When I was a younger kid, I never did like my vegetables. My parents never forced me to, and concequently I have gone many years (well not too many, I’m 19 now) not eatting (many) vegetables. I like all kinds of fruit, but when it comes to lettuce, carrots and tomatoes, I can’t stand the stuff. Whenever I try to eat a salad, it tastes like I’m eating, well, plants. I want to be one of those people that enjoy salads! Is there any way that I can “train” my taste buds to accept a wider variety of foods?
Can you train yourself to like veggies? Yes.
Here’s how:
When I was younger (IE: up until the age of 17 or so…) I HATED pizza! Why? I dunno, now… but I did!
This became an extreme hassle, as all the rest of my family wanted to go out and have pizza, but knew I hated the stuff. So I decided to try to train myself to like it. Everytime we went out, I would order something else for myself, but would also force myself to eat a slice of pizza. After a few months of doing this, I found that I didn’t mind pizza so much (having become used to the taste), and slowly began to enjoy it!
Now, pizza is one of my favorite foods…
It worked for me anyhow… slowly getting used to it. Try it, it might work!
I had a similar condition of not liking veggies - too “planty”! One thing that might also help is to cut back on really unhealthy but tasty stuff… NOTHING is going to taste good in comparison to salty french fries with gravey and a big cheese burger with meat juice dripping down onto your chin, especially a withered carrot stick or cucumber slices. If you eat more unprocessed and more “real” food, your taste scale will adjust by it’s self. That and try fresh vegetables as opposed to old wilty ones. Slowly learn to appreciate the real taste of veggies as opposed to trying to dress them up too much with dressings or by frying them in butter. You can actually train yourself into drooling at the thought of fresh baby lettuce heads from the garden (just brush off the caterpillars first:D -hope that didn’t ruin it for ya!)
I’ll second Astroboy’s suggestion that you can train yourself to like foods.
I have a friend whose preteenaged son had always been very picky about his food. He ate almost no fruits or vegetables. His doctor told him that he really needed to expand his food selection because he simply wasn’t going to be able to grow properly without a better diet.
The doctor’s suggestion was to take one fruit or vegetable at a time and eat it every day. He could start out with just a small bite if it was really offputting, and work up to a full serving. According to the doctor, he should expect it to take 2 to 4 weeks of eating a food daily before his tastebuds accepted it.
He has been doing this for some months now, and it seems to be working.
I concur with the points mentioned. Case in point - Soft drinks. I used to guzzle those by the litre, and now I hate them. Why? I realised just how much of the soda went to my waistline, and it sort of disgusted me. Now, I think of all sodas as flat, pallid, syrupy liquids, and would only drink one if severely dehydrated. Same goes with chips - vile, greasy chunks of brittle potato that always get stuck in my teeth.
I had to train myself to like my veggies when I turned into a lacto-veggie-type-guy. If I didn’t, my diet would have consisted entirely of junk food and dairy (and I emit vile, flammable vapours when I drink too much milk), and that would very bad be (high sugar makes me feel like a sluggish, blobby fat cell with legs. Same goes with grease.).
Yes, tastebuds can be trained, and it’s a lot easier than said, if one is properly motivated. Disgust is a very powerful shifter of tastebuds.
Try Chinese food, but skip all the deep-fried stuff. In mixed meat/veg dishes, itf it’s cut properly, you should be able to get a piece of meat & a piece or two of veg in the same mouthful. Altho a lot of American Chinese restaurants cut things too big.
<rant> American vegs simply don’t taste all that good because they’re not all that tasty to begin with–Americans usually buy just by looks–and they’re not well prepared.</rant>