It seems like no matter what parents do, they face backlash for it, even for things that seem pretty harmless in the long run — you know, like feeding their kids spicy foods. Recently, a video of a mom feeding her little girl wasabi for the first time went viral. While many people were too caught up in the cuteness of the little girl's reaction to think too far into the video, other parents have been calling the mom's actions child abuse.
At the beginning of the video, the girl is sitting in her high chair engaging in a hard stare-down with her mom's food.
"You want to try wasabi?" the mom asks, to which the little girl immediately replies "no."
For the next few seconds, the mom and daughter are caught up in that timeless conversation that happens when a kid can't decide if he or she actually wants to try a new food or not.
Finally, the mom raises the chopsticks to her daughter's lips, and the toddler takes a tiny bite of wasabi.
It's actually very similar to those videos of babies trying lemons for the first time that everyone seems to love. The toddler moves the wasabi around in her mouth for a minute, then just looks directly at the camera and says "help."
But very few people were amused by this mom's decision to feed her kid wasabi.
Social media was flooded with comments from fellow parents calling her actions "disturbing" and "abusive."
A lot of people took the child's reaction at the end of the video to mean that she had been traumatized by the experience.
"How is that child supposed to trust her mother if she feeds her wasabi?" one commenter wrote.
Even those who didn't necessarily think it was abusive got angry at the video.
Many felt that the mom "should be ashamed of herself" for allowing her kid to do something as "dangerous" as eat a tiny bit wasabi.
Of course, not everyone found the video troubling.
A lot of people actually commended the mom for introducing her kid to different foods at such a young age.
Others clapped back at the parents yelling out "child abuse."
"I'm sure child services have bigger cases on their hands," said one parent.
Some even pointed out the differences in feeding kids wasabi as opposed to other spicy foods.
On the popular science podcast Science Update, Diana Bautista, a neuroscientist at the University of California at San Francisco, said that the types of heat in wasabi and peppers are very different. While the majority of chili peppers have a level of heat the lingers for minutes at a time, the heat from wasabi only lasts a few seconds. This pretty much squashes the idea that the little girl experienced any long-lasting suffering because she was fed wasabi.
It's clear to see that the little girl was a bit floored by her first experience with wasabi.
But to call her mom out for being abusive is a huge overreaction. Young kids from all over the world and from many different cultures eat spicy foods as part of their normal meals. I highly doubt this little girl will be scarred for life because she tried wasabi. In fact, she might actually reap some of its benefits if she ever develops a liking for it. According to Parenting Healthy Babies, wasabi can act as a digestive aid and an anti-inflammatory agent, and can help with cavity prevention in kids. The site makes it clear that as long as they don't eat giant globs of the stuff every day or have an allergic reaction to it, wasabi is fine to feed kids.
