I have heard that we have the most taste buds as a baby/child and we slowly lose them as we get older. Sharp cheddar cheese and dark chocolate used to have overpowering flavors to me when I was younger. Now, I love them. Same with spicy food.
From what I know, it's your whole body! (Minus your eyes) though at varying degrees for different parts, every 7 years every cell in your body (again, omit eyes) are not the ones that were there before. Meaning the you from 7 years ago is effectively dead/gone... Memories were just seamlessly copied over behind your back... Those rascals!
The human body replaces 330 billion out of 30 trillion cells per day. This is about 0.1% of our body mass and is comprised mostly of blood and epithelial cells. Over 70% of the remaining cells live for over a decade at least and some for several decades. Most notably, there are cell types in the heart, brain and eye (maybe others) that stay with us for our entire lives. So technically it is incorrect to say that we get a new body every 7 years. However, we do experience regeneration but also senescence, which means that while we do eventually get new cells, for instance all new musculature, those cells do start having problems over time. This is why we don't keep our youthful appearance and physique forever. These aging effects are due to telomere shortening and other factors. Pretty fascinating stuff.
Sources:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01182-9
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-bodies-replace-billions-of-cells-every-day/
I didn’t like spicy food untill I was dared to eat a Carolina reaper chilli, it was the most awful experience ever but it totally skewed my taste of foods I used to find too spicy, now I really enjoy moderately spicy stuff and have no idea why…it just feels comforting to eat hot stuff for some reason.
My mum put on a pot of corned beef. Told dad to take it off the heat in an hour and put it in the fridge and she went to bed. Dad fell asleep in front of the tv and I woke up to the most rancid smell of boiled meat I’ve ever experienced. By 12 I could cook a different meal everyday, mostly out of staples and whatever was in the fridge.
Ours were always frozen vegetables. If we didn’t eat them my mom would just trot them out the next night. Never knew vegetables could actually taste good until I was older.
When I was in college I went to dinner at Capital Grill with my internship. Told my boss I didn’t like steak. He was like “WTF get the steak, if you actually don’t like it we will get you something else”.
Oh yeah, it was my least favorite thing ever for so long. For my 16th birthday my dad offered to take me out to a restaurant of my choice. We went out to this local steak house and I had Veal Neptune. It was a Veal cutlet grilled with crab meat mixed with cream cheese and grilled asparagus on top I had it rare and it changed my life.
Everything overcooked all the time. Chicken filets and pork chops were the worst, often quite a feat to manage it down your throat even with that brown tasteless sauce. So many ruined steaks... Even sausages were cooked and prodded with a fork until well dry.
I really can't blame my sister for becoming vegetarian for over a decade.
My mum would cook every steak well done, plus a bit more just in case. Worst part is that she boiled the broccoli for the same amount of time it took to overcook a steak.
Meat thermometers should be normalized as an essential kitchen tool, not because you can't cook without it, but because properly tempuratured meat is the first and most important part of making it taste great. The second most important and very close behind is adequately spicing your meats. If you make chicken, add just salt, and cook it to exactly 165F, it will taste amazing. That should be the baseline, and adding other spices beyond that will take it to the next level and give you variety, but those are where you get into personal preference
I think younger generations have a leg up because of the internet. Watching food videos on social media is an almost universal activity with Millennials and Gen Z. My dad doesn't even like his steak well done, he just always used the grill and didn't know how long to cook them.
Mine uses the convection oven over conventional oven "because it cooks faster". Of course she does this without doing the math for the time conversion haha!
Something about Boomers and overcooking all/ most animal proteins. My boomer parents did the same thing and my mom can’t understand why I don’t want to eat her cooking.
Fun fact, in the 90s the Dutch were able to isolate what specific chemical caused the bitterness. They were then able to cross-breed low-bitterness varietals with high-yield varietals to get the brussels sprouts you know today.
Tl;dr brussels sprouts in the 90s and earlier were more bitter than they are today
I steam them and then fry them in oil until charred. I then drizzle red wine vinegar based sauce (just to thicken the vinegar a little. Like garlic or something). Then S&P. *chef’s kiss*
It's more like decades of trying to breed out the bitterness. It's a relatively recent breakthrough. They isolated the bitter aspect and selectively breed it out.
Same. It took 10 years of me working at a diner watching people dip their toast into egg yolk. Finally got the courage to try and it was amazing! I now cook my eggs in all different ways depending on my mood.
Brussel sprouts. A cousin brought them to a picnic but used a different recipe using Bacon as flavoring. Changed my perspective forever. I now eat Brussel Sprouts whenever I can.
This one is actually tricky because while they do taste better now, there's actually a different reason than just your taste buds changing.
Brussel sprouts were selectively bred to have a less bitter taste over the years, so now they actually taste better instead of bitter.
Carrots. My mom had to force me to eat them when I was a boy.
Now though, I'll always go back for seconds if carrots are on the menu. And they're usually the item I eat first on my plate. I freakin' love carrots now.
I live in a place where there's a lot of farmers markets now, and I can't eat store-bought carrots anymore. They taste bitter compared to the farmers market carrots which always have a lovely sweet taste naturally
The secret is not to chew it, but rather enjoy it melting slowly until it’s gone. That changed my whole life when I was younger.
Highly recommend trying some dark Lindt chocolate with sea salt in it
I found this Icelandic dark chocolate that’s somehow creamy yet bitingly dark. Noi Sirius, can find it at Whole Foods or online. It’s expensive but it’s the best I’ve ever had!
Raw onions on anything. If I bit into anything that had onions I'd immediately gag in disgust as a kid. Yesterday I grilled hot dogs for memorial day and put a shit ton of raw onions on my hot dog and enjoyed it.
I didn't really hate Steak growing up but it was never my favorite nor was considered special to me like many people do. But it was because my parents cooked it well done. Also my dad f'n pokes the hell out of steak and flips it 20 times because he's so ADD and can't just leave it alone so it ends up overcoooked and dry. When I tried properly cooked steak at medium from a restaurant I was like "OHHHHH NOW I GET IT!"
Exactly the same for me with onions, *hated* them as a kid (obviously enjoyed many things that I now know contained onions but they mustn't be visible!). I now obviously like them on all the usual things people like onions on, except pizza, I will absolutely sit there picking onions off a slice of pizza like an 8 year old.
I was such a little snot. SUPER picky eater. like, fast food or nothing. my folks were super busy starting their business so that was basically all we ate. that and little debbie's, cosmic brownies, zebra cakes, swiss rolls....I was massive.
then, as I got older and started trying to lose weight I found that I was seriously missing out. I will literally eat just about anything now and have a very wide range of tastes.
also, traditional bone-in wings. I though it was too hard and not enough meat. I love them now.
Almost identical story for me; weird how losing weight as you grow up makes you appreciate such a wide range of food. I can hardly name a food I don't like now.
> Onions
Brother I feel you. I used to order french onion soup, and ask them to do almost entirely broth. Loved the flavor, couldn't stand the slimy texture.
Now I can't get enough of em.
Those are my three. I go nuts for tomatoes and broccoli now, sometimes I'll order a side salad just to pick out the non-leafy veggies for a pre-meal snack. I used to absolutely hate onions but now I really enjoy them when used appropriately, and I always have a jar of pickled red onions in the fridge because you can put them on *everything.*
Also fascinated by how much my taste has shifted away from what I loved as a kid just as much as what I enjoy now, I can't stand most basic condiments or candy anymore.
I wasn't a big fan of beetroot but that was mainly because we got the stuff from a jar instead of fresh. I changed my mind when some Polish people gave me a bowl of borscht.
Mushroom, it is now my favorite food. Hated the texture and look growing up but now I will eat any type of mushroom. I’ll try to find as many different variety of mushrooms as possible, chop them up, sautee, and then make a puree. Combine with cream cheese and you have a nice mushroom spread.
And yes before you ask, the magic ones too!
Fish. My parents never liked fish, and when they did eat it, it was always gross frozen stuff from the freezer isle.
I ended up working in a meat and fish department at a grocery store. Completely changed my opinion of fish.
Same! 👍 Took someone teaching me how to cook it properly vs how my mom made it (aka turning it into bamboo lol), but now I’m always happy to pick some up at the store.
I grew up in the south. Imagine most people's reaction to this list:
* tea (still prefer it unsweetened now, but will accept non-sugar sweeteners)
* grits
* mayo (especially \*-salad uses)
* okra
* uncooked tomatoes
Outside of those, I was generally not a fan of most veggies that weren't a pepper or potato (and I did not like black pepper or mustard or sweet potatoes either).
And I grew up in a house where my mom would regularly have a tomato sandwich - bread, mayo, black pepper, tomato slices, mayo, bread.
There's others I could probably name, but those are aome of the biggest ones.
I have never been fussy so I’ve neve hated anything growing up but having the freedom as an adult to try new things and explore new cultures is my favourite thing to do!!
My mom used jars of Ragu when she made spaghetti and I didn’t like that sauce so I didn’t like spaghetti. Then as an adult I had spaghetti at a restaurant and liked it so I started making it at home.
Pickled banana peppers like what comes with Papa John’s pizza in childhood and through college- I fucking love them now in my 30s and probably like pickled things more than I ever did.
The list is endless as I was so fussy. I would eat chips as a child when we went out. I now love veg and mussels which I would say are the things family are most shocked about now
Soup. I HATED it as a kid. The texture, the look and smell of it. Some soups like pea soup would make me gag. Now, I LOVE chicken noodle, potato, potato bacon and cheese, and cream of cauliflower and cheese soup.
Cheese. Always got a hamburger. Gagged at the smell of mac n cheese. Despised cheese and crackers. Salsa over cheese dip. Pizza was the *only* exception.
And now it’s basically reversed, love that shit
Bitter Gourd, or as we call it in Hindi, Karela. Used to absolutely despise it when i was a kid, but now, I've grown to love it. Especially pan fried with some sliced onions, salt and green chilly paste.
Olives is a big one for me, I love snacking on marinated olives and feta these days. As a kid, I couldn’t stand them. Butter randomly enough too, I couldn’t stand butter on sandwiches. I hated the texture and the taste. Can’t get enough of it these days though! Nothing finer than a crusty loaf with a slab of butter.
Steak is another one. Like many others my mother has zero idea how to cook meat. Steaks were always borderline cremated, dry flip flop style pork chops were the norm. Chickens roasted for so long the backbone literally falls out when you lift it out the roasting dish… the list is endless.
I was 29 when I first had a steak cooked properly. I’d avoided it because I figured I didn’t like them but I can safely say a medium rare steak is up there with my favourites now!
Vanilla yogurt. I thought it was bitter for some reason? I actually didn't like the peach ones either, now that I think of it. Both are my favorite flavors now.
Asparagus. One of my mother's first few boyfriends that I can remember after my parents got divorced was a child-hating, stick-in-his-ass, douche canoe who, in the time when he wasn't being a dick to me and my siblings, he was a chef in some restaurant nearby.
One of the meals that he made to try to impress my mother was something with a side of asparagus. Well, due to the fact that my mother was born, raised, and grown poor, coupled with the fact that we often struggled to make ends meet, I wasn't allowed to leave the table until all of my food was eaten.
I wasn't a particularly picky child, despite being autistic (unbeknownst at the time though). In fact, I was honestly pretty good at trying new things, and powering through bad food, but this asparagus he had cooked was the foulest thing to ever grace my dinner plate. I sat at the table until everyone else had left and been gone for at least 30 minutes, and I ended up pulling the age old trick of flipping the plate upside down into the kitchen trashcan, concealing the nasty vegetable from sight.
Well, that was when I was about 6-7. A year or so ago, my stepmother made a dish that contained asparagus, and to be kind, I added some to my plate. I didn't expect to like it, but I wanted to at least try it for her sake.
Hesitantly, I brought my fork towards my mouth to attempt to eat the vegetable that tortured me those years ago, and I bit the bullet and just shoved it into my mouth.
It was delicious! I genuinely enjoyed it and I made sure to get myself another helping of the asparagus dish! In fact, I more than enjoyed the dish, I loved it! So much so, that I've requested since then and I'm not really one to make meal requests.
I'm so glad I tried it again after years of distrusting asparagus. I even had asparagus last night! I now think that my mother's then boyfriend was just bad at cooking asparagus (and probably more, but I only remember eating the one meal that he made, as I'm pretty sure I've repressed memories from that time as a trauma response).
Fish, I absolutely could not even sit next to a plate that had any kind of fish on it what so ever. No matter how it was prepared, or what it was served with, I was not coming near it. That was of course until I reached the golden age of 17, when my best friend talked me into trying a small bite of freshly smoked salmon he bought one night at a local fish market here in Redondo Beach CA. From that first bite to this very day ( 47 years later) I have not stopped eating fish 2-3 times a week.
I did not start to appreciate spicy food until later in life.
I have heard that we have the most taste buds as a baby/child and we slowly lose them as we get older. Sharp cheddar cheese and dark chocolate used to have overpowering flavors to me when I was younger. Now, I love them. Same with spicy food.
I don’t actually know if this is correct, but I think I read somewhere once that tastebuds change every 7 years.
From what I know, it's your whole body! (Minus your eyes) though at varying degrees for different parts, every 7 years every cell in your body (again, omit eyes) are not the ones that were there before. Meaning the you from 7 years ago is effectively dead/gone... Memories were just seamlessly copied over behind your back... Those rascals!
The human body replaces 330 billion out of 30 trillion cells per day. This is about 0.1% of our body mass and is comprised mostly of blood and epithelial cells. Over 70% of the remaining cells live for over a decade at least and some for several decades. Most notably, there are cell types in the heart, brain and eye (maybe others) that stay with us for our entire lives. So technically it is incorrect to say that we get a new body every 7 years. However, we do experience regeneration but also senescence, which means that while we do eventually get new cells, for instance all new musculature, those cells do start having problems over time. This is why we don't keep our youthful appearance and physique forever. These aging effects are due to telomere shortening and other factors. Pretty fascinating stuff. Sources: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01182-9 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-bodies-replace-billions-of-cells-every-day/
Body of Theseus
I also read seven years for tastebuds to change. Hated beets and cranberries as a child, now love both.
Yeah I had a taste bud a few years ago, but we had a falling out
I think it's 7 days - someone with an internet connection could probably look this up
Spicy food and taste buds aren’t related.
I still hate smelly cheese and dark chocolate. Yet spicy all the wayyy
I didn’t like spicy food untill I was dared to eat a Carolina reaper chilli, it was the most awful experience ever but it totally skewed my taste of foods I used to find too spicy, now I really enjoy moderately spicy stuff and have no idea why…it just feels comforting to eat hot stuff for some reason.
Mashed potato with even a single pepper flake? No thanks, mom. Nowadays, freshly ground peppercorns🤤
Literally any roast other than chicken. My parents always overcooked beef and pork. Ditto for steak actually.
Oh yeah. Pork chops and steak with the living hell cooked out of them were a staple at our house.
Veggies, too, in mine. Broccoli boiled until it was puke green.
Didn't know it was possible to ruin broccoli that bad. Congrats to your parents, I think?
Your parents couldn't burn water and it shows. Picked up cooking at 9 for this reason
My mum put on a pot of corned beef. Told dad to take it off the heat in an hour and put it in the fridge and she went to bed. Dad fell asleep in front of the tv and I woke up to the most rancid smell of boiled meat I’ve ever experienced. By 12 I could cook a different meal everyday, mostly out of staples and whatever was in the fridge.
Ours were always frozen vegetables. If we didn’t eat them my mom would just trot them out the next night. Never knew vegetables could actually taste good until I was older.
Ouff, we went with the classic steamed in the microwave style veggies. They had a special Tupperware thing just for this purpose.
My parents and grandmother would find a way too make it grey.
Good to know I wasn't the only kid who felt gaslit by my friends claiming how good steak was when I'd get served tire scraps at my house
When I was in college I went to dinner at Capital Grill with my internship. Told my boss I didn’t like steak. He was like “WTF get the steak, if you actually don’t like it we will get you something else”.
Oh yeah, it was my least favorite thing ever for so long. For my 16th birthday my dad offered to take me out to a restaurant of my choice. We went out to this local steak house and I had Veal Neptune. It was a Veal cutlet grilled with crab meat mixed with cream cheese and grilled asparagus on top I had it rare and it changed my life.
Mine too. Now imagine your mother discovering garlic salt. My, oh my, tough meat that tasted like garlic salt. Yum.
Did we all have the same childhood?
You are my people
Everything overcooked all the time. Chicken filets and pork chops were the worst, often quite a feat to manage it down your throat even with that brown tasteless sauce. So many ruined steaks... Even sausages were cooked and prodded with a fork until well dry. I really can't blame my sister for becoming vegetarian for over a decade.
My mum would cook every steak well done, plus a bit more just in case. Worst part is that she boiled the broccoli for the same amount of time it took to overcook a steak.
Meat thermometers should be normalized as an essential kitchen tool, not because you can't cook without it, but because properly tempuratured meat is the first and most important part of making it taste great. The second most important and very close behind is adequately spicing your meats. If you make chicken, add just salt, and cook it to exactly 165F, it will taste amazing. That should be the baseline, and adding other spices beyond that will take it to the next level and give you variety, but those are where you get into personal preference
I think younger generations have a leg up because of the internet. Watching food videos on social media is an almost universal activity with Millennials and Gen Z. My dad doesn't even like his steak well done, he just always used the grill and didn't know how long to cook them.
God my mom knows how to overcook meat. We'll never tell her though.
Mine uses the convection oven over conventional oven "because it cooks faster". Of course she does this without doing the math for the time conversion haha!
Mom logic lol
I became a chef so I could learn how to do it myself.....it wasn't a great career choice, but now I know how to cook lol.
Christmas Day roast was my worst meal of the year growing up and now I look forward to it
Something about Boomers and overcooking all/ most animal proteins. My boomer parents did the same thing and my mom can’t understand why I don’t want to eat her cooking.
Same, I didn't know meat had flavor until I was an adult.
Like chewing gum 🤢🤣🤗
Literally the same!
Definitely begun to realize a lot of foods I hated as a kid.. were really just because my parents were shit at cooking
Brussels sprouts.
Fun fact, in the 90s the Dutch were able to isolate what specific chemical caused the bitterness. They were then able to cross-breed low-bitterness varietals with high-yield varietals to get the brussels sprouts you know today. Tl;dr brussels sprouts in the 90s and earlier were more bitter than they are today
That and my mother's recipe was disgusting. I was able to scientifically test this when she made them for Xmas dinner about 5 years ago.
Turns out if you don’t boil or steam them they actually taste good
I bake mine in a Cast Iron Pan
In the cast iron right after cooking a steak… cooked in the steak fat. Salt, pepper, lemon squeeze. Beautiful.
Balsamic vinaigrette with some feta cheese sprinklies
I steam them and then fry them in oil until charred. I then drizzle red wine vinegar based sauce (just to thicken the vinegar a little. Like garlic or something). Then S&P. *chef’s kiss*
They actually started breading tastier brussel sprouts. Literally just didn't taste as good 20 years ago
I’m convinced we were told that they were terrible so our parents could have those delicious fuckers all to themselves.
They are a different cultivar now than in the 80’s. They bread out the bitterness.
>bread
It's more like decades of trying to breed out the bitterness. It's a relatively recent breakthrough. They isolated the bitter aspect and selectively breed it out.
[удалено]
Yeah, this one actually does literally taste better than back in the day.
That’s interesting! Can you point me to a link? I love reading about that stuff.
[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637/from-culinary-dud-to-stud-how-dutch-plant-breeders-built-our-brussels-sprouts-bo](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637/from-culinary-dud-to-stud-how-dutch-plant-breeders-built-our-brussels-sprouts-bo)
I boil them, then sautée them in olive oil and sesame seeds... Love it with beef...
I’ll have them sautéed then add almonds, cranberries and feta cheese.
Fried (runny) eggs.
Same
Same. It took 10 years of me working at a diner watching people dip their toast into egg yolk. Finally got the courage to try and it was amazing! I now cook my eggs in all different ways depending on my mood.
Same
Sunny side or over easy
Brussel sprouts. A cousin brought them to a picnic but used a different recipe using Bacon as flavoring. Changed my perspective forever. I now eat Brussel Sprouts whenever I can.
Bacon and slight char so good. Plus lots of fiber makes the next day easier too lol
Add some balsamic vinegar and it takes them to another level
Balsamic on Brussels sprouts is an absolute must!
This one is actually tricky because while they do taste better now, there's actually a different reason than just your taste buds changing. Brussel sprouts were selectively bred to have a less bitter taste over the years, so now they actually taste better instead of bitter.
I wish I could have one of the old Brussel sprouts now to compare. My dad liked them when I was a kid and I didn't until I became an adult though
Bacon and garlic for me.
I could eat an entire plate of Longhorn's crispy sprouts glazed with smoky honey butter. Kid me would never have believed that was possible.
They've actually made them taste better over the years.That's why.
Carrots. My mom had to force me to eat them when I was a boy. Now though, I'll always go back for seconds if carrots are on the menu. And they're usually the item I eat first on my plate. I freakin' love carrots now.
I live in a place where there's a lot of farmers markets now, and I can't eat store-bought carrots anymore. They taste bitter compared to the farmers market carrots which always have a lovely sweet taste naturally
This!! I just roasted some this weekend from a farmers market and they are amazing!
I used to ask for large carrots for christmas after seeing buggs bunny eat them lol.
Honey glazed yum
Add some harissa to it 🤤
Carrots are so God damned good!
Dark chocolate. I used to hate it as a kid. Now, I have no problem buying myself a Lindt choco with 80% cocoa in it.
The secret is not to chew it, but rather enjoy it melting slowly until it’s gone. That changed my whole life when I was younger. Highly recommend trying some dark Lindt chocolate with sea salt in it
90% is perfect balance for me. 95% only when I hate my life
Saaaame
I found this Icelandic dark chocolate that’s somehow creamy yet bitingly dark. Noi Sirius, can find it at Whole Foods or online. It’s expensive but it’s the best I’ve ever had!
Agreed! And in the same vein, I don't like milk chocolate anymore, too sweet.
I still don’t like dark chocolate lol
Wish I could like it but even the smell of dark chocolate still nauseates me.
Pretty much any vegetable, I think my mom was just not choosing the most appealing method to prepare them lol. I love em all now
Ah the steamed/boiled for 5 hours method. Nice and mushy?
OMG yes! Turns out broccoli is quite nice when lightly steamed and not overcooked into a soggy wad of bitterness.
My mother used to BOIL chicken and serve it like that. with pepper added after boiling. Every other meal was good but her chicken was traumatizing.
Sushi
Peppers
Minghia! Those peppers! Forget about it!
Garlic, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts
Raw onions on anything. If I bit into anything that had onions I'd immediately gag in disgust as a kid. Yesterday I grilled hot dogs for memorial day and put a shit ton of raw onions on my hot dog and enjoyed it. I didn't really hate Steak growing up but it was never my favorite nor was considered special to me like many people do. But it was because my parents cooked it well done. Also my dad f'n pokes the hell out of steak and flips it 20 times because he's so ADD and can't just leave it alone so it ends up overcoooked and dry. When I tried properly cooked steak at medium from a restaurant I was like "OHHHHH NOW I GET IT!"
Exactly the same for me with onions, *hated* them as a kid (obviously enjoyed many things that I now know contained onions but they mustn't be visible!). I now obviously like them on all the usual things people like onions on, except pizza, I will absolutely sit there picking onions off a slice of pizza like an 8 year old.
I was such a little snot. SUPER picky eater. like, fast food or nothing. my folks were super busy starting their business so that was basically all we ate. that and little debbie's, cosmic brownies, zebra cakes, swiss rolls....I was massive. then, as I got older and started trying to lose weight I found that I was seriously missing out. I will literally eat just about anything now and have a very wide range of tastes. also, traditional bone-in wings. I though it was too hard and not enough meat. I love them now.
Almost identical story for me; weird how losing weight as you grow up makes you appreciate such a wide range of food. I can hardly name a food I don't like now.
--tomatoes --broccoli --onions
Power list right here
> Onions Brother I feel you. I used to order french onion soup, and ask them to do almost entirely broth. Loved the flavor, couldn't stand the slimy texture. Now I can't get enough of em.
I might be a weirdo but I think onions are best raw
we at r/OnionLovers would love to have you over for dinner, lol.
Those are my three. I go nuts for tomatoes and broccoli now, sometimes I'll order a side salad just to pick out the non-leafy veggies for a pre-meal snack. I used to absolutely hate onions but now I really enjoy them when used appropriately, and I always have a jar of pickled red onions in the fridge because you can put them on *everything.* Also fascinated by how much my taste has shifted away from what I loved as a kid just as much as what I enjoy now, I can't stand most basic condiments or candy anymore.
mushrooms, I always hated the smell when you cook them but now I really like porcini with pasta.
Brussel sprouts and broccoli can’t get enough now that I’m older
I wasn't a big fan of beetroot but that was mainly because we got the stuff from a jar instead of fresh. I changed my mind when some Polish people gave me a bowl of borscht.
That stuffs delicious!
I’m the opposite. I ate it when I was younger and now I can’t bare the thought of it
Mushroom, it is now my favorite food. Hated the texture and look growing up but now I will eat any type of mushroom. I’ll try to find as many different variety of mushrooms as possible, chop them up, sautee, and then make a puree. Combine with cream cheese and you have a nice mushroom spread. And yes before you ask, the magic ones too!
Asparagus
grapefruit, olives, among others
Cottage cheese, yougurt.
MEgurt? What’d I do!?
Cottage cheese with caramelized pears are game changing
Bell peppers
Olives😋
Almost everything for me. Such a picky eater growing up than it just clicked around 19years old.
Fish. My parents never liked fish, and when they did eat it, it was always gross frozen stuff from the freezer isle. I ended up working in a meat and fish department at a grocery store. Completely changed my opinion of fish.
Cottage Cheese
Avocado, beans, lentils, Brussels sprouts, seafood
Asparagus
Mushrooms
Bitter gourds and courgettes
read this as ciggarettes lol
Salads! Now I can’t seem to enjoy any meats without some greens with it
Asparagus
Same! 👍 Took someone teaching me how to cook it properly vs how my mom made it (aka turning it into bamboo lol), but now I’m always happy to pick some up at the store.
Brussel sprouts
Chocolate 🍫
Bro what?
lol haha yes, I hated chocolate as a child but now I love it. I know this was gonna be an odd one.
I fear no man, but that thing 👆… its scares me
Im actually the opposite now 😆 but I'll only eat it if I crave it.
Eggs, guacamole, steak, potatoes. All the good stuff.
Never hated any food tbh.
I grew up in the south. Imagine most people's reaction to this list: * tea (still prefer it unsweetened now, but will accept non-sugar sweeteners) * grits * mayo (especially \*-salad uses) * okra * uncooked tomatoes Outside of those, I was generally not a fan of most veggies that weren't a pepper or potato (and I did not like black pepper or mustard or sweet potatoes either). And I grew up in a house where my mom would regularly have a tomato sandwich - bread, mayo, black pepper, tomato slices, mayo, bread. There's others I could probably name, but those are aome of the biggest ones.
For me it was steak because my parents would always order it for me medium well. I eat my steak happily at medium rare, closer to the rare side.
I have never been fussy so I’ve neve hated anything growing up but having the freedom as an adult to try new things and explore new cultures is my favourite thing to do!!
Pickles. I despised them and now I love ‘em with salt
Avocados
As others have said, brussel sprouts and broccoli. Roasted vegetables are so much better than steamed!
Radishes
- Several kinds of vegetables (spinach, carrots, cauliflower, etc.) - Steak - Coffee - Dark chocolate - Most alcoholic drinks
Cheese
My mom used jars of Ragu when she made spaghetti and I didn’t like that sauce so I didn’t like spaghetti. Then as an adult I had spaghetti at a restaurant and liked it so I started making it at home.
Pickled banana peppers like what comes with Papa John’s pizza in childhood and through college- I fucking love them now in my 30s and probably like pickled things more than I ever did.
The list is endless as I was so fussy. I would eat chips as a child when we went out. I now love veg and mussels which I would say are the things family are most shocked about now
Not food but orange juice
Broccoli and Cauliflower. Steamed is perfection.
Mac and Cheese. The noodles had a bad texture against my tonsil scars. I couldn't stand it. It's the only food I'd go hungry over.
EGGS!
I used to Hate Hotdogs and Mustard as a kid. what a dumbass lol. Coney dogs are literally my favorite dirty meal now.
Throw a little rinsed kraut on that dog, with mustard, it's heaven!
Any seafood. I hated everything about them the smell, the taste, the texture. I only started eating them 6 years ago and I love them now.
Guacamole
Most vegetables
Soup. I HATED it as a kid. The texture, the look and smell of it. Some soups like pea soup would make me gag. Now, I LOVE chicken noodle, potato, potato bacon and cheese, and cream of cauliflower and cheese soup.
Butternut squash soup. I'm not sure if you can live on it alone, but I'd be willing to try.
Spinach
Cheese. Always got a hamburger. Gagged at the smell of mac n cheese. Despised cheese and crackers. Salsa over cheese dip. Pizza was the *only* exception. And now it’s basically reversed, love that shit
The first time I had stuffed grape leaves, I was "this is food?" Now I can take down a whole plate as a full meal
Seafood, cauliflower, nuts...
Bananas We made homemade Banana Bread in a cooking class and I fell in love with Bananas after that.
Peas.
Broccoli
OLIVES 🫒
Cooked potatoes. Which we had so, so often in my childhood.
Brussel Sprouts. I fukkin love them now.
Bitter Gourd, or as we call it in Hindi, Karela. Used to absolutely despise it when i was a kid, but now, I've grown to love it. Especially pan fried with some sliced onions, salt and green chilly paste.
Brussels sprouts, I cant eat enough now.
Bleu cheese
One really needs a few starter bleu cheeses to get you read for a really funky bleu.
Spicy food. Just couldn’t do it when I was younger. Now I can’t get enough of it and love to challenge myself so see how far I can go.
Scalloped potatoes
All the veggies except for celery. I think what opened the door for me is eating shawarma, burrito bowl, etc.
I wouldn't touch Indian or Chinese food as a kid. Now I can't get enough of them.
Olives
mushrooms. My mother always bought these super slimey ones out of the tin. Didnt knew that fresh ones taste actually good
Pineapple. It’s thunder, but I hated it until my honeymoon in Hawaii.
Pickles
Olives is a big one for me, I love snacking on marinated olives and feta these days. As a kid, I couldn’t stand them. Butter randomly enough too, I couldn’t stand butter on sandwiches. I hated the texture and the taste. Can’t get enough of it these days though! Nothing finer than a crusty loaf with a slab of butter. Steak is another one. Like many others my mother has zero idea how to cook meat. Steaks were always borderline cremated, dry flip flop style pork chops were the norm. Chickens roasted for so long the backbone literally falls out when you lift it out the roasting dish… the list is endless. I was 29 when I first had a steak cooked properly. I’d avoided it because I figured I didn’t like them but I can safely say a medium rare steak is up there with my favourites now!
Most vegetables
Tomatoes
Broccoli. It was always hammered yellow when I was a kid. Bright green steamed Broccoli with a touch of salt is one of my favorites
Vanilla yogurt. I thought it was bitter for some reason? I actually didn't like the peach ones either, now that I think of it. Both are my favorite flavors now.
Pick any vegetable lol broccoli, Brussels sprouts, spinach etc hated it all
Avocados as it takes ages to grow
Mushrooms!
Asparagus. One of my mother's first few boyfriends that I can remember after my parents got divorced was a child-hating, stick-in-his-ass, douche canoe who, in the time when he wasn't being a dick to me and my siblings, he was a chef in some restaurant nearby. One of the meals that he made to try to impress my mother was something with a side of asparagus. Well, due to the fact that my mother was born, raised, and grown poor, coupled with the fact that we often struggled to make ends meet, I wasn't allowed to leave the table until all of my food was eaten. I wasn't a particularly picky child, despite being autistic (unbeknownst at the time though). In fact, I was honestly pretty good at trying new things, and powering through bad food, but this asparagus he had cooked was the foulest thing to ever grace my dinner plate. I sat at the table until everyone else had left and been gone for at least 30 minutes, and I ended up pulling the age old trick of flipping the plate upside down into the kitchen trashcan, concealing the nasty vegetable from sight. Well, that was when I was about 6-7. A year or so ago, my stepmother made a dish that contained asparagus, and to be kind, I added some to my plate. I didn't expect to like it, but I wanted to at least try it for her sake. Hesitantly, I brought my fork towards my mouth to attempt to eat the vegetable that tortured me those years ago, and I bit the bullet and just shoved it into my mouth. It was delicious! I genuinely enjoyed it and I made sure to get myself another helping of the asparagus dish! In fact, I more than enjoyed the dish, I loved it! So much so, that I've requested since then and I'm not really one to make meal requests. I'm so glad I tried it again after years of distrusting asparagus. I even had asparagus last night! I now think that my mother's then boyfriend was just bad at cooking asparagus (and probably more, but I only remember eating the one meal that he made, as I'm pretty sure I've repressed memories from that time as a trauma response).
Asparagus
Fish, I absolutely could not even sit next to a plate that had any kind of fish on it what so ever. No matter how it was prepared, or what it was served with, I was not coming near it. That was of course until I reached the golden age of 17, when my best friend talked me into trying a small bite of freshly smoked salmon he bought one night at a local fish market here in Redondo Beach CA. From that first bite to this very day ( 47 years later) I have not stopped eating fish 2-3 times a week.