 David Solot is a Ph.D. student in organizational psychology at Walden University, with a Masters in clinical psychology. His background includes the study of animal sensation and perception, and conditioned responses to sweetness in foods. This is part two in a series on "The psychology of food aversions." From peanut butter cookies to macaroni and cheese, there sure are a lot of food aversions out there. Hundreds of people took the time to tell us their own stories. Lisa told us about how when she was pregnant she walked past a store selling candied pecans. The pecans got associated with her morning sickness, and now she avoids any food with cinnamon and sugar on it. Ann overdid it on Heath Bar cookies, and today she can’t even look at a Heath Bar wrapper. This leads us to our first question about food aversions: Why does the sight and smell of these foods make us sick? Remember where these aversions came from. The whole point of a food aversion was to make a primitive creature avoid eating something poisonous. Now your brain doesn’t give you a lot of credit here: It knows that the closer you get to something, the more likely you are to put it in your mouth. Therefore, the aversion has to start while you’re still at a safe distance. To start with, your brain makes you feel queasy when you see the food across the room. Then as you get closer and smell the food, your brain makes you feel worse. If you walk right up to the food and put it in your mouth, the taste of the food triggers the strongest reaction of all. If you’re feeling brave, go get a food you don’t like and try each of those steps. The closer you get to the food, the worse your reaction will be. What’s really neat is when you realize that there’s a step before “seeing the food” that gets attached to feeling sick. As intelligent creatures, we have the ability to imagine things. Imagining the food is a step that happens even farther away than seeing it. To make sure you really, really get the message, your brain will make you just a little bit sick when you imagine the food, even though it’s nowhere in sight. Go ahead, think about your most hated food. Unpleasant, isn’t it? It’s all part of your brain’s plan to teach you to keep on walking and go forage somewhere else. And that leads to our second question: Can’t we use this power for good? One of the most interesting questions came from readers like Ali and Lx Bizarre, who asked if food aversions can be used to make us eat healthier or to lose weight. After all, if a food aversion can make us stop liking our favorite foods, can’t we use this to our advantage? They suggested we eat our favorite unhealthy foods when we’re sick so that we stop liking them in the future. Reader Drat took this one step further and thought that people could take a pill that induces nausea right after eating a favorite food. No more cravings for chocolate ice cream or French fries, right? Well, maybe. Psychologists have known about the mechanism behind food aversions for a long time, and it stands to reason that if it was actually that simple, there’d be a diet book called “Easy and Queasy” on the best sellers list. We’d all be nauseated but we’d be thin. The problem is, as human beings, we just think too much for this to work. Let’s say you’re reader Paige, and you want to condition yourself to stop liking pizza. If you were an animal, we could describe the process with behavioral psychology. In behavioral psychology, if a behavior is followed by a reward, you’ll do more of that behavior in the future. If you follow a behavior with a punishment, you’ll do less of that behavior in the future. So, if an animal eats pizza and then feels sick, that animal will be less likely to eat a pizza in the future. But when we’re talking about people, it’s a slightly different story. In her comment, Paige suggested that she would wait until she had a really bad cold, and then eat a lot of pizza. Right off the bat, we’ve got things backward. For a food aversion to form, we need to eat the food first, and then get sick afterward - not the other way around. Conditioning doesn’t work as well in reverse, because the brain likes normal cause and effect relationships. Since we can’t usually predict when we’re going to be sick, getting the timing right is difficult. Secondly, Paige is actively thinking about trying to form a food aversion. As it turns out, thinking about doing it is a really good way to stop it from happening. In fact, it’s how I suggested undoing one in the last article. Because we’re intelligent creatures, our thoughts alter our reactions. So while her animal brain is trying to connect "eating pizza" to "feeling sick," her human thoughts are jumping in the way and messing things up. It would be like a magician showing you how a card trick is done while he’s still doing it. Sure, the trick looks impressive, but the magic is gone. Now don’t get me wrong - if you did it over and over again you would start to dislike pizza. And the sicker you are, the stronger the dislike would be. But the formation of an intentional food aversion is an iffy thing, and would likely be fairly weak. And by the time you got done conditioning yourself, you would have eaten a lot of pizza. It’s probably better just to have a salad instead. And what about Drat’s idea of taking a pill that induces nausea after you eat your favorite foods? Sorry, that’s not likely to work either. Because we’re intelligent creatures, we know that the pill is what’s making us sick, not the food. All you’re likely to do is make yourself really, really hate those pills. Drat, indeed. |
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Just thought of another one: French Toast. Ugh. Love toast and eggs separately, but not combined with syrup poured on top. I ate it once at a friends house when I was eleven, went home and was very, very sick afterwards. Now, just the sight, smell, or thought of it makes me feel queasy.
Wow. Just thinking about it now is making me sick. I think I need soda crackers and pop to settle my stomach...
Olives. What disgusting, vile fruit. But I like olive oil.
Cottage cheese. So so gross. This one will make me throw up.
Oh, and I find all cheesecake repulsive.
When I was 17, I spent a Sunday drinking coffee and working on a huge backlog of school projects. I got it all done, but that night, I woke up suddenly with a bad case of the flu and threw up. Since then, I can't stand the taste of coffee.
My mom used to give me Sprite all the time when I was sick as a kid, so that's off the list too.
This isn't really an aversion yet I guess (since I haven't had it since), but my daughter had a White Castle and anyone familiar with it knows they use A LOT of onions on their sandwiches. Well, that night she got sick and the undigested onions came out. So I threw her sheets in the wash and when the wash was done, the onions came out clean and were all over the bottom of the washer. That was really gross!
When I was a teenager being tested for allergies, my doctor said some times when you have an aversion to food or it tastes bad to you, you may be allergic to that food. The aversion is a way of keeping you safe.
Okay, here's a question that I have: there are many, many foods I have an adversion to but have never tasted or had a bad experience with them. Sometimes it is the smell or the sight that makes me want to hurl. For instance, I have never had bologna but to smell it makes me sick. I'll fix mac and cheese for my husband but the look of it and the squishy sound it makes - I feel sick. Same with certain pasta dishes. Can't stand to look at them. I can't stand the smell of Ranch Salad dressing. Never tired it, never will. To me, it smells like a soured dishrag.
This was a battle all during my childhood. My mom swears the only problem I caused her was my eating habits. She even took me to the doctor (1970's) and they told her not to worry that all kids are picky and just give me peanut butter for protein.
This went BEYOND picky eater. I am now over 40 and have included a few more foods into my diet but very few compared to most people (e.g. no hamburgers, steak, mixed cooked vegetables). I eat lots of salads, cereal (no milk on it, must be in a seperate glass), breads, fresh veggies, etc. I have a healthy little girl with no vitamin deficiences from my pregnancy. Her Dr. said if he had all kids like her for patients, he'd be out of business. (I was always told as a teen by family members that due to my weird eating, pregnancy would be out).
Anyone else have this kind of disorder. Most people in my adult life have no clue. I cover it up at restaurants by ordering salad, baked potato and if they ask if I am going to get a steak, etc. I just give the excuse as, "I'm a vegetertian" or "I'm not too hungry right now."
When I was a kid I ate an entire can of hersey's chocolate syrup that you put in ice cream and it made me sick. to this day, if I eat more than one reese cup, I got sick to my stomach..
I'm breastfeeding and averse to milk. I won't even let my husband buy cow's milk. He has to use almond milk in recipes.
I ALWAYS get a confused look when I say this but....
Cheese. Just about every kind (american, gouda, ,mozarella, provolone...etc) Can't stand to eat the stuff. It was at the point where even looking at it made me want to vomit. I think it's gotten better over time; I even enjoy the smeill of freshly baked pizza, but as soon as I so much as take a bite, my gag reflex goes into overdrive.
I can't remember it but my folks told me I got really sick after eating pizza one time as a kid. Since then I've had this cheese aversion.
Strangely enough, there is a type of Mexican cheese (queso fresco) that I absolutely love and eat whenever it's available. I can also eat cheese doritos and cheetos puffs with no issues.
Weird, isn't it?
I am so unimpressed by this grad student's rehashed ideas. Addressing the question of inducing food aversions on purpose and not bringing up bulimia? Not bringing up aversion therapy (was common at one time for getting people to quit smoking)? Pah. Even the central idea that getting sick from a food triggers some primeval self-protection mechanism is downright silly.
It's all just operant conditioning. Just as a dog doesn't know why he avoids the sofa that once held a scat mat (a cruel shock device for lazy pet owners), we avoid anything that looks, smells or tastes like the thing that made us sick. Or the thing that a parent beat us for eating. Or the thing we were eating when we found out a loved one died. I cannot stand the smell of red wine (and eschew all alcohol) because it once gave me one of the worst migraines (with violent vomiting) I've ever had. Previous to that I loved wine, even though I would occasionally get a headache for it. From that one exceptionally bad experience, however, I now associate all wine with pain. I might as well have been wearing a shock collar (another cruel device for lazy and sadistic pet owners) that was activated when I drank that particular wine. My reaction to the smell of red wine is that extreme.
Guessing you have an aversion to lazy pet owners. What's with the chip on your shoulder?
Coconut, and sauerkraut. When I was a young child, I had constantly enlarged tonsils/tonsillitis and the coconut coating on the birthday cake my parents always got me at Howard Johnsons would get stuck on my tonsils and I felt the gag reflex because I had difficulty swallowing. Same with sauerkraut. Stringy and would get caught in the back of my throat. Even after removal of tonsils and adenoids in 5th grade circa 1970's (surgeon asked my parents how I could even breathe or swallow both were so big) I can't stand the smell of coconut or sauerkraut.
Seafood! The idea of eating it makes me sick. Even watching someone eating it makes my stomach turn. The smell is gross!!!
I never drink water. Fish fook in it.
Jello–any kind, any flavor–makes my stomach turn over and I'm sure it is directly linked to the fact that when I was sick as a child, my mother would give me jello. Just the thought of it makes me gag.
And cream and jelly sandwiches. I have only recently gotten over my aversion to cream cheese but if I see it together with jelly–oh yuck.
eat my sausage it is good for you!
I ate sauerkraut the night before getting sick when I was around 9 years old and cannot even stand to think about the smell or taste. Unfortunately, my husband's favorite sandwich is a Reuben with lots of sauerkraut!
They should study food aversions in Moms who have to clean up after their sick kids. My daughter threw up Chipotle Mexican the other night and I may never be able to eat there again!
Why do we have fruit scented cleaners?? When I was pregnant with my second child, I couldn't stand the smell of orange scented dishwashing detergent. That was nearly 10 years ago and I still can't stand the smell. It's grown to include ANY fruit scented cleaner.
Because people couldn't stand the smell or effects of the chemicals. There are other scents of cleaners besides fruit to choose from. Lavender dish soap for example.
Companies hire market researchers, and people like the academic-to-be above, to find out what smells people associate with cleanliness. That's why you'll find differerent scents in cleaners in different parts of the world. In the US, people think citrus smells clean and natural (no matter what toxic ingredients the product may hold). The smell of pine is associated with antiseptic properties, lavender with freshness, and so on. It's marketing.
I never have liked raw onions. I also hate green peppers unless they are so thoroughly cooked that they no longer had a taste in themselves, like in chili that's cooked for a long time. Oddly, I like cooked (sauteed) red, yellow, and orange bell peppers though O.o I'd swear that they taste different than the green ones...somehow. Weird. And brussel sprouts are right out! Blah! But I love spinach and greens and other veggies in general.
Even though I don't share your adversion, I agree that the peppers do taste different. There are dishes that I like red and yellow peppers in that I would not consider adding bell peppers to (those are the green peppers I assume you're referring to).
They're actually all bell peppers. Red, orange, yellow and green peppers are all the same thing, but at varying stages of ripeness :)
It's not just you, red and yellow peppers DO taste different than green.
Thanks you two : ) I thought they tasted different too, but I thought also that this was like psychological or something.
Agreed. The red & yellow ones are sweeter, as peppers go. The green ones are bitterer. *snicker*
Don't care for them as a rule. I'm not nauseated by them, but I will not eat them, Sam I am.
Peas. Enough said.
I've been waiting thru two threads to see you post that! HA!
Hah. Perhaps I should not post my mealtime weaknesses so prominently. There aren't any heroes present, are there?
Alas, it cannot be helped. Peas are far more evil than I, I'm afraid. They are insidious little spheres of terror.
"They are insidious little spheres of terror." LMAO! With that I leave for the day. Don't be good!
You know what the politician said? "If you can't be good, be careful." Good Night, Jerv!
Tongue. Our local cows need them far more than I................gross gross gross A total YUCK.
Overripe bananas!! The smell makes me want to puke, scream, yell, and rage. I can't stand the smell of them even in the garbage. We took long road trips when I was a kid, because my mom wouldn't fly, and that's what they'd pack – ripe bananas, skim milk, and other inedible substances. The stench of banana would fill the entire station wagon. Those trips were sheer hell, fighting from start to finish. No wonder I hate them, and I don't drink milk, either.
tapioca pudding–it is the texture that creeps me out–those mushy balls of tapioca, gross!
LIcorice. It really will make me vomit. Even things that taste remotely of licorice; star anis, anisette, Ouzo......I get queasy stomach just thinking about it.
It is really vile!
It's better than ipecac, though, if you really NEED to vomit. I hate the stuff.
The smell of boiling hot dogs makes me ill. Also, watermelon bubble gum and I love watermelon. Also, I am with all the others about Pepto Bismol. Never have been able to take it, makes me puke.
I can't do Pepto Bismal either. Some girl threw it up in 3rd grade and it has scarred me ever since. The weird thing is that the stuff I have puked, doesn't really bother me later.
I loathe watermelon gum too! (And love real watermelon.) My other aversions are cold cheese (try living in Wisconsin!) and mushrooms of ANY sort.
Grilled chicken. Since I was pregnant with my daughter 3 years ago. I just can't stand it.
As a child I got sick eating steamed crabs – I was well into my 40's before I could even think about eating any form of crab products.
I can't stand the taste of alcohol. I think I must be missing the gene that makes people like it. I can't understand how people can stand to drink enough of it to get drunk, but obviously they do so I must be the weird one, lol. Whatever.
Alcohol is gross to me too. I have never been drunk and don't drink. Yuck!
I can't eat anything I have vomited – which made eating that much harder after having morning sickness for several months.
I couldn't eat my own vomit either!
As a high school teenager, I got a part-time job at a fast food place where you could eat all you wanted for free within a half-hour of your shift ending. On one of my first nights on the job, I foolishly gorged down three or four "Gino Giants," our equivalent of the Big Mac, along with fries and milk shakes, went home and got sick to my stomach. I couldn't eat another one for a year, though I eventually did get over the aversion.
My 4 year old has never eaten green beans. If he notices a single bean on his plate the whole plate in contaminated and he will not eat until he gets a new plate and new food. Nothing else bothers him. My dad could never eat cottage cheese. His first job was at a dairy in the late 40's early 50's and one of his responsibilities was to fish the drowned rats out of the cottage cheese vat in the morning.
If this is true, I think I just gained an aversion to a food I used to love.
Seems to me that the idea of creating a food aversion is just another name for creating an eating disorder. At least, that's the basic idea for how it worked out for me. Now I have a strong aversion to fruits and veggies, which isn't exactly helping my health, mental or otherwise. I think even considering this question leads down a long hard road most of you don't want to follow me on.
I think your body knows what it needs. I'm not a big veggie fan, and there are some I just can't eat. Don't know why...but I've never eaten them...squash comes to mind. But, I'm healthy. Not suffering nutritionally. I dont take vitimins, so I'm not getting things that way, so there's not really any logical reason why I can't stomach some foods. Occasionally, I'll crave a specific veggie like carrots, but for the most part...they aren't part of my diet.
Any type of gum! The chomping and the lip smacking spit filled disgusting-ness just makes me sick!
Green Beans (yellow beans, string beans...) . Not many of us out there but occasionally I'll find another person who can't stand them. In my case it was the one vegetable that my father would force me to eat when I was at an age when I only wanted to eat meat, peas and corn.
Wow...guess Im one of the lucky few who doesnt have bad food aversions. I can only think of 3 foods I dont like-lima beans, peas and cottage cheese; and even then I dont gag on sight and will still eat them if theyre apart of something. (lima beans in a soup or peas in a pot pie dont bother me)
One time I ate too much raw kohlrabi at my grandparents and felt terrible all day- Now I can't even stand thinking about them- luckily they are not very common. Jicama too- I think the texture is similar. Other than those two things I love absolutely every type of food!
I have one that I haven't read about yet. I HATE RAW TOMATOES!!!! Hate the smell.... Hate the taste! If it's cooked into sauce or ketchup I love it, but RAW... YUCK! I hate the smell so much that when I grow a garden I even hate the smell of the plant. WHen you have to pinch the flowers to get better tomatoes.... I can't do it!! I can't get the smell on my hands or be near it! Someone else has to do it! I have had this since I was small and don't know why. Almost 50 years old and still hate it as much as the first day I smelled a tomatoe!
I didn't eat raw tomatoes until I was 23. Now I love them!
YES! Raw tomatoes smell rotten to me and make me gag. I love tomato sauce and ketchup though.
Same with my hubby, he hated them all his life, but now at 40+ he tried a tiny grape tomato and was hooked! He still hates the large sized tomatoes, but loves the tiny grape ones. Go figure!
When I was pregnant with my first child I could not stand to be any where near raw beef. The sight of the red blood would make me ill.
I don't like liver and onions, unless they are chicken livers. My dad had the bright idea that we would 'enjoy' a lovely dinner of fried beef liver, onions and mashed potatoes, weekly. That lasted for a few weeks, until he noticed that each of his six children were suddenly ill about dinnertime on Thursdays.
Yes! When pregnant with my first child, I threw an entire pot roast in the garbage because I lifted the lid to check on it while it was cooking, and it was still rare. I said, "We can't eat this - it's disgusting!" and threw it out before my husband could stop me.
I had my first taco when I was at a friend's 8th birthday party. I didn't like the taco sauce. It was the last thing I had before coincidentally a fever set in and coming down with the chickenpox. I'm 40 and still can't eat Mexican food. The smell still makes me queasy.
Also got food poisoning from a salad with chicken and ranch dressing once. I couldn't look at Ranch for ages and still avoid it.
Oatmeal. It looks and smells like a bowl of vomit! And cottage cheese. Same thing. Also can't stand the smell of popcorn and not too crazy about the taste either.
Gracious, the difference in people. Oatmeal is my comfort food. When I was growing up, my daddy would get up so very early on cold winter mornings and get the fires going. Then he would cook oatmeal with raisins in it and make buttered toast. We would break up the toast in the oatmeal after adding milk and sugar to it and it was so, so good. The wonderful memories that brings back to me are priceless! I so wish you liked oatmeal!
Yes, oatmeal and tapioca pudding; quite similar to vomit and sperm.
I agree with you on the popcorn but only the pre-packaged or movie theater types. Something about the smell from the fake butter flavored oil.
Wow. This so goes with my aversion to ANYTHING sea food. And I know where it comes from too.
When I was in grade 3, my math teacher decided to take the day off the math subject and do something she thought would be fun, so she brought in a whole bunch of unusual japanese dishes for us to try.
I managed the swordfish just fine. And even the shark and the caviar. But then came the octupus. I put that in my mouth, and it was like rubber and I had to run from the class or I'd have thrown up in front of everyone. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to rinse the horrible taste and feel from my mouth in the girls bathroom.
I haven't been able to even stand the SMELL of sea food since then. It makes me feel sick to my stomach, though I'm older now and I can stop myself from actually doing the action of nearly throwing up at the smell of it. I cannot eat any sea food. Not any, at any time. Even the thought is just nasty.
And I know I'm missing out because there are alot of dishes that are probably very good with sea food in them. But any kind of fish, turtle, anything at all from the water... I just can't. Unreasonable yes, but I haven't been able to get over it in 26 years, I don't see it going away any time soon. The smell alone is enough to make me gag.
Most green vegetables, especially peas and the smell of boiling brussel spouts is disgusting. It smells like sh!t balls! Any squash is nasty. Blue cheese, who could enjoy this nasty vial just ewwww! I tasted a potato salad sample at the market that had blue cheese and I bolted for the water fountain. Liver, nasty. That's why I like to cook so I can dictate what I'm eating. Look for my recipes on youtube / divinechef!
Just making me think of blue cheese makes me want to get sick! Same with gorgonzola! One taste of it, and I couldn't swallow it! Need to carry a list of cheese that tastes rotten so I can remember them!
You sound like a terrible chef. All food is good if prepared properly and with love.
I used to drink the liquid blue cheese dressing when I was a kid. Now, I can't stand that dressing.
I think you and I are the same person. It's the mush factor and to too it off add the smell. When my daughter was just over a year, my ex gave her an oyster from those tins. I couldn't kiss her for a week. I had never eaten one but that reinforced my decision to never eat the nasty lil critters.
Lima beans, white turnip and peas. Lima beans taste gross, I almost threw up trying to eat white turnip and peas smell funny. The look on my mother's face when I was trying to get the white turnip down is etched in my brain. She never made that mistake again.
I can't stand anything dairy unless very much hidden behind a strong flavor. Anything like yogurt, butter, cream cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese, cheese of all types, or any of the "spoiled" milk tastes make me gag. Uck.
On the other hand, at least it makes going vegan fairly easy.
So interesting, this topic! My food aversion is oysters and clams and any fish with its head still attached. Dis-gusting. I love onions but hate the smell in the house after I have sauteed them. My comfort foods are cottage cheese and bananas; G
Gatorade for a headache!!
Garlic! Just thinking about it makes me ill, thanks to some baked chicken I once ate that had been prepared with a butter garlic sauce. Ugh!
Also: Grand Marnier, thanks to a sauce that had been flavored with it. Just seeing the words makes me nauseous.
There is something to "association" in trying to get yourself to not like a certain kind of food/stop eating it. I wanted to stop eating chocolate candy, and after associating it with something disgusting I didn't eat anything chocolate for the next 20 years! It really worked for me. I do eat chocolate once in a while now, but I still don't care for chocolate candy.
You may be onto something! Every time I want to eat chocolate, I need to think of rice pudding. Just the thought of that makes my stomach queasy. It might break my addiction to chocolate.
The person with the melon aversion is probably from childhood hayfever. your body can't tell the difference between
the two. it thinks your injesting ragweed.
No one had mentioned the most vile foodstuff on the planet....BELL PEPPERS!!! I hate them all; all colors, all preperations. Disgusting, bleching cloying crap!
Yep bell peppers are disgusting. My mom would dice them up and ruin perfectly good spaghetti sauce. YEECH!
I thought I was the only one in the world who hated bell peppers! Any color. They don't make me puke; I just can't put them in my mouth. The texture is unpalatable. It's like they're not really food. They end up on the side of my plate if they're in the dish I'm served.
Huh. Interesting is right. I don't care for bell peppers in any way shape or form either. So many frozen dinners & pre-made deli meals are contain GP, I figured I was ... just ... well ... different. :D
Oh Wow! I SO agree with you on GREEN PEPPERS! YUCK!! Just picked all of them out of my Chinese lunch! Won't order from that place again...
I LOVE peppers of all kinds. I seriously think I am the least picky person here.
Try feeding them to a pig; a pig will eat a rattlesnake before it will eat bell peppers. Pigs have an instinct for poison.
Oh I hate peppers soo much to. Just the smell makes me sick. And I hated when my family would order pizza, they would get half plain for me and half pepper. Umm...no. The pepper stink and flavor soaks in to the pizza and it all tastes like peppers. To be honest I've never really eaten peppers, but if they smell that bad that it makes me feel sick why would I put them in my mouth? lol
Traveling during the summer in the south, we paused at a fast food chain for some lunch on the run. At the drive through pick-up window, I caught a whiff of the fry oil disposal tank. Never again...the idea of fast food fries makes my stomach roil. Think 100+ degrees outside, no wind, and scorched rancid fryer oil. YUCK!
I would have to say bananas...disgusting. I ate so many of this as a child that now not only do I hate the smell, but I hate the sound that people make when they eat them. Makes me want to puke everytime.
I KNOW! I had banana-flavored medicine as a child, and find the smell repulsive now. And the sound is disgusting...that moist, schlecking noise -BLECH!
Agree 100% on the banana thing. The kids love them but I can't even touch them without gagging. Their mom gets to open them every time.
Bananas! I hate them! Was recently on a plane when the passenger in front of me ate a banana. I had to go to the back of the plane until the smell dissapated! Yuk!
I'll eat iceberg lettuce only at Japanese restaurants with ginger dressing. Otherwise, the smell makes me sick. I have to ask at Mexican restaurants to leave it off the plate. I also make sure when I order a veggie burger they leave it off. I especially hate the way it gets hot and smells even worse. When I'm having lunch with someone and they have the lettuce on a sub- it smells vile to me.
Trident gum! My mom used to chew it in the car and I was prone to car-sickness. I cant STAND the smell of it now
BLUEBERRY MUFFINS!!! I was pregnant with my firstborn and I ate one omg I threw up so bad that never again have I gotten near one. They were my favorite. With my second child I had to eat taco bell nachos supreme. Now I dont even get close to a Taco Bell restaurant.
Swiss cheese and sauerkraut, either separately or together. (The thought of a Reuben sandwich is positively REVOLTING to me.) My aversion began not from eating these foods but from SMELLING them. I was still in grammar school when I came home one day and my father was broiling a homemade Reuben for lunch. It smelled like somebody died in the kitchen and I remember running out of the house, hysterical.
I have virtually no food aversions. I guess I'm lucky. I can eat and enjoy the cuisine of any culture. I can eat just about anything from strong blue cheese to raw sea urchin to Southeast Asian durian fruit (tastes a little like rotten onions and custard). I guess I'm lucky.
Pepto Bismol on the other hand makes me want to hurl.
I have the same problem with Pepto Bismal. There are very few other things that I won't eat but I can't stand green peas or tea.
This article is contradictory. It states later that food must be eaten first before sickness to form an aversion, yet the first part describes a woman pregnant who gets an aversion after shes sick and sees candied pecans and not even eating them. Personally I had an aversion to a specific brand of hamburger for years because I was home sick as a child and saw the hamburger in a commercial. I didn't even smell or taste the food, and it was after I was already sick. Based on my own experience I think someone could form an aversion eating the food after being sick.
Liver, mayo, and brussel sprouts are yucky.
Love it all. Especially goose liver. Yum!!
vegemite! The most disgusting thing for me...at my erstwhile workplace it used to be as punishment for the person who is responsible for breaking/delaying the build. Such person was forced to eat a vegemite spread-breadslice.
The winner of the most disgusting food of all time....??? Not even fit for human consumption??? SPAM. Ugh. I have goose bumps just thinking about it. As a kid my Dad used to fry it up for breakfast over the campfire when we were camping. My brother and I would gag. THEN he would put sugar on it, in an effort to get us to eat it. Then it was even WORSE. Revolting.
My roomate in college made SPAM salad for a fancy dinner party we were having. I was stunned. Not only would I not eat it, but I thought that was something served to inmates in prison, or found in a hurricane supply box for desperate times, or distributed for WIC or something.... Have to agree. It looks like plastic and smells like vomit.
I am DR PETER IGHOa manager in the Bills and Exchange at the Foreign
Remittance Department of the ECO INTERNATIONAL BANK I am writing this letter
to ask for your support and cooperation to carry out this business
opportunity in my department.We discovered an abandoned sum of$15,000,000.00 Fifteen million United
States Dollars only)in an account that belongs to one of our foreign
customers who died along with his entire family of a wife and two children
in November 1997 in a Plane crash.Since we heard of his death,we have been
expecting his next-of-kin to come over and put claims for his money as the
heir,because we cannot release the fund from his account unless someone
applies for claim as the next-of-kin to the deceased as indicated in our
banking guidelines.Unfortunately,neither their family member nor distant
relative has everappeared to claim the said fund.Upon this discovery,I and
other officials in my department have agreed to make business with you and
release the total amount into your account as the heir of the fund since no
one came for it or discovered he maintained account with our bank,otherwise
the fund will be returned to the banks treasury as unclaimed fund.
Peanut butter & jelly in any form and also honey mustard. Ugghh.
I love the smell of a lot of foods, but cannot stand the taste. Coffee – had to try it in the 4th grade on a school trip (yes, my teacher MADE me drink it) and now I can't drink coffee, but love the smell of coffee beans. Coconut – love the smell, but it squeaks on my teeth and that makes me cringe. Oranges – again I love the smell but the texture is like eating a goober.
But there is one food that I hate, sight, smell, taste, and even sound – salmon. Ugh. My parents used to make salmon cakes and potato patties (we're not even Russian!) about once a month and the smell was horrific! It would RUN all of us kids out of the house. Of course, a night free of their five children could have been the plan to begin with...
About the coffee, it smells soooo good. But it tastes disgusting.
In my early 20s I drank way too many screwdrivers (vodka & orange juice)... and was sick all the next day.
30 years later I still cannot eat anything that tastes or smells like oranges... no popcycles, candy, juices, sauces, dressings. I can't even use orange scented detergents, air fresheners or perfumes. The only thing orange I can handle is just the color itself.
Cream cheese is disgustipatin'!!! I can barely stand the sight or smell, let alone the taste.
Oh, how I LOVE cheesecake! Yum!
Coconut. I detest anything coconut. I see the big ads for coconut water and I get nauseous. All beans gross me out. Something about the texture. I've gotten to the point when I can eat black beans if they are in something else and refried beans, but every other bean? Gross.
Onions! Cooked, raw – hate them! The smell makes me want to hurl. If I accidentally eat one, I will hurl!
ChrisGene, I'm 100% with you on that. Raw onions are the WORST of all, make me gag just smelling a molecule of them. I wish that didn't happen but I can't help it!
I hate fish, any type, any kind. People always say "but it doesn't taste fishy". Well, if it doesn't taste fishy, why do you eat fish anyway? Fish stink, plain and simple.
I love to fish and even have a weekend place on a lake but I always catch and release. Can't stand the thought of eating something which lived it's entire life swimming around in it's own toilet. Gross
I agree – can't stand any kind of fish that have scales and fins. I have tried, on recommnedations from friends, salmon, swordfish, flounder, tuna – two bites and I want to hurl. Interestingly though, I LOVE shellfish – shrimp, lobster, crab, mussles, oysters, clams. I even love caviar! Makes no sense, I know. My husband is almost the opposite – loves any kind of fish and also likes shrimp, scallops. He will eat lobster and crab if it's in a dish, but refuses to eat oysters, mussles, clams.
when I was 15 and recovering from being horribly ill - the first meal I "tried" to eat was: fried chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes. bad idea. still can't go there... 20+ years later
Mayo is the most disgusting substance ever concocted by man. I'd be extremely happy if we could banish it from the planet.
I agree 100%.
I too have to agree with you... That's one food I can't make exceptions for. It smells so bad...Raw.... and tastes even worse.
*Pardon me, meant to add onto that posting. Gingerale repulses me, just seeing a can or bottle of it. The smell is horrid, like soapy perfume. I think it comes from being in the Hosp so much as a child and given Gingerale often. Perhaps I am associating it with that, although my childhood in no way was a traumatic experience.
Miso soup, violently vomited after eating a bowl-first time to have it. Aslo, ginger! The thought makes me have goosebumps ! I know ginger is for nausea, not this girl! ewwwwwwwwwwwww The thought of ginger *in* miso soup makes me shudder.
I think they are wrong about needing to get sick FROM the food–I was sick for a couple of weeks when I was 12 with a severe stomach virus, and I vomited everything up until I was able to start holding down some Gatorade. Now Gatorade is forever associated with vomit.
The smell of garlic on people's skin makes me gag. I have a strong sense of smell, so that infusion of garlic and sweat gets me everytime. I also hate mustard.
For me it's bacon. I can't stand the sight, smell, or even the sound of it sizzling. My mom used to make it in the microwave all the time, and the smell would linger in the kitchen...ugh!
Avocados are a no go for me. Even when someone attempted to "sneak" it into my food, I tasted it and the urge to vomit had to be quelled. I cannot stand the smell, the taste, the look, the texture of this particular pear. Just not appetizing to me.
When I was about 12, my gramma gave me one of those little packs of cheese cracker sandwich things... with bacon flavoring. My god, they were the worst taste I can ever remember being subjected to. For years afterward, the smell of bacon would make me nauseated and I stayed away from ALL cheese crackers. It's only been fairly recent that I've gotten to the point where I can eat bacon. I still don't enjoy it though.
The other big thing is mushrooms. As a child, I would change my mind about what foods I liked roughly by the week... I think most kids do. But I was in this phase where I didn't like mushrooms, and my mom picked up on this as a punishment. That set the aversion in so deeply that I will never touch another mushroom in my life... and I passed this aversion on to all of my sisters! They never had that same experience, but my aversion was so strong they all picked it up too.
When I was pregnant I developed a terrible food aversion to potato salad and fried shrimp, two things I loved before. It has now been over 3 years and I am just starting to eat potato salad again but fried shrimp still makes me want to gag!
The other weird food thing is mangos and kiwi. For some reason my brain tells me I hate them, when I actually like the flavor. I have to take a bite with another fruit though, I cannot eat them alone. Very odd but interesting article as to why it happens.
I can't eat eggs or fish, any type. When I make fish for my daughers, a rare occasion, when I see or touch the scales on the fish, it makes me gag. I would be easy to torture, just stick an egg or fish in front of me and I would give up state secrets.
Dish, I agree on the eggs! I have never liked them and the smell of deviled eggs makes me practically gag! I eat fish but during my pregnancy couldn't stand the smell much less eat any!
I am the same way – eggs and fish both revolt me. My mother told me I ate eggs when I was very young but something about ann egg white grossed me out and I swore them off. I hate the smell of eggs, and the worst is when you can taste them in a food, like pancakes. Ugh, the worst!
yeah, i'm with you on eggs! eggs! eggs! especially fried ones, nasty smelling/looking stuff. I don't get how people eat eggs
After too many fireballs, anything cinnamon flavored was out of the question... gum , toothpaste, candy...made me feel like I was going to hurl!
Fum-un-da cheese for me. Ring a ling ding a ling!
Mustard makes me gag. As noted in the article, just smelling it makes me gag. I hate when restaurants don't state what they put on something. I've gone hungry many a time when something comes out slathered in that vile substance.
That is funny how we are all different... I can't get enough mustard.. However, MELON.. ANYTHING MELON... The thought even while typing makes me queasy.. ICK! And I don't even know why.. My mouth waters in disgust just thinking aobut melon
Then .... you're a leg man?
I'm with you–I can't stand to even sit at a table where someone else is eating mustard. I hate the fact that you can't even get a burger at McDonald's in some states without mustard on it. What is that, anyway? Mustard on a burger? Gross!
Really? None of the burgers at the McDonald's near me in TX have mustard on them unless you specifically ask for it. I love mustard! Mayo on the other hand makes me gag, particularly the smell.
I cannot stand the smell of mustard- my brother ate a mustard sandwich when I was 6 and then breathed in my face. I can eat it if it is mixed into baked beans, but anything else- honey mustard pretzels, honey mustard dressing- makes me want to run.
For me it's oatmeal. In grade school a kid found a meal worm in his at breakfast time and every since the sight of oatmeal makes me gag!
I have the same issue (almost) with Twix...when I was a kid, my best friend bit into an old Twix Bar with and there was a worm in it. Now, I still eat them sometimes, but I have to inspect it between every bite.
Oatmeal makes me want to gag too – although don't know why, never had a bad experience with it. It is just disgusting – sight, texture, taste... ick!
Two aversions – cottage cheese, and fried eggs.
I've actually tried to taste cottage cheese a couple of times. My husband likes it with apple butter. I tried it and can see why he likes it - but I can't eat it. It's something about the texture.
As for fried eggs, I would have to be really, really hungry before I could even try them. The smell makes me ill, and the sight of the jiggling goo -ugh. My poor father used to love them, and as we sat across the breakfast table from each other, I would complain as only a snotty teenager can complain! I'd pile the cereal boxes in the middle of the table so I wouldn't have to see him eat it. Poor guy was just trying to enjoy his breakfast!
My husband likes fried eggs, too – but only has them if I'm not home.
My Mom used to give me Pepto-bismal when I became sick as a child. Now the smell and even the sight of the bottle makes me nauseous and queesy. Ironic.
Same here! Whenever I'm sick enough to need Pepto Bismol, the LAST thing in the world I want is to ingest Pepto Bismol.
I've never had to take Pepto-Bismal, and always had a fear of doing so because it looked gross and smelled gross. A few months ago I got heart burn and the only thing I could think to take was that, and I sucked it up and drank some. It was just as nasty as I had feared! Yuck!
Me too! Just the thought of Pepto Bismol makes me nauseous.
I took it once and my tongue turned black in color. Apparently that's 'normal', but I couldn't ever bring myself to try it again.
When I was in 3rd grade a kid puked Pepto Bismal all over the floort. Oh, the horrid smell in vomit form is so gross. I have never been able to use it.
Eggs. Any kind, any style. DISGUSTING.
I never thought about it this way, but I'm guessing my nausea whenever I even smell liquid cough medicine started when I was a child. I had the flu and remember violently throwing up a lot of orange cough medicine. Ever since, I get nauseated even thinking about it. Gel caps too because they still remind me of the consistency; I immediately feel ill. I've tried all kinds of medicines through the years, and I can't seem to avoid it. I've just learned to suffer through a cold without any medication.
Water chestnuts= worst texture a food could have! It reminds me of Styrofoam (which I can't stand either)
Me too! I can't stand them! And it's not so much the taste but the texture!
UGH you are so right, and one i'd forgotten about.. they are SO nasty... When pregnant I had a huge aversion to carrots of any kind, even though normally I love them. I too am an EGG HATER.. yuck.. also the Jello... the mere sight of a jello dessert is enough to make me hurl, and one with fruit entombed in it WILL make me hurl.. .. I think fruit/jello desserts should be outlawed.. lol
Oh GOD. I am sitting here shuddering at the thought of water chesnuts. So nasty.
I don't think you're actually supposed to eat styrofoam...
I can't stand orange jello. I can't even look at the box on the shelf in the store without getting queasy. It goes back to when I was six and had my tonsils out. The first thing mom fed me was orange jello and I got hopelessly sick off of it.
I lived one year in the Dominican Republic and I cannot stand the sight of a banana. I guess it must be too much exposure to the fruit.
I think you are becoming really strange if you want to create an aversion. You want to lose weight? Eat less. My own aversion is perogies – the sight,smell – the mere thought of them makes me gag and I've never even tasted one. Another one is unfortunate – bananas. When I was pregnant with my first child, I ate the greatest banana pancakes. The nausea that followed was horrible and I cannot end that association. It has been over ten years, but I still have no desire to ever eat a banana.
perogies sautéed in onion and bacon with a little dollop of sour cream.......heaven!
Thats really funny. I was thinking about that for dinner last night. I haven't had any in a long time because I live in the south and they just don't have that down here. But mmmm perogies with onions, bacon, and green peppers, with just a bit of ketchup on top just like mom used to make when I was a kid. Delicious.
An aversion to pierogi? Oh, that's a terrible fate! We make ours at home, potato and onion or saurkraut and onion, fry it up with some bacon fat and serve with sour cream like efour said... nothing better!
I wonder if maybe you're talking about pierogis stuffed with something you don't like, like sauerkraut? Otherwise I don't get the "smell" problem. You can get all kinds of differently stuffed pierogis. Typical pierogis can be nothing more than dough filled with mashed potatoes and cheese and you can buy them frozen that way. They can be boiled for a few minutes and immediately eaten or they can be finished off by frying in margarine/butter, usually along with fried onions. There's a old Catholic church near me where the older Polish ladies make and sell home-made pierogies most Sundays. They're a delicacy in my family!
How can you have an aversion if you've never tasted pierogis? They are wonderful. I've even eaten them cold.