squash But I always had it mashed and cooked to death as a kid and usually steam, stirfry or sautee now
eggplant Wouldn’t eat it as a kid, see comment for squash
fish As a kid it was always canned or fishsticks, now it is fresh/frozen or tuna from the pouch
meatloaf Again, bad cooking lead to greasy/dry (yes, it can be both at the same time) salty mass o’ cow.
Maybe it is more a matter of us learning how to prepare foods in the ways that we like them instead of having them senselessly murdered by our frazzled caretakers
Lots, mostly vegetables. I don’t know how many of them I might have liked as a kid, because to be honest my mom’s cooking is very good but not terribly diverse… so she rarely made vegetables beyond carrots, potatos, string beans and corn.
Now I will eat pretty much any vegetable except I don’t care for stuff in the squash family, and I don’t like soggy veggies (raw spinach ok; cooked not ok). I will eat quite a bit of things I never ate as a child, but it’s hard to say whether or not I might’ve since many of the foods I love most now I was never introduced to until I sought them out.
Things I’ve never liked and still don’t? Tomatoes and onions. I will not put them in my mouth for anything. There are plenty of foods I don’t really care for (melons and olives fall into this category) but will eat anyway if they’re in something else that I want, or someone serves it to me, but I absolutely abhor tomatoes and onions with the passion of a thousand white hot suns.
Apparently I liked spaghetti as a small child, but I think this is a lie. My mom force fed me spaghetti damn near once a week, I swear, as a kid – I can hardly stand to even be sitting at the same table as someone eating it now. My mom was one of those who when she found something she thought you liked, she would buy/make it until you literally couldn’t choke down another ounce of it… so she ruined a few of my childhood favourites for me. Many of them I have come to like again, but I don’t think I will ever like spaghetti.
Similar experiences for me. I didn’t enjoy zucchini or eggplant until I started working in an Italian restaurant. Eggplant parmesan was my “gateway” dish for eggplant.
When I was a little kid, I hated ketchup, American cheese, anything even remotely spicy (such as salsa, or jalapeno peppers), bleu cheese, feta cheese, sauerkraut, and big chunks of tomatoes in tomato sauce. Now I love all that stuff. Oddly enough, I’ve always loved sushi, liver, anchovies, mustard, and spinach.
I tended to like “foods only adults like” when I was still a kid; by the time I was 18, my favorite food was liver and lima beans (still love it).
But those I didn’t like but like now:
Cola. Couldn’t stand it. Then, a couple of years ago, a book mentioned the flavors in Coke were well known: vanilla, cinnamon, and citrus. I realized I liked them so started giving it a try.
Shepherd’s Pie. At the school cafeteria, this was dried out hamburger with a Bisquick crust. But the good stuff uses actual mashed potatoes for the crust and I think that’s fine.
I didn’t like dill pickles until I was in my 30s. I guess the only ones I’d tasted before were run-of-the-mill dills and not kosher half sours. But I went to a deli with a Jewish friend, and had a corned-beef sandwich on rye that came with a dill pickle. Normally, I would have left it there, but I tried it, and it was great! I like them so much now that I don’t think we’ve ever bought a jar of sweet pickles.
I still can’t eat mushrooms or turnips or squash, though, or horseradish, and I’m not interested in finding out what any seafood tastes like, beyond fish and chips. I never was, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon.
Indian food, especially curry. I used to work at a place where the cafeteria served a lot of curry, and I couldn’t even stand the smell. Now I love, love, love Indian food, including curry. The change happened when I was about 30. Why? I do not know.
Shrimp was something I disliked well into adulthood. Now I like boiled shrimp a lot. Spinach was something I didn’t start liking until about 2 years ago (I’m 31 for frame of reference). I buy it fresh for salads or frozen for casserole-type meals or dip. Everything else, I either like it, never liked it, or haven’t tried it.
Brie
Blue cheese
Asparagus
Egg whites (i.e. non -scrambled eggs, hardboiled eggs, etc.)
Potato salad
Don’t take this short list to mean that I still have a long list of dislikes. My mom always made me try a little bit of something, every time it was served, and any dislikes I had as a small child (e.g. red cabbage and avacados) evaporated as I grew up. These are just the things that I didn’t like until I tried them as an adult. The only food I can think of that I don’t like at all is brussels sprouts, and I still try them occassionally.
Oh, wait: Orange roughy. I absolutely abhor orange roughy due to a traumatic childhood experience. Mom bought and froze a whole mess of filets. Then she served them weekly for about a year and a half. (I may be exaggerating.) “No, thanks, Mom, I’ll just have a peanut butter sandwich,” was unfortunatly not an option in our house. They had this thick layer of grey fat was just . . . urrggghh . . . The flesh of the fish wasn’t bad, and you could mostly eat around the fat (don’t try to scrape it off, though, for the love of God, because that just smeared the abominable taste everywhere), and every once in a while you’d accidentally get a teeny tiny bit of it . . . Oh, lordy . . . I’m getting nauseated just thinking about it. I don’t know if it was something about this particular batch, or if all orange roughy is like that, and frankly I’d rather pass up the whole orange roughy experience than risk ever tasting that again. Some day my number will come up and somebody will make it for me at a family dinner or something, I’m sure.
The first time I ate shrimp (I was around 18, maybe still a minor), it was chewy and gross and I swore off all seafood. The texture was so wrong and, honestly, just thinking about it makes my stomach churn. I related this to a few chefs I know (one on this very board), and I was informed that it was likely overcooked. It’s all good now though. I love shrimp. I still haven’t tried as much seafood as I’d like to try, though. But I’m getting there.
The taste and texture of seafood, and especially shellfish, are extremely sensitive to freshness and correct preparation, far moreso than beef, pork, or mutton. Overcooked shellfish of any kind are going to be more chewy than india rubber, and undercooked will be runny and…nasty.
Fish are almost as bad. Whenever I buy fish, I always do a smell-check and (if they’l let me) run a finger across the surface to check on how slimy it is. Frozen fish, except for cod or catfish, are just uugghh! And the only reason to bread a fillet is to conceal the taste of frozen fish. I avoid breaded fish like the plague, even though as a child that was about the only way I’d eat fish.
The other thing I’ve noticed, now that I don’t eat much in the way of land-meat, is that fish tastes a lot better, and beef tastes kind of rank. Not gamey–I like buffalo and elk–but like old lard, or fries that have been cooked in two week old grease. Steak has become kind of “meh” to me…someone else recently described it as tasting “steaky” (i.e. having no particular appeal) and I have to agree. I think the same thing about domestic chicken and turkey, as well. Too much fat, no intrinsic meat flavor.
Over the last year and a half or so I’ve come to really love barbecued Asparagus. I wouldn’t go near the stuff as a kid. My mom had a special dish just for asparagus when she cooked it and just the sight of that thing made me naseous. Now I’m completely in love with the stuff.
Banana Peppers - these were one of those strange foods that I craved before I liked them. I worked at a pizza shop in high school and thought they were the grossest thing on the menu when I started there and I couldn’t understand why anybody would order them. After awhile I started craving them and I would eat one every once in awhile but I still didn’t like them. By the time I stopped working there I loaded all of my own pizzas with them and I still love them.
Jalapenos - It was never the heat that bothered me, because I liked salsas and hot sauces, etc. They just tasted like pickles with too much vinegar and not enough dill. Now I love the things and can’t eat things like bean dip or quesadillas without them. Lots of them.
Mushrooms - These were another food that I craved before I liked. In fact, I still don’t really like them, but I crave them, and I’ll eat them fried (with ranch) or on pizza now, and I’m confident that I will like them soon.
I still don’t like Fish (unless it’s fried, which pretty much negates its nutritional value from what I understand) but I really hope I develop a taste for it, because it’s healthy.
It took me a good long time to come around to raw tomatoes and bell peppers–at least into my early 20s. And the tomatoes have to be really good and I have to be in the right mood. Green bell peppers are still out except in minute quantities.
I’ll chime in with a few that I hated (as an adult) but have come to love:
oysters (The texture was a problem, but I got used to it and now love 'em.) Beets Dr. Pepper (Used to taste like medicine to me.) (non-battered) Fish (I still don’t love it, but I will eat it now.) sweet pickles (I used to find these repellent.) buttermilk (My dad drank the stuff. I used to hate it, but now I’ll drink a glass on occasion.)
There are very few foods I won’t eat these days. (Liver springs to mind.)
My advice to fussy eaters: keep trying the stuff you don’t like. Your tastes may change.
