I was processing invoices today, and one of the items on them was chocolate milk. I used to love chocolate milk, but am grossed out by it as an adult. Weird, because I like hot chocolate.
Another childhood treat I would not touch today is cottage cheese with a layer of sugar on it.
A very strange culinary invention of my preteen self was a ketchup and mustard sandwich. I tried to eat one recently in a fit of nostalgia. Ummm, ick is all I can say for it now. I was so proud of it when I was eight or so. I thought it fit to rival the PBJ.
What food did you eat as a kid that makes you go ewww today?
Those corn dogs you pick up in the frozen section of the supermarket. I used to love them as a kid but the last time I tried to eat one I ended up tossing it in the trash.
My parents would never buy them but I would have traded just about anything for some Bugles Corn Snacks as a kid.
By the time I got old enough to buy my own they were just overly salty, overly greasy nastiness.
For some reason, I am turned off in the last few years by most packaged snack cakes and cookies. They don’t taste ‘bad’, but they aren’t all that either. Little Debbie, vanilla wafers, Archway filled cookies…meh. I can take 'em or leave 'em. I don’t buy them, so no problem.
I don’t know if I’d call it “beloved” but I certainly willingly often ate gefilte fish when I was a kid. I can remember my friends being absolutely repulsed just seeing it in our refrigerator and amazed that I, the pickiest eater of any of us, would eat such a thing.
Even though I recall it not being bad, there’s no way I would entertain eating it now.
Mac and cheese was a staple that I haven’t touched (and will not touch) in years.
As a kid there wasn’t any kind of candy I wouldn’t stick in my gob but as an adult most things are way too sweet for me.
That reminds me: I used to think pork rinds were an amazing snack when I was a kid, but nowadays there are many other salty, greasy snacks that I’d rather eat.
My mother use to by the big cans of Chef Boyardee pastas, Spaghetti-O’s and the raviolis. With 6 kids it was an easy way to feed us. The smell of that stuff turns my stomach now.
I was a latchkey kid and so when I got home from school I would go to the pantry for snacks and eat what was available. My mother would do the shopping and stock up on what we were missing. I was just a kid so didn’t notice, but it became a weird cycle of eating what was there and so that’s why it was there. Things I haven’t touched since I could buy my own food:
Kipper Snacks
the cherry fruit snacks that tasted like wax
honey granola bars
Dinty Moore beefstew
Hamburger Helper
chocolate pudding
Rice Crispies with sugar
Oh yeah, definitely Chef Boyardee. Not a chance of that getting in my mouth again, but I guess I liked it at the time.
Little Debbies were another good one. I used to buy one every day at school (for a quarter, I think?), and save the rest of my lunch money for nefarious purposes. Now I can’t look one in the eye.
Grandma would sometimes buy us sweet cereals, like Cocoa Puffs. Wow, candy for breakfast! I might like a couple of dry Cocoa Puffs now, but in reality I will never find out.
On a healthier note, I used to sit down and just plow through a few oranges. Can’t imagine eating a whole one these days. Maybe processed into a sauce, with a nice crispy duck under it.
Pancake syrup over white bread – way too cloying Table sugar over white bread – see above Candy corn – see above Bologna with the red plastic edges – if I must, it’s got to be premium stuff from a deli Jeno’s “party” pizza – Heckuva small party. Used to be manna from heaven to my grade-school self. Underwhelming these days. Jello – loved it so much as a youngster. Have a texture revulsion to gelatin and gummy-type items as an adult
Some other things, I still kind of like but I am convinced have been cheapened and adulterated over the last 20-30 years. Various Chef Boyardee items and Bugles fall into that category for me.
Good example. Chocolate milk was the preferred choice for me and the majority of other kids when I was in elementary school, but I got over that and graduated to regular white milk. Nowadays I’m not grossed out by chocolate milk, but I haven’t had any in years.
The one I thought of, even before I saw that other people had mentioned it, was Little Debbie Snack Cakes.
Baloney-and-cheese sandwiches were a staple of childhood (with sliced baloney and individually-wrapped cheese slices on white bread). All three of these ingredients are things I would never choose or buy for myself nowadays.
Some of the other things that people have been mentioning (like Chef Boy-ar-dee, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese) are no longer a regular part of my diet, but I’ll still eat them once in awhile, for the sake of convenience, comfort, and nostalgia.
Chuck E. Cheese’s and Showbiz used to be separate, rival companies, but at some point they merged.
I seem to remember that at some point, Chuck E. Cheese’s changed their pizza recipe, to try to make it more palatable for adults, but I can’t verify this. The last time I had their pizza would have been sometime in the 2000’s, and as I recall it was perfectly okay but nothing special.
Used to love dried ebi (shrimp, specifically small shrimp in the shell) as a child. Then suddenly I started developing hives when I ate them. Last year I ate cup ramen that a few in them and I immediately got hives.
Not a real lost because the last time I ate them, I couldn’t believe how salty and fishy they were.
