From negative preconceptions to centuries of being shoved down reticent children’s throats and ungrateful slogans on t-shirts, the cabbage is not having a good time on our plates. And yet, even KFC sells cabbage.
Right now, at this very moment, 4.20pm, 10 March 2021, there is a slogan t-shirt for sale on Amazon that reads “Cabbage[,] If sadness was a vegetable”. It is not the only – and certainly not the wittiest – entry in the unfortunate body of cabbage slander that floats around the internet and in the hearts of the nutritionally ungrateful. Websites such as food.com offer up recipes under the header “Cabbage for those who dislike cabbage”. An article on something called Texarkana Gazette asks, “What are your feelings about cabbage?” as if cabbage-hating sociopaths have feelings. The last post on I Hate Cabbage, a Facebook page abandoned mid-pandemic, in April 2020, asks, “Would you still be friends with someone that forces you to eat sauerkraut?”.
This slander is not new, nor is it limited to the internet. Some have even committed it to print, as demonstrated by this quote from the 2012 book by London based author, John Ayto, where he writes: “The cabbage, object of…