Greens Precede Sweets

Dexter: Oh mother, I submit that if I did indeed consume all of my vegetables, I would not have room for your delicious dessert.
Dexter's Mom: Now, now, Dexter. If you don't eat your veggies, you can't have any cake. How can you have any cake if you don't eat your veggies?

— Dexter's Laboratory^note shouting out The Wall

A character is told by someone (usually Mommy or Daddy) to eat all their vegetables or the penalty is that they won't get dessert. Despite occasionally overlapping with Denied Food as Punishment, this isn't meant to be a form of discipline, it's actually more of a rewarding system. Peas and broccoli are the most common vegetables assigned for eating. Oftentimes, this trope applies to children (who have a lot of taste buds that make them dislike vegetables) but can be Played for Laughs with adults as well. Common reactions include protesting, throwing a tantrum, trying to hide the vegetables, or even, begrudgingly, trying to eat them and giving up in the process. For other ways to bribe children, see The Compliance Game and Moniker As Enticement. A sister subtrope of Kids Hate Vegetables is Trojan Veggies.

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Examples:

Fan Works

• In Holidays with Holmes, Watson warns Holmes about Mrs. Hudson's reaction if she sees that he's eating cherry tart before lunch. Holmes, not seeing the use of that custom, returns to the tart as soon as possible.
• In the Ma Fille chapter "Big Kids", Joe mentions that he made chocolate pudding, but Katrina needs to finish her carrots and broccoli before she can have some. Katrina understandably rushes to eat her veggies.

Films — Animation

• In Pixar's Inside Out, baby Riley is told by her dad she must eat all her broccoli (green peppers in the Japanese version) or she's not getting dessert. This causes Anger to take control and leads her to throw a tantrum. Then her dad does an "airplane" and successfully gets the broccoli in.

Films — Live-Action

• Lampshaded as a metaphor in The Cheetah Girls when Galleria feels her mother Dorothea is holding the band back from a record deal.
  Galleria: I set my mind to something, and I almost get there, and you just stand in my way. What's the good of eating your vegetables if you can't have dessert?
  Dorothea: Strong bones and teeth.

Literature

• Hilda and the Mad Scientist: Hilda moves in with Dr. Weinerstein because she thinks he needs a caretaker. Among other things, she insists that Dr. Weinerstein eat his broccoli before he can have any apple pie.
• Inverted in The Topsy Turvies; Jinx, the son, is excited by the idea of eating tomatoes for dessert, but his mother tells him that he can't have any tomatoes unless he finishes his cake. Jinx asks his mom if he has to eat it all, and she tells him yes.
• Also inverted in the picture book Little Pea. The characters are anthropomorphic peas, whose health food is candy. Little Pea hates candy, but his parents insist that he eat five pieces before he can have dessert. With much grimacing, he does, and then gets his favorite dessert – spinach.
• A variant (and subversion) occurs in Judy Blume's The Pain and the Great One: "The Great One" complains that her annoying little brother "the Pain" isn't supposed to get dessert if he doesn't eat his meat, but since their parents spoil him as the baby of the family, he always gets it anyway.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory:
  • In "The Einstein Approximation", Sheldon, obsessed by a physics problem, steals Raj's lima beans to use as part of an atomic model to study particle physics better. Raj, a man in his 30s, protests, saying that he can't have his cookie if he doesn't eat the beans first.
  • In the episode "The 21-Second Excitation", Raj defends his ordering dessert at the Cheesecake Factory which caused his friends to be late for the movie showing. Raj asserts to Sheldon that he ate all his broccoli!
• In an early episode of CSI: NY, the only witness to a crime is a young boy who refuses to speak for quite a while. Detective Taylor takes him under his wing. The boy keeps pointing to candy bars in the crime lab's vending machine, but Taylor tells him he can't have any junk food until after he gets him "some real stuff." Subsequently, they're shown having a well-balanced meal together and Taylor cuts the boy's meat up for him.
• In The Amanda Show, Amanda and her friend who's invited over for dinner are both told by Amanda's parents to eat all their vegetables or no dessert. Therefore, they buy Sugar Veggies (pure sugar that looks just like broccoli but still tastes like sugar) to replace the real broccoli (which they hid from their parents by distracting them with the lie that there's chipmunks).
• In the The Suite Life of Zack & Cody episode "Health and Fitness," Zack is ordered to go on a diet by his mother. After eating all his vegetables, Zack is allowed by Carey to have sweet foods for dessert and while he was expecting cake or ice cream or pie, Carey instead gives him a fruit salad.

Music

• At one point in Pink Floyd's The Wall a Sadist Teacher shouts, "IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT, YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY PUDDING! HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY PUDDING IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT??"

Puppet Shows

• In one Lamb Chop's Play-Along sketch, Shari tells Baby Lamb Chop that she can't have dessert until her plate of veggies is empty. She then resorts to Feeding By Example, but Lamb Chop keeps saying "Show me more!" until Shari unwittingly eats all the veggies, and then she claims that since the plate is empty, she can have dessert now. Shari tries to turn the tables by saying that since she ate the veggies, she gets the ice cream, but when she lets Lamb Chop have one lick, Lamb Chop uses that one lick to slurp up the whole scoop.

Web Comics

• In this My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fancomic, a filly-aged Celestia is making her younger sister Luna eat her alfalfa before dessert. After listing all the reasons why she hates it, Luna finishes with "...and besides, you never eat your alfalfa." Celestia reluctantly eats some, and makes a funny face with the alfalfa hanging halfway out of her mouth ("Bleeeeh! Alfalfa monster!"), making Luna laugh.
• This tropes is referenced in the Penny Arcade story "Sand" when the ship's captain is communicating with the maternal AI.

Web Videos

• SuperMarioLogan:
  • In "Shrek's Diet!", Shrek suffers a heart attack as a result of eating too much cheesecake, so under the advice of Dr. Brooklyn T. Guy, Mario puts Shrek on a diet and makes him eat salad. Mario tells Shrek that if he eats all of his salad, he will let him have a bite of cheesecake for dessert, but Shrek would much rather eat cheesecake first. Because Shrek really refuses to eat his salad, Mario and Chef Pee Pee have to tie him down and force-feed him.
  • "Jeffy Gets Potty Trained!" begins with Rosalina trying to get Jeffy to eat peas. Jeffy tells Rosalina that he doesn't want to eat peas, and that he wants to eat marshmallows instead. Rosalina tells Jeffy that he can't have marshmallows until after he eats his peas.
  • "Locked Out!" begins with Mario serving Jeffy peas for dinner. Jeffy tells Mario that he doesn't want to eat peas, and that he wants to eat chocolate cake instead. Mario tells Jeffy that he can't eat chocolate cake unless he eats his peas first. Jeffy tries to fool Mario by hiding his peas in his high chair, but Mario soon finds out. Mario then decides to taunt Jeffy by eating chocolate cake in front of him, but Jeffy retaliates by tricking him into going outside and locking him out of his house.

Western Animation

• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Hunger Strikes", Dexter refuses to eat his peas and so is refused his dessert of upside-down pineapple cake while Dee-Dee and Dad are allowed to have the ridiculously unhealthy and large portions of it that dwarfs the size of the small peas they ate (defeating the purpose of eating those peas). Dexter, who can't stand vegetables, uses gamma radiation to rearrange his taste buds and adjust his food preferences, but it works a little too well and he starts to have uncontrollable cravings for vegetables that cause him to Hulk Out if he goes too long without consuming any.
• The plot of the Esme & Roy episode, "Sofishticated Taste" involves the titular characters trying to get Snugs to eat a healthy dinner that includes vegetables before he can have his dessert of a slimesicle.
• In the The Fairly OddParents! episode "Just Desserts", Timmy destroys all the vegetables his parents gave him while they aren't looking thinking that he'll get dessert next. His parents just give him carrots for dessert, but they try to manipulate him into eating it by telling him that it's carrot cake without the cake. Timmy goes to AJ's and Mark's house, respectively, where AJ's family proceed to solve math equations as their dessert, while Mark's "dessert" is a vegetable sundae.
• In Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., Hulk tells his prisoner Leader "Pipe down and eat your peas, or no pudding!"
• In the The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Beat Your Greens", the Girls are ordered by the Professor to eat their broccoli or no dessert, but the Girls still refuse, apparently agreeing to forgo dessert. Townsville winds up being invaded by broccoli aliens that resist all attempts besides eating to get rid of them.
• Rugrats:
  • The 1991 series episode "Pickles Vs. Pickles" begins with Drew and Charlotte trying to get Angelica to eat broccoli, but Angelica refuses to eat it. Drew then tells her that if she doesn't eat her broccoli, she won't get seconds on dessert. Angelica finds this unfair and retaliates by throwing her dinner plate against the wall. Drew and Charlotte punish her by sending her to her room without dessert.
  • In "Cavebabies", another episode from the 1991 series, Angelica wants to eat cookies for dinner, but Didi tells Angelica she can't have any cookies until she finishes her spinach. Angelica finds this unfair, and tells Didi that Grandpa Lou always sneaks a few cookies from the cookie jar before dinner. When Didi finds out, she hides the cookie jar, and Angelica makes the babies find said cookie jar for her. The babies do so, and a prehistoric Imagine Spot takes place.
  • Discussed in the 2021 series episode "Mr. Chuckie"; Chuckie has a dream where he's an adult and he takes his friends on an outing. When the babies get hungry, Susie spots an ice cream truck and suggests they eat from it. Lil brings up that Betty makes her eat some green vegetables before they can eat ice cream. Chuckie decides that as the adult, he and his friends can have ice cream.
• The Simpsons: In the "Treehouse of Horror XI" segment, "G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad", Homer asks Marge what's for dessert. Marge objects Homer will not get dessert if he doesn't eat his broccoli. Homer eats his broccoli, and dies as a result. Dr. Hibbert then tells Marge that broccoli is actually one of the deadliest plants on Earth, trying to warn people with its horrible taste.
• Inverted for laughs in the beginning of the Teen Titans Go! episode "Titan Saving Time". Beast Boy, Starfire and Raven reluctantly ice cream sundaes, with Cyborg telling them they can't have their vegetables, which they would rather eat, until they finish.

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