Would Hypnotherapy Assist with Disliking Certain Food?

[BarnOwl]

@cainxinth

I have trained myself to eat a lot of foods I once disliked, such as milk, tomatoes, mushrooms, and shellfish. There are very few foods I don’t like now. Beets are next on my list of things to learn to like. The secret is very simple, I forced myself to keep trying them over and over. And these weren’t simple dislikes. Mushrooms used to be abhorrent to me. I thought they smelled bad, tasted bad, and the texture was downright alien. But, after eating them a few dozen times, in a lot of different preparations, they stopped being so alien and started tasting pretty good.

It worked for me. It might work for you.

Wow!

I find this exceptionally impressive. I thought such things were impossible - without some kind of outside help.

HTG, cainxinth!!

[Anne_Neville]

@Drum God

His stress comes from worrying that he will be put into a situation where he has to be impolite in refusing the food (or his dad will yell at him for not eating that dinner he paid for! :D)

You do realize that the yelling at him is counterproductive, and a good first step might be to stop doing that, right?

The stress might be making him less willing to eat. That’s very common, of course. Lots of people find their food just doesn’t taste right, even if it’s a food they like, if they’re eating in an atmosphere of stress and tension. The texture could seem different, too, because stress affects the salivary glands (stress can cause dry mouth- I notice this sometimes) and can make your throat tense up. It gets worse if you feel a little nauseous from stress, as some people do. You could probably get a food aversion going if you ate something when you were feeling nauseous.

@si_blakely

My take is that these things can get more entrenched as sufferers get older, and thus harder to break, so it would be better to work on them now. On the other hand, sometimes people grow out of them naturally as they get older. I hated veges and salad as a child, but now (at 40) I rely on salads as a major component of my diet as I try to lose weight

Or you might be eating better vegetables and salads now than the ones you were trying to choke down as a child. I hated salads until I moved to California in 1998 and discovered mesclun and spring mix. I still hate the kind of salads that were the only kind of salads my parents ever served- iceberg lettuce with big hunks of raw carrots and tomatoes (I dislike the texture of raw carrots and tomatoes, though I love them cooked, and will eat shredded raw carrots). Or the vegetables might be prepared differently now- maybe you just don’t like “cooked to death” vegetables, which are less common now than they were 30 years ago AIUI. When I lived at home, I thought I hated asparagus- we had canned, which was slimy, mushy, and stringy, and frozen, which had a gag-inducing sulfurous off taste to it. Now I eat fresh asparagus when it’s in season, and I like it.

If you’re trying to get yourself to like something you don’t, try a different way of preparing it. Get a good up-to-date cookbook- I like Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything as a good general guide to buying and cooking things you are not familiar with. Or at least Google some recipes for it, rather than cooking it the same way you’ve always had it and never liked it. If it’s a vegetable, try buying it fresh and in season rather than frozen or canned. You might find you like it- you just don’t like the way your mom always fixed it.

The OP might try some different kinds of cheese, if he hasn’t already. Find an upscale grocery store with a cheese counter, or a cheese shop. Different cheeses have vastly different tastes, smells, and textures. You might find you don’t like the mass-market mozzarella that most pizza places use, but you do like blue cheese or buffalo mozzarella.

Come to think of it, this might be it. I was gobsmacked that the OP could say he disliked the taste, smell, and texture of all cheese, because not all cheeses have the same or even similar tastes, smells, and textures. But come to think of it, pizza-parlor mozzarella cheese and Velveeta (sometimes used for nachos) are kind of similar in those respects.

[Stringer]

@Anne Neville

The OP might try some different kinds of cheese, if he hasn’t already. Find an upscale grocery store with a cheese counter, or a cheese shop. Different cheeses have vastly different tastes, smells, and textures. You might find you don’t like the mass-market mozzarella that most pizza places use, but you do like blue cheese or buffalo mozzarella.

Come to think of it, this might be it. I was gobsmacked that the OP could say he disliked the taste, smell, and texture of all cheese, because not all cheeses have the same or even similar tastes, smells, and textures. But come to think of it, pizza-parlor mozzarella cheese and Velveeta (sometimes used for nachos) are kind of similar in those respects.

This is good advice and occurred to me as well reading the OP – there are thousands of different kinds of cheese you can try, definitely check an upscale grocery store before writing cheese off entirely.

[si_blakely]

@Anne Neville

Or you might be eating better vegetables and salads now than the ones you were trying to choke down as a child. I hated salads until I moved to California in 1998 and discovered mesclun and spring mix. I still hate the kind of salads that were the only kind of salads my parents ever served- iceberg lettuce with big hunks of raw carrots and tomatoes (I dislike the texture of raw carrots and tomatoes, though I love them cooked, and will eat shredded raw carrots).

I don’t think so, really. These were home-grown, really well prepared veges and salads. My parents were pretty ahead of the curve (and keen gardeners). Maybe I do like rocket and spinach leaves (modern salad fare), but I’ll also eat iceberg. It’s not very different. And I don’t prepare veges any different now than we did then (microwaved, mostly).

So it really is a change in me, and not with what I eat.

Si

[Rhythmdvl]

Wow, what a question. I was considering posting something similar in the Café for similar reasons. Like emilyforce, I can’t take seafood. I grew up thinking I was allergic to it (think nausea) so always had a strong aversion. Recent allergy tests indicate I should be good to go. But… but… but where do I start? Hence my thinking of posting to the Café.

I know exactly what Spit’s talking about. I love to cook, but can’t really get into cooking shows because they inevitably turn to some piece of fish. Dining out isn’t quite problematic, but without a doubt about 30 per cent of the menu is seafood—it’s quite limiting. I hate making a big deal out of it, and it’s always a bit awkward when someone else is cooking: while close friends don’t serve it, I’m not that comfortable telling a dinner party host what not to serve. Yes, I know how to put on my big-boy pants and get over it, but it’s not easy. Oh man, the lamentations could go on…

While I’ve taught myself to like other foodstuffs, I’m not sure it would work in this case, and from what I’m assuming about the OP it’s a bit different there as well. Consider moving to a country where bugs and worms are a delicacy. No matter how well prepared, no matter how well seasoned, there are still bugs on your plate. Macho swaggering aside (I’m sure someone here could boast of worm-eating prowess), could hypnotherapy or some other process help get over a decades-long, deep seated personal taboo against eating a particular food?

[Madd_Maxx]

I wonder if hypnotherapy could keep me from getting hungry after reading this thread about all these delicious foods.

[even_sven]

In the beginning of the very excellent book “The Man Who Ate Everything”, the author sets out to desensitize himself to a list of about ten food aversions. I think he said you have to eat something seven (or is it twenty) times to lose an aversion. He managed to get rid of all of his food aversions except for one.

@Rhythmdvl

Consider moving to a country where bugs and worms are a delicacy. No matter how well prepared, no matter how well seasoned, there are still bugs on your plate.

The first time I was offered bugs, it was grilled grubs. I choked one down, gagging the whole times, even though it tasted fine. The next time I ate roasted flying termites. These were outright good- they taste salty and oily and crunch like American snack food. But I was still a little grossed out. Then I ate some giant crickets, which didn’t taste too bad but which were still kind of gross. But I will eat the termites again this year when they are in season, and I’m kind of looking forward to it. In a world with no Doritos, you take what you can get.

Anyway, I guess the point is that you probably could get yourself used to eating bugs.

[sandra_nz]

There is a programme on UK television called Freaky Eaters which documents adults with extremely restrictive diets due to eating issues. Often they’ll only have two or three foods that they will eat, and their pickiness with food started as children and has developed into full blown phobias of eating a full diet as adults. For instance, there was a fellow who was actually afraid to hold a vegetable in his hand. Another one had a guy who would only eat meat.

There are two presenters, a psychologist and a dietician who work together to get the person eating more normally. The approach seems to be desensitisation, e.g. the fellow who was afraid to hold a vegetable was instructed to place vegetables around his house for the first week, so he got used to seeing them. He was then instructed to hold a vegetable in his hand for 2 minutes, then 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, etc etc.

However, these are people with eating disorders. The issue is not that they *dislike * the taste of a certain food but that they have become afraid to eat it and often *afraid * to simply be in its presence (so you can imagine what impact this has had on the rest of their life).

So it’s probably more relevant to someone like Drum God’s son, although I’m not by any means saying he has an eating disorder - he might just be going through a picky stage or be playing out his frustrations as you’ve suggested.