Strong Food Aversions

[Dale]

I have started a new food program which requires eating fresh meals prepared by local chefs. (I want to lose 75 lbs). It's amazingly tasty food but I've had one problem. No one has ever accused me of being a picky eater, but I have an incredibly strong aversion to raw onions. It's not a mere preference of dislike. I react to onions much as I expect I would if trying to eat a salad drenched in ammonia. There are some foods I don't particularly like, but I have no trouble imagining that others would like them. But, in the case of raw onions, it is absolutely inconceivable to me that anyone could choke these things down, much less enjoy them.

This matter is of interest to me. Do you have any EXTREMELY strong food aversions?

[rebl_rn]

Green (bell) peppers. Cooked, raw, it doesn't matter. They are disgusting. Even the smell makes me gag. You can't just pick them out of whatever you are eating, either, because they flavor everything around them.

I don't like other bell peppers either, but I don't have the aversion to them I do to the green ones.

I don't like raw onions either, though I don't dislike them as much as you, Dale. But I do like cooked/fried ones. When ordering out, I will ask for no onions on the burger/sandwich/whatever, but then sometimes I get onion rings on the side. The servers think I'm weird.

[mutepointe]

Getting back to these raw onions, how are they sliced, diced, minced, or whatever? I find a thick slice of onion a bit much but a sliver slice of an onion a welcome addition to lots of things. Even a stack of sliver slices that equal the thick slice is better to deal with. Diced and minced onions can go almost unnoticed.

Miracle Whip, Rye Bread, and Brie & Bleu Cheese come to mind as foods I avoid.

[izzarina]

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is calamari. I don't usually have a gag reflex thing for any kind of food. I typically can eat it, even if I really don't like it...I just have to go more slowly. I do like calamari, but I can't really eat it because to ME they look like deep fried spiders (BIG spiders...with the HUGE bodies...those REALLY icky ones)...at least the body portion. So, I think it's more the thought of what they look like rather than the taste, because whenever I eat one of them I start to gag in a big way. It's really weird.

[harpmaker]

My daughter once claimed that I have a "wild dog" attitude toward food. That is, if it's not moving, I'll try it.....and if it is moving, I'll kill it, then eat it. She may be right...... except for hot dogs.

I don't care what you put on them, smother them in, bury them in, I can't stand them. Even the smell of them cooking brings up the gag reflex.

FWIW, this same daughter used to eat raw onions like other would an apple.....she started it as a toddler. When we were in a grocery store while the other kids would be reaching for candy bars, she'd be digging in the cart for the bag of onions. I actually had parents accuse me of abuse

[CHasR]

Mrs. CHasR shares your onion aversion. What Ive had to do is mince onions into teenytiny bits and saute them, so its like a kind of onion paste, almost; before inserting it into a recipie. She has no complaint at this.

My aversion is, having an ulcer, that I was once wholeheartedly (and responsibly) an omnivore, and now can't eat many of the foods I once enjoyed without, well..let's say, repercussions. (Anything heavy in vitamin C, for ex., is agony.) It's a pretty long list.
Yes, the days of mush are fast approaching for CHasR...

[Nanohedron]

Green bell peppers (I'll eat 'em, but I don't have to like 'em). Blech.

Raw oysters (but I like sashimi, and sushi that has raw fish. Go figure). Major gag reflex.

Cilantro (except in a certain couple of Thai preparations only or so). An abomination.

Undercooked or raw string beans. Horrid. The worst. Poison.

Menudo. 'Nuff said.

[peeplj]

I've come to like most vegetables; however....

I have a strong distaste of beans. I can't abide the smell of them. I have tried them and found the taste absolutely nasty. The one exception is, on Thanksgiving, I eat the green beans almandine that my mother in law cooks. So far that's the only kind of bean dish I care for.

Also, I can't abide cooked greens. I like salads--if you want to feed me spinach, just put it in the salad, thank you very much. Cooked--and this is all greens, not just spinach--it looks and smells like something that came out of the south end of a north-facing horse. I simply can't imagine putting that in my mouth.

With regards to meats, my automatic gag reflex comes into play for organ meats. I can't imagine eating them, don't want to smell them cooking, and can't even stand to look at them for long.

However, I quite like raw onions. Very nice in salads, and I also like to eat them with fried fish or fried pork chops. Yum. Sorry Dale.


--James

[Dale]

Even a stack of sliver slices that equal the thick slice is better to deal with. Diced and minced onions can go almost unnoticed.

Not by me!

[Dale]

Miracle Whip, Rye Bread, and Brie & Bleu Cheese come to mind as foods I avoid.

But, I'm looking not for foods people merely avoid, but for foods people react to with particular, almost biological aversion.

[mutepointe]

I guess these foods do not qualify to the truly culinary sophisticated to be "aversions." I guess I just really dislike them. Would it help to know that if I accidently eat them, I drop them off my tongue, even at a swanky partay?

[Nanohedron]

I guess these foods do not qualify to the truly culinary sophisticated to be "aversions." I guess I just really dislike them. Would it help to know that if I accidently eat them, I drop them off my tongue, even at a swanky partay?

I would call that "aversions". We'll have to ask Dale.

[Nanohedron]

Gristle. If you want to torture me, force me to chew and swallow gristle. 'Cause that's the only way you're gonna get me to eat it: at gunpoint. And even then I'd consider the bullet to maybe be the better option. *shudder*

[mutepointe]

Yes, what is the scientific food aversion scale? Where does "scream like a schoolgirl" fall on the scale?

[missy]

Bananas. Even the smell disgusts me. My kids owe me the rest of their lives for mashing up those bananas for them when they were babies.

Coconut is a close second. I refuse to eat a chocolate out of a box cuz I can never tell if it's coconut.