Last summer I bought some prepacked sushi at the Co-op in my office building. The first one tasted a bit off and when I lifted the slice of salmon on the next one I noticed that the rice was all green. Out it went. A week or so later I decided to give it a new chance only to have the same experience once again and that was the latest time I had sushi.
I really must buy some somewhere where they are made à la minute to reinstate my trust in them.
When I was in high school, and a little bit beyond, I worked for a place that processed eggs including buying them directly from farmers (we called them ‘current receipts’) and you wouldn’t want to know what was found in some of them. It diminished my enjoyment of eggs, but didn’t entirely quash it.
My food turn-off would be Red Baron Pizza. Doesn’t seem to matter which kind, they all give me terrible heart burn. Haven’t had one in a long time. Maybe I should try again as I see they have a ‘new improved’ recipe.
Snapple. Used to drink it all the time, then one day I choked on some to the point I thought I was going to die. Probably wouldn’t have, sure I would have just passed out, throat would have relaxed and I’d have been fine, but can’t stand it anymore.
When I was a young lad, I had a taste for pickled beets. I was feeling a bit off one day as we filed into the school cafeteria, but hey, there were beets that day, so it wasn’t all bad. I even traded my dessert (a cookie, as I recall) to a friend in exchange for his share of beets, thereby convincing him I was quite mad. My satisfaction with this excellent bargain was short-lived, however; it turned out that I was suffering from a nasty stomach bug that launched an all-out assault less than an hour later, forcing me to flee for the bathroom.
You know that rich, lovely color beets have? It’s not so lovely when it’s bursting back forth in a chunky stream, splattering on white porcelain, and turning water the color of blood. Between the miserable nausea, the acid-tainted taste, and the image of that horrible abbatoir-pool of a toilet, I couldn’t face beets again for nearly 30 years. I still don’t seek them out, though I can tolerate them in chance encounters.
It wasn’t the fault of the delicious chile rellenos, obviously, since my boyfriend and I ate exactly the same meal. Unfortunately, only one of us came down with the massive barfs/shits at 4am. Wow, way to ruin Mexican food for me, especially the horrifyingly pasty chunky texture of everything that was trying to escape my body. Bad, bad, bad. That pretty much kills because I love Mexican food, especially chiles rellenos, but…I think it’s going to be a long time before I can even consider that combo platter.
24 hours later, though, my dear sweet boyfriend brought me the post-barf special meal: ginger ale and mini saltines. I don’t think I’ve tasted anything as delicious as those mini saltines.
About 30 years ago I got the flu after eating ham steak and i still can’t even look at it in the store without a little gag.
I remember reading a long time ago that this was our collective caveman food gag reflex so that when we encountered food that was bad for us a second time we wouldn’t eat it. Probably something like rotting meat - you only needed to eat it once to know next time you would rather die than eat it again.
Not “ever again,” but for many years I couldn’t eat custard.
When I was a little kid, my brother had some goldfish in a little aquarium. At some point the fish died, and my brother was too lazy to get rid of them. So one day I looked in the tank, and the fish were floating at the top, rotting and fuzzy-looking. Then, finally, someone got rid of them. That night my mother served custard for dessert. I was SURE she had made it from the dead goldfish.
It was about 20 years later when I tentatively ate some custard.
Back in the 70s, My mom bought us kids Koogle, the sandwich spread. The flavor she got was the one seen here, Peanut/Banana. I had some one day, and came down with a pretty bad case of the flu soon after. After recovering, the next time I opened up the Koogle, slight waves of nausea would pass over me, as if I were sick again. I could no longer eat the stuff, but every once in a while I’d open that stuff up and take a sniff, to see if I would react in the same way. I always did.
Scrambled eggs. Really, eggs in any recognizable form. If I can see the eggs, I won’t eat it. (Fried rice is the only exception to this rule.) About 30 years ago my little sister projectile puked scrambled eggs all over herself, the couch, and me. I haven’t been able to eat them since.
Tuna fish: when I was four years-old my mother gave me a TF sandwich for lunch that coincided with the beginnings of a virulent flu. I upchucked everything but my toenails for two days . . . haven’t touched TF for 41 years and can’t even stand to be in the same room with someone who is eating it.
Biscuits 'n Gravy 'n Nyquil: another flu bout coincided with having eaten biscuits and gravy for breakfast then downing some Nyquil because I thought the fever was due to sinuses/bronchitis. Insty-spew all over the drying dishes in the drainer next to the sink. Oooog, this was 23 years ago and I still get queasy thinking about this dastardly combination . . .
One fateful afternoon in 1980, I consumed 1.5 bags of Tostitos. I was watching afterschool cartoons and for some reason just couldn’t stop eating. I hurled it all up later that day. It was the flu, but I developed a SERIOUS aversion to Tostitos for decades. Doritos were ok, though, which kinda proved to me, even at the time, that this was purely psychological.
My sister would sometimes say “Tostitos!” or just flash the bag of Tostitos in front of me and sometimes I would gag, eyes tearing and everything. I could feel my stomach churning. It would send her into hysterics. This was years and years after.
When I was 17 I overdid it at a friend’s birthday party drinking “Slow Comfortable Screws” - sloe gin, Southern Comfort and orange juice. To this day (I’m 51) if I have to pour Southern Comfort I have to turn my head so I don’t smell it.
Sunkist (basically orange Fanta). I came down with a bad flu in elementary school, and couldn’t hold anything down. They gave me Sunkist to drink and nothing else. It tasted the same coming up as it did going down.
I have only just now gotten over that aversion, 30 years later.
Cashews - I bought a bag in the produce section and ate most of it in a day. I puked cashews up for two days and had diarrhea. That taste as they came up stuck in my throat for days.
Not sure if they were green or not cooked. That was the first time I ever saw cashews in anything except a can. Gosh they made me violently sick.
Haven’t touched a cashew in 12 years and never will. That one episode cured me of ever eating those things again.