If you’re from a country that sanitizes water, you’re going to get the shits from water in a place that doesnt. Because your body isn’t used to fighting all that stuff off on a daily basis.
But there’s also the insane amounts of air pollution in India, again, it’s bad for everyone, but especially people whose bodies aren’t used to it.
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”.
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.
In general, similar to Thai restaurants, Indian restaurants in the US all have the same ~10 things on the menu, so our exposure to the diversity of Indian cuisine is actually really limited to mostly northern Indian dishes.
In the US, a lot of Indian food is served buffet-style, so you walk around and slop different colored mushes on your plate, which can be kinda unappetizing. And some of them aren’t that good.
It’s very vegetable based, and Americans are meat babies.
Spices, Americans don’t like em. Strong smells can be off-putting to the sensitive cracker palette
Ah yes, the make assumptions and lump all 330 million Americans into the same bucket comment. Tell me all Americans have a bland pallette and can’t stand spice after eating hot chicken.
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.
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.
There is a third side who understands that there are more food flavorings then “spicy,” and that often excessive spicing is used to hide shitty quality food.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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 thought you meant for Indian food being praised worldwide at first…
Most people I know that enjoy Indian food switched to Thai prerty quickly. They might still get Indian occasionally, but Thai food does everything better.
Most Indian dishes that are popular in other countries, aren’t even Indian. At most they were invented in other countries and portrayed as authentic. So I’m not even sure that counts.
Kind of like how General Tsao’s chicken is an American dish
Butter chicken was invented for the British (in India), but naan bread and the various dal dishes are authentic, and those are the first things I think of. Thai food is good too, but it’s different.
I think after a cuisine or manner of cooking has been used in a region for almost a thousand years we are free to say it is authentic to that region, even though it was introduced. That you would deny Indians that, while accepting that Thai cuisine only started using chilli peppers in the last 300 years, opens a broader discussion about your personal understanding of culture and ethnicity.
That you would deny Indians that, while accepting that Thai cuisine only started using chilli peppers in the last 300 years, opens a broader discussion about your personal understanding of culture and ethnicity.
Not really…
Because one is an ingredient, and one is a a cooked item that someone mentioned as a food that was invented in India.
Those seem like two very different types of things.
But I don’t know why you want for chili peppers instead of just curry.
Curry was invented in India, but me and most people I know think Thai curry is better. Which is literally what I said in the beginning…
What is even going on in this thread?
Why do so many people that know nothing about this care so much?
No one made mention of anything being ‘invented’ anywhere until you, just now. I think I’d like to quote from one of history’s true greatest food scholars when I say, “What is even going on in this thread?”
No one made mention of anything being ‘invented’ anywhere until you
That’s what it is…
When OP said “Indian food” you took it as any food that’s sold in India, regardless of where it originated
So like, if there’s a taco bell, then tacos are Indian.
If there’s spaghetti, then spaghetti is Indian.
I’d think that would also mean all those people “worldwide” aren’t eating Indian food either then. They’re eating the food of whatever country theyre in. Do you think Uber Eats has spaceships? Is that what ufos really are?
I’m outta here.
Good night, thanks for sticking around long enough I could start to understand what you were talking about. That shit was a trip.
Gee, how far back does it have to go to be authentic? Tomatoes weren’t in Italy until after Columbus brought them (of course after 1300), and didn’t catch on until well after the later date mentioned of 1700, so there goes all of Italy’s most famous dishes.
Hamburgers are American food. Not Native American food, but American. Next you’re going to tell me baguettes are Middle Eastern food because grain was domesticated there, or that camel meat is Native American food because they evolved in America before crossing the land bridge in pre-human times.
The only reason naan is in India, is one of the many people who conquered that area brought it there.
You can say it’s popular there, but it’s still not Indian food. Just a dish that’s popular in India.
And I have zero idea what the tomatoes rant was about…
Italians got a new ingredient and incorporated it into existing dishes or made completely new ones. It’s not like someone shiped spaghetti sauce to Italy and Italians just decided they should claim they invented it like you’re doing with naan.
Or that someone from another country moved there and showed everyone how to make it like Butter Chicken.
Yeah, tandoori naan is apparently popular across neighboring countries too. I’d say India can still claim some co-ownership, just like Europeans and their various loaf breads, but I guess that’s a matter of definition, so sure, it’s not exclusively Indian.
The dal dishes are Indian, though. Curries in general are Indian - that one goes all the way back to Harrapa IIRC. Since you seem intent on keeping score, that’s 2 to 1.
It makes a difference for some stuff, but not naan.
Curries in general are Indian
Yes… Which is what I was talking about Thai doing it better…
Why are you talking about scores?
Is you just now understanding my first comment a point for me or you?
Honestly, if we’re keeping score I think we should both get a point for that. I legitimately had given up on trying and wasn’t going to reply again, but then I saw you got it!
Naan as known today originates from Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt.
The word Naan originates from Iran.
Anyway you might as well try to make the case that any Indian dish that contains tomatoes, potatoes, chillies, squash, and much else isn’t really Indian because they didn’t exist there until a few hundred years ago.
I’d never consider food to be “switchable”, let alone think another culture does it “better”. Like there’s so much diversity between Indian/Thai, on a dish by dish basis no country is better.
I think the point is they are very different cuisines, not interchangeable. They both just happen to be spicier than the American palate is used to.
I don’t choose food based on country of origin but what I fancy to eat. Sometimes that’s Indian foods sometimes thai, sometimes vietnamese etc.
I live in Australia where there is not a great selection of Indian food (despite a relatively high Indian population) compared to the UK where I also lived. Even so, there are different styles of Indian food with different dishes available just in my suburb. It’s nothing like Thai food, which also has a large variety. Both Indian and Thai restaurants have a few dishes that are ‘classic’ and available at most mainstream restaurants. Like, it would be odd to not have Pad Thai available, or in an Indian, butter chicken.
Sometimes I’ll want a pad Thai. Sometimes a butter chicken. The pad Thai is not better than the butter chicken. A green curry is not better than a jalfrezi. They are different flavour profiles.
I would say there is more crossover between dishes from Vietnam, Thailand malaysia and China, with varying levels of spice and flavour but very similar dishes available and common.
Again, you might prefer a Vietnamese sweet and sour chicken, but that doesn’t mean Cantonese or Hong Kong style is better or worse.
That’s always how ethnic food works though. It always starts with the original base food then gets modified by the local culture to fit their tastes and available ingredients. Chinese is the same. American Chinese food isn’t the same as Indian Chinese food which isn’t the same as French Chinese food. American Thai food isn’t 100% authentic either, it’s just different than Indian food because it’s not based on Indian food.
American Chinese food isn’t the same as Indian Chinese food which isn’t the same as French Chinese food.
Sooooo…
If it’s all different, then it’s not the same.
And if it’s not the same, it’s not a single thing “praised worldwide”.
It’s impressive how long people keep commenting on this thread, but still super weird y’all keep agreeing with me but acting like you’re explaining what I said to me.
Strong odors (as noted in other comments) can cause physical distress to a sensitive individual.
Every office I've worked in has had a policy related to odors.
The same policy covers perfumes and body odor.
Check your handbooks people!
I wish the places I've worked at had a policy like that. I always kind of hated the smell of popcorn because of how it lingers and it's very popular in communal offices. But even more so, wearing perfume or cologne inside of an elevator should be a crime.
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
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.
It is literally a toxin, which is part of why it binds to your pain receptors and not your taste buds.
Which is 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 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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Disagree. This is entirely dependent on the particular restaurant. None of them put Scoville ratings on things, so “hot” can mean “barely mild” at one restaurant and “this will absolutely wreck your colon” at another. This has been my experience, at least.
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.
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