That’s the other one; when I was younger, cilantro tasted distinctly and overpoweringly of soap. As I’ve aged, it’s not nearly so soapy- enough less that it doesn’t bother me on tacos and things like that, and it used to make me scrape it all off or spit it out, when I was say… 23. (I’m 42 now).
I’ve lost the ability to decide at the beginning of the year that I could live on a fish paste [or whatever] sandwich, and more or less happily take one to school every day for the rest of the year.
Now I find it hard to have two different pasta dishes for dinner in a week without feeling like I’m one of the world’s oppressed.
Also, far less of my food is delivered in the form of tiny little planes coming at me.
Forget “since childhood” for me. In just the last few years I’ve had my tastes change so much if you didn’t know any better you’d think I was a pregnant woman. To wit: for YEARS I enjoyed an English muffin (toasted) with cream cheese on it and a fried egg for breakfast. For YEARS I enjoyed that combination for breakfast. No problem. Then one day my mind decided that I didn’t like English muffins OR cream cheese anymore so those got switched out for a bagel at breakfast. The bagel has persisted. We’ll see for how long. Another: milk. For YEARS (decades, really) I drank milk. No problem with doing so whatsoever. Glasses of milk with cookies or other desserts, hot cereal (oatmeal or Cream of Wheat® or Malt-O-Meal®) made with milk, milk poured on COLD cereal. No issues. I drank milk ALL THE TIME. Then one day a couple of years ago my mind said: you HATE milk. It’s gross and disgusting and you want nothing more to do with it. I haven’t had any milk, since (yogurt? Yes. Sour cream? Yes. Cheese? Yes. Cottage cheese? Yes. Ice cream? Yes. But not plain ol’ milk! Not even to make hot chocolate with!). I used to drink Coca-Cola® like crazy (I remember one time during a company event about 20 years ago - I must’ve downed 20 - 30 cans of Coke in one day. It was nuts). Haven’t touched the stuff in YEARS, now. Finally, M&Ms. Within the last couple of years I was known to go to Costco® and buy several 5 lb. bags of 'em and then toss them down like there was no tomorrow while waiting for my next trip to Costco®. All of the sudden one day my mind said: “You don’t like M&Ms anymore. Stop eating them.” So I did. Very strange. I have no idea where all of this is coming from, but…
I still eat Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. More than once per week. 
Oh, and here’s what I think of vegetables:
(Short version: They’re icky.)
Like a lot of others here, I was raised eating a very provincial, mid-western, rural, 1960’s diet. Meat was charred, cheese was Kraft singles, vegetables were from a can*, fish was Mrs. Paul’s Fish Sticks, the only slightly ethnic food was Italian pasta/pizza. Also, ate a lot of “kid food” - hotdogs, hamburgers, pizza, mac & cheese, PB&J sandwiches.
*We did have a vegetable garden so we had fresh veggies in season.
So, I didn’t really like fish or cheese. Beef was take-it-or-leave-it.
In adulthood I learned about real fish, and real cheese, and non-charred beef, and all manner of ethnic foods, and different fruits & veggies, and grains, and vegetarian dishes, etc. etc. etc. Oh, and sushi!
I like to try new things, and being in a major metropolitan area offers new foods and preparations to try (woodsmoke foam, anyone?).
I will confess I’m still not generally on board with organ meat…
I do want to clarify that my parents were not averse to ethnic food at all- I grew up eating homemade Cajun/Creole (gumbo mostly) ,Tex-Mex and New Mexico-Mex, and halfway authentic restaurant Chinese food. We weren’t averse to pizza and pasta either.
But stuff like Thai or Indian wasn’t going to fly with my parents.
a) I drank fresh milk in small quantities as a child, especially poured over cereal. Somewhere along the line lost my taste for the stuff entirely, can’t stand it, sweetened or not; I drank Kool-Aid and various fruit punches as a kid that I’d have a hard time choking down now.
b) Things I didn’t like as a child but love now, most of them with bitter or other strongly flavored tones: caraway seeds; sour cream; okra; rutabagas; whiskey and other distilled alcohols; particularly hot peppers like fresh Louisiana or Jalapeño peppers (too hot for me as a young kid)
c) Things I had not tried as a child, now on my favorites list: garlic; wine; huge array of cheeses; black (ripe) olives; lamb
Not that much has changed. I was pretty experimental for a kid and wanted to try new foods, and often ended up liking foods that not that many people around me (and especially not very many other kids) tended to like: buttermilk, chicken livers, lemons and limes, black coffee, water chestnuts, dark pumpernickel bread, etc
I was a picky little shit of a kid who would pick the onions out of meatloaf, had to be forced to eat fruit or salad, and who wouldn’t tolerate the least bit of fat on a piece of meat. Actually I’m still picky about fat on meat, but my food tastes expanded exponentially after leaving home.
When I was a kid, I hated shrimp so much that my baby brother’s enjoyment of them offended me. I remember being seven or eight and at the beach, trying to persuade him that he should feel guilty for eating all those poor defenseless shrimp, and getting caught. It was the only time I was ever sent to bed without supper. I deserved it, little shit that I was.
These days, I draw a sharp line between farmed shrimp and wild shrimp. The former are weird and nearly flavorless, like eating some sort of artificial flesh matrix. Wild shrimp (mostly I eat ones caught off the Carolina coast) are sweet and bursting with flavor and some of the best food on the planet. If you don’t think you like shrimp, but you’ve not ever tried fresh wild shrimp, it’s worth giving shrimp another try.
And I had the same experience with olives. I think of their flavor as an almost sexual flavor, deep and briny and kind of funky. At some point I flipped from hating them to thinking they were incredible–there was no desensitization necessary.
I still hate oysters, though.
You can get wild olives? :eek:
Oddly, I’ve lost my taste for most fruit, especially bananas, pears, and most apple varieties. I used to love all fruits except blueberries.
Most food tastes too salty to me now, which I do blame on a mild dietary restriction. If something is supposed to be sweet, it has to be really sweet. Assuming that that’s not an option, I’ll pass on sweets. I’ve totally lost my taste for milk chocolate, especially Hershey’s.
There are some vegetables I like now, such as a baked sweet potato, that I never would have touched 20 years ago. And my olive preferences have changed, sadly, to those sodium bullets known as Kalamata olives.
The oddest thing I’ve noticed is that I cannot stand anything fried in either corn oil or soy oil. I have to use canola or olive oil. It doesn’t seem to be a matter of rancidity. The smell of corn oil makes me literally nauseous, and soy oil has to be absolutely fresh. It’s at the point where if a Chinese restaurant doesn’t use peanut or sesame oil–and I can tell by the smell–I can’t eat there.
Meats? I’ll eat nearly anything except liver. Bacon? You can have my share. Used to love bacon and ham.
I used to hate seafood, now I will eat or at least try a good bit of it. I love scallops, shrimp, and calamari. I used to hate cranberry sauce, now I can’t imagine Thanksgiving without it. I’ve also discovered that I love wide varieties of cheeses–stuff like blue cheese would have been too much for me previously.
On the other hand, I think my texture issues have gotten worse. And I’ve mostly lost my sweet tooth. I used to sneak candy all the time, now a lot of it sets my teeth on edge. Donuts and ice cream are too sweet, and I can’t stand icing. Coworkers will dive all over whatever treat’s been left in the break room and it sparks no interest whatsoever for me.
I wouldn’t eat cheese as a kid, and now I will. I am still not wild about macaroni & cheese, and if I get cheese on my hamburger I will send it back and complain loudly, but I’ll eat cheese on occasion, even smelly cheese. (Gruyere I’m talking to you.)
I did not like pasta as a kid and still don’t. I also did not like ice cream as a kid and still don’t.
For some reason when I was growing up, in my family garlic was considered evil, or something. A bad thing to eat. So it wasn’t that I didn’t like it, it was just that I didn’t eat it, ever. I love it!
Like some of you, I have also lost my “sweet tooth.” Candy, ice cream, pastries and the like just do not appeal top me any more.
I am not a fussy eater at all. A lunch buffet is provided at my job site with an ever changing menu, and I like to see new food as an adventure. Some of the offerings I have liked more than others, but it has been fun so far.
Being raised in the Mid West, I do not have the exposure to fresh seafood that some have, but I have an open mind.
As a kid I loved eggplant, now I hate it. I can remember ordering eggplant parm in restaurants when I was little. What was I thinking?
I wish I’d lose my sweet tooth…
As a little kid I liked strawberry flavored things. Loved strawberry milk, loved Frankenberry cereal, loved other cereals with freeze-dried “strawberries” etc. These days if it’s not literally a strawberry or strawberry pancake syrup, no thanks.
I no longer dislike hard pretzels or dry roasted peanuts. And I like honey glazed cashews. That’s about it for changes.
I like most things that I disliked as a child. And cannot stomach the overly sweet things that I ate as child.
Growing up the Northeast, Mom like to pick fiddleheads and cook them for dinner. I HATED those things and they would trigger my gag reflex.
Now, that my tastes have been refined, I wonder if I still hate them. But I haven’t had the opportunity to eat them since I was a kid.