Can you give an example? I know that some people have a hard time with the strong smells, but I honestly have never heard it made fun of in any demeaning way. Maybe at worst a character has a bad time on a toilet due to the Indian food being so spicy, but I can’t think of how it would be made fun of. Seems well loved here in the States in my experience.
I’ve not heard these jokes. I love my Indian food. Taco Bell jokes are 10x more prevalent. What are your sources for Indian food hate?
As a Mexican, I don’t take Taco Bell jokes to be offensive. Or even Mexican food jokes to be offensive, for that matter. I mean, i know my people’s food will sometimes make me shit my pants, but fuck it’s delicious. But back to the point, Taco Bell is far from being ethnically offensive, because it is far from being representative of Mexican food.
Taco Bell is far from being ethnically offensive, because it is far from being representative of Mexican food.
You’re right, Taco Bell is way better.
(just kidding pls no hate)
laughs in Mexican
Jajaja
Everyone knows it’s a shitty photocopy of Tex-Mex. We eat it anyway because it’s greasy, cheap food with a strong but not offensive flavour of some kind.
Cumin, paprika, and a touch of Cayenne, oh and some MSG
And then they combine a few stock ingredients together with it in one of many ways. Their marketing doesn’t even bother to claim it’s anything special, it’s just like “here’s a new, even more convoluted way to combine the exact same shit! DONG!!”.
It’s still hits the spot, though, and to cut them some slack my bean crunchwrap is mostly vegetables, which is more than you could say for pizza or a burger and fries.
Oh definitely. Makes it stupidly easy to make at home. Cheaper and faster too according to some YouTube cook vlogger. I abhore his cross contamination controls, or rather the complete lack thereof, but it’s supposed to be a home cooking show, so whatever. Dude still manages to do some decent knife and fire work, so I’ll watch to get ideas.
There are some things you don’t joke about, taco bell actually being Mexican food is one of them. It might be a war crime to even joke it’s better than Mexican food.
Do Mexicans even know how to be offended, or is it a foreign concept completely? You guys like Speedy Gonzales.
I think a very interesting part of Mexican culture is to learn how to not take ourselves too seriously. I had to learn to deal with being made fun of for the stupidest things. It was always “el que se enoja, pierde (he who gets mad, loses).” So you had to learn how to take it and dish it back. And the idea was to keep it as a battle of wits, without becoming irate and physical. I have to admit, I lost more times than I’d like to own up…
That’s neat (the cultural part, sorry you got teased so much). I guess America creates enough butthurt for the whole continent, amiright? :P
Someone’s gotta balance the scales
Yeah, the joke isn’t just that Mexican food gave them the shits, it’s that we still eat knowing that is the case because its so fucking good.
Taco Bell was started by a white guy named Mr. Bell. He had a hot dog stand that wasn’t doing so well, and talked a Mexican restaurant that always had a line out the door into teaching him how to make tacos. He moved the stand across town and made so much money that he started his own store.
Carl’s Jr, and In N Out have similar origin stories.
I’m American and I can’t think of a comedy show that makes fun of Indian food. Can you name one of them so I can check it out?
I’d say most medium to large sized cities in the US have Indian restaurants, so it’s not so unusual.
Big bang theory.
Rag “you’re talking about a subcontinent that hasn’t had a solid bowl movement…”
Is that a comedy show?
Removed by mod
Where Sheldon tells an Indian woman how to cook curry ? Ok.
Friends did, Big Bang Theory does all the time, but yeah pretty much every yank comedy contains some negativity towards Indian food. I don’t watch much comedy, but it seems to be a meme in their shows.
Do they? I rarely see jokes about it and if I do see jokes they are spicy diarrhea related which I will admit is odd because Americanized Indian food is not spicy at all.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen jokes about Indian food, but if you’re right I would guess it’s for the same reasons Taco Bell gets the same jokes - it’s still spicy by “mayonnaise is spicy” standards and (at least my orders) are usually bean heavy and that’s a lot of fiber by average American diet standards. The joke is really on us, not the Indian food.
exactly the spicey diarrhea jokes, as well as direct comparisons to vomit. American Dad and Family Guy writers spring to mind.
That’s the kind of jokes those shows make; cheap shots and poop jokes.
So 2 cartoons that are by the same people. So basically a single source.
Indian food is probably given less shit in the states than most other foods. Mainly just the smell it leaves permeating through everything.
British food is tasteless trash. Mexican food makes you shit your pants. Chinese food is eating cats and dogs. Thai will burn your butthole to death. German food is angry and has sauerkraut. Canada just has syrup on everything. Japan is fish they won’t cook. Irish is all potatoes and sheep belly. Indian is stinky and smells forever.
Americans deep fry everything.We’re an equal opportunity country. We’ll talk shit on everyone.
The German food stereotype is definitely that it’s all sausage.
The spice jokes happen in any nation that culturally lacks a pepper based heat as a common seasoning, towards any food with said spice. Southern states, who share food inspiration with mexico, do not have these jokes. They eat the hottest nonsense sauces, theyre used to the effect.
When you say southern states, do you mean southwestern? Because I’ve lived in the southeast, and the food is not spicy.
It’s also a joke because if you don’t often have spicy food you are going to get the shits when you do have it.
Right, but specifically that joke cannot be made successfully in regions where pepper based spice is common cuisine. Because those people dont have that reaction.
And a large portion of the US makes that spice a common part of normal meals, thanks to proximity to mexico, or international ports.
Basically, this is only funny to people in very isolated communities and the central northern states. Both coasts and the south have plenty of spicy influence.
I’m an exceptional nut job from the Midwest, myself. I’m immune to spicy shits and the Mexicans I know won’t eat my hot sauces and think I’m crazy. I’ve seen people on the internet eat hotter stuff than me and enjoy it, but I’ve never met someone in real life that does.
As near as I can figure I just like spicy flavors and I’m not as sensitive to capsaicin as normal people are, because it doesn’t cause me pain like it seems to do to anyone else. Southern Thai food tastes pretty good after I add a splash of mad dog 357 gold edition to it.
You got the bird gene, lucky bastard
Half bird, at least.
It comes with downsides too, though. If I cook for other people, I have to make it bland and add my hotness afterwards. That one took a while to figure out because as soon as I could taste any spiciness, everyone else would moan and complain.
Then I can’t just buy some $5 sauce from a grocery store if I want hot sauce. I have to order stuff that’s generally north of $20 a bottle. Also, a lot of grocery stores don’t keep habaneros year round.
Casual xenophobia/racism. Much like the whole MSG thing here.
Indian food is very popular in the US and I have never heard anybody rag on it ever. Don’t know what kind of media you must be consuming.
Do they?
It’s not just Indian food. A number of mostly older Americans like to make fun of any spicy “foreign” foods that are more adventurous than the local Taco Bell. They do it because their tummies can’t handle anything that’s not bland to the point of being tastless. These are the same people who think salt and pepper are exotic spices. For the record I am American and I love Indian food
Who made you the expert on old people and their tummies?
I did. I decide those kinda things.
Don’t ask who tasked me with this responsibility
A bunch of cranky old relatives who do things like order hibachi chicken at the best Thai restaurant in town, or insist that their steak be cooked until it is flavorless shoe leather
Its not that they arent used to flavored food. You have a built up tolerance to a mildly toxic chemical such that it doesnt cause you intestinal inflammation anymore.
I love heat as much as the next guy, but lets be clear. You dont taste with your butthole, and its a toxin that doesnt discriminate between tongue and tookus.
Capsaicin is not a toxin. It’s also sensed by your pain receptors, not your taste buds.
It is literally a toxin, which is part of why it binds to your pain receptors and not your taste buds.
Which is also why it reacts with your entire digestive system, not just your mouth. Because it is a mammal targeting poison that evolved to deter unwanted predation. Its supposed to make you sick, so you dont eat the pepper and grind its seeds with your teeth.
Its just a toxin that is only deadly in insanely massive doses, that humans are lucky enough to be able to build tolerance for.
Capsaicin is not the first toxin humans ingest for fun. It will not be the last. But while lots of toxins are fun to eat, you shouldnt forget that it is very much a toxin, which is why some people cannot stomach them. Not everyone can stomach eating poisons easily, and you can have too much of them if youre not careful.
E: to clarify, “you dont taste with your butthole” means while capsaicin is a fun flavor boosting chemical when paired with food, you do not get the additional flavor when that chemical passes through your south mouth and shares its little gift regardless.
I appreciate your elaborating.
I was going to say more until I realized that you and I are using different definitions of ‘toxin’. There is more than one definition and yours is not the one that I was approaching the subject from. To me, a toxin is something that causes disease. But yes, you’re right, a plant is considered toxic for different reasons.
What toxin causes disease in a way that capsaicin doesnt at a high enough dose? The only difference between capsaicin and any other toxin is the pathway of activity and dosage. Enough cap will definitely kill you, and it has a well documented list of capsaicin poisoning symptoms.
Do they? I don’t watch much TV and nobody I know makes fun of Indian food, it’s awesome.
It gets the same jokes as Mexican food usually here. Really, some people’s guts just can’t handle any amount of spice, and poo jokes are always a hit.
I haven’t seen too many shows make fun of Indian food, but to be fair my taste in TV often isn’t very mainstream and doesn’t tend to include a lot of comedy, so I may not be the right one to answer this.
When I do see it, usually I see them joking about the smell, and I can kind of get that. Don’t get me wrong, I love Indian food, I love the flavors and smells and all that goes with it. But all of those wonderful spices can create a powerful smell, it can kind of cling to clothing and such, if you live in an apartment it’s very likely you’ll smell when your neighbors are cooking Indian food, etc. and I can get how that can be annoying or unpleasant for some people. Honestly, if I was constantly smelling Indian food wafting into my apartment through a shared vent or something, I’d probably get sick of it too.
There’s also the fact that a lot of Americans just have a very bland palate, and all of the spices, not to mention heat, can be very overwhelming to people who aren’t accustomed to it. Personally when I see these jokes, and again, my experience may not be typical, it tends to be more at the expense of the American having boring taste in food than actually making fun of Indian food itself.
And since I mentioned that people may not be accustomed to it, let’s not forget that America is a big, diverse country, and not every part of America has a big Indian population, which means a lot of the country doesn’t necessarily have a lot of exposure to indian food. I do happen to live in an area with a lot of Indian families, but you only need to drive maybe about an hour away for your options to dry up pretty quickly. I have friends who genuinely do not have any Indian restaurants anywhere near them, and their grocery options are sometimes kind of limited which may get in the way of making it at home if they wanted to (and not everyone is a great cook or willing to risk messing up dinner with unfamiliar recipes) And that much spice and flavor when you’re not used to it can be a bit off-putting. I’m a fairly adventurous eater, but I didn’t grow up eating Indian food (my mom is one of those kinds of people who thinks a McChicken is too spicy,) and I know the first time I had Indian I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, I didn’t dislike it, but I had to have it a couple times before I really came to appreciate it.
Personally, in my circles the people who don’t like Indian tend to be the odd ones out that get made fun of, but again I’m not necessarily representative of America in general, that’s just been my own experience. I even know some people who love indian food but can’t/shouldn’t eat it due to all of the spices and such not sitting well with their stomachs (and there may be a discussion to be had about many American’s bland, super-processed diets having negative effects on their gut microbiomes possibly making it harder for their systems to handle certain cuisines, but that’s well outside of my depth to really go into, I’m a foodie, not a nutritionist, so take my speculation with a heaping helping of some coarse finishing salt)
let’s not forget that America is a big, diverse country
We just did a 5 week trip in the US which was LA, drive to Vegas, fly to NYC, then drive 5000k to the middle of Texas, and man… I keep hearing about all this diversity but that joint is the same all over. Having some mountains in the background instead of a desert, and having a majority RAM 2500s instead of majority Teslas is not the “diversity” I’d been led to believe existed. It’s all just chain stores, tipping, and bad coffee anywhere you go.
Most places in the US developed in a similarly shitty way thanks to the logic of American capitalism. That doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t ethnic and cultural diversity.
If you say so! Place was the same from coast to coast from our outsiders perspective.
America - where you can get any kind of fast food you want, as long as it’s a hamburger.
-Neil Gaimen
Yeah I’d like to see some examples. Everyone I know loves Indian food. Hope you’re not some kind of troll. Give me that curry, man!
A skit making fun of an American stereotype…
Aww I sure hope you aren’t basing your opinion off of one of the most purposefully offensive shows out there haha. Indian food is known for its potential heat and the corresponding affects… and more often than not the joke is about stupid americans who think they’re chads who go for the multiple star rating and pay the price. Peter from Family Guy is beloved because of his stupid decisions and we laugh at the consequences!
Also, Indian food is not the only example of this… Thai Food is my particular masochistic joy =) Give me that pain! It tastes so good!
Thai food is so much spicier than Indian food. I’ve yet to encounter the Indian food that was just too spicy for me to eat at all, but Thai food…
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What is the punchline you see in American media about Indian food?
The stereotype of Indian cuisine is that it sometimes has really strong flavor, sometimes a strong smell to match. Those are not bad things.
I don’t have any overall negative associations with Indian food. There are certainly dishes that don’t appeal to me, but if anyone wanted to go to an Indian restaurant for dinner, I would say “yes, please”.
Edit: I see some comments about “spicy diarrhea” jokes. I see those as a function of people not acclimated to spicy food, not that the spicy food itself is bad. I’m impressed by people who can eat full spicy level Indian food. I would be on a toilet for a day if I ate fully spicy level; that’s my problem, not the fault of Indian cuisine overall.
No amount of acclimation will stop an ulcer from reacting badly to spicy food. There are plenty of people who love spicy hot food but physically can’t eat it, unfortunately.
bland shows catering to bland tastes, maybe?
odd, never heard of comedy making fun of foreign food.
I personally enjoy a fair bit of Indian food, it’s quite varied.
