This is another lingering effect of how white Americans didn't figure out how to cook until like 20 years ago. For a long time the only preperation of broccoli here was just boiling it down into an indistinguishable bitter paste. If you were lucky you got salt. The kids hated it because it sucked but their parents decided that actually their cooking was fine and the kids were wrong, and it got into the culture that children inherently hate vegetables.