Recently I was chatting with yet another person who can’t freaking stand mayonnaise, and I had to stop and wonder. Over the course of my life I’ve run into an amazing number of people who feel that way-- hate the taste, smell, and feel of the awful stuff-- yet it’s probably the most ubiquitous condiment there is. Pick up a sandwich from the deli, it comes with mayo on it. Order a fast food burger and they’ll ask you if you want ketchup or mustard, but the mayo is on there by default. Not to mention being present in potato salad, tuna salad, egg salad, macaroni salad, some coleslaws, many dips and dressings… it’s pretty hard to avoid.
This perplexes me, and I have been trying to come up with any other foods that are everywhere yet frequently despised as well. The closest I can come up with is cilantro, but even that isn’t nearly as omnipresent as mayo.
Broccoli. I used to think it smelled like raw sewage when being cooked, but now I rather enjoy it. Anyway, I imagine there are just as many people who love it as hate it; maybe more.
That’s right folks, turn up your noses at perfectly good food every chance you get because someday, when you have no idea when or if you will ever see food again, you will be able to look back on these times and smile.
I think the tomato-hate is an allergy, it seems like lots of people are allergic to tomatoes and mangos.
IMHO, the big omnipresent food-hate is Bell Peppers. They are colorful and cheap, so they show up all over the place in winter. Soups, salads, a little bit in every side dish. Yuck!
I lurve mayo. Especially on Whoppers, which it does come on by default. I can’t understand how people can hate it. I could understand having an egg allergy, but to just not like it at all?
Anyway, I do truly loathe beets. I am convinced people who like them are not native to Earth. I’m also not crazy about green bean casserole. There’s something about baking that removes the flavor from the beans. I prefer them green and fresh.
I have to second mayo - I despise it, it’s like a mouthful of fat (and I’m hella fat!).
Dijon or otherwise-spiced mustard - Bleah! A friend once described it as “Mayonnaise with botulism.” Horrifying. Anything other than plain yellow mustard can just go to hell…
Well, okay, they’re not EVERYWHERE, but they’re usually included in packages of jellybeans. Yet many Americans* and I think the vast majority of American children (who must be the primary consumers of jellybeans) HATE them. I remember at elementary school parties everyone would give their black jellybeans to the one kid who liked them. Otherwise they just got thrown away.
I also hate mayo, and hate the fact that it seems to be a default topping on chicken sandwiches. I don’t eat red meat, so if I’m at a fast food place I’m usually going to be getting the chicken sandwich. I’ve learned to specify “no mayo” even when there’s nothing on the menu to indicate that mayo will be present, but even then I often wind up with the foul stuff anyway. And if they use that shredded lettuce then there’s no way to wipe the mayo off without also wiping off the lettuce, so I wind up with one naked sandwich.
*It’s my understanding that licorice is more popular in some other countries, like the Netherlands.
Yes, because when one is starving or trying to stretch a food budget, they’re really going to think “jeez, I sure wish I hadn’t refused to eat that bit of cilantro back in '06”
Dr. Pepper - I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone drinking this since I was about 10, and yet I seem to see it in pop machines everywhere (and by everywhere I really mean the two at work).
For the record, I like black jellybeans. Put them aside and send them to me.
I don’t so much “hate” okra, but I FEAR it … it’s a vegetable that HP Lovecraft must have enjoyed … some of his outer space creatures would have to have been built along the lines of an okra pod … and the damn stuff is SLIMY …:eek:
The people who like mayo generally don’t bother speaking up about it, but the ones who don’t like it will complain about the ubiquity. Confirmation bias. (Sometimes I exclaim to my roommate how much I like mayo. Weirds her out.)
Another mayo hater. I also don’t like bananas - smacksmack blech. I only recently got into putting mustard into homemade salad dressing; otherwise, can’t stand the stuff.
I think Mayonnaise’s ubiquitousness must be an American thing, because in this part of the world we put butter, margarine, or olive spread on our sandwiches- not mayonnaise.
Myself, I cannot stand Tomato- it makes me vomit- so when I take over the world I will be destroying the world’s tomato crops, with only a few allowed to remain to continue Tomato Sauce production.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said to somewhere “No tomato in my food, please, I’m allergic to it” and what happens? There’s Tomato in my food. I try not to get angry about it- I’ve worked in food service before and most of the food prep staff are on autopilot anyway- but when I’ve said “Look, it’s really, really important there’s no tomato in this, OK? I cannot over-emphasis the importance of there being no tomato in my food” and there’s still Tomato in my food, then I find it very hard to be pleasant about the whole thing.
Ditto Bananas, actually. Can’t stand them either, for the same reasons as Tomato.
Mushrooms. I love 'em but I’ve noticed there’s no middle ground with shrooms. You either like 'em or hate 'em.
Cheese. I love cheese in all forms, but my mother claims to despise it. Thing is, she has these secret cheese rules that she can’t seem to be able to articulate, and the rules tend to change around a little, so my sister and I have no idea what to make her. She won’t got into restaurants where cheese is found on things because it never occurs to her to just, you know, request no cheese. She will eat Stouffer’s frozen block o’ mac n cheese, pizza, and lasagna as long as there’s no ricotta in the lasagna. She ate a grilled cheese sammich I made for her before my grandfather’s funeral. I think she likes fake, yellow, pasteurized, processed cheese food products, hot and melted and possibly fake mozzarella, hot and melted. All other cheese need not apply.
I don’t like raw tomatoes, but I will eat any form of cooked tomatoes, including tomato-based sauces, soups, and even fried green tomatoes.
Beans, in any form, which means peas too. Refried, pureed, in a caserole or salad, it doesn’t matter. Just keep the nasty buggers away from me.
See, when I was really little (like under 4), my mother would feed them to me quite a bit. Probably because they were cheap and easy. However, I’d always throw them up in return because the combination of a taste that makes my stomach turn and a smell that makes my eyes water is not a good thing for yours truly. Well, being the believer in Tough Love that gool ol’ mom was (is), she determined that the best way to get me over being an attention whore ('cause I only did this for fun, yanno? – not due to a real problem or anything) was to make me eat my vomit from one of those meal mishaps. And stay put until I ate it all. :mad: Yeah, I have no memory of how long I sat at the kitchen table trying to choke that shit down, but it was a while.
So needless to say, a lifelong hatred has ensued and ever since I’ve been able to choose for myself, nary a bean (or pea) has voluntarily passed my lips. Never again will someone make me eat that shit. Not even to guarantee good luck for the New Year with the customary Black Eyed Peas at midnight. < shudder >