How about barbecue? Be it ribs, chicken, tofu, Korean-style, Mongolian…
Isn’t bbq almost always meat, though?
It can’t be a vegetable. Plenty of kids hate eating vegetables of any kind.
Memphis, Carolina, Texas, etc.? Yes. Korean, Mongolian, Japanese, etc.? No.
AFAIK, England is particulary friendly to the idea of vegetarian BBQ.
Well I think you aren’t talking about a specific food really. I think you are talking about a couple of styles of cooking which encompass an enormous variety of food. I don’t think that really counts for what this thread is going for. (Note that the example I gave in my OP wasn’t even just “cookies” it was chocolate chip cookies. I’m looking for specific, individual foods.)
Terrifel: I think this thread can only really apply to adults. Children’s tastes change so much, and they are such notoriously picky eaters. I mean if we wanted to go down that route, we could say “well it can’t be solid food, because plenty of babies will only drink milk!” I’m talking about people whose taste in food has for the most part fully developed.
Bit late for that. 
Ok well hell then, I think that cooked foods have darn near universal appeal.
Edited to add: Yes, several people have posted things that are more broad than what I was looking for, like “bread” in general… but when you try to encompass an entire style of cooking–more than one, even, because mongolian bbq and texas bbq have zero to do with each other–and try to call that “a food” then it’s just going to the level of absurdly meaningless.
Burritos need at least an honorary mention. (And not that Taco Bell/Chevy’s shit.)
I’ll add beans. You can make’em vegetarian, add fatback (and/or bacon), mash & fry them, what have you. Terrific variety, so that may disqualify it but I nominate beans.
Okay, we are looking for a particular food that is near-universally popular among adults, that isn’t any kind of meat or beverage. So that pretty much leaves some type of vegetable or fungus. Therefore, it might make more sense to ask, “what is a vegetable or fungus with darn-near universal appeal?”
Rice has been nominated. Are there people who don’t like rice? Well, rice is high in carbohydrates, and low-carb diets are extremely fashionable these days, so rice is out. The same principle also disqualifies bread (and most chocolate chip cookie recipes, I expect). Tomatoes, then? Apples? Does cocaine count as a food item? Or is it cheating if the substance is literally addictive? What if the food actually kills you before you can decide that you dislike it? Pufferfish gonads or cultured tetanus bacteria might be the most universally appealing food by that standard, although I’m uncertain how rich Clostridium tetani is in complex carbohydrates. I believe that the bacterial growth medium is high in sugar, so it would probably be healthier to scrape that off first.
Beans bad! Beans squishy mush!
Parfait.
gag
I hate anything custardy. With a passion. Ew ew ew.
Spoo.
In the B5 universe, at least…
:rolleyes: Do you just enjoy threadshitting in general or is it this one specifically? If you don’t enjoy the spirit of the thread, feel free to not participate. Most everyone else seems to get the idea. You’re acting like the spirit of the thread, the goal, is somehow totally impossible. It’s been acknowledged that nothing is TRULY universally liked, but we’re trying to come as close as we can. You don’t see the point, fine. Leave. Go somewhere else.
I’m not looking for some “naturally occurring ingredient” with universal appeal. I mean “chocolate chip cookies” aren’t “a vegetable” are they? And I think we’ve come close with things like pizza, too. It can be made special for people with health restrictions (no cheese, made with grain other than wheat for the crust, etc) and very few people have met anyone who doesn’t like pizza (at least so far that we know of).
Sorry for the misunderstanding, then. I thought when you remarked in your OP:
–you were, you know, inviting people to dispute, debate, whatever. I was also trying to hint that, in my opinion, the parameters of your OP were somewhat vague. Maybe you imagine that everyone else in the thread “gets the idea,” but you ought to look back and see just how many times you’ve had to clarify your intentions to others. “No, no; you seem to think that I was asking for this, and I was really asking for something else… No, no; that’s too broad a category… No, no; adults only, children’s tastes don’t count…” You even (apparently) contradict yourself, first nominating chocolate chip cookies, and then only a few posts later remarking how shockingly many people you’ve met that hate chocolate. At this point, I am a bit dubious that any choice meeting your satisfaction will qualify for “near-universality” in any legitimate sense, given the huge difference in tastes across cultures-- sort of like trying to pin down a “near-universal” musical genre or hairstyle. I suppose pizza is as good a nomination as any.
I thought that by attempting to define the problem a bit more closely, I was contributing to your goal in a mildly humorous manner, not “threadshitting.” I wasn’t actively trying to be confrontational, to upset you or anyone else. Or maybe you’re right, and I inexplicably decided to derail a random thread about food preferences for occult reasons of my own. In any case, you’ve convinced me, and I’m done here. Curse you and your infernal vigilance.
Seriously? You’ve never had ravioli or tortellini? Potstickers? Perogi? They’re all just different kinds of dumplings. I honestly think this is a really good suggestion.
I’ve yet to meet anybody who doesn’t lurv my fried chicken. 
I’ve had ravioli and tortellini and perogi. No idea what potstickers are. But ravioli and tortellini and perogi are different enough that I don’t think of them as “one food”.