Kids Hate Vegetables

Disgust is the perfect emotion for situations like this.

"Ian, why don't you say Grace?"
Dear God, thanks, and if you loved me, vegetables would be extinct
Now I'm looking down the barrel of a string-bean side
Like an Exodus of biblical proportions redefined

— Aesop Rock, "Grace"

In fiction and also real life, children tend to have a disgust for vegetables and dread the moment they're served for dinner or lunch. It could be that they're Picky Eaters or their taste buds just are more sensitive to bitter tastes, which are found in many vegetables. Or their parents (usually the mom in fiction) has poor culinary skills and cooks them to an unappetizing mush. Whatever the cause, they will devise a mischievous plot behind their parents' back to get rid of them, which usually never ends well. This can often be used as an exploitative device for parents or babysitters to torture disobedient kids, though in most cases they just want to ensure a healthy diet in children to assist in their growth. Oftentimes, the kids will resort to hiding the vegetables, feeding them to a pet, putting them on a sibling's plate, or using a junk food condiment to diminish the squeamish flavor. In many cases, a dislike of vegetables as a teenager or adult is used to indicate lingering immaturity in a character.

Interestingly, this trope exists in many parts of the world, but which specific veggies are most commonly subjected to it can vary quite a bit from place to place and from culture to culture. For example, Western works tend to focus on vegetables like broccoli and spinach, but in Japanese media the primary offenders are instead bell peppers and carrots. Of course, it's by no means unheard of for these to overlap.

Overlaps with Does Not Like Spam and Picky Eater. Subtrope of Stock "Yuck!". May involve Greens Precede Sweets if dessert is used as a bribe. Also possibly related to If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You and Disgusting Vegetarian Food. One method of getting around this trope is Trojan Veggies.

This can very much be Truth in Television, as anyone who remembers their childhood can attest to. Especially the case if one grew up in an area where it's not common to use a diverse arrays of spices in cooking or simply boiling vegetables being the be all end all of preparing them.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A television commercial in the United States for Ore-Ida Frozen Crinkle Fries presents a father using the product as "payment" to encourage his daughter to eat her green vegetables in exchange for several cooked fries. When it works successfully, the entire family looks pleased and relieved.
• A televised commercial for Sara Lee baked goods has two brothers at the dinner table. One boy finishes his vegetables and is rewarded with a serving of Sara Lee pound cake. The second boy sees this and begins trying to ingest a head of broccoli. It's a slow process, as if the thing is made of nitro.
• For one television commercial for Campbell's Soup, the father in the commercial picks up the can and reads "1/2 serving of vegetables in every bowl," but just as he reads the word "vegetables," the mom bangs on some pots hanging overhead to drown out his voice. As he tries to repeat himself, she throws him a Death Glare as she bangs them a second time.

Animation

• BoBoiBoy: Probe displays a slideshow to his boss Adu Du about the horrible things humans do to green aliens like him, unaware at the time that it was simply broccoli. One of the slides shows a young child leaning away in fear from the broccoli being served to him.

Anime & Manga

• Chainsaw Man: Psychopathic Womanchild Power hates vegetables. Really, really hates vegetables. At some point she was forced to eat some and reacted like she had ingested poison, to the point she couldn't keep them down and ended up puking all over herself.
• In Crayon Shin-chan, one of Shin-Chan's trademark dislikes is green bell peppers, which he often tries to dispose of without his mom noticing, from holding it in his mouth and running away mid-dinner to spit them into the toilet, to pretending to keep them with plant seeds and burying them. Truth in Television, however — bell peppers are widely-produced in Japan and frequently served to children for their nutritious value, but most Japanese kids dislike them for their bitter taste.
• Hello Kitty: In the series Growing Up with Hello Kitty, the episode "Eating Our Vegetables" reveals that the twins hate tomatoes and bell peppers, their classmates all hate various vegetables, and none of them like bell peppers. However, the twins' mother always looks sad whenever they don't eat their vegetables, so they decide to force them down anyway.
• Monster Rancher: Genki hates carrots; in one episode, he's freaked out to learn that Holly and Hare prepared a carrot-heavy dinner the night before the tournament, but can't bring himself to reject the meal, complaining to Mocchi that "It's hard being a man."
• Pokémon the Series: XY: Bonnie does not care much for carrots, as is typical for kids her age in anime.
• Pokémon: The Series: Misty (who is around Ash's age) mentions that she does not like peppers and carrots when she's ranting about how much she hates Bug-type Pokémon.
  Misty: Bugs are one of the three most disgusting things in the world!
  Ash: Aside from you, what are the other disgusting things?
  Misty: Very funny. Carrots, peppers, and bugs! Everyone has something they don't like and I don't like bugs!
• Sailor Moon:
  • Usagi is a young teenager, but to emphasize how immature she is, she is shown to detest carrots. This is ironic, as her name sounds like the Japanese word for "rabbit".
  • Chibiusa inherited Usagi's hatred of carrots.
• Sleepless Domain: Heartful Punch (whose diet consists primarily of protein shakes and protein powder) is at one point somewhat embarrassed to admit that she still doesn't eat vegetables, though she claims to at least be trying.
  "...I'm working on it. Beets are okay. And salads are easy to make."
• Spy X Family: Early on when practicing for Eden Academy's entrance interview, Anya describes herself with "I like peanuts! I don't like carrots!"
• Pretty Cure:
  • In Episode 6 of Fresh Pretty Cure!, it's shown that Love dislikes carrots, and is upset about having to cook them for dinner. Her mother scolds her for being picky, and in the end she obliges to eat them.
  • In an episode of Doki Doki! PreCure, we learn that Aguri Madoka and Ai-chan both hate carrots. Later in the episode, both of them learn to love carrots after thinking of all the effort people make to grow them. This episode was cut from the English dub, Glitter Force Doki Doki, likely due to Values Dissonance as carrots are not as widely disliked among North American children compared to Japanese children.
  • Episode 26 of Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure deals with Kome-Kome and Kokone trying to overcome their hatred of green peppers.
• Ojamajo Doremi: Part of the plot is centered on how Hana, the baby that the main characters are taking care of, has been cursed to dislike vegetables, so they have to find a way to bake different kinds of food that have vegetables in them.

Arts

• An art installation by Norm Magnusson near the convention center in Boston - a faux historical sign - is intended to humorously subvert this trope: "On this site stood Scottie Webb, age 7, who refused to eat his herbicide-resistant, pesticide-producing, genetically engineered vegetables."

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin, a Picky Eater in general, hates vegetables and vegetarian meals, claiming to be a a dessertarian. To be fair, most of his mom's cooking appears to be lumpy green sludge — but that might just be Calvin's overactive imagination. He also provides the page image for Does Not Like Spam, complaining about having to eat a "slimy asparagus".
• The titular character of Dennis the Menace (US) is a five-year-old boy who hates carrots. In a few◊ strips,◊ he'd try unsuccessfully to get rid of them.
• For Better or for Worse: April has a serving of peas on her plate, and her mother insists that she eat them. After much protest and negotiating, April appears to get the peas off her plate. It's not until Ellie clears away the dinner dishes that she discovers April had hidden her peas under the plate's rim.
• A famous cartoon in The New Yorker, drawn by Carl Rose and captioned by E. B. White, showed a mother trying to get her child to eat her vegetables:
  Mother: "It's broccoli, dear."
  Daughter: "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."

Fan Works

• Fate Unown: In a flashback, Spencer asks Delia for advice on how to get his daughter Molly to eat vegetables. Delia's son Ash has never had an issue eating, but Delia does know of a few tricks involving mixing foods together.
• In this JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fan comic, Jolyne doesn't want to eat her vegetables. Her mom tries to get her to eat them by saying that she will grow up to be big and strong like her dad Jotaro if she does, but it backfires when Jolyne imagines herself as a big muscular Brawn Hilda and starts to cry at the thought of that happening.

Films — Animation

• Inside Out: Riley hates broccoli, as established in the scene that introduces Disgust, who thinks she's saving Riley from being poisoned by them. Later, a trip to a pizzeria is ruined when the pizza has broccoli as a topping.
  Anger: Congratulations, San Francisco! YOU'VE RUINED PIZZA! First the Hawaiians, and now you.
  • Interestingly, it was changed to green peppers in Japan, because Japanese kids don’t have the broccoli dislike.

Films — Live-Action

• Daddy Day Care: Charlie Hinton comes up with a vegetable-flavoured cereal called Veggie O's. During focus group testing, it's apparent that the kids do NOT like it, causing the company's entire health division (which Charlie is a part of) to be shut down.
• Actually weaponized in The French Dispatch. When bringing poisoned food to the criminals that have kidnapped the Commissaire's son Gigi (as well as the aforementioned captive), Lt. Nescaffier specifically puts the poison in the radishes, knowing that Gigi won't touch them because he hates radishes. Unfortunately, the leader of the kidnappers hates radishes too.
• The Hobbit: Played for Laughs: the dwarves aren't exactly thrilled to eat Elvish vegetables and seem downright confused by the lack of meat. Ori openly states that he doesn't like green food.
• Briefly joked about in the Marx Brothers' movie Animal Crackers as one of Groucho's character's "strange interludes".
  This would be a better world for children if the parents had to eat the spinach.
• The Shirley Temple vehicle Poor Little Rich Girl (1936) featured the musical number "You've Gotta Eat Your Spinach, Baby", in which Shirley objects "on behalf of the kids of the nation" to having to eat the title vegetable:
  No spinach, take away that awful greenery
  No spinach, give us lots of jelly beanery
  We positively refuse to budge
  We'd like lollipops and we like fudge
  But no spinach, Hosanna!

Literature

• American Girls Collection:
  • In Meet Molly, Molly McIntire is disgusted by the sight of the orange-colored blob of mashed turnips that the family's housekeeper Mrs. Gilford had made for dinner and refuses to eat it. Mrs. Gilford tries to shame Molly for being wasteful and unpatriotic, as this is taking place during World War II and the turnips came from their very own Victory garden, which the family grew over the summer as part of their effort to not buy tin cans to the metal could be used by the military. The trope is zigzagged a bit, as Molly's three siblings don't seem to have a problem with eating the turnips, and Molly finds that she likes them after her mother comes home and adds butter, sugar and cinnamon to them.
  • In Lindsey, when everyone is staring at Lindsey with Death Glares for ruining the pet parade with her activism, she describes them as looking at her "the way you stare at an overcooked piece of asparagus your mom is trying to make you eat."
• Angela Nicely:
  • In “Healthy Holiday!”, Angela is revealed to hate beets and she makes a face when eating a carrot.
  • In “The Ugly Sisters!”, Myleen finds Angela’s carrot sticks gross.
• Making Money: The Discworld novel inverts the stereotype. Protagonist Moist von Lipwig recalls how, as a boy, he used to hide his meat under the vegetables rather than eat the former. Justified, as Moist's grandfather ran a dog kennel and, apparently, had saved all the tastier bits of pigs or chickens for his dogs.
• A Bad Case of Stripes: The main reason for Camilla's self-consciousness is that all of her friends hate lima beans and she doesn't want them to find out that she actually enjoys them.
• Franny K. Stein: In The Fran That Time Forgot, it is mentioned that Franny invented broccoli that eats itself so that no kids ever have to eat it.
• In the children's picture book How Martha Saved Her Parents From Green Beans, Martha absolutely hates eating green beans and fights tooth and nail to avoid them. But one day a gang of outlaw green beans invades her town and abducts everyone who ever told people to eat green beans, including her parents. Martha soon realizes that if she's going to defeat the green beans and get her parents back, there's only one way to do it... by, you guessed it, eating them.
• Humorously subverted in the picture book Little Pea: the title character is an anthropomorphic pea who loves to eat spinach for dessert, but can't have any until he finishes his dinner of candy, which he hates.
• In the second Pippi Longstocking book, Pippi Goes on Board, Pippi, Tommy, and Annika "shipwreck" themselves on an island in a lake, and Pippi wonders if they might get caught and eaten by cannibals. Her only apparent concern about this is that the cannibals might serve her with stewed carrots, which she hates.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Even in medieval Westeros, highborn children don't like vegetables.
  • At Winterfell's harvest feast, ten-year-old Bran Stark is told by his servants that he must send dishes to his fellow lords as a gesture of friendship. He sends most of them tasty dishes like goose and lobster, but when Maester Luwin reminds him to include his foster brothers Big Walder and Little Walder Frey (who he hates), he sends them boiled beets and buttered turnips.
  • Eight-year-old King Tommen Baratheon declares to his mother Cersei, "When I'm king in my own right, I'm going to outlaw beets."
  • In Fire & Blood, the ambitious Hand of the King, Unwin Peake, is trying to persuade his young king Aegon III Targaryen to marry his daughter Myrielle. When Aegon asks what will happen if he doesn't like her, Unwin says, "Your Grace does not like turnips, but when your cooks prepare them, you eat them, do you not?" Poor Myrielle would forever be nicknamed "Lady Turnips" afterwards.
• "The Etiology and Treatment of Childhood" by Jordan W. Smoller, a pseudoscientific spoof of developmental psychology, names "legume anorexia" (i.e. the refusal of children to eat their vegetables) as the fifth out of five clinical markers of childhood to be used in a proposed DSM-IV definition. This condition was reportedly measured through a Vegetable Appetite Test devised by a researcher credited as Popeye, T.S.M., who is cited for articles on the use of spinach.

Live-Action TV

• Good Eats: Alton Brown posits the (woefully ignored) suggestion of, instead of breeding resentment by forcing your child to eat vile-tasting slop, finding a vegetable (or a way of preparing the one you're making) that your child will eat.
• The title character of Leave It to Beaver hates Brussels sprouts. This became a plot point of an episode in which Beaver was promised to eat his Brussels sprouts or he won't be able to see a sports game. He eventually bucks up and eats them when his family goes out for a meal. A later episode had Wally reveal that the Beav once hid his Brussels sprouts under a couch cushion.
• Nova ScienceNOW explored this in one episode. It turns out there's a genetic basis for this: some kids have a stronger expression of a gene for tasting bitter flavors that makes green vegetables unappetizing. It usually inactivates as the child grows older.
• Shining Time Station: In "Double Trouble", after telling the story of the Thomas & Friends episode, "The Diseasel" to the children at the station, Mr. Conductor says he wishes he had a twin of his own so he could eat his peas for him since he doesn't like peas. He then asks the children if they like peas, and Dan says, "Peas? Yuck!"
• One of the Parody Commercials on The Amanda Show features a girl trying to run away when she learns that her friend's parents are planning on serving broccoli with dinner. Said friend (played by Amanda) tells her not to worry, as she has the perfect solution: "Sugar Veggies." As the name implies, they're actually pure sugar shaped to look like vegetables. Oddly, both girls are teenagers, which is older than the usual instances of this trope.

Music

• In "Grace," Aesop Rock recounts a story from his childhood: he dislikes green beans and stubbornly refuses to eat them, but his parents will not let him leave the dinner table until he does. They regret this though, as little Ian was not exaggerating his disgust: after only one bite, he throws up.
• The Preschool Popstars song "Wait Until I Cook It" features a little girl of preschool age saying that she's so hungry that she'd "even" eat vegetables, implying that she usually wouldn't.
• Sandra Boynton:
  • The album Dog Train includes the song "(Don't Give Me That) Broccoli", performed by the Phenomenauts. Subverted at the end; after an entire song about the horrors of broccoli, the child takes a bite and says: "Yum."
  • Rhinoceros Tap includes the song "O Lonely Peas", a child's song about the peas that he refuses to eat despite not being able to leave the table until they're gone.

Video Games

• Borderlands 2: In a DLC mission, we find out that 13-year-old Tiny Tina has subsisted on crumpets alone for years. The original Vault Hunters hold her down and force-feed her a salad. Subverted in that she finds it tasty; her problems with it are of a different nature.
  Tiny Tina: I can't believe you made me eat salad.
  Lilith: It wasn't THAT bad, was it?
  Tiny Tina: No, it wasn't. It was tasty. That's the PROBLEM.
  Lilith: Wait, you liked the salad? Why is that a problem?
  Tiny Tina: You know who likes the taste of salads? ADULTS. I don't wanna be an adult!
• Commander Keen: In "Keen Dreams", Keen is sent to bed without supper after refusing to eat his vegetables, and subsequently gets trapped in a dreamworld where kids that refuse their vegetables are enslaved by sentient vegetables.
• Pancake Cookie from Cookie Run doesn't like vegetables. He once had Cherry Cookie and Werewolf Cookie help him steal and hide vegetables, and he doesn't like it when Spinach Cookie offers him vegetables.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Downplayed compared to Felix, but Lysithea complains about eating vegetables and wishes she could eat nothing but sweets. Much to her horror, the much pickier Felix doesn't like sweets at all but also dislikes three out of the four vegetable-based dishes (with the fourth having a heavy cheese and fish component). It seems meat is the only food he actually likes.
• In Fable II, an overhear-able conversation between a man and his son:
  Son: Is that a vegetable!? Gross!
  Dad: I washed them. Honest.
• Like a Dragon: Ishin!: One substory involves encountering a boy who's crying to his mom about veggies, giving the impression that this is the issue. It's not. The problem is that his mom hates vegetables and refuses to ever serve them, so he's forced to eat nothing but fish and tofu and he wants to eat vegetables. You can give him various veggies you grow in your garden before he decides that to actually fix the problem, his mom needs to learn that vegetables can be delicious. The solution is to prepare a delicious salad for her that puts her firmly in the "vegetables are good" camp. When you next talk to the kid, you discover that his mom now serves nothing but vegetables for every meal, and now he's sick of eating them.
• Po Po Lo Crois: Gami Gami Devil kidnaps Jilva and tries to make her eat vegetables that she doesn't like because they're healthy. And these vegetables are Green Peppers and Carrots.
• Rune Factory Frontier: When you ship fruits Rosetta likes she'll applaud you when she comes to pick them up, but if it's Danny's turn to collect shipments and you've got just about any vegetable in your bin he'll whine, expressing a desire to not even touch them.
• Story of Seasons (2014) has young Lutz hate vegetables, with his most hated meal being spinach salad. Melanie is not as bad, only really disliking some vegetable dishes and despising Kimchi, and your children hate Grilled Pumpkin. This is also played straight with Mistel who, while not a child—he's old enough to date and marry—hates all vegetables, and considers attending the crop festival a burden due to how many vegetables are present.

Web Videos

• SuperMarioLogan:
  • Junior's hatred of broccoli is a major plot point in "Bowser Junior's Broccoli Problem!". He flushes some broccoli down the toilet and it ends up being eaten by a Sewer Gator, who sneaks into the house for another snack.
  • Jeffy is an immature teenager and he hates green beans. They don't just disgust him, they outright infuriate him.

Western Animation

• Arthur: In "D.W. the Picky Eater", among the many other foods that D.W. refuses to eat, spinach is what really sets her off. When David and Jane worry that she's too immature to handle Grandma Thora's birthday dinner at a fairy-tale-themed restaurant, Arthur, who really wants to go, makes it his mission to help D.W. overcome her problem. In a twist ending, D.W. chooses "Little Bo Peep Pot Pie" for her entree, loves it, and is surprised to learn that it is, in fact, full of spinach.
  D.W.: This...this is spinach.
  Waiter: ...Is something the matter?
  D.W.: This is spinach. And I! HATE! SPINACH! [slams her fists on the table until her bowl flies up and on the waiter's head]
• Caillou: In "Caillou Hates Vegetables", a younger Caillou is less than enthused when he's given broccoli and carrots for dinner and would rather have cookies. Later, his grandmother has made peas and carrots (much to Caillou's chagrin), but his grandfather convinces him to eat them by telling him to pretend to be a bear eating berries.
• The Casagrandes: In the episode "Chancla Force", eight-year-old Carl hates asparagus, and tries to make it bearable by having his pet bird Sergio dump chocolate sauce and sprinkles on it.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: While they can tolerate other vegetables, Broccoli is hated by all of the kids (and the adults, but unlike the kids, they can handle broccoli if they have to eat some), and it seems to act as some sort of Kryptonite.
  • In the episode "Operation: I.T." Father gets made the leader of the Global KND, but in order to get in the KND's good graces, he enacts a plan to rid the world of broccoli once and for all, something all of the KND are overwhelmingly in favor of. Unfortunately, to everyone's horror, the only way to get rid of broccoli is to eat it. Later in the episode, Numbuh 362 becomes comatose after eating broccoli.
  • In "Operation: S.P.R.O.U.T.", a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot episode, Numbuh Four accidentally eats a Brussels sprout. The KND enact an entire ploy to get into Numbuh Four's body to destroy the Brussels sprout before it begins to make him enjoy cleaning his room, among other things. Later on, he accidentally starts it all over with some liver.
• Dan Vs.: Manchild example. The title character despises vegetables, and there is even an episode dedicated to him effacing vegetables off the face of the Earth after his favorite burger joint supplants burgers and fries for vegetables.
• Dexter's Laboratory: In the episode "Hunger Strikes", Dexter can't stand broccoli, which his family demands that he eats or else he can't have dessert afterwards. In order to avoid future denial of desserts, Dexter invents a machine that will genetically alter his taste buds that will make eating vegetables more palatable. Only problem is that this machine not only makes veggies suddenly delicious, he also happens to turn into an Incredible Hulk-like monster that destroys everything in his path in search of the vegetables he craves.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: In My Fair Ed, Ed and Eddy's fear of broccoli used for comedic effect at both the beginning and end of the episode.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • In one of the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts, Cosmo becomes evil for a day and performs various Poke the Poodle acts. Among them is destroying all Brussels sprouts, which Timmy is indifferent to because he hates them anyway.
  • In "Just Desserts," Timmy wishes to have nothing but desserts for every meal so that he can avoid vegetables.
• Family Guy:
  • In "I Never Met the Dead Man", Stewie spends the entire B-plot attempting to destroy his plate of broccoli Lois made him eat for dinner. He ends up trying to feed them to Brian, but Brian just dumps them back onto Stewie's plate.
  • In "He's Too Sexy for His Fat," Chris goes on a diet to lose weight, and Lois cooks him a vegetable platter for dinner, much to his dismay. He complains that "it tastes like a monkey—a monkey that's past its prime!"
• Histeria!:
  • In "Presidential People", Loud Kiddington tries to persuade former President George H. W. Bush to eat some broccoli in a parody of Green Eggs and Ham. Bush does, and he hates it. It turns out, though, that Loud just wanted him to verify his distaste for it because it provides an excuse for him and his friends to not eat it themselves.
  • Additionally, a sketch about Florence Nightingale included a part where she advises all the troops be put on a vegetable diet, during which she takes away the burger Froggo was about to eat. His response to what she gave him in its place:
    Froggo: A turnip?!? Yeeugh!! Now I'm really sick!
• Jorel's Brother: In one episode, Jorel's brother is forced to eat his broccoli by his mom, but he refuses to eat it and gets grounded without playing with toys.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: In "Frenchfry", Lilo and Stitch are both disgusted by the healthy foods that Nani is trying to get them on at the episode's start: whilst them hating the oatmeal was just kids being kids, it's hard to fault them for wanting nothing to do with those unappetizing vegetable-studded gello ready-made meals that Nani stocks up on. This leads Lilo and Stitch to activate Experiment 062 so he can make much-tastier junk food for them, unaware of just how dangerous 062/Frenchfry really is.
• Muppet Babies: Lampshaded and averted in one episode. Gonzo threatens Kermit that he'll make Kermit eat all of his green vegetables. Kermit just points out that he likes green vegetables because they put color in his cheeks.
• My Big, Big Friend: In "Hippo-licious", Matt is none too pleased when his family has spinach for dinner. Later, he and Bongo are trapped in a forest of spinach, forcing them both to eat their way through. To Matt's surprise, it's not as bad as he'd thought it would be.
• The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: In "Pooh Oughta Be In Pictures", Christopher Robin has a melodramatic reaction to his mother asking him to eat his carrots. This inspires Tigger to make a giant carrot costume for the monster movie the toys were planning to make.
• Ninjago: In "Rise of the Snakes", Bratty Half-Pint Lloyd Garmadon appears in Jamanakai Village and demands all the candy in town, but the villagers boo at him and throw fruits and vegetables, to which Lloyd exclaims that he hates vegetables.
• PAW Patrol: In the episode "Pups Save a Toof", Ryder says that he fears Brussels sprouts. He then proceeds to eat one so that he can teach Alex about facing your fears. Unfortunately, Alex isn't convinced.
• Peppa Pig: Played with the episode "Lunch" in which the title character and her family visit her grandparents' house for, well, lunch, where George refuses to eat his salad. So Grandpa Pig then rearranges the vegetables to look like a dinosaur, and because of that George eats them and loves it.
• Popeye: Unlike their uncle, Popeye's four nephews Peepeye, Pipeye, Poopeye, and Pupeye hate spinach.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Beat Your Greens", the Girls refuse to eat their vegetables, until Townsville is attacked by aliens that resemble them. They and the other kids eventually discover that the only way to defeat them is to eat them, and after that they love vegetables.
• In the Recess episode "Weekend At Muriel's" dinner at Miss Finster's when Spinelli is being babysat by her for the weekend is brussels sprouts (along with liver and horse meat) much to Spinelli's dismay.
• Rugrats (1991): In the episode "Pickles vs. Pickles", after Drew and Charlotte send Angelica to her room without dessert for refusing to eat her broccoli, Angelica sues them. The surrounding media circus warps things and blows them out of proportion and the judge is taken in by Angelica's cuteness and sides with her. Drew goes crazy and is dragged off to prison screaming "I'm a good father!". Of course, it was All Just a Dream, but the episode ends with Angelica being apologized to and it is implied that Drew has a very weak will which Angelica can manipulate this way for every vegetable.
• The Simpsons: In the Treehouse of Horror XX segment, "Don't Have a Cow, Mankind", Bart is shown starving despite there being a bowl of fresh fruits and carrots beside him (which he refuses to eat).
  Bart: There's gotta be something yummy out there.
• TaleSpin: In "Vowel Play", twelve-year-old Kit Cloudkicker is revealed to dislike spinach. The episode begins with him in school, constantly misspelling "spinach" in front of his class and always being corrected by his teacher.
  Kit: "Spin-ick". There!
  Teacher: No, no, no! There is no "ick" in "spinach", Kit.
  Kit: (chuckles) You wanna bet? Taste it! Ick!
  (Kit's classmates laugh)
  Teacher: Spell it correctly, please.
  Kit: (sighs unhappily) I don't even like to eat it, let alone spell it.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: In the short "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli", the titular mistake is all that Buster Bunny needs to see to know that he's dealing with robot replicas of the rest of the cast planning to Take Over the World.

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