Much like GingerOfTheNorth mine is an artificial flavor/scent - but in my case it’s Watermelon flavor.
I love real watermelon, but there was an incident with some fruit rollups & then watermelon sherbert…and either overeating or flu, I don’t recall which.
To this day, I can’t stand that artificial watermelon flavor/scent - ESPECIALLY Jolly Ranchers.
So has anyone studied this phenomenon? Is there a don’t-eat-this-again gland somewhere that sends a signal to our brains, after we puke just once?
Hubby used to love Iowa goulash – macaroni, tomatoes and hamburger meat. He’d eat it at least every week. The last time was about 8 years ago, before he got his blood pressure and blood sugar straightened out. Right after supper he started vomiting and got dizzy. He was in the hospital for three days.
The illness wasn’t to the goulash (I ate it too), but he hasn’t been able to eat it since.
To this day, I cannot eat Chee-tos with hot dogs. Cannot do it. I had a stomach bug once and horked that very combination up. I still love both foods, but not together.
It’s just a hardwired instinct. If our ancestors ate something that incapacitated them for two or three weeks, they sure weren’t going to try to it again and it’s still a handy trait to have now, even though we sometimes know it was an isolated incident and that not all peanut butter will kill you.
Some of us, anyway. I’d rather be sick for a month than eat PB&J but that has nothing to do with food poisoning and everything to do with its flavor.
I’m only going to say this: Twinkies really do go bad.
Cole slaw. When I was about three years old, I ate some cole slaw at a drive-in and spewed it all over the parking lot. Haven’t touched it since, and I’m almost 36. In fact, I can’t eat Wahoo’s Fish Tacos any more since I noticed they contain something with a passing resemblance to cole slaw.
Last February, I got the most horrible food poisoning of my life, and couldn’t keep anything down for a week–even water. I never saw a doctor or went to a hospital or took any medicine, which was probably stupid, since I got pretty weak and even lost a good deal of weight.
Anyway, I narrowed the culprit foodstuffs down to two choices… either a lunch I grabbed on the road at a Sonic fast food restaurant in Brandon, Florida (including a burger, onion rings, a shake, and one of their frosty fruity drinks I brought with me to sip as I drove), or a meatball sub from the mom-and-pop sub shop near my house in Miami, that I had been eating at most of my life. I never went back to that sub shop, and while I would try Sonic again because I like them, I haven’t gotten around to going back yet.
Tequila. I once drank WAY too much tequila, and under the influence, ate something that if I was sober, I would have said “Hey, that’s been unrefrigerated WAY too long.” So I ended up with food poisoning on top of alcohol poisoning. The smell of tequila will have me near to vomiting even if I haven’t had a drink in weeks. I haven’t drunk to excess ever since then (about ten years now). I have a few drinks a month, usually, and NEVER ones with tequila.
I can’t stand scrambled eggs. I got food poisoning from eating scrambled eggs at a fast food restaurant (it was probably McDonalds) for about a week. I can’t stand looking at them. My stomach makes this heaving sensation whenever I do.
You, too! :eek:
I loathe the smell and taste of peanut butter, I can’t stand it. Bleeeugh!
Fresh asparagus. Mom and dad bought a case of it once, and my brothers and I gorged on it raw…shudder. I can’t even smell it now. Not raw. If it’s been canned, it’s fine.
Cheese fondue.
Went to a party when I was a teenager; 17-year-old hostess’ first attempt at making fondue. I think she put in several hundred types of cheesoid substances. Mix it with lots of Screwdrivers (the drink), and it’s a bad time to find out you’re lactose-intolerant. I have never felt so ill in my entire life.
It’s called sauce béarnaise syndrome, or conditioned taste aversion. Ranchers make pretty good use of it by spiking sheep carcases with non-lethal poison and letting wolves go at it. The affect is quite unique (and very well documented) in that it only takes one shot to create the aversion. A useful trait to have.
For me, by the way, it’s coffee. Drank way too much staying up writing one night a few years back and still can’t drink a cup of plain, ordinary coffee.
My dad had a cousin who dealt in candy and other foodstuffs that had been pulled from shelves for being passed their sell-by date and so on. Dad would get boxes of candy to sell super cheap at his gas station and, while he was at it, crackers, cereal, canned stuff, and other “non-perishables” for home. Of course, even supposed non-perishables perish eventually, and then out come the mealyworms. It’s bad enough becoming conditioned to check every box you open, every bowl you pour, every spoonful you raise to your mouth for wriggly mealyworms. But eventually you begin to wonder just how many mealyworm eggs are in our food, anyway? Suddenly you’re casting suspicious eyes at new, non-expired food and it becomes hard to eat just about anything knowing that that there’s already vermin in it.
Ah, but I hadn’t meant to tell that story. I meant to tell about the time he brought home a crate of Triskets and a crate of aerosal cheese. Ohmygod, that was the greatest invention! We ate box after box of Triskets sprayed with can after can of cheese. There was no specific incident of vomitting, but there did come a point where I literally could not bring myself to take another bite. To this day, the very thought of cheese in a can makes me feel queasy. My sister claims she felt the same, but a couple years ago she served aerosal cheese and crackers as an appetizer at Thanksgiving. I was horrified! I can’t forget. Or forgive.
I also have a problem with boiled hot dogs since I really did throw those up once at the state fair. Hot dogs that have been nuked or prepared just about any other way don’t bother me, but boiled dogs have a flavor of their own, which takes me right back to that day. I haven’t ridden any of the rides at the fair since then, either, though fear of throwing up is only part of the reasoning behind that.
Lutefisk.
Oh, and some kind of seaweed flavoured buttery popcorn thing we were sent from hubby’s relatives in Hawaii - “Mochi Crunch and Nori”. I got sick after eating it, and the flavour would not go away.
Now, the mere mention of the words “Mochi Crunch and Nori” send me screaming for the hills, quivering and trembling in abject fear.
Oddly, it isn’t said all that frequently.
I can’t eat chocolate covered cherries. Ate a whole box one time as a kid and got really sick. I don’t care for Maraschino cherries either, but they wouldn’t make me gag.
Can’t drink any kind of whiskey or scotch. Got sick on it once and that was it.
Oddly enough, I’ve gotten sick on tequila before, yet I still enjoy it. Tequila is the only hard liquor I can do a straight shot of, although I insist on some lemon, or lime & salt.
I can’t eat the brown parts on a banana. No way. And I have friends that prefer the brown mushy parts!
Same thing with avocado. I love fresh, firm green avocado. but if I detect, or even just think that it might be anything but 100% fresh, I will gag & spit it out. I rarely am able to eat avocado in restaurants, unless they serve it as a whole wedge, and I can see that it’s still firm with no brown mushy parts.
Homemade baked beans with ham… shudder Dad made the dish anyway, even though the ham was freezer burned. We all got food poisoning, and I puked so much I came up with something I assume was bile, since it was green and bitter. Never again!
I must not have this reflex. Anything I like enough to eat a ton of once, I will continue to eat once I feel better (just not stuff myself.) I’ve gotten sick off of eating too much pizza Bog knows how many times, but I keep on eating it.
I am ever-so-slightly lactose intolerant, and for awhile I tried taking those pills that will help you digest milk. I had myself a nice time eating milk stuffs without worry. I didn’t realize the pills were expired though (it was brand new) and ended up puking my guts out for a whole night until I think there was nothing left inside me. A few days later, I tried the same exact thing, having myself a couple nice bowls of shredded wheat or what have you or breakfast with a big glass of milk (I don’t remember) along with my milk pills. Repeat puking experience. I still drink milk on a fairly regular basis and use it all the time when cooking, but since I can usually have a glass or less of skim milk with no ill effects, I don’t bother with the pills.
My boyfriend won’t eat ketchup to this day. Once when he was a little kid on a roadtrip, his parents stopped at a diner and he ordered a burger and fries. He slathered ketchup all over his fries, and wolfed a bunch down before noting something wasn’t quite right. Apparently the ketchup had been sitting out there in that restaurant for quite some time, and no one noticed it had gone rancid.
Myself, I won’t eat spaghetti. When I was a kid, my mom used to make it at least once a week, I guess because it’s cheap. Apparently as a baby I would eat it up. But as I got older I grew to hate it, and sure enough like clockwork, my parents would make me sit there and choke it down. It doesn’t help that I can’t stand large chunks of onion in things, and despite begging for at least spaghetti without this, my mom basically told me “tough shit,” and I’d be made to sit there and chew it until I felt like gagging. To this day, I cannot stand the sight of a plate of spaghetti, I won’t eat spaghetti noodles with some other kind of sauce, I hate tomato and meat sauces, and don’t even like to be near someone eating them.
Battered fish is my nemesis. I think it was cod. Whatever it was, it tasted bad enough coming back up that I haven’t eaten anything that comes out of the ocean since. And that was probably 20 years ago when that happened!
My wife used to love garlic, and we used a lot of it in our cooking.
One day, while she was pregnant with our first-born (which makes it seventeen years ago now), she was adding garlic powder (yeah, I know, but sometimes you gotta use shortcuts) to spagetti sauce, and the top came off of the container, dumping the entire thing into the sauce.
The strong smell and the pregnancy interacted in some way, and she hasn’t been able to tolerate garlic since.