A lot of the "British food is bad" meme comes from older victorian sensibilities where the upper class sensibilities were very against unfamiliar or particularly flavorful foods. A common cook book at the time called potatoes "suspicious; a great many are narcotic, and many are deleterious", and also said things like garlic were offensive.
Another part of it comes from the fact that the UK went through rationing during and after WWII, lasting 15 years total, and the recipes that originated during that time were...not always great things, and they carried for a long time afterwards as people who grew up during the blitz ended up enjoying those recipes and continuing to make them.
The actual bad stuff is kinda hard to find nowadays. It's been outcompeted. Kidney pie, or blood pudding, or stuff like that is 'divisive' in the sense that it's something that some people are scared of, but they don't actually taste bad if you try it. The same book that holds the first recipe for steak and kidney pudding is the same one I got the quote from earlier from, and is also the same book that holds a recipe for a "Toast Sandwich". Stuff like that is more where this idea comes from.
This is the comment I came looking for. The American soldiers stationed here during world war two did us bloody dirty, and unfortunately the stereotype persists from people who've never even been here, let alone have actually tried beans on toast.
The "British Teef ar bad" meme is from American GIs too. At the time, it was a valid barb, but over the last 80 years, the UK's dental outcomes have outpaced the US'.
Stuff like this really is a great example of "common sense" being complete horseshit, baseless, and based entirely on how people feel. It's the lesson to learn in the modern day if you don't want to be led around by internet memes and bullshit artists.
You don’t define “necessary” as “you look ugly and have crooked teeth” though. It’s only if it’s like a medical problem. In the US, anyone with crooked teeth will get them because their parents don’t want their kids to be unnecessarily ugly for no reason, which impacts their quality of life in lots of ways that are well documented. British parents don’t care about their kids in the same way (and have no money lol) and so you get a lot of hideous snaggletoothed people
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u/alexxerth 22d ago
A lot of the "British food is bad" meme comes from older victorian sensibilities where the upper class sensibilities were very against unfamiliar or particularly flavorful foods. A common cook book at the time called potatoes "suspicious; a great many are narcotic, and many are deleterious", and also said things like garlic were offensive.
Another part of it comes from the fact that the UK went through rationing during and after WWII, lasting 15 years total, and the recipes that originated during that time were...not always great things, and they carried for a long time afterwards as people who grew up during the blitz ended up enjoying those recipes and continuing to make them.
The actual bad stuff is kinda hard to find nowadays. It's been outcompeted. Kidney pie, or blood pudding, or stuff like that is 'divisive' in the sense that it's something that some people are scared of, but they don't actually taste bad if you try it. The same book that holds the first recipe for steak and kidney pudding is the same one I got the quote from earlier from, and is also the same book that holds a recipe for a "Toast Sandwich". Stuff like that is more where this idea comes from.