I have a nausea reaction to most food popular in the post wwII era – canned creamed spinach, baloney sandwiches on white bread with bright yellow mustard, chemical-dyed synthetic-flavored candy and desserts, hot dogs, tuna salad, I could go on. Food terrified me as a child because it all was so horrible. I survived by eating my grandmother’s made-from-scratch cooking and grazing in her garden and orchard. I often went hungry when I wasn’t at her house.
Besides those things, the smell of bananas will drive me out of the room, and I have never been able to like asparagus. All other fruits and vegetables are fine. I also can’t eat bivalves – the sandy gristly chewy thing, not the taste. Univalves and crustaceans are a-okay. Although I will eat pureed things I can’t think of a pureed dining experience I’ve ever cared for.
I think bell pepper and cilantro are two of the foods that literally taste completely different for a minority of the population. It is a genetic thing.
Shellfish. Even when I ate meat and fish, I could not stand shellfish. A co-worker once assured me her salad was “pasta and vegetables,” I took one bite and spit it out. “There’s shellfish in this.” She replied “Oh, you can’t taste the little bit of crab meat in it.”
You wanna bet? Tastes like something that went bad. I’m just glad I’m not violently allergic to it like some people.
Cauliflower. Liver, specially pork liver. Make this most kinds of offal. Brain!!! Specially lamb, sheep, goat, cattle… makes me sick just to think of it. Bananas, I ate too many as a child. Most peppers, they spoil every dish they come in contact with. Corn, except sometimes popcorn at the movies.
I used to really not like spinach or chard, but I found good recipes for them in the meantime: it was my mother’s faulty cooking. Now I only refuse frozen spinach.
Most things served in Dutch take away shops (frituur): even the fries are often mediocre.
Bad bread and pastries, the frozen kind that gets reheated in shops that pretend to be bakeries. That is a plague in Europe in general and its hotels in particular.
The sour cream Russians put on top of soups, smetana they call it. Spoils the best soups, specially the good mushroom soup they are so good at.
Natto. And umeboshi. But I’ll keep on giving them a chance every now and then. Japanese love them and in general their cuisine is fantastic. Only those two items I do not get at all.
Forgot milk, beetroot and brussels sprouts, I eat them so seldomly that I had to read about them in other posts to remember how little I can stand them.
One more thing I don’t like that seemingly everyone else likes: beans/peas.
Ok, I like black beans, lentils and green peas. And I’ll eat the occasional green bean, which isn’t really a bean, but the pod around undeveloped beans.
But try being a Texan who doesn’t like pinto beans or black-eyed peas! Lima beans, kidney beans, red beans, ranch style beans are all nopes for me.
I do like baked beans but that’s because you’ve covered up the bean flavor with so much brown sugar, mustard and bacon that you can’t anything else.
Brussels sprouts for me. And everybody that loves (not just likes) them tells me it’s just because I haven’t had them cooked right. Yes I have, and they are still little bitter pills of death.
I was going to say brussels sprouts. But, then again, surely no one could possibly like those evil little f*ckers.
Other than those - strong spirits. I’ll drink wine, beer, port, cider - but detest whiskey, brandy etc. Maybe it’s the alcohol content I have an issue with.
Anything related to hot dogs including hot dogs!
Same with sauerkraut, relish, coleslaw etc. ( yet I’ll eat kielbasa, kimchee, half sour pickles, so shades of difference, go figure).
Bacon. I do not get why people praise pieces of salty, chemical-laden mixed slimy fat and tough muscle. Just makes no sense to me. I dislike bacon for itself, but hate it for all the whoop-de-doo eveeryone makes over it. It’s salty fatty tough meat; get over yourselves, people!
Bananas. Long story why the smell makes my stomach flip; I won’t bore you with it.
Watermelon. Water is the operative word here, though there’s a cloying sweetness with an odd after-taste.
Guac. Stop ruining the perfection of avocados by mixing them into something that looks like what I scrape off the bottom of my shoes.
Cream-style corn. I don’t need my food pre-digested. Ditto for similar “creamed” foods.
All boiled leafy vegetables.
Broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts.
I don’t get why people make such a big thing about how much capsican they’ve habituated themselves to. If you don’t even notice Cayenne pepper, that doesn’t impress me.
Bacon. Did I mention bacon. Yeah, bacon most of all.
Hey, I was right there with ya for most of my life. I didn’t like either whole, but I liked refried beans. I missed a New Year’s Eve dinner as a teenager because I refused to eat black eyed peas.
But as I got older, I realized that I just didn’t like them flavorless. Put enough onions and jalapenos in the pot, and they’re great.
Similarly, I didn’t think I liked brussels sprouts until last year. Then, I had them halved, battered and deep fried. It turns out that I liked them, but most people have no idea how to prepare them well.
Eggs. This makes it difficult for me to get a decent breakfast in any hotel restaurant, diner, and truck stop in North America. Everything seems to come with “two eggs, any style.” I make do with coffee, juice, toast or some other baked good, and bacon or sausage. But damn! Why must eggs accompany every breakfast? Why can they not be added as an extra, instead of being the default breakfast food?
Buffalo wings. They were okay to begin with, but after years of beer-league softball, after which wings, and only wings, were the preferred snack of everybody on the team, I loathe them. Heck, my local sports bar (at which I am a regular) has trained its bartenders not to ask me, when I walk in on Wing Night, “Hey, what kinda wings you want?” After a couple of, shall we say, salty retorts, they have learned not to ask me about wings.
Tomatoes – Don’t get me wrong – a thin slice on a bagel with lox, onion and cream cheese, or on a sandwich is fine. I don’t like big chunks of tomato in a salad.
Green, Red, sweet peppers, and pimentos (spicy peppers, like Jalapenos are fine, though nowadays, they tend to disagree with my digestion).
Venison
Cooked carrots, cooked peas, sauteed onions (raw is fine for all of those)
Overly “veiny” leafy vegetebles, especially in salads. With some bags of prefabricated salad, might see me discarding a third of the contents because I just don’t like the look of some of the lettuce. The outer, greener part of Romaine lettuce makes me skeeve the most.
Brussels sprouts look like little alien skulls to me.
