Photo: Darwin BellBeets are the new broccoli. Or at least they will be after Obama takes office on January 20, as the president-elect recently revealed his distaste for this vitamin-laden root vegetable. And Obama is not alone: Even as beet salads have become popular in trendy eateries, most American kids I know also reject the mighty beet.
It’s a curious thing. You see, I grew up in Australia, where just about everyone seems to love eating beets, especially kids. In fact, even those kids who wrinkle their noses at other vegetables still love beets (or “beetroot” to an Aussie). When I arrived in the U.S., I was stunned to find Americans don’t add beetroot to their burgers. In Australia, beetroot on a burger is a given. In fact, during my undergraduate days the student cafeteria stopped serving beetroot on their burgers; I ran for election to the Sydney Uni student union partly on the platform of restoring beetroot on the burgers. (Obama should be careful, beetroot-lovers are a powerful constituency: I was elected in a landslide.)
Even McDonald’s understands the beet imperative, adding a healthy slice to their McOz burgers. And these aren’t fancy beets; the simple canned beets you get from the supermarket will improve any burger. Try it — you will thank me. With more adult tastes, I now prefer my beets roasted, perhaps with goat’s cheese.
But my point isn’t about how best to enjoy your beet, my point is the Beet Paradox: Why is it that American and Australian children have such different reactions to such a simple vegetable? The rest of our diets are pretty similar; our upbringing is similar, and so are the broader social and economic milieus which shape us. Yet the same food elicits starkly different reactions. Why?
And the Beet Paradox forces all of us economists to ask: Can we really treat preferences as exogenous and stable?
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My understanding is that Australians dislike root beer. And God knows Americans can’t stand vegemite.
You don’t have to travel far to see stark reactions. Outside of New York, you get mustard on your hambuger.
Could it come down to connotations?
The “beetroot”, McOz and other Aussie preparations in a land of multiple growing seasons = fresh, alluring, exotic…
Polish grandparent cooking, canned sidedishes and other common North American tie-ins for beets = staid, unattractive
(No offense to good Polish cooking – I love a nice borscht.)
So, are the beets raw or cooked before putting them on the burger? How well do canned beets work on burgers?
I have always believed that the best way to encourage children to enjoy good food is to let them see me enjoying good food. When the grandkids come to visit, they see me eating lots of fruit and fresh veggies and soon ask for more themselves.
It may be as simple as kids in the US get pickles (pickled cucumber vs. pickled beetroot) with hamburgers and other foods. Once you develop a taste for pickled cucumber (especially with dill), beets always taste artificial (at least to me).
I can’t speak for wider American tastes in root vegetables, but for my part, I thought beets awful until a handful of years ago. As a child, my only experience was with canned beets and borscht from a jar. I found both dreadful and would avoid them under pain of no dinner at all. My daughter, who was receiving boxes of fresh produce from a farm each week, had me over for dinner and prepared a platter of roasted vegetables which included both red & golden beets. She warned of their presence, offered that I could avoid them, but that I should try them, expecting to be pleasantly surprised. Long story short, roasted beets are on the menu weekly save for the few hottest months of the year when I avoid using the oven. Nearly everyone I’ve served them to has had their opinion favorably altered.
Australians are also fond of vegemite, right? If you can get kids to eat vegemite, getting them to enjoy beets shouldn’t be a problem.
(Of course, non-Americans would probably say the same about peanut butter.)