Most Americans secretly dislike one or more beloved Thanksgiving classics, but eat it anyway to avoid hurting your feelings or because it’s an American tradition, according to a new survey conducted by Harris Poll for Instacart.
Green bean casserole turns out to be the side dish most people hope you won’t cook this year, the survey showed.
But it wasn’t at the top of the “least liked” list. That dishonor went to canned cranberry sauce, which has its own Twitter hashtag and a Facebook page where people post such tongue-in-cheek articles as “38 Stunningly Beautiful Pictures of Canned Cranberry Sauce.”
Twenty-nine percent of the 2,000 people surveyed online by Harris last month admitted they don’t like canned cranberry sauce, followed by green been casserole (24 percent), sweet potato casserole (22 percent), pumpkin pie (21 percent) and surprisingly, the turkey itself (19 percent).
“Nearly half of Americans (46 percent) say canned cranberry sauce is ‘disgusting,’ ” the survey found.
One reason might be the fact that a third of households serve it still “in the shape of the tin can,” the poll reported.
What other food gets that kind of treatment, other than canned dog food?
The survey, commissioned by same-day grocery delivery company Instacart, didn’t say why people hate green bean casserole, which is built on a foundation of canned cream of mushroom soup.
But countless confessionals on the internet bear witness to the culinary hatred with headlines such as “Green Been Casserole is disgusting” and “Death to Green Bean Casserole.”
A 2017 Food Network article tried to sum the issue up by saying the classic casserole is “that gungy melange of random pantry ingredients thrown together in a Pyrex, unmistakably salty and plastic in taste.”
As for how so many of us manage to eat something we secretly hate, the survey also found 65 percent of Americans 21 and older consume booze on Thanksgiving, with nearly half going for a lot of red wine.
