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.
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.
Casual xenophobia/racism. Much like the whole MSG thing here.
odd, never heard of comedy making fun of foreign food.
I personally enjoy a fair bit of Indian food, it’s quite varied.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe it’s that I don’t watch much comedy, but I’ve literally never seen anything dump on Indian. There is nothing more delicious than Indian. Nothing. Not even Mexican food. I do not say that lightly.
Eh, however on the Mexican side, it became kind of tradition to associate Taco Bell with uncontrollable, debilitating, liquid diarrhea
Taco Bell isn’t “mexican food,” it’s fast food, and there was a time when it was even worse then it is now.
There are two sides to american eating habits… the ones who think the Wendy’s Ghost Pepper fries were too spicy, and the ones who are actively out there inventing a whole new level of spice to torture their taste buds with.
Sadly, the first side is WAAAAAYYYY larger than the second and any level of spice stronger than black pepper will instantaneously send them both to the bathroom and the emergency room for even daring to try something with some flavor on it. And it doesn’t help that as far as most people (around here anyways) consider indian food chicken tika marsala and samosas… and that’s the entirety of the menu.
The only other thing I can think of that might cause it is the intention for each bite of bland food (like rice) to have a surplus of flavorings on it, which works for most non spiced foods but may wreak some havoc on people who don’t balance out their spice intake with the rest of the meal. There’s probably something to be said for overall quality causing some problems as well.
I can’t be sure, but from the people I’ve interacted with, these are reasons I can think of which may explain how things got to where they are.
Side one thinks Ketchup is spicy enough. The other side laughs at them, but they don’t understand how much spices hurt side one. This is genetic as far as I can tell - it isn’t just you get used to spices if fed them as a kid which side two seems to think.
It’s nothing genetic…
At least not for people
Capsaicin is what makes peppers hot, and all mammals are sensitive to it. But birds aren’t.
And birds are better are distributing seeds than mammals, so some peppers that evolved to have a lot of capsaicin spread much further. There was an advantage to large mammals not woofing a whole pepper down in one bite.
The difference in people is some like the endorphin rush from their bodies thinking they’re in actual pain, and some people don’t think it’s worth it.
But the vast amount of people that don’t like spicy food never work up to it, they just go straight to something crazy spicy and then refuse anything remotely spicy.
Like, if your first time drinking alcohol you just chug a fifth of everclear, it’s probably gonna be a while before your second night drinking.
2 things.
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It’s food that is prepared in India (not essentially the cultural food). They have sanitation issues like other developing nations. Mexico- “don’t drink the water”.
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White people with their sensitive tummies think salt is spicy.
Am American and eat Indian food several times a month. Even here there’s hole in the wall restaurants that have sanitation issues and you have to do some investigating before choosing to eat at a new place.
Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? The dirtiest places have the best food it’s just like taco trucks. If it looks like it will give you food poisoning. The food will be delicious.
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Could you post some examples of comedy shows making fun of indian food? Otherwise it sounds like you are using anecdata and then drawing an inaccurate and worthless generalization of a diverse genre of “comedy shows.”
It’s so common people don’t even see it. But it’s the same thing as Mexican food. The perception is it is spicy and will give you diarrhea.
I firmly believe this is because American people in general don’t understand what spices are. Spiced does not mean spicy hot. Spiced is flavourful and they just can’t have that. I have dined with Americans that truly believe black pepper is too spicy. We had a Starbucks chai which is absolutely terrible, and they’ve said “it’s too spicy”… What? Their brains equate flavour to spicy heat to bad.
It’s stupidly infuriating.
Spiced does not mean spicy hot.
Yea but like… it’s way hotter than most other American food by default.
No it isn’t… It has more spices. It does not have more capsaicin. Indian food by default is NOT spicy hot. It is spiced. You can get it spicy hot but that’s not default.
It’s like saying fried chicken is spicy because you can order it with a hot sauce coating. In reality just that style of preparation is spicy.
You can argue semantics until you go blue in the face. If you’re not used to spicy food or hot food, or food that produces a similar feeling in the mouth, you have to be careful with Indian food. Your tolerance level isn’t everyone else’s.
Spices are not heat. End of story. If you don’t understand this, you are obviously a pasty white American and the exact point being made.
What’s the point in being so pedantic? Calling it the correct thing isn’t going to make it palatable.
