A while back, I had an obsession with words and naming, and it’s been revived by the term, “seasonal vegetables.” You ever notice that the seasonal vegetables are always broccoli? I don’t know that I’ve ever been to a restaurant that offers something other than broccoli when the menu says, “served with seasonal vegetables”! Why can’t they just call it like it is? The entree is served with broccoli!

It’s because broccoli has this terrible reputation for being a yucky food, the kind that kids turn their nose up at while parents watch them like hawks to make sure they aren’t feeding the broccoli to the family dog under the dinner table. Which, dropping broccoli for the dog is a pretty futile endeavor, since even the dogs know that broccoli is yucky. Restaurants know they won’t sell broccoli, but they will sell seasonal vegetables.

This doesn’t make sense! Simply changing the name will make people eat the food in front of them? I’m a survey of one, but it’s true for me. I would never order broccoli for myself, would never purchase broccoli at the grocery store, and if asked, would reply that I don’t like broccoli. And yet, when my “seasonal vegetables” turn out to be broccoli, I eat every last bite! When my husband insists on throwing a few bits of broccoli into the stir fry, I eat them along with the rest of the items in the dish. In short, I eat broccoli. Essentially, you’ve either got a misnomer for broccoli or diners lying to themselves, because in the end, the broccoli is purchased, prepared, and consumed regularly enough that the grocery stores carry it in abundance, and the restaurants keep serving it as a default side dish. This is one of those times that the “evil marketers” have actually done something good. They’ve convinced the consumers to eat something healthy by calling it something else. If you don’t think a name has power, just look at the broccoli phenomenon! (Granted, some marketers use their power to sell us over-processed, sugary “health” food, but we’re not addressing that in this post!)

So, can we all stop with the euphemism for broccoli? Can we agree that we’ll order “seasonal vegetables” with our eyes wide open?