Hollywood has made some great movies featuring everything that’s good and right and pornographic about food. It has also made some doozies that will ensure we’ll never eat certain dishes again.
What do you think of when you hear “fava beans and a nice Chianti”? If you’re like most children of the ’80s and ’90s, then you immediately think of Anthony Hopkins’ character, Hannibal Lecter, who is describing his favorite side dish and drink when sitting down to a lovely feast of people. One offhand remark from a movie ruined an entire generation on fava beans and dry red wine! The worst part is that’s not the only food Hollywood has managed to ruin. Check out these others — if you can stomach it.
1. Fava beans and a nice Chianti (Silence of the Lambs)
www.youtube.com/embed/iVlkZVAw8Gc
Like we said, find someone who has seen the movie or heard about its main character, and you can watch them shudder. Who knows how many people have never had fava beans or Chianti because of this movie?
2. Samples (Hannibal)
www.youtube.com/embed/xx_hlStCL7g
If that wasn’t enough, the follow-up to Silence of the Lambs —Hannibal — taught us to avoid the kindness of strangers as we watched Hannibal share his meal with a small child. While the serial killer would never be so brazen as to poison a kid, the fact that he’s sharing an ex-FBI agent’s brain is a lot disturbing.
3. Indian banquet food (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)
www.youtube.com/embed/3MgyRO3c870
Perhaps the first movie to really display jubilant diners tucking into a magnificent feast that many remember, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom did more to upset stomachs than a decade’s worth of salmonella. The chilled monkey brains, eyeball soup and lives snakes served from a snake… Ew. Just ew.
4. Indian peasant food (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)
GIF credit: Giphy
And it wasn’t just the fancy food that was so gross. The food the starving peasants could eat looked a little like paste of spider with extra legs. Years would pass before many could even look at an Indian restaurant.
5. Aspic (Julie & Julia)
www.youtube.com/embed/Tn894dqOUR4
Aspic, also known as meat jelly made from calves’ hooves, plays a prominent part in the ode to Julia Child that was Julie & Julia. Sadly the movie also told us that aspic was meat jelly made from calves’ hooves. Had we not known that, we might have tried it…
6. Blueberry-flavored anything (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory)
www.youtube.com/embed/Z4_cf_fZDc0
Seriously, how long did it take us to try new flavors of candy or to not be creeped out by green hair after watching Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory?
7. McDonald’s fries (Super Size Me)
www.youtube.com/embed/I1Lkyb6SU5U
If the rapid weight gain filmmaker Morgan Spurlock supposedly suffered wasn’t enough to keep us from eating McD’s fries, then the fact that they tend to not biodegrade surely would. Despite the fact that the whole documentary has come under fire, to this day, some won’t touch a McDonald’s french fry.
8. Thin mints (The Meaning of Life)
www.youtube.com/embed/HJZPzQESq_0
Sure, it wasn’t really the thin mint that caused the vomiting overweight diner to explode — it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Still, after seeing that movie, it’s surprisingly hard to separate chocolate mints and innards.
9. Baby corn (Big)
www.youtube.com/embed/nOwZrjb3Z4o
OK, so Tom Hanks’ charming rendition of a child eating an ear of corn isn’t disgusting so much as it is disappointing. Before Big, we all ate baby corn like that. After the movie, it became so cliché, and it’s not like baby corn tastes good enough by itself to eat if you’re not going to be a goof about it.
10. Mashed potatoes topped by something other than gravy (License to Drive)
www.youtube.com/embed/A8nXP8oHWB0
The pregnant mother in License to Drive has a serious craving for mashed potatoes covered in ketchup. It sounds disgusting, it looks disgusting, and the characters in the movie find it disgusting. Other than that, it’s hard to tell why we’re taking only gravy on our potatoes from here on out. Since we can’t find that, though, enjoy the music!
11. Mashed potatoes in general (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
www.youtube.com/embed/yecJLI-GRuU
It’s not OK for us to play with our food, but Richard freaking Dreyfuss can model a mountain out of it? No fair. I’m so over mashed potatoes. Where was quinoa in the ’80s? That’s a better starch anyway.
12. “Steak” served on lettuce (Anchorman, extended scenes)
www.youtube.com/embed/9FOGSJsAxUw
If you were unlucky enough to see the unrated, extended version of Anchorman, then you’ll treat yourself to a scene in which the disgraced Ron Burgundy ducks into his favorite yazz — er… jazz — club for a steak. Though brown and fragrant, what he is served is not steak.
13. Pot pie (Sweeney Todd)
www.youtube.com/embed/OTOHl9nD6B0
The demon barber of Fleet Street makes a delicious pot pie from ingredients Hannibal Lecter would approve. Given the sort of amorphous, barely identifiable nature of the meat in pot pies anyway, we’re pretty much OK just giving up on them entirely.
14. Any food sent back to the kitchen (Road Trip)
www.youtube.com/embed/Z4ZXRlcoEW8
OK, more than likely, food that gets sent back isn’t licked and worn as underwear. Still, once that image gets into your head, it’s darn tough to get rid of it.
15. Cream-filled pastries (Van Wilder)
www.youtube.com/embed/yYFM66TC4nI
And last but not least, in one of Van Wilder‘s raunchier, less-thoughtful gags, the cream in some pastries gets replaced with… let’s just say “cream.” Don’t think about that next time you’re at the doughnut shop.
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