Inspired by Derleth’s thread, what are some foods or preparations that you outgrew for some reason? It’s common for people to get a bit less of a sweet tooth as they grow older, or to grow more “refined” tastes in, say, cheeses, but do you have any less common examples? But feel free to share any stories.
I’ll start out with just one example. I loved oatmeal and oatmeal cookies and breads and so forth as a kid, but then I sort of got burned out. I don’t think I’ve had oatmeal but once in 5 years or so, and that was under duress. And oatmeal spice cookies are sickening now. But I’ll still eat other cookies. I don’t know what it is, but the bland, slightly alkaline flavor is offensive now. It might be in part due to the “oat bran is healthy!” trend in the 90s. As a corollary, I can’t eat granola or granola bars anymore, unless they are so impregnated with other goodies as to resemble a Snickers.
Spaghetti. For the same reason you stopped eating oatmeal. It’s just such an easy meal that I served it way too often to my family. Now I can barely stomach the thought of it.
Canned tuna in any recipe. I used to LOVE canned tuna in any form, cold or hot. I could eat it straight out of the can with crackers.
Now it smells wrong. Stinky. And I’ve tried every kind they sell around here. The last few times I had it I couldn’t get away from the smell for days and I swear that stink was coming from every orifice. Yeah all of them. Gross. So no more tuna, although I still WISH I could eat it.
I can’t eat bananas anymore. I love them but I get horrible indigestion and a buzzy feeling in my throat so maybe I’m developing an allergy. Best I avoid them.
spaghetti and other cooked tomato dishes. I don’t like pasta that much anyway and now that I have become more sensitive to the acids in cooked tomatoes, I find it unpalatable.
Mayonnaise and tuna. I lived on tuna salad sandwiches, and just plain mayonnaise sandwiches, as a little kid who didn’t like the standard PB&J, but no more. Overexposure, maybe.
The cereals of my youth. If I talk myself into a bowl of Capt’n Crunch or Frosted Flakes the same thing always happens. First spoonful: Sweet but good. Second: Wow, this is really sweet. Third: OMG, too fucking sweet!!. With the Capt’n Crunch I get the added fun of cutting the roof of my mouth.
McDonald’s, and fast food in general. I used to live on the stuff - back during the 1984 Olympics I fed myself and my high school friends for a week on free food from their Olympic promotion (in which they hadn’t planned for the Soviets dropping out, leaving the Americans to make every event a McDonald’s winner).
I stopped going out to lunch at work ~10 years ago, and since then even the smell is kind of nasty. Once a year or so I try maybe a french fry, and the greasy aftertaste is enough to keep me off the stuff for another year. Bleah.
IMHO it’s almost a separate subject to list the childhood foods that you abandoned as an adult. (I’m not trying to kill the thread, just sayin’)
For me it’s red wine. As I became an adult I developed an appreciation of wines. I liked learning about different wines and different wine producing regions, liked doing wine tastings, etc.
Then I married someone and turned them on to the finer things in life, wine included. This is someone who previously would not be seen without a jumbo size fountain drink or can of diet coke - so a bit of an addictive personality.
Fast forward and now “we” spend every evening downing mid-range red wines (it can only be red because one of us just doesn’t like white wines - forget about blindfolded taste tests that prove people can’t tell the difference in taste.) So, my experience of enjoying wine has been compromised, and the over emphasis on red wine has grown tiresome. Special ain’t special when it becomes routine.
Kind of a couple of things already mentioned - oatmeal and cereal.
Oatmeal - used to like it, then had some of the instant kind with too much cinnamon and dried apple bits in it. Like getting drunk on tequila and avoiding it for a decade, the whole smell/texture just turns me off now.
Shredded Wheat. Used to like it, now it’s like cardboard. I can’t even wrap my head around me ever liking it.
I grew tired of broccoli (my wife was dieting and we ate it all the time, though I’m starting to like it again), cinnamon (my daughter loved them and we had them every weekend), and raspberries (we had our own raspberry patch and used to pick a lot of them).
I also grow tired of apples by the end of the fall, but I’m happy to have them again the next year.
