I can’t stand most vegetables. Lettuce and green beans are the only two that don’t trigger a gag reflex. I’m working on carrots.
I know vegetables are good for me. Heck, if it was just the fact that they tasted terrible, I’d choke em down anyway because of the benefits they offer. But I gag when I eat them. I think a big part of it is the texture; I can eat vegetables when they’re in soup. V-8 is very yummy; I can drink gallons of that stuff. But brussel’s sprouts, or the flowerette thingys on broccoli make my throat go nuts.
Bob,
Are you posting this because you’re just curious about how common it is? Or are you concerned about it being a possible problem healthwise?
If you’re concerned about not getting enough nutrients, then just make sure to eat lots of vegetable soup. If you’re concerned about fiber, you can get it from things other than vegetables.
If you’re concerned about the social stigma of being a “picky eater”, maybe you could take on the guise of a macho “meat and potato man” and derisively refer to us wimpy salad eaters as “rabbits” and “carrot huggers”.
I like the nice raw crunchy texture of raw veggies, but mushy cooked ones make me gag. People are strange, aren’t they? Another reason for my aversion to cooked vegetables is the cooked-veggie aroma and flavor. Ew. I’ll eat them in Oriental and Indian food happily, because most of the time in the above cuisines the veggies are only lightly cooked and have plenty of spices to cover up the nasty cooked veggie flavor.
Sometimes vegetables taste like dirt to me, potatoes and iceberg lettuce especially often. In my strange mind I figured that sometimes a veggie will pick up a dirt flavor, like water will taste of tea after it’s steeped. Well, I said I was strange.
