“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” As these magical words, uttered by Romeo, swirled around the intimate auditorium of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, on the banks of the River Thames, my mind wandered – to broccoli. The reason this unassuming vegetable dominated my thoughts at that precise moment was a collision of cerebral connections that flashed back to my early childhood. If you care to stay the distance with me, I will attempt to reassure you that I am not in need of an expensive Harley Street psychiatrist.
As an 11-year-old, or thereabouts, I remember seeing Romeo and Juliet for the first time at the local cinema as part of an organised school trip. During the screening of the iconic Franco Zeffirelli version, I sniggered with my chums, ate sweets, and was as touched by this cultural experience as I was by the discomfort associated with having a haircut (I can vaguely remember the barber’s chair) whilst under general anaesthetic. Yet here I was, over four decades later, welling up at the end of this literary masterpiece. Why the change? Equally, as a much younger kid I absolutely loathed broccoli to such an extent that once, after my mum had made me remain at the dinner table under strict instructions to eat this perceived green peril, I hid the lot behind the fridge when she wasn’t looking. Later I returned to the scene of the crime and chucked the spears into the outside bin, shoving them firmly below other rubbish as parents can be sly! Today I am happy to eat bucket loads of this beautiful brassica which has, if I’m honest, a fairly benign taste. So why the comprehensive U-turn, from hostile fare to gorgeous grub? And more to the point, why had I contradicted Juliet’s impassioned plea, “What must be shall be”? As I left the Globe the urge to investigate became overwhelming.
I was surprised, but reassured, to discover that I was a normal kid since children have a biological bias against most vegetables, chiefly because as babies we are conditioned to crave the sweet stuff. Containing colossal amounts of lactose, breast milk is the champion of natural sugary desserts and provides the energy necessary for babies to cry at the same decibel level as a pneumatic drill, and to propel toddlers around the living room at the speed of light. Consequently, and in the sage words of Dr Pauline Emmett, a leading nutritionist at Bristol University, “they aren’t so keen on sour and bitter tastes,” the principal flavours in most vegetables, especially the green ones. Poor old broccoli contains lashings of the compound glucosinolate, responsible for the bitter taste. TAS2R38 – the bitter taste receptor gene – is far more commonplace in children too, since they generally have double the number of tastebuds of us oldies. No wonder broccoli is on a hiding to nothing during those formative years of our development. Dietician Duane Mellor, lead for Nutrition and Evidence Based Medicine at Aston Medical School, Birmingham, also adds, “This bitter taste is thought to be protective. We are almost conditioned not to like bitter flavours as some bitter compounds can be toxic.” Professor Dr Klazine Van der Horst, from Bern University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland, recommends, “When kids are older, let them help pick vegetables in the grocery store.” Who could ever argue with her credentials during a dinner date?
I guess that I was therefore preordained to loath the green stuff when I was younger, and it was only a matter of time before I appreciated the brilliance of broccoli. According to Leslie J. Bonci, author of the American Dietetic Association Guide to Better Digestion and co-author of “Run Your Butt Off, Walk Your Butt Off, the Active Calorie Diet,” my ideal vegetable date can make you beautiful too – “The skin’s wish list is for caloric balance – not too much but not too little, optimal intake of protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fluid. At the same time, overconsumption of sugar may affect not just our waistline but our jawline, as excess sugar intake may increase the likelihood of collagen breakdown so the skin is not as elastic as it should be. Does this mean you can never have a cupcake? Of course not, but perhaps satisfying some of the sweet craving with fruits and vegetables can help your skin as well as what is within.” Check out my profile picture on social media and I think she may have a valid point!
So that concludes the analysis of the turnaround on the broccoli front but what about culture? Are we deprived of sophistication in our early years too? Is reading William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and latterly Dylan Thomas, Thomas Hardy and Alan Bennett the broccoli of literature?
Striking an instant chord with my recollections of my initial exposure to Shakespeare, teacher Alex Walls, having taught in Uzbekistan, China, Oman and Russia – not places where English is the first language – got straight to the point, “But it is Shakespeare, and he wrote in Early Modern English which nobody uses nowadays. It’s hard to understand half the words and we might as well read Chinese.” He has a point since according to several reliable sources the general rule of thumb is that a child’s attention span is two to three minutes per year of their age. Thus, at eleven my attention span was no more than thirty-three minutes. The Zeffirelli version of the Shakespearean classic was 138. No wonder I lost the will to live in that dark cinema and much preferred to hit my mate Alan on his head with my lunchbox. Even today with my enhanced attention span of circa 174 minutes, punctuated by a couple of visits to the loo, I must confess that the ensuing narrative at The Globe was nigh on impossible to fathom, but at least on this occasion I didn’t feel the need to assault anyone. As an aside, and according to the Cambridge University translation service there are at least three ways to say broccoli in Chinese – 西兰花，花椰菜；球茎甘蓝
So there you have it. For once it is an age thing. But what would the Bard have to say about that?
“The golden age is before us, not behind us.” Or more poignantly, “You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.”
But the last words in this cultural cavalcade must honour the colossus of the cabbage family that is broccoli. Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, a prominent YouTuber, remarked, “Don’t be a salad. Be the best god damn broccoli you can ever be.” And to counter the myth of food elitism, “Without pain, how could we know joy?’ This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering, and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate,” uttered by novelist John Green.
But to conclude, and perhaps illustrative of why I never rated the 41st President of the United States – “I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.”
If you are an adult and as stubborn as George H.W. Bush, then maybe it’s time to reacquaint your mature taste buds with the versatility that is vegetable. You just may be in for a quite delicious surprise.
Anyway, it’s getting close to my dinner time and a little literary vandalism is required – “O broccoli, broccoli, wherefore art thou broccoli?”
© Ian Kirke 2021 and all photographs