@Dustcan
To be fair, One Piece wasn’t even originally on their list of anime to distribute as a Saturday morning show. For the kids, you know? Because they were already well aware of the massive amount of violence and sexual jokes? But they didn’t have much of a choice, as it was part of a package deal when they wanted to dub another series, so the edits WERE, in fact, needed to satisfy the Standards and Practices.
Okay, let me explain what Wikipedia tells about the “butchering”:
At the 2019 Fan Expo Canada, Eric Stuart, who was the voice of Brock and James in the 4Kids dub of Pokémon, the voice of Seto Kaiba in the English dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and who was also part of the production side, mentioned why 4Kids’ dubs had this censorship. He explained that American culture has a different sensitivity to certain content compared to Japanese culture, and networks on Saturday mornings had standards that would forbid certain inappropriate content like firearms, sexual references, religious references, display or mention of death, alcohol, cigarettes, and other content that is considered offensive to American audiences. As the censorship is dictated by the networks and not the production company itself, 4Kids would submit the scripts and footage of their dubs to the networks their dubs air on, and then the executives of those networks would review them. Then after they reviewed it, they would tell 4Kids to cut out certain scenes and edit inappropriate content to something particular like changing Sanji’s cigarette to a lollipop in One Piece, or changing a stone that looks like a cross to something non-religious for their dubs to pass the network’s standards. He also pointed out that Pokémon, and anime as a whole, wouldn’t be as wildly popular as it is today if companies like 4Kids didn’t air it on network television instead of being in the back of a video store.
At the 2016 Metrocon, Eric Stuart also explained the “Americanization” in 4Kids’ dubs. He stated that those edits were international edits. When companies like 4Kids purchase the licensing to Japanese anime, the anime not only was redubbed into English but also redubbed into multiple languages because companies like 4Kids were used to distribute the anime to other countries by using their dubs and licensing them to other countries to have their dubs be used to distribute the anime. The Japanese food products being changed, and Japanese references being removed were requested by those Japanese anime companies because they wanted their anime to be distributed worldwide and wanted international audiences to relate to their products much easier. So, while the Japanese anime companies remove the Japanese text on signs, 4Kids removed the scenes involving Japanese references and changed the names of the Japanese food products like rice balls to something more international like donuts while only occasionally changing the animation to the foods since making animation changes causes a rise in production costs and they already have to make plenty of animation changes in their dubs.
Oh, and one last thing: don’t shoot the messenger. This includes me.