43% Of People Think This Is The Tastiest Vegetable

Vegetables generally aren't known for being tasty. That's why children treat them like chores that must be performed before their taste buds can play with dessert. Sure, you can drench them in dressing or turn them into chips like the humble spud. But let's be real: Dressing is basically flavor makeup for bland food, which presumably makes chips the recipients of plastic surgery. You might not have to convince many people to eat squash that's been "surgically" altered to resemble spaghetti, especially when armed with the right recipes. But people might find themselves resorting to trickery to get their families to eat extra veggies that look less appealing, perhaps by sneaking them into mac and cheese or mashed potatoes.

One way to inspire higher vegetable consumption might be to focus on the tastiest options. But even if you're one of those dietary unicorns that can't get enough carrots or asparagus, you might be interested in how your favorite veggie measures up against competitors. Fortunately, Mashed conducted a YouTube survey that may serve both of those ends. People were asked to pick the tastiest vegetable among four specific options (asparagus, broccoli, corn, or carrots) or specify "something else" as their top choice. Roughly 46,000 people from around the world responded, and close to half of them consistently picked a single option.

Perhaps the "pop" in "popcorn" is short for "popular" because a lopsided 43 percent of survey respondents chose corn as the tastiest vegetable. In a distant second place was broccoli, which was favored by 22 percent of people. Seventeen percent chose asparagus. The most jolted vegetable was the carrot, which lagged far behind the others at 10 percent. However, the survey options met some objections.

Multiple commenters pointed out that corn's status as a vegetable might be questionable. Some remarked, "Corn is technically a 'grain'" or more disapprovingly, "I'm really surprised you included corn, you should know better!" There's a kernel of truth to the grain claim. Healthline explains that whole corn on the cob is classified as a vegetable while the kernels responsible for popcorn are regarded as a whole grain. Since we don't know whether the people who picked it had a kernel or a cob in mind, perhaps naysayers can think of it as Schrödinger's corn and say it was both a vegetable and a grain.

Eight percent of people chose "something else." Potatoes unsurprisingly made a series of appearances. But some contributions were offbeat like iceberg lettuce. Others preferred beets while cauliflower came out smelling like a rose for more than one person. A massive Brussels sprout fan declared, "I can literally eat my weight in brussel sprouts." While there's no accounting for taste, various commenters argued that how vegetables are cooked counts a lot.