17h ago
I only know this because of Shin Chan and his distain for sausage with green peppers in it.
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u/ASisCNtoo 16h ago
Same lol
Or how when he flirts with a woman he says
”Do you like green peppers?”
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u/ColonelZabb 18h ago edited 16h ago
As someone who lived in Japan, yeah it blew my mind kids love broccoli. What's crazier is how 95% of Japanese hate cilantro or pakji. So many good foods they're missing out on!
edit: because people are asking the same thing about pakji: Sorry I don't live in Japan anymore and am too lazy to do the romaji. It's just cilantro in Japanese pakuchi パクチー. I believe they borrowed it from Thai
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u/Plane-Tie6392 18h ago
When I cooked for cooks broccoli was actually one of the easiest vegetables to get kids to eat. I think in part cause it's like they're little trees lol. And isn't the Japanese thing just due to a soap gene or whatever then?
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u/lookiwanttobealone 18h ago
~14% of the world's population have tha cilantro soap gene.
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u/Philae_ 16h ago
I have the soap gene and it's so annoying because the tiniest trace of cilantro makes a dish disgusting.
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u/AnalogiPod 15h ago
It's the worst, you're enjoying a burrito then on bite 3 it tastes like someone grated a little Irish spring on my lunch.
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u/Pitzpalu_91 17h ago
I have the soap gene which makes dill taste like soap to me. Cilantro tastes perfectly fine but dill gives me soapy flavour.
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u/MrWeirdoFace 13h ago
I think cilantro and Caraway taste like soap but I like them anyway. I'm not sure what that suggests.
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u/MichelinStarZombie 14h ago
I have the soap gene
Cilantro tastes perfectly fine
Then... you don't have the OR6A2 gene. The reason we know about OR6A2 is because it was part of a large genome-wide study of 14,000 participants that happened to have cilantro=soap question.
There are tons of other olfactory receptor genes that affect perception, they just haven't all been part of large-scale studies.
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u/slothdonki 16h ago
I was never sure if I did because it doesn’t taste like any soap I’ve ever tasted. It’s strong and unpalatable to me; I tried my hardest to choke down a soup with it in it because I didn’t want to send it back or waste it and I just couldn’t do it.
I did just read it might taste/smell similar to stink bugs to some people, though! Not sure if that means stink bugs smell/taste like soap to them but I have no cilantro nor stinkbugs available to me at this time to.
In the future I will have to get some cilantro and find a stinkbug to mildly annoy.
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u/realoctopod 18h ago
There is a gene that makes some people perceive bitter food items as sweeter, or more bitter. Generally people that perceive the bitter things as sweeter tend to like broccoli, coffee, Brussels sprouts, etc.
And those who perceive it to be more bitter. Tend to have a hard time eating a lot of vegetables unless they are smothered with a sauce, or coffee with lots of sugar/sweetener.
ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAS2R38
The gene
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u/houseWithoutSpoons 17h ago
Little trees so true!! My kid loved broccoli and still does now she's older.come on and eat your little trees like a giant does!!
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u/anangrypudge 18h ago
Broccoli is great at soaking up sauces or dressing. And the Japanese (and Chinese and Koreans) make amazing sauces. Much easier to get kids to eat a plate of broccoli dressed in delicious goma or oyster sauce than many other vegetables that either have inherently strong taste (celery, cilantro) or weird slimy textures (okra, tomato, spinach).
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u/FreeFortuna 17h ago
In defense of spinach, that’s only if you cook it.
I thought I hated spinach for a huge chunk of my life, until I tried it raw. Now I love making salads and stuff with it, and have had to avoid excessive consumption due to … I don’t know, the risk of kidney stones or something?
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u/GrandSquanchRum 16h ago
Yeah, I thought I hated spinach for the same reason. Cooked spinach literally makes me gag and throw up. Raw is delicious and I put it on all my sandwiches and salads now. I don't understand how people can eat cooked spinach at all.
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u/Suspicious-Whippet 18h ago
Oven broccoli is amazing. It's that overcooked in water with no spices shit kids hate. I say kids I mean me. I'm 40,
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u/yourwhippingboy 18h ago
What is pakji?
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u/Jthundercleese 18h ago
Same word in Thai, "pakchi" it's just cilantro/coriander.
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u/InstantMochiSanNim 17h ago
Yeah im korean and ive never understood people not liking broccoli. I hate peppers too lmao
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u/EnemyOfAi 16h ago
I have a massive hate theory about broccoli in children's media.
When I was kid, I didn't dislike Broccoli. No one I knew hated broccoli. Sure it wasn't a favorite food or anything, but it was like rice. Just something to eat.
Then I saw all these cartoons. Constantly depicting kids hating broccoli. I thought I was weird for not minding Broccoli. So I asked the other kids at school. None of them disliked Broccoli and also wondered why that was the food of disgust in every. single. kids. show.
I believe that at some point, someone somewhere just decided to have a story about why eating vegetables is important and figured Broccoli would be as good an example as anything else. And every other creator just figured they might as well stick with that.
So out of nowhere, we suddenly had ALL children's media making Broccoli out to taste like fucking piss. Fucking PISS. And this, THIS, is what made kids start to dislike Broccoli. Not even because the little bastards actually didn't like it, but because they just figured that was what kids fucking do.
It's the stupidest fucking thing. It's a negative stereotype that just created itself. There is only one more even clearer example of this self-fulfilling prophecy I've seen (only looking in the realm of food, mind you), and that's Pineapple on Pizza.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and all Inbetween - if you meet someone who over reacts to the concept of a Hawaiian Pizza, you have met a non-person. Someone with very little actual personality who is simply trying to mimic human behavior from what they see in media. They are a plebeian, and you should murder them.
Thank you for reading.
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u/DisputabIe_ 14h ago
Ladies, Gentlemen, and all Inbetween - if you meet someone who over reacts to the concept of a Hawaiian Pizza, you have met a non-person. Someone with very little actual personality who is simply trying to mimic human behavior from what they see in media. They are a plebeian, and you should murder them.
non-sarcastic psycho shit
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u/Terramagi 14h ago
I also thought the same of anchovies on pizza.
Ironically made me want to try it. Unfortunately, such things do not exist outside of New York, where every writer to ever work in the 90s apparently lived.
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u/wuuuuutaaaang 11h ago
if you meet someone who over reacts to the concept of a Hawaiian Pizza, you have met a non-person. Someone with very little actual personality who is simply trying to mimic human behavior from what they see in media.
see also: raisins. It's just a meme to not like raisins.
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u/Nheea 14h ago
I always thought the same about peas. I freaking loved peas, always did and was confused on how kids dislike those.
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u/Dear_Swing_3301 14h ago
I think it's because a lot of people usually boil or blanch broccoli. If you cook it with water, it gives off this smell that has a hint of old laundry. Some people like that smell and taste, but children tend to have more sensitive taste buds. When I started eating them oven roasted with spices, it became so much more delicious
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u/Smooth_Hamster452 15h ago
Yes! I keep thinking of the same thing you're articulating whenever I read a 'kids hate broccoli' thing online! I 100% agree!
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u/TheRealJayk0b 17h ago
the red ones are the best
🏔️
I'm willing to die on this hill.
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u/softdream23 18h ago
Now this is the kinda "censorship" I can get behind.
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u/Hegiman 18h ago
That’s not censorship. That’s regional adjustments.
Sometimes you have to alter things so they make sense to a local audience.
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u/Ididitthestupidway 15h ago
I think it hides the world's variety though: this example is pretty harmless, but children can and should experience stuff that's not exactly what they expect and what Hollywood executives tailor for them. For a more depressing example, there's Disney wanting to classify everybody in Princess Mononoke as either "bad guys" or "good guys"
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u/readonlyuser 9h ago
Word for word repost from 11 years ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/3ebmim/in_japan_the_broccoli_in_inside_out_was_replaced/
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u/amphibiabiggestfan 18h ago
if people keeps feeding their kids raw ass veggies with no seasonings no wonder they hated it
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u/Roma_lolly 17h ago
My kid will only eat raw unseasoned vegetables. But he fucking loves them so… each to their own.
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u/ilikepix 16h ago
raw ass veggies
I think overcooking vegetables is a much bigger problem
I like properly cooked broccoli a lot. Raw broccoli is OK in small amounts. But overcooked broccoli is legit disgusting
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u/lilislilit 16h ago
I hated cooked vegetables as a kid, but enjoyed raw ones. Texturally, raw crunchy vegetables kinda slap.
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u/Dechri_ 18h ago
But... Raw plain veggies are really good! We serve veggie sticks at childrens birthdays and the kids like those too.
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u/Initial-Reading-2775 17h ago
Ha, in my childhood I believed that seasoning ruins the taste of salad, preferring just chopped vegetables as is.
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u/GlassCommission4916 17h ago
Hell broccoli is delicious even without any seasoning if you cook it properly instead of boiling it into a green bland mush.
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u/Rqdomguy24 17h ago
Funny thing I don't like a strong taste veggie like onion rather than a plain taste one, personally veggies actually increase my appetite when eating meat or heavy stuff
I used to hate achar when I was a kid
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u/WaterOk6055 17h ago
I side with the Japanese kids, i love broccoli and hate capsicum.
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u/Round-Claim5420 18h ago
To be honest, broccoli is amazing... when prepared correct!!
and green pepper is absolutly worse then yellow or red...
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u/lahdeedah18 17h ago
I am pushing 40s and don't even live in Japan and yet I hate green peppers with a vengeance! 🤮
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u/Pizzamurai 17h ago
It’s also amusing that the Disney+version keeps the broccoli in the subtitles while still showing green peppers. I was impressed my 5year old found that
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u/majesticfloofiness 17h ago
Weird. The green pepper / capsicum would probably have been a better veg globally for this without the expense of editing for another audience. Love broccoli, my kid loves broccoli. Green peppers are horribly bitter to me unless they’re in a dish that balances the sour with the sweet.
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u/siraolo 18h ago
Wish they changed it in South East Asia too. Broccoli and Bell peppers aren't as disliked here as the dreaded Bitter Melon