A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Last week, Roger blogged about peanut butter:

Here’s something I may not have mentioned; I don’t particularly like peanut butter. Actually, that’s not true – I HATE peanut butter. Odd thing is that I loved it as a kid, specifically Jif. I remember eating it when I was three or four. I think I must have had too much at some point, because now the smell makes me nauseous, and the taste is intolerable. I’m not allergic; I can eat peanuts, though I don’t love them.

Peanut butter is one of those foods that I just can’t fathom disliking, but that’s not my question. I’m interested in Roger’s hypothesis that he ate enough as a kid to permanently dissuade him from eating it again. Now, I can’t think of any foods that large quantities consumed in childhood ruined for me, but The Wife is the same way with bologna; she won’t go near it now. So, do you have any foods that you OD’d on as a kid, and now the thought of eating them makes you ill (figuratively or literally)?

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9 Responses to A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

  1. M. D. Jackson says:

    When I was a kid I entered a pie eating contest. My mother supplied my pie and she thought that a lemon meringue pie would be perfectly acceptable.

    The contest was one of the most truly horrifying and sickening few moments of my young life. I couldn't help looking at the other kids and seeing their faces smeared with pie as they ate like wild animals. I managed to eat the meringue but when I got to the lemon I couldn't do it anymore. I either had to walk away or cause a real spectacle.

    It has taken over thirty years but it is only recently that I have actually been able to eat and keep down a piece of lemon meringue pie. It was a purely psychological aversion. Any other combination of the ingredients was okay with me but that particular arrangement always brought me back to those awful few moments from my youth.

  2. Call me Paul says:

    Vodka.

  3. SK Waller says:

    Sweets in general. I really don't like candy. Ice cream, on the other hand, is a different matter.

  4. Lynn says:

    Nope. I can't think of anything I liked as a kid that I don't like now.

    I was more picky as a kid than I am now (though there are still things I don't like) so I kind of think of it as normal that when you grow up you lose your little kid pickiness so I have a hard time dealing with adults who are still picky. There's a part of me that wants to say, "Grow up, already," but do know that is unfair. I read an article some years ago that said some people literally have overactive taste buds of one type or another, say for example the taste buds for bitterness, so that some foods just taste horrible to them.

  5. Jason says:

    Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Not mac-n-cheese in general — I've had some homemade varieties that were just delicious — but the stuff that comes in the blue-box. Why? Well, my dad was laid off for a couple of years back in the early '80s, my middle-school years, and we ate tons of that stuff because it was cheap. I don't have any physical aversion to it now, i.e., it doesn't make me sick or anything… but I really have zero desire to ever eat it again.

  6. Kal says:

    I have three things. When I was six my cousin and I ate a whole carrot cake with icing and a 2L bottle of cherry creme soda…then my Dad offered me a smoke. I puked up that combination of flavors for two days and never smoked again. If I smell carrott cake I can just go. Same for coffee which I drank ONE bottomless cup of one very very very cold Canadian winter night. Long coffee puke…no more coffee ever. I also have to open all dairy products myself. Crunchy milk, was the blame that time.

  7. Kelly Sedinger says:

    M.D.: You know, that's funny. I find pie-eating contests pretty nauseating to watch, and you couldn't pay me to actually participate in one. And that's saying something, coming from someone not adverse to a face covered with pie!

  8. Anonymous says:

    This blog looks quite lovely. Lucky me for clicking that bookmark finally (not sure when, how or actually why I bookmarked it, but oh well). Before I will go do dig up some five year old posts, a quick Kazantzakis quote that came into my mind:

    "Once when I was a kid-this'll show you-I was mad on cherries. I had no money, so I couldn't buy many at a time, and when I'd eaten all I could buy I still wanted more. Day and night I thought of nothing but cherries. I foamed at the mouth; it was torture! But one day I got mad, or ashamed, I don't know which. Anyway, I just felt cherries were doing what they liked with me and it was ludicrous. So what did I do? I got up one night, searched my father's pockets and found a silver mejidie and pinched it. I was up early the next morning, went to a market gardener and bought a basket o' cherries. I settled down in a ditch and began eating. I stuffed and stuffed till I was all swollen out. My stomach began to ache and I was sick. Yes, boss, I was thoroughly sick, and from that day to this I've never wanted a cherry. I couldn't bear the sight of them. I was saved. I could say to any cherry: I don't need you any more. And I did the same thing later with wine and tobacco. I still drink and smoke, but at any second, if I want to, whoop! I can cut it out. I'm not ruled by passion."

    An interesting take on stoicism, eh? 😉

  9. Jeremy Bates says:

    I have two: spinach and margarine. As a kid, I'd eat more spinach than Popeye but kick less ass. The sight of it makes me think of boiled grass clippings.

    Then there is margarine. To hear my mother relate the story, she has about a dozen sticks of it thawing on a stack of books to be used in holiday treat making. Well, here I came and, liking it, munched 3 complete sticks. Since then, I do not and will not use margarine. I do use REAL butter only on rare occasions.

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