As an adult, ever start loving a food you once disliked? (inspired by Pit thread)

In My Humble Opinion
1

(Inspired by this Pit thread.)

I was wondering about people’s hate-love experiences with certain foods. I don’t mean foods you hated as a child – I mean foods you couldn’t stand even as an adult.

Since my early 20s, I have started enjoying foods that I previously disliked as an adult. Two personal examples inspired by anecdotes from the Pit thread:

  • Jayjay mentioned his personal impression of the “Ivory soap” taste of cilantro. I, too, had exactly that experience with cilantro the first few times. What helped me better appreciate cilantro was coming across a cilantro-infused home-brewed beer. The notes I tasted in the beer were not soapy notes at all – it was much more of a subtle, pleasant minty sensation. Ever since then, cilantro-heavy foods have been no problem.

  • Several folks mentioned sushi and sashimi in that thread. My first few experiences with sushi were dreadful – and it was beginner sushi (various maki) to boot. The thing was, though, is that I was initially sampling significantly subpar sushi at cheap ersatz Chinese buffets. It wasn’t the raw-fish thing, or a fishy-taste thing – I was raised on seafood of many types. The smell of raw, cleaned fish even puts me in a “mealtime” frame of mind. It was just that the “Chinese” buffet sushi was pretty tasteless and overly firm for whatever reason. But once I had fresh-rolled maki at a real sushi place, I got hooked.

Now then. After reading through that Pit thread, it occurred to me that there may be a negative correlation between being apparent “pickiness” and number of hate-turned-to-love food experiences as an adult. I’m not trying to pass any kind of value judgment here. My aim is simply to get a sampling of Dopers’ hate-love food experiences, and see if the frequency of these experiences for a given individual is tied to overall pickiness.

2

Lots. Olives, mushrooms, yams, liver, anchovies, cilantro too.

3

Lots, but the strangest is Coca-cola. Used to not like it, now at the age of 30 I suddenly love it. Go figure.

4

I’ll second mushrooms. Love them now, couldn’t eat them from age 8 to about 18 or so. Then, from 18 to about 25 I could eat them if I had to, I just preferred not to. Now I love them. My fear of them never had anything to do with the taste, though.

Mustard, especially the really strong kinds. Love the stuff, hated it as a child.

5

With Coca-Cola, I vascillate. I never get to where I hate it, but I go through stages where I find it too syruppy sweet. Other times, it’s pleasant and bracing.

And it’s not a situational thing – it’s not like today, at the 7-11 fountain, it was too sweet and then tomorrow, it’s great coming out of a 2-liter bottle. The ebb and flow of my Coke yen would be measured in months.

6

This is common, though I’d think – hating a certain food as a child, enjoying it as an adult.

I’m thinking more like your first example. Even better is if someone has food conversion stories from when they were, say, 30 or older.

7

Oh yes, this has happened many times.

Sushi. I had a similar horrible sushi experience when I was 19 or 20 years old. At a Thai restaurant I sampled some spicy tuna rolls that were gummy and had a mildly fishy smell. I couldn’t even choke one bite of it down. It has just been in the past 2 years or so that I got up the nerve to try it again, and LOVED IT. As a matter of fact when I was pregnant I craved salmon rolls on a weekly basis. And I can’t get enough sashimi now (red snapper is my favorite).

Beets. I think most every kid I knew hated beets. So did I. With a passion. On a whim last year I was at the salad bar in my grocery store and threw a small beet into my container. When I tried it I was surprised how much I liked it. I’m not ready for a big honkin’ bowl of beets for dinner, but they don’t turn my stomach anymore.

Plain seltzer water or even the ‘lemon lime’ flavored seltzers. Used to think they tasted bitter and metallic. Could never understand the appeal of Perrier. A few years ago I impulsively grabbed a small bottle that was in the mark-down bin for thirty cents because it got separated from a 6-pack. I chilled it up at home and drank it, and was surprised at how the taste wasn’t that bad and it was actually more refreshing than plain water. Now I buy it by the liter every week.

8

Yep. Asparagus, olives and brussel sprouts, to name a few. I’m sure there are more, I just can’t think of them.

9

Seafood, broadly speaking. As a child (I’ll use that term to describe “younger than 16”) I refused to eat seafood other than the omnipresent fish sticks. Tuna sandwiches were barely acceptable. I attended college in Boston, and the summer before my freshman year, I decided enough was enough, and that I should learn to appreciate seafood considering where I was going to spend the next four years. Now, I’ll try any seafood at least once.

Mustard. I hated yellow mustard as a child and couldn’t imagine why people put it on hamburgers, hot dogs and french fries, and had no exposure to other kinds. As an adult, one of my favorite meals is homemade bratwurst slathered in spicy brown mustard.

Liver and kidneys and very rare meat - didn’t eat those much as a child, nowadays I’ve got no problem with that at all.

However, pickles and mushrooms still give me an involuntary shudder. I’ll eat them if they’re presented to me, but I won’t seek them out and I’ll try to avoid the bigger pieces if they’re in a meal. I’ve tried to open my mind to them, but the taste and texture have been associated with vileness for so long that I can’t separate them. It’s a shame.

Hmm, and green olives, too. Hideous, wretched things. I don’t even know what they taste like, but I’m sure they’re awful.

10

I didn’t like avocados as an adult. When I was about 30, I made some guacamole for a party, and decided I loved them. I’d had guac as an adult before, but hadn’t liked it, but everyone else did and said mine was good, so I kept making it. Now I have a hard time not inhaling avocados whole right in the store. I think that pit could be a problem.

I also didn’t start tolerating eggs until I was about 30. Still can’t stand them hard boiled or fried, but I do like a nice omelet or scramble now and then. I don’t think I “love” them though.

Incidentally, 30 was the year I got divorced, and had the opportunity and inclination to try and to cook things that my extremely picky ex had always vetoed.

11

Tea. I hated it as a kid, and still don’t like it much, but I’ve learned to drink it as a survival skill.
Mushrooms, alfredo-sauce, Italian sausages are things I learned to love after I didn’t have to eat the results of my mother’s cooking. I thought I hated mushrooms, but I just hate button mushrooms.

12

I just recently, in the last year or so but well after I turned 30, started liking spinach and asparagus. I think the difference is that I finally had some cooked by a person who knew how to cook. Plus it was fresh rather than crap from a can.

13

Water, oddly enough. When I was young I took sick, and had to stay in the infirmary for a couple of weeks (I was in military school). The nurse on duty would periodically come around with everyone’s pills and a brushed metal pitcher of ice water. My pills were particularly repulsive (probably penicillin), and somehow the sickness and vomiting and horrible pills got linked to the water, in my mind. I remember the scraping of the ice cubes against the sides of the metal pitcher as she made her rounds… urgh.

Refused to drink water for many years after that. Soda, milk, coffee, juice, anything but straight water.

I still wake up sometimes, wake up in the dark, to the scraping of the ice cubes.

(I like water now, though.)

14

I hated pickles, until I had my ex-mother-in-law’s homemade bread-n-butter pickles. Loved 'em, and now I like sweet pickles, especially if they’re those little whole ones rather than slices. I still don’t care for dill pickles, but I can tolerate them.

15

Growing up, there was The Big Five. I wasn’t really a picky eater at all, and if I tried to be, I’d starve, because my mom wouldn’t be moved by my pleas. We ate what she served, period.

But there were five things I would not eat. Olives, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, and spinach. Just the smell is enough to make me gag in a few cases. But my husband LOVES all five things. We were having a bit of a conflict due to the fact that I didn’t even want to watch him eat the food.

But one day, he ordered deep fried mushrooms and offered me one. I declined, because ewwww! BUt he talked me into it by covering it with ranch, and it wasn’t too disgusting. From then on, I sampled his fried mushrooms but never ordered my own…and then one day, I found myself craving them. Then I sauteed some mushrooms in butter and garlic one night for dinner, and hey, those weren’t too disgusting either. I still don’t like raw mushrooms, like in salads or whatever, but mushrooms have pretty much become a staple for our meals.

I learned ways to make broccoli edible. Cheese helps, a lot. I can now eat casseroles and dishes that include broccoli, but I still don’t like it raw or just by itself as a side-dish.

I try one olive every Christmas, just to make sure I still don’t like them. So far, a miracle has not occurred. Still don’t like spinach either.

I know people say that cauliflower doesn’t taste like anything, but it has a very distinctive taste to me, and that taste is nasty. I know a few ways to make it edible now, but I’d rather just not bother.

16

Miso soup. When I was heavily into martial arts I hated it. It smelled too much like the heavy “feet” smell the training hall would take on. I guess once I stopped training I stopped smelling the “feet” smell and miso started smelling more like food than sweaty feet. Now I love it, but I try not to smell it too deeply.

17

I was the classic picky eater, and until I started cooking for a living there was a slew of things I wouldn’t eat that I’ll eat regularly now. Pretty much all green and red vegatables, corn not on-the-cob, potatos any way but fried or mashed, salad, most fish, et cetera.

Items of note (that I’ll eat now but not then): [ul]
[li]Tomatos, raw.[/li][li]Pickles.[/li][li]Asparagus.[/li][li]Mushrooms.[/li][li]Eggplant.[/li][li]Zucchini.[/li][li]Tea.[/li][li]Peppers.[/li][li]Various roughage.[/li][li]Hi Opal![/li][/ul]

And that’s just the short list. 'Course, my early aversion maybe have had something to do with my mother force-feading me peas and string beans (which I still hate) and the fact that most childhood vegetables came from a can (ick).

Now I’ll try most anything at least once, and probably three or four times, before I decide I don’t like it.

I still can’t eat eggs though, prepared any way, especially boiled. Just the smell makes me nauseous. It’s too bad, because I love cooking omlettes. Very fun. I just can’t eat them.

Stranger

18

Mangos. Up until about two years ago, I couldn’t even stand the smell of them. All of the sudden, one day, I think to myself, “I HAVE to have a mango, NOW!” And, that was that. I’ve loved them ever since.

I can eat raw cauliflower, but cooked–ugh. Even the smell of it turns my stomach.

I’ve never been able to eat cantaloupe. Watermelon, regular melon–those are wonderful, but no way for the cantaloupe. If it’s mixed into a fruit salad, I can’t even eat the fruit salad because the taste of the cantaloupe stands out so much.

19

Sounds like the usual suspects for me, too. Spinach, broccoli, brussel sprouts, asparagus, I like them all now. Never really got over turnips, but I did give them a second chance. Oh, and as I mentioned in The Pit…raw tomatoes :wink:

I never tried raw oysters until I was grown (liked fried oysters always), the first raw oyster I had wasn’t a good example. Just nasty. Then I spent some time in New Orleans in early spring and hung at a bar where fresh ones were $2.25/dozen. Figured what the heck, it’s only a couple of bucks. Loved them! Totally different.

20

I still can’t do mushrooms, even though I’ve tried on many occasions.

But I’m now a shrimp eater. I hated it when I was a kid, but in the past year I have realized I like it. Quite frankly I think it was a preparation problem. The only time we had shrimp when I was a kid was when my parents would make “shrimp salad” - they would essentially make a macaroni salad (with mayo/mustard type “dressing”) and throw in some of the tiny shrimp. I realized I actually like shrimp when I had it grilled on skewers with yummy spices, and in things like scampi.