Okra is the rare food where both sides agree on the facts and disagree only about whether the fact is good. The pods are mucilaginous, so cooking them releases a soluble fibre that turns viscous. That is the slime that okra is either famous or infamous for. Cooks who dislike it have a standard workaround: cook the pods with something acidic, such as tomatoes, which cuts the mucilage down. Cooks who want it treat it as the point. Okra is one of the three traditional thickeners used in Louisiana gumbo, where the same viscosity that puts people off is doing structural work in the pot. So the argument is not really about flavour, which is mild, but about texture, and specifically about whether a thickening slipperiness belongs in your mouth or only in a sauce. That also explains the unusually large share of Americans who told YouGov they were not sure how they felt: 13%, higher than for nearly any other vegetable on the list, because plenty of people have simply never encountered it.