Your food "NO WAY!"'s [Archive] - Straight Dope Message Board

Stoid

11-01-2010, 02:57 AM

Aside from offal and weird fish, it's gotta be wet bread and fruity meat. I'm so freaky on the subject of wet bread that I will remove any squishy bread from a burger, and I can't eat anyone's stuffing but mine, because I make it very dry. The only moisture is butter and what seeps from the vegetables as they cook, then I make sure to sort of dry and crisp it.

And just about any meat recipe that involves cherries, apricots, pineapple, apples, pears, etc. NO. Fruit is dessert.

Beware of Doug

11-01-2010, 03:25 AM

Ratatouille (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratatouille). It's French for "slime."

Aspidistra

11-01-2010, 03:45 AM

Peanuts and chocolate. Peanuts are salty. Chocolate is sweet. It's Just Not Right.

kambuckta

11-01-2010, 04:02 AM

multimediac17

11-01-2010, 04:03 AM

Any sort of fruit that has been manipulated into anything other than juice: purée, pie, "fruit and nut" chocolate, chopped up and put into some sort of yoghurty crap - no. Either the fruit is in it's natural state or it's a juice, there are no other options.

Carmady

11-01-2010, 04:34 AM

Misuse of fruit, including:

Pineapple pizza, apple pie, fruit yogurt.

multimediac17

11-01-2010, 06:21 AM

Oh actually, I forgot to mention that I really like pineapple on pizza, so that's another of my exceptions. I think I've covered every acceptable use of fruit now.

KinkiNipponTourist

11-01-2010, 07:47 AM

Store- or deli-packed fruit cup. All the fruit juices leaking out of the fruit, mushy melon, red-tinged pineapple, tart tart grapefruit ruining the taste of all the sweet fruits. GROSS.

Any kind of liquor in desserts. blecchh.

My mother used to make this nasty pork chop dish. She'd pour milk over the top and bake those mofos til they were tough as leather, then insist that the milk kept 'em soft.

oh, sorry. That really can't be considered food I reckon. heh!

BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed

11-01-2010, 07:56 AM

I'll try anything at least once, and thus due to their disgustingness I've added a few to my NO WAY list.....tripe, brains, sea urchins and commercially produced ham-steaks.

Thanks all the same, but I'd rather starve to death. :D

Have you had fresh sea urchin? As in, I just pulled this off the rock and bashed it open fresh? Any urchin more than a few hours old has this particular taste, and smell to go with it, but fresh urchin has all the deliciousness with none of the stank.

They live in Oz, right? Next time you're snorkeling, give it a shot.

FairyChatMom

11-01-2010, 07:58 AM

Anything excessively hot or salty.

Oysters.

Stuffed shells made by my ex-sister-in-law, altho those barely qualify as food...

salinqmind

11-01-2010, 08:18 AM

- Mushy overcooked pasta.
- Gristle in meat.
- Cold cuts with flecks of fat, like salami or mortadella. (This used to include sausages - I was one of those kids who picked apart a piece of kielbasa or Italian sausage! Now I just eat it without looking...)
- Chocolate with fruit, and this includes Black Forest cake, those chocolate oranges candy they sell at Christmas, and why is it that every chocolate cake (on the cover of a happy homemaker magazine) is festooned with strawberries or raspberries???
- Those awful, cheap, frozen, gluey pies they sell during holidays - doesn't matter what kind, apple, blueberry, cherry - they are an abomination and designed for one purpose: to fill up stomaches of men and kids who don't care what dessert is, as long as there's plenty of it.
- Ringdings, Ho-Hos, Little Debbies, Hostess - I have to be faint and starving before I'll willingly eat them. They're so...blah.
- Cube steak. Nothing good is ever made with cube steak, there's something about the texture that says: "spit this out, quick!".

Annie-Xmas

11-01-2010, 08:20 AM

Shellfish. It tastes like something that's gone bad.

Fruit belongs in the fruit bowl, not the chocolate dish.

Qadgop the Mercotan

11-01-2010, 08:28 AM

Beets. I just don't like the taste.

Zsofia

11-01-2010, 08:30 AM

I can't stand wet bread either. I don't really mind, say, a moist burger bun, but I cannot stand soup in a bread bowl or bread pudding or that bread that comes with French onion soup (but I'd never go without it 'cause of the nummy cheese on it), etc.

kiz

11-01-2010, 08:36 AM

Anything in the cruciferous family. I don't care how "good" they are for me. The sight of them alone is enough to make me run screaming into the abyss.

Enderw24

11-01-2010, 09:47 AM

I'll eat most anything and I'll tolerate eating almost anything, but there are two things I won't eat

1) Blue cheese
2) Bleu cheese

Either of them makes me want to blew cheese.

Fried Dough Ho

11-01-2010, 10:00 AM

RealityChuck

11-01-2010, 10:28 AM

Coffee
Coconut
Beer (as a beverage -- I'm wary of it in cooking, but haven't hated it).

DCnDC

11-01-2010, 11:45 AM

Mushrooms. Ich.

Okra. Can be okay if prepared in a non-slimy way.

aruvqan

11-01-2010, 12:30 PM

insects. That mythbusters where Keri ate bugs - no fucking way. I would rather be covered in scorpions and spiders and snakes. I include nematodes that you find in a slab of fish in that class.

Anything I am actually allergic to of course =) [mushrooms, bivalves, palm products]

Okra, zucchini, eggplant. I used to be nice and try them when anybody told me that I just hadnt had them prepared correctly. After probably 10 years of living in both the north and south, and eating that crap, I decided nevermore. I will not willingly let any of them across my lips. I have had them in pretty much every single way they can be prepared. We need a vomiting blarghy face.

I hate liver and kidney. I wont eat eyeballs, or brains [not overall fond of the taste] though of all the organs I like heart when prepared properly.

I dont like most fish, especially the nasty fishy crap ones like mackeral. Even just opening a can of that shit to make croquettes makes me want to hurl. I eat sole, trout, perch, cod, haddock, salmon [sushi grade as sashimi only] tuna [canned or raw sushi grade only] Don't care for sea urchin so someone else can have my share. Detest eel in every form I have tried. Hate smoked or dried or reconstituted fish [that means lutefisk is right out, as is that fermented shark shit]

I prefer my spinach fresh and slightly wilted or plain raw with dressing, will grudgingly eat it frozen refuse it canned. Refuse canned peas, prefer fresh properly cooked veggies to frozen or canned, but most people are like that=)

Cisco

11-01-2010, 12:41 PM

I haven't tried a lot of organ meats, eyeballs, etc (though I eat turkey heart every Thanksgiving and love it), but I'd be willing to give them all a shot at least once. I'd also try insects, and I'm kind of morbidly curious to try an earthworm.

As for stuff I commonly come across, I am always very reluctant to eat:

-artificial sweeteners,
-most non-fried seafood,
and
-romaine lettuce*,

but I'll choke them down if I have to.

I will absolutely not touch:

-cilantro,

and prefer not to be in the same room with it.

*the second to last time I ate romaine I gagged and almost vomited, but then I tried it again a couple months later and managed just fine, so I'm still ranking it above cilantro.

pulykamell

11-01-2010, 12:48 PM

There's no "NO WAYs"! for me, but as far as things I've tried that I didn't particularly care for, the only thing I've had that was offensive, so far, is surströmming, a Swedish fermented herring. I liked pickled herring and strong flavors in general, but this stuff is in another league. I reckon it's probably similar to that fermented shark the Icelanders eat. The stuff smells like a cross between a fresh dog turd and rotting flesh, and attracts flies just as effectively. (Seriously, when I opened up a can of this stuff on my stoop, within a minute it seemed as if all the flies in the neighborhood had gathered on my front steps.)

I've never had balut, though, but I think I might have some difficulty trying to get that down.

Darth Panda

11-01-2010, 12:58 PM

I don't like the idea of eating reptiles (you might convince me to eat gator, but snakes are right out) and there's no way I'm eating anything's brain.

Kyla

11-01-2010, 01:43 PM

I've never had balut, though, but I think I might have some difficulty trying to get that down.

I attended a dinner party in the Philippines at which balut was served. I did not partake (when I saw it, I decided it was NOT vegetarian), but a number of my classmates did. One of them really liked it. One of them declared herself to be immune from disgusting food because she's Mexican and has eaten every part of the animal. The rest were not impressed. Apparently it wasn't the flavor that was bad, it was the texture that was gross.

The balut. (http://oi53.tinypic.com/2n1gx0i.jpg)
Matt tries balut. (http://oi54.tinypic.com/1fblsw.jpg)

StusBlues

11-01-2010, 01:44 PM

One time my roommate (from China) talked me into trying pork jelly.

No. No. No.

Scubaqueen

11-01-2010, 02:21 PM

It’s been mentioned by the Queen before in a previous thread about foods you hate (can’t find the silly thread now, but it was there, damnit), but nonetheless it bears repeating.

Until my final breath of life while upon this mortal plane, I stand by what I consider to be The. Most. Hated. Food. Everlasting: lima beans.

The very words make me shudder with horror.:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

JohnT

11-01-2010, 02:26 PM

Grapefruit
Beets
Liver
Alcohol

tdn

11-01-2010, 02:38 PM

I'm so NOT there with almost all of you, except for aruvqan. Liver and lima beans I agree with. And wet bread except in stuffing and onion soup. Yum.

Jello salad. Any jello containing Miracle Whip, cottage cheese, cole slaw, or marshmallows. That shit is a sin against God and man.

Mayo-based "salads." That includes seafood, egg, macaroni, and potato. Odd, because I adore seafood, eggs, macaroni, and potatoes. Tuna steaks are great, tuna salad is fishy barf. (Yeah, I know. I've also never seen The Godfather.)

pulykamell

11-01-2010, 02:39 PM

One of them declared herself to be immune from disgusting food because she's Mexican and has eaten every part of the animal.

Any good peasant cuisine eats tip-to-tail. I've eaten most parts of the animal: from brains to eyeballs to intestines, stomachs, hearts, kidneys, etc. But a fertilized duck egg would give me pause.

Kal

11-01-2010, 02:54 PM

Pretty much everything that lives underwater.
Mayo.
Brussel sprouts.
Parts of a chicken or turkey that ain't breast.
Offal.
Beef.
Fresh tomatoes.
Sweetcorn.

Push You Down

11-01-2010, 04:03 PM

Hardboiled eggs. EFF. THAT.

Pretty much everything else is on the table.

Mangetout

11-01-2010, 04:28 PM

I was going to agree with the wet bread thing (Summer Pudding makes me gag), but then again, I absolutely love bread and gravy - if there's gravy left at the end of a Sunday roast, and I'm hungry, I can very happily tuck into slice after slice of bread soaked in gravy.

Pretty much anything else is OK (hence the username). Durian didn't work for me, but I've only tried it in preserved form.

The Hamster King

11-01-2010, 04:31 PM

I've eaten lots of different things, but balut looks really nasty.

Of things that I've tried and hated, I offer natto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natt%C5%8D). I thought it tasted like a Rice Krispie treat made with stale coffee and cigarette butts.

prettydorky

11-01-2010, 04:46 PM

-I agree with soggy, overcooked noodles. Add rice to that.

-I have thrown up from the mere smell of canteloupe. Not only will I not eat it, I actually have a physical fear response, as if I am in some sort of danger, when I see it.

-Raw or even rare meat. Get away.

Everything else is pretty much ok as long as it's not slimy.

Stoid

11-01-2010, 04:50 PM

Peanuts and chocolate. Peanuts are salty. Chocolate is sweet. It's Just Not Right.

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Reeses??

Haagie's PB & Choc ice cream?

Stoid

11-01-2010, 04:52 PM

Any kind of liquor in desserts. blecchh.

Ding ding ding! Let's take this delicious cake and dump nastyass rum all over it....WTF???

Stoid

11-01-2010, 04:55 PM

Gosh, I love it all....

Offal - I'll fight you for the eyeballs!
Sea Urchin - raw or cooked!
Insects - been there, done that; I recommend grasshoppers!
Live Octopus - easier to start with the heads; once the brains are disengaged, the tentacles will *mostly* stop moving around

The ONLY thing I don't care for us balut - boiled, fertilized, partially formed duck eggs. For those with a strong stomach, here are some pictures. (http://www.google.com/images?q=balut&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1440&bih=640)

Hmm... Maybe you were Icelandic in another life:

Something that you might not be keen on trying is "hakarl" which is rotten shark. The light-colored pieces have a stronger flavor and this dish is made by burying a shark in sand for six months. The flavor has been described as a cross between strong cheese, ammonia, and rotten fish.

Another curious Icelandic dish is "svid" which is burnt sheep head. A sheep head has the wool burnt off to make this dish. It is then split in two to take out the brain, and boiled.

Another dish, which you might not fancy trying, is "hrutspungar." To make this Icelandic treat, rams' testicles are pickled in whey before being combined with gelatin and pressed into a pate or a cake. For "hvalrengi," fresh whale blubber is mixed with milk to give it a sour flavor. Seal flippers are also soured with milk and salted to make "selshreyfar."

Larry Mudd

11-01-2010, 05:00 PM

I am hard pressed to think of any serious food aversions.

Processed cheese is the only thing that comes to mind - whether it's Cheez Whiz,Velveeta, those nasty little "slices" which aren't sliced off of anything, aerosol cheese product, "American Cheese" of the sort used in hotel omelettes and which I have been assured by earnest U.S. Dopers is not like real "American Cheese" which is asserted to more closely resemble cheese - all of these things fall well short of anything that might reasonably be classified as "food."

Oh, I might also add that (while I am grateful for the gift of lactobacilli and appreciate the tireless work that those little bastards put in transforming mere milk into something that's much more useful in the kitchen) I can confess that I am at a total loss when contemplating the appeal of kimchi. Sauerkraut is something I can get my head around. Kimchi is a mystery to me.

Stoid

11-01-2010, 05:01 PM

Lamar Mundane

11-01-2010, 05:03 PM

This is a bad time of year for me, because I really don't like any of the fall vegetables. Gourds of any kind - pumpkin, squash, I'm not liking any of it. I also don't care much for sweet potatoes, turnips, beets, brussel sprouts, radishes, rutabaga, etc.

I do like broccoli and cauliflower, though.

TBG

11-01-2010, 06:07 PM

Mushrooms. Ich.

THIS so hard.

I can't even eat around them most of the time. If a mushroom has even touched it it's tainted and will taste of foul mushroom filth. The only exceptions are some chinese dishes, where eating around them is possible, for some reason they haven't tainted everything else, but still not preferred if it can be avoided.

Apollyon

11-01-2010, 08:09 PM

One time my roommate (from China) talked me into trying pork jelly.

No. No. No.When team went to a Yum Char lunch my Chinese co-worker talked me into eating chicken's feet... in a sorta satay sauce.

I have a short No Way list. :D (And it was well worth it just for the looks on the faces of the other team members).

zoid

11-01-2010, 08:42 PM

It's a damn good thing we don't have an annual doper picnic.

The menu would consist solely of water and we'd still have arguments over bottled vs tap :D

Ah well, to each his/her own.

bibliophile

11-05-2010, 12:25 AM

Raisins. They ruin thousands of loaves of Irish soda bread every year.
I also agree with the vote for hard boiled eggs. I can't understand why anyone would willingly eat something that smells like a fart.

boomerwang

11-05-2010, 12:38 AM

Mushrooms and/or tofu. How these are considered foodstuffs, I'll never know.

Stan Shmenge

11-05-2010, 12:49 AM

Ratatouille (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratatouille). It's French for "slime." You obviously haven't had mine.

Stan Shmenge

11-05-2010, 01:01 AM

Wowsers. Some interesting things on here. That fertilized egg, balut? is something I probably wouldn't try.

This has come up before, but it seems a lot of dopers have some strange food aversions. Perhaps an idiosyncracy that goes along with high IQ?

For me it is hazelnut flavored anything. I can eat hazelnuts, no problem, will much them by the handful, but the liquor or anything flavored with the extract, hazelnut coffee, pastry, candy, etc., not on my list. Too cloying. Not gross, but something I don't prefer.

And the bug thing. Not into the bugs. Except for lobster.

ryan

11-06-2010, 07:09 AM

No offal or organ meat...ever. It just grosses me out. This includes "trotters". Head cheese is utterly revolting.
Oddly, I prefer natural casings on sausage and hot dogs.

Any seafood consisting of an entire creature...whole fish, lobster, shrimp, crab, clams/oysters, etc... No invertebrates at all!

I'm also not too fond of entire poultry bodies such as roast chicken or turkey, but I can manage.

Nothing too "far out" from mainstream US cuisine... not insects or balut, which seems quite horrifying.
I dislike overly fatty or gristly meats.
Lettuce of any kind in a "hot" meal, such as on a burger...I can tolerate it in a salad, but cool lettuce on a hot burger or in a wrap turns in a slimy repugnant mess.

Veal. I'm about as far from an animal rights person as you can be, but the deliberate cruelty of veal production just squicks me out.

Patty O'Furniture

11-06-2010, 10:10 AM

I've always thought offal was something like decaying rotted meat, so I was shocked to see it named in this thread of things that could possibly be considered as food. Then I went to the wiki page on offal and found out it's just entrails and other organ meat.

By the way, reading that wiki page highlights the danger of eating in an unfamiliar environment, even in your own country. You might order something that sounds tasty, like turkey fries, only be served a plate of testicles.

That article made my mouth water, and not in a good way.

lindsaybluth

11-06-2010, 10:20 AM

Olives. I've tried black, green, kalamata, expensive, dirt cheap. They all make me pucker up. I always politely ask for no olives if it's listed in the dish or if I suspect it'll be in the dish. If they're there because the kitchen or server forgot, it's the one food I won't "eat around" or pick out/off. I'll send it back.

Mint jelly or hot pepper jelly. Nooooo thank you.

DianaG

11-06-2010, 10:35 AM

Pumpkin. The smell is unbelievably vile, and at this time of year it's everywhere, in the form of those coffees that everyone else seems to live for. Shudder.

DCnDC

11-06-2010, 11:06 AM

THIS so hard.

I can't even eat around them most of the time. If a mushroom has even touched it it's tainted and will taste of foul mushroom filth. The only exceptions are some chinese dishes, where eating around them is possible, for some reason they haven't tainted everything else, but still not preferred if it can be avoided.

Right? It's fungus. Why the fuck would I want to eat that?

Olives. I've tried black, green, kalamata, expensive, dirt cheap. They all make me pucker up. I always politely ask for no olives if it's listed in the dish or if I suspect it'll be in the dish. If they're there because the kitchen or server forgot, it's the one food I won't "eat around" or pick out/off. I'll send it back.

I'll eat olives, I don't necessarily dislike them, but I don't understand why other people can like them so much. Just tastes like squishy salt to me.

Crafter_Man

11-06-2010, 11:59 AM

Tomatoes. Yuck.
Mushrooms. Yuck.

MadTheSwine

11-06-2010, 11:30 PM

canteloupe

Rhiannon8404

11-07-2010, 12:32 AM

Mushrooms: I gag if I even see them touching my food.

outlierrn

11-07-2010, 01:48 AM

Liver is not food.

Aspidistra

11-07-2010, 03:02 AM

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Reeses??

Haagie's PB & Choc ice cream?

My housemate brought back some peanut butter cups from a trip to the US once. I managed to choke down about a quarter of a mouthful, then pased the rest on to my SO.

I'm sure it's entirely psychological. But it does limit my chocolate bar selection quite substantially...

Gestalt

11-07-2010, 02:00 PM

The ONLY thing I don't care for us balut - boiled, fertilized, partially formed duck eggs. For those with a strong stomach, here are some pictures. (http://www.google.com/images?q=balut&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1440&bih=640)

Okay, there is no politically correct way to say this, but does it seem like east Asia has a disproportionally high amount of absolutely disgusting food? The stuff that even starving people in Africa are like, "no thanks, that is not fit for human consumption?"

I have a pretty strong stomach and even looking at those pictures was a little "urp."

BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed

11-12-2010, 06:15 AM

Okay, there is no politically correct way to say this, but does it seem like east Asia has a disproportionally high amount of absolutely disgusting food? The stuff that even starving people in Africa are like, "no thanks, that is not fit for human consumption?"

I have a pretty strong stomach and even looking at those pictures was a little "urp."

I think most of it is just perspective, though, and how you perceive the food you eat. You might think that fish eggs are weird, but why is it any less palatable than chicken eggs? They're both from animals reproductive organs, right? In the same way some people might not be able to get around the whole internal organ aspect, but when you put the idea aside, the taste really isn't very different than "normal" meats. Sure liver has a stronger, more bitter taste, but stomach and intestines taste much less strongly than a steak. Why waste all that meat?

Besides, I'd rather east something tasty that has a strange concept attached to it than something that doesn't taste at all. Look at traditional Irish cooking, for example: boil the crap out of everything until the only flavor left is cabbage. And you want to start pointing fingers at east Asia, you better be prepared to explain haggis and blood sausage first. Or hot dogs, for that matter :D