Sorry If this is in the wrong forum. I had a question about taste aversion. Well let me tell you the story first. Well one day for lunch I had raw oysters. Then later on that night I got really drunk off of Jim Beam and coke. Well me and my bro both got really sick that night and for about 3 days to come. I could not keep anything down for 3 days. I have since developed a taste aversion to whiskey. If I try to swallow my gag reflex kicks in. I used to love Jim Beam. I was wondering if there is anyway to get rid of my taste aversion?
Well I could be wrong but well it sounds psychological. Well I suppose it could have been bad oysters that initially made you ill but well it may have also been alcohol poisoning. Well you also may need to find a different alcoholic beverage. Well you also may need to stay away from raw shellfish. Well I think I’ve contributed about all I can contribute.Well someone else may be along soon to offer more advice. Well buh bye. Well try to stay well.
This is known as Sauce Bearnaise syndrome, because the first researcher to document it was spurred to study it when he ate a steak with sauce bearnaise and later became ill. He realized that he was only ill because of a flu that was going around that most of his co-workers had had, but even so the sauce nauseated him years later.
The brain has an instinctual, and very powerful reaction to foods that are associated with illness, and it exists among lower animals too - down to the level of slugs (or so I’ve read.) It’s not the same as psychological conditioning, because it’s much, much more powerful, and it takes only one exposure - and the associated illness can occur hours later than the food is eaten.
Suffice it to say, you’re working against one of your body’s most basic, strongest self-defense systems. I don’t know that there’s a specific thing to do, except maybe try drinking small quantities of whiskey fairly often until you get used to it again. I’d just take a sip at first, and if you do this for awhile, you might manage to erase the association, since you’ll have drunk it later without ill effects. Good luck to you . . . sad thing, since whiskey is one of life’s great pleasures. 
That is right. To continue on with this, taste aversions are an evolutionary defense mechanism. Humans and other animals evolved in environments in which the selection and quality of food could vary. When a substance was consumed that caused illness, a taste aversion was immediately put in place to protect the organism from never eating that substance again. Unfortunately, taste aversions are very powerful and meant to be permanent so this one is going to be very hard to overcome. You should be able to force yourself to drink whiskey without throwing up but remnants of the aversion will probably stay with you for a long time. Drinking just a little over time may work as pointed out above.
Just writing about taste aversions has made me think of some of mine that I developed as a child and I feel like I am about to throw up.
When I was younger, I was taking a rather nasty asthma medication that made me feel like I was on the verge of hurling for days. It was just a tease, though, because I never did. After about three days of barely eating, I said “screw this” and ate an enchilada dinner.
The next day, around noon, my stomach finally rebelled, rejecting both the medication and the still undigested enchiladas. For years after, even the thought of the smell of enchiladas made me sick. The medicine didn’t bother me any more, though.
Anyway, since I like Mexican food, I began reintroducing myself to enchiladas slowly. It took a couple years of not-very-resolute reprogramming, but eventually I could tolerate the smell again, and then I could eat them. If you really applied yourself, you could probably do it in far less time, but start slow.
Good news: it’s possible to recover. I’m currently on the rebound from Indian “vindaloo” dishes. I had chicken vindaloo the same night I was grievously ill with a flu. Actually, just typing the word vindaloo makes me a little queasy. I haven’t eaten in an Indian restaurant for a few months. Next time I do, I’ll be eating almost nothing but nan bread and maybe some mild curry, and concentrating on re-educating my taste-smell center to keep food down even though I can smell the vindaloo.
Bad news: after being force-fed a sandwich with too much mayonnaise on it at age four, I am still disgusted by (and usually throw up after eating) mayonnaise-based or similarly textured sauces. While not an allergy, I have to explain it like that in every sandwich shop I enter. And next time you’re out at a restaurant, look on the sandwich menu for anything that doesn’t come with “chipotle mayonnaise” or “a spicy western sauce” etc. – it’s really damn tough to avoid! Also, “hold the mayo” doesn’t seem to register with waitresses if the burger comes with “fancy wasabi cream sauce”.
But I’ll save my mayonnaise rant for later.
Oh yes, mayonnaise. I can’t eat it either after I discovered when I was 15 that:
You should always check the dates on things in the fridge before you eat them
Mayonnaise expiration dates do not have a six month grace period
I’m fine with flavored sauces with a mayonnaise-like texture, but can’t stand plain mayonnaise or Miracle Whip. Six-month-old mayonnaise tastes a lot like Miracle Whip. I’ve gotten some weird looks over the years for not wanting mayo on my sandwiches.
I’m pretty sure I’ve read somewhere that being made physically ill by food produces a stronger aversion than the association of pain with a food. Anyone know if that’s true.
I’ve got this problem with cheesecake. I had just had a small slice when I got hit with a really nasty case of food poisoning. But recently, more than 15 years after the incident, cheesecake has started seeming appealing again. So maybe ti just takes lots and lots of time…
Yes it was also a flu going around which I must have caught from coworkers. I am going to try to take it slow and maybe I can overcome this. I appreciate all of your help guys.
I remember reading in a low level college psych class that taste aversion was the only instance in which only ONE experience was necessary to produce a lasting association. I.e., Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate upon hearing a bell after being REPEATEDLY fed after the bell. They learned to avoid mayonaise after puking up mayonaise only once. Err…you get my point.
I had a grapefruit aversion that I grew out of after a long period of time. I threw it up during the flu as a child (maybe 12 years old or so) and even the smell of it made me gag for years. Recently, I’ve had grapefruit juice and enjoyed it, so I guess I’m over my own aversion. Of course, I’m 34…I hope you don’t have to wait 22 years to have another shot.
One experience, and the two events can be separated in time by at least hours (dunno if the limits of the effect have been studied) - whereas classical conditioning, as in Pavlov, requires the events to occur very close together. That’s how it’s known that taste aversions are a different system altogether, one just for the particular purpose of avoiding dangerous foods, rather than one whose operation can be generalized into different areas. It was, if I understand correctly, rather a surprise to psychologists when it was studied, because it doesn’t resemble conditioning as it was understood in the slightest.
Over one weekend I drank a lot of rum, and used vanilla coke as a chaser.
I got to the point where I drank far too much and became sick.
For the longest time vanilla coke tasted like rum to me and made me sort of gag. Rum also had the same effect.
Eventually I was able to drink both again.
I think sometimes you can get over a taste aversion by slowly reintroducing yourself to the food but other times you can’t.
For example, I became really sick after eating spaghetti as a child not once but twice. For many years after that, I could not eat or even smell spaghetti without feeling sick. It was really weird because I had no problem eating other pastas. Now I really don’t have a problem eating spaghetti.
Another example was when my Mom served me and my brother pudding sundaes when I was about 8 years old. It was basically chocolate and white chocolate pudding layered with whipped cream on top. Hours after eating it, I became violently ill and threw up all day the next day as well. I still don’t know if I had a stomach bug or if I was having side effects from a medication I was on for an ear infection. But to this day, I can’t eat chocolate pudding or any creamy chocolate dessert without feeling sick.
That’s a parfait, not a sundae. /zombie nitpick