I made a conscious decision in my mid-20s to stop being so picky.
Best decision I’ve ever made. No regrets, at all. There is so much to discover in the world. Why would you limit yourself?
I really feel like some people cling to listing the foods they don’t like as some unique part of their personality. Like they picked it at their character selection screen and they’re sticking with it.
Yeah, I used to have the mindset that either I loved or hated foods and would only want the ones I loved. But eventually, I realized that there’s a middle category of foods that I don’t go crazy for but aren’t bad, plus two reasons to revisit the ones that I still didn’t like: good cooking can make almost any food delicious, and tastes change as you age (and/or nutrition needs vary).
I have trouble respecting picky eaters after that. As long as your body isn’t trying to reject the food entirely (and I do understand that some people’s bodies will reject things that mine is fine with), it’s just sensations that you can get past. It’s a mental block that if you can get past it, you’ll eventually look back and wonder what was so hard about it.
Though my mindset plays a role. I like novelty more than familiarity (though ironically I don’t think we test our new things enough to really determine their safety… I like the new stuff but also side-eye it).
I’m knocking on the door of 60. There’s three things I don’t like and one I wouldn’t try.
I don’t like broad beans (aka fava beans), Brussels sprouts, or peas. One of the best things about being an adult is being able to say ‘No, thanks’. I try them again every few years, just to check. With peas and sprouts I still hate the taste horribly. Broad beans can taste alright but have to be properly prepared and cooked and it’s just easier to say no because when they’re not right they’re the thing I dislike the most.
The one thing I wouldn’t try would be balut. The idea just makes my skin crawl for some reason.
I had balut in the Philippines when I visited around 2008.
Not my favorite thing to eat, but I could see how some people like it.
If you ever get to the Philippines give it a try! Ask for the “young” balut so it’s more like an egg and less like a baby duck.
And yeah, almost all beans have to be prepared right to be good. If it’s just mush then it’s overcooked.
If you ever get to the Philippines give it a try! Ask for the “young” balut so it’s more like an egg and less like a baby duck.
No thanks!
Onions are gross. Shallots however, are divine
There is no life without The Trinity! (onion, garlic, peppers)
But there are people that just can’t eat some foods without digestive repercussions. And food tolerances can even change as we age. I used to love eating peanuts and other tree nuts. But as I have aged, my digestive tract can no longer tolerate eating them except in small amounts. But I now pile on the herbs and spices when I cook. I want strong bold flavors in my food as I have aged.
Life, it seems is weird and changing.
Uncooked onions can be pretty overpowering to me, burying the taste of everything else. Grilled onions, on the other hand, overpower everyone near me after they’ve been digested and farted out.
Look, onions are like anal sex. If you were forced or tricked into having it as a kid, chances are you don’t want it when you become an adult.
Hope that isn’t coming from personal experience, brother/sister/anything you prefer.
I used to hear that in high school when we were seeing who could be the most offensive. I still slip up sometimes and use it as a dark joke, and it’s always received as well as it has been here.
Some of us laughed.
I was trying to extend the joke but then looked at everyone’s responses and decided it wouldn’t go over well
Some of us screen shotted it and shared it too!
Hu-man
Is there, uh… something you wanted to share with the group?
Yup. That’s me. I don’t mind the flavor, but the sliminess is not for me
Are we talking about onions or anal?
Do they still feel slimy if they’re finely diced? I love the taste but hate the texture of mushrooms, and mincing them to incorporate into a dish is the best of both worlds for me.
Mushedrooms?
For me even that isn’t enough. I love the taste in something like hot and sour soup, but anything more than soup is just a horrible experience
That’s it for me, goodnight internet.
Congratulations, I think you might have a truly original experience. Never seen a kid that doesn’t like onions in any way, so they don’t need to be forced to eat them. And why would you force that in the first place? They aren’t the kind of vegetable that you need to eat, they’re there for flavor. I’m certain there’s some deeper issue here, you might want to figure that out.
You must not know a lot of kids or have a lot of world experience. Onion is a top picky eater food. Why do parents force kids to eat them? Perception of table etiquette.
Pretty easy thing to explain, if you are over the age of 15.
Someone has never taken a big ole bite out of a vidalia onion! Like eating a spicy apple.
Get the peppers out of here. Cooked bell peppers are a crime.
I have to agree. Mostly because there are SO many good peppers, but 90% of the time you see a pepper its that trash. Theyre not gross, but they just bring down the dishes theyre in, when other peppers could uplift the dish.
You’ve never eaten Hungarian goulash.
Bitch I’m Magyar.
Well don’t tell your grandma about your taste then lol.
I’m joshing, but honestly, I love Hungarian beef goulash with bell peppers!
I assume this was produced by a 23-year-old who thinks adulthood means something. They’ll learn.
I mean it’s usually kids who are really picky eaters and many grow out of it. If they grow out of it that probably has happened by the time they’re 23
Define “picky eater”.
I’ve had people who seem to think disliking any food makes you a picky eater. This seems to be the category the original creator is in. Those people are often the same category of people I never want to see eating because they look like pigs at the trough, shoving food into their mouth at an alarming rate while almost forgetting to breathe, more like animals than humans. But that’s not universal, just common.
In reality I don’t know many people who universally enjoy every food as an adult. So is everyone picky?
Ok, so it’s undefined
I normally associate the childhood one with what the page calls neophobia.
The issue is that there’s a lot of differing definitions
Right…so it’s not defined. I don’t know the practical difference between “there is no definition for this” and “there are so many different meanings that the term alone without clarification has no meaning”.
You said it was undefined and that’s right. There’s just no one singular definition that is generally agreed upon. But same sort of characteristics are in them, being more selective than normal in eating
Right. We’re all just old kids.
Old babies
Geriatric infants
Mummified zygotes.
Onions and peppers? At that point you’re basically ordering ‘food, but with the flavor DLC removed.
Hey you can defend onions and peppers without slandering corn.
I could but I don’t want to
And that is why you must perish.
I’m with you OP. It’s an IBS nightmare. I’ll have it popped but that’s just because it’s so convenient of a snack and not too bad health wise.
God, sometimes I might as well say frag out! when eating corn. Blows me tf up
oh gods. i remember when i still had a digestive tract, before it was removed but after it went all manky, eating popcorn was just asking for the jackson pollock shits. that shit scraped EVERYTHING out
That’s me, ileostomy and any fresh vegetables. Tiny piece of salad? Fuck you, how about your guts spit out the piece and flush themselves empty in half an hour. Several bagfulls of yellow liquid. I don’t eat fresh vegetables anymore
my husband hates onions. not the flavor, but the texture.
This also made me find out I have autism🥲
I avoided onions and peppers when I was younger because I was a picky ass eater.
Now I avoid onions because I realized I can’t properly digest them and the make my tummy sad.
I was a picky ass eater.
That’s something we should all be picky about.
Don’t kink shame, its only smellz
They’re talking about having standards
Schmalz
A little corn kernel around the rim never hurt nobody
A corn kernel around the onion ring
My partner’s in the same boat.
What’s wicked sad is he loves garlic but it doesn’t love him. He can have garlic oil but that’s about it (something to do with FODMAPs).
Might want to also try powers, cooking the shit out of the alliums, or cooking with the bulbs then removing the bulbs before serving. Get the flavor without the high FODMAP fructans.
I’m also trying to see what I can do to build back the gut bacteria which would normally process that stuff correctly. Probiotics + slowly reintroducing the alliums over a long period of time.
:(
Caramelized onions are soooo tasty!
Don’t get me wrong, I love onions as an adult. That said, I had a procedure a few years that fucked my ability to digest allium.
I’m trying to eat fist fulls of probiotics to see if I can get back in the game.
If it’s the oligosaccharides or fructans that are fucking you up, you can heat (not fry) onions in however much oil you’re okay with in your final dish, and then just remove the onions. The flavor compounds are oil soluble, but the oligosaccharides/fructans aren’t. Smaller pieces = more intense onion flavor.
Yeah, I’ve been experimenting with that as a solution. I can also mildly tolerate them if they’re cooked high hell or used as a powder. The more raw it is, the harder it is to digest.
If I can dial the fructans down, I do a lot better.
Fingers crossed for you finding a solution that lets you get all the onion you want! Intestinal issues are so miserable
This was such a delightful comment chain! Equal parts pleasant and informative.
Indeed! TIL! I am going to do the fine chop on the onions for cooking and see how much more flavor I can get out of them.
You can keep heating them slowly and caramelizing them until they turn in a jam … that’s how good onions are.
Or you could dehydrate them and use the crusty bits like bacon bits on all sorts of food.
I always find it strange to hear people say they don’t like onions … I keep a large stock of onions in my kitchen all the time because they go into just about every recipe and you can cook, fry, bake or use them raw in all sorts of things.
I don’t mind the flavor but I hate that I’m an onion/garlic sweater. For days after eating garlic or most onions, I stink so badly no perfume or deodorant or antiperspirant can control it. As a girl growing up, it was a real problem, and once I was old enough to do my own cooking I started leaving them out, or using sweet onions when they were too important to exclude.
I’m also capsaicin-sensitive, like major ass-bleeding bad, so I minimize spicy peppers and use bell peppers plus black pepper/wasabi/horseradish/ginger for spice. If it’s not my cooking I get “Mild” and do the best I can with it.
Interesting then that wasabi or horseradish doesn’t affect you in similar ways.
Yes, different chemicals
This is my story except with cheese.
Why did I have to start enjoying the taste of cheese?
Every time I eat onions, it takes about 5 minutes until it feels like someone is repeatedly stabbing me in the guts with a rusty knife. So yeah I avoid them
I know someone who was allergic to onion and garlic. Their food choices made me sad, but yeah, go get checked for food allergies if you can. That not being weird enough, lymphatic cancer cured them of the allergy.
Might be an allergy. I used to have something like this with some foods some years ago. What’s interesting is that now I don’t seem to have it any more with the same foods; it might be true what they say about allergies - that they come and go. Not a medical professional - just speaking from my experience.
Nobody says the come and go. They can come on later in life but once there you are basically stuck with it. Reason being is that allergies are an immune reaction. These are mediated by immune cells, antibodies, that bind to the $insert_bad_thing and put a “murder me” sign on its back. These cell are produced by long lived immune cells.
Same for me with corn!
Wait, why not all three?
You can reasonably use all three in an omellette or rice based dish or soups or many other possible kinds of meals.
… And … there are many kinds of onions, peppers and corn, and many ways of preparing them for inclusion in some kind of food.
You can also mix diced onions with corn kernels, and spray some lemon an black pepper on top and it would be good to eat.
Although I find raw onion to be too strong to eat in such proportions, a few fistfuls should be fine.Yeah, that’s a great example!
You can make a bit of a salad outta that with some kind of leafy green, as a main portion of all that, maybe some croutons or broken up tortilla chips, i dunno.
Like hell, uh… proper sauerkraut. Korean pickled onions, radishes, cabbage.
People will just eat that shit as a whole meal, I’ve seen it, even dated someone who did at one point.
And its usually at least as, if not more pungent than raw onions, unless you just chopped those onions.
Personally, that’s a bit wild for my tastes, but… I’m not German or Korean.
A lot of people who are super tasters find alliums like onions and garlic incredibly overpowering unless they are in really small amounts.
I was thinking to myself that it can’t be that many people, but sure enough I was wrong and was surprised to learn the following from the Wikipedia article about super-tasters:
“Research suggests 25% of the population are non-tasters, 50% are medium tasters, and 25% are supertasters.”
Quite interesting and concise page, recommended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster
That article is wild to me. I consider myself a super taster and smeller. The list of foods super taster’s avoid is basically a list of my favorite flavors. Maybe I’m just a slightly above average taster?
Most of the list is true for me. All seltzers are disgusting due to the presence of Bitter 2 which makes them undrinkably gross. Diet soda works extremely well and tastes great. Beer, wine, coffee, and unsweetened tea are pretty awful. Savory deliciousness is magnified and a fantastic steak (medium rare to medium) will knock the soul out of my body. Cheese and spicy food is life and I eat spicier stuff than anyone I know. Onion powder and garlic salt are vastly preferable to the actual full vegetable. Dark chocolate is repulsive. Pineapple is godlike, melons are foul. Cucumber smells so bad I will flee a room to avoid it but a pickle spear is decent. Just a window into how my tastes work.
who are these people? can we get them isolated from our community?
YES PLEASE
