Italians have a lot of proverbs and sayings featuring food and wine. Maybe one day I'll make a compilation of them.
Here's one with soup: o mangi 'sta minestra o ti butti dalla finestra. You either eat this soup or jump out the window. It's very similar to our "it's my way or the highway" (which also rhymes- I love that in a proverb), to express a drastic lack of options.
In Altan's cartoon above, a mamma uses the proverb quite literally to force-feed her reluctant bambino, modifying it slightly to say that she will throw him out the window. He gives her lip by observing that she's very modern. Actually, it's not so realistic. A contemporary Italian woman is likely to outsource her baby-tending woes to a foreign tata (nanny).
