So, your kid is abnormal for not liking chocolate?
My second son can take or leave chocolate. For a treat, he’d far rather have something salty.
I am another real live person who doesn’t like chocolate. And I never have. Like tim314’s uncle I tell people I’m allergic to it, though it’s probably more technically correct to say I have an aversion to it. What happens when I try to eat it is I get a headache and if I keep eating it I get nauseous. Even the smell of chocolate, if strong enough, will induce a headache in me. Sometimes I have to walk out of a room if other people are eating it. I’ve conclude that my aversion has more to do with the smell of it combined with its unpleasant physiological effects than with the taste of it per se. I don’t find the taste especially pleasant, but I might say I’m indifferent to it. I think the strength of the flavor is part of it too, although I have no problem with other strongly flavored things like black coffee or alcohol.
I like to amaze people by telling them I’ve never eaten an entire candy bar in my life, which is true (I’m in my 50s). The issue was settled for me back in first grade when we had a party in class and I tried to eat a miniature 3 Musketeers bar and it made me vomit. I always gave away all of my Halloween chocolate.
But the form of the chocolate does make a difference.
What I cannot eat: Snickers, Hershey, Mars bars etc., Tootsie Rolls, Hershey Kisses, chocolate chips (Chips Ahoy brand the worst), chocolate Easter eggs, chocolate cake, brownies, fudge, frosting, syrup, any chocolates that come in “samplers.”
Not bothered by: chocolate pudding, mousse, sorbet. I don’t eat ice cream, so not sure about that.
If anything, dark chocolate is a little easier for me to take and very occasionally I will take a few nibbles of it to satisfy a late-night sweet tooth. Still I could never eat a whole bar of it. White chocolate, no way.
Here’s a weird one: Raisinets don’t seem to give me much of a problem. I’ve often wondered if something in the raisins counteracts the effects of the chocolate somehow. (I’ve read the ingredients and there’s nothing different about the chocolate in Raisinets).
It’s apparently an unusual issue to have, and people all the time express their sympathy to me, but I tell them it’s fine - since I never developed a taste for chocolate I don’t lament the inability to eat it.
I can’t say chocolate disgusts me, but I never go out of my way for it. I too love sour candy. I wonder if there is a correlation there. They are extremely dissimilar.
I like chocolate, but I do not understand why some people work it into every conceivable desert. I think chocolate rarely works in concert with other flavors. It is just to dominating. It ruins a cheescake- same for pecan pie (chocolate pecan pie? Yes, I’ve seen it). Oddly, it is treated similarly to bacon. Bacon is a good thing, but there seems to be this recent mindset that its addition can improve any dish… including chocolate itself, in which case they ruthlessly cancel one another out.