Have you ever lost your taste for something, either by growing out of it, an illness, or some other change in your life?
I used to loathe most vegetables, but now I love carrots so much I actually crave them if it’s been a while. Glazed carrots, raw carrots, steamed carrots all mashed up, OM NOM NOM.
A.
McDonald’s food.
I used to eat it weekly. When we’d go on road trips, we’d stop there for car food, regardless of what other options were available.
Then, one Christmas break, The Missus and I were coming back from visiting her sister and we hit a McDonald’s drive thru. We both ate the same thing and the next morning we were so violently ill that it took us a week to recover. To quote my father, who watched The Midget for us while we were completely incapacitated, “You guys weren’t green. You were gray.”
It’s been years since I set foot into one of these places. I can’t even stand the smell of their food. If a kid is eating McD’s in the newsroom, I have to leave.
I can’t even order a Diet Coke through the drive thru without getting nauseated.
There have been a few as I have attained a certain (ahem) age. But the first food I remember giving me trouble was Fritos brand corn chips. I loved them growing up, and I suppose I’d still love them today, but somewhere in my early 30s, they no longer agreed with me. It’s been 20 years or more.
I learned to like bitter greens when I was doing my fieldwork in Nepal. I understand that a lot of women develop a taste for bitter things–not just romance–as they age. I think I read an article about how your sensitivity to bitterness decreases or your ability to like it increases or something. At any rate I came back from Nepal and adored brussel sprouts and now kale, cauliflower, etc…
Things that no longer agree with me that I would stlll eat if I could? Orange Juice, Cabbage (well, I still eat it).
There’s very little I won’t eat. I more grew into foods than out of them, stuff I didn’t care for as a child I now relish.
The one exception is pesto, as I found out a few years ago (in a very unpleasent manner) that I had developed an allergy to pine nuts.
I’ve never been huge on sweets, but the older I get the more cloying sweet tastes can be. Even no-calorie flavored seltzers (what I drink instead of soda) now taste unpleasantly heavy. I pour a glass of club soda and add a splash of flavored seltzer if I want some taste beyond a lemon or lime wedge.
It’s the opposite with cruciferous vegetables — something in the taste buds makes them taste better as you get older. I now adore brussels sprouts if they’re prepared well.
Like Doc, I’ve pretty much abandoned franchise fast food, or at least the burger joints. I’ll still occasionally eat fast food chicken from a local franchise called Raising Cain’s or even less often Popeye’s, but can’t remember the last time I was at a McD’s or Burger King…and I think the only trip to Jack-In-The-Box was as a child in the 1960s. The clown in the drive thru lane scared the crap out of me.
Lost the taste for McD’s after Katrina. They didn’t reopen in NOLA for maybe 6 months (don’t remember)…and we were so excited…until we tasted it! Ugh! How could I have ever liked this when it tastes so bad?
Post K, I did however develop a fondness for canned chili(hormel) which I had never had before Katrina. Since we didn’t have a refrigerator until the day after Thanksgiving we had lots of canned foods (and just a few necessities in a little dorm fridge). I still like it!
i do miss the old HOT deep fried cherry pies from mcdonalds. but i never really LIKED mcdonald’s. i used to like black olives. til i ate way too many + made me barf. well, i blame the black olives.
i no longer drink coke. it is NOT THE SAME. RARELY drink fizzy.
I lost my taste for prawns. They were always a favorite. I was amazed the first time it happened a couple years ago. I didn’t believe myself and fixed them again. Can;t like them any more. I still don’t understand it.
After living with my vegan spouse for four decades, I’ve lost all desire for muscle meats or dairy products. But the whiff of corned beef does make my mouth water for some reason, though I haven’t given into the urge to order a sandwich and snarfing it down. Yet.
PB&J sandwich every day for lunch through six years of elementary school. Then six years of liver sausage and dill pickle sandwiches with Fritoes until graduation. It took about 10 years for me to be able to eat either one. Like both of ’em now, though. Maybe it’s the pepperjack I put on my liver sausage these days; dunno.
Cotton candy. Loved it as a kid. Can’t stand it today.
Scotch. When first encountered, seemed very nasty. Couldn’t see why people drank it. Now seems ambrosial.
My mother likes to remind me that when I was a kid, I used to love carrots in salad but hate cucumbers, then it became the other way around.
I’m still not a fan of just eating carrot sticks like I apparently used to, but I’ll slice them up into salads and use them in recipes.