Why do people not like certain foods?

[MonkeyDragon]

I've told customers at work with an utterly straight face that they should purchase the chocolate covered espresso beans, because beans are a vegetable, and thus they are healthy!

Some people don't like some foods because of their tongues. A certain percentage of people are "super-tasters," and are thus more sensetive to some flavors. These folks tend not to like strong vegetables like broccoli, or brussel sprouts, because to them they are very bitter.

I am not one of these people, but I have seen it on television (it must be true!). I heart brocolli.

 

[Relique du Madde]

Ha! I had a friend of mine who is a vegitarian tell me, quite seriously, that pepperoni is a vegeable.

I think he is confusing pepperoni with a peperoncini pepper.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Did you eat it in China? My parents did complain that the food was quite inedible to them while they were there...

Nope- I was in a Dallas area restaurant owned and operated by a chef who used to cook for diplomats & dignitaries.

I mean, it tasted all right, but MAN did my jaw get a workout.

OTOH, its possible I ticked him off (how, I can't even guess) and this was just a joke on a "round-eye" American.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Some people don't like some foods because of their tongues. A certain percentage of people are "super-tasters," and are thus more sensetive to some flavors. These folks tend not to like strong vegetables like broccoli, or brussel sprouts, because to them they are very bitter.

I'm not one either, but I know one. There are certain artificial sweeteners he cannot tolerate because of a horrible and long-lasting aftertaste.

 

[ProfessorPain]

I think it makes sense that people eat things they are familiar with and avoid things they are not familiar with. Seems like a good instinct for avoiding dangerous foods. That said, you eat what you are raised to eat. Personally I am an adventurous eater, but I still have to work harder to bite down on the more exotic foods. Usually Asian cuisine is brought up as the ultimate in disgusting by western people (with their fish sauces, raw food, 100 year old eggs, etc). But it is interesting to stop and consider something like cheese. We love cheese, but its disgusting. Its rotten dairy product. And interestingly, Asian people find it revolting.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Every culture has their disgusting foods.

On his new show, F Word, Gordon Ramsay challenged James May to eat some Hakari, an Icelandic dish consisting of fermented shark, buried for up to 3 months, hung to dry for another 4. I'm all over that- Gimme! Gimme! Erm...no.

F-Word - James May vs Gordon Ramsay • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control *
Recipe:
HOWTO make "rotten shark" - Boing Boing
Hákarl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


* Warning- even though this aired on British TV, there is the typical European use of salty language.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But it is interesting to stop and consider something like cheese. We love cheese, but its disgusting. Its rotten dairy product. And interestingly, Asian people find it revolting.

And with good reason- most Asians are lactose intolerant. Lacking the enzymes neccessary to properly digest the stuff, it makes them quite ill.

 

[Aeolius]

We love cheese, but its disgusting. Its rotten dairy product. And interestingly, Asian people find it revolting.

I have three children that were born in China, the older two share another trait I noticed with many of our guides. They hate cinnamon.

...an Icelandic dish consisting of fermented shark...there is the typical European use of salty language.

Shark...salty... heh

 

[Pbartender]

...Hakari, an Icelandic dish consisting of fermented shark, buried for up to 3 months, hung to dry for another 4. I'm all over that- Gimme! Gimme! Erm...no.

That reminds of a traditional Norwegian dish... Lutefisk.

I grew up in as a German-roots kid in a very Scandinavian town in Minnesota. A lot of families would make homemade lutefisk around the holidays. You could always tell who was cooking up a batch, becayse you could smell it a quarter mile away.

Lutefisk is made from salted/dried whitefish (normally cod, but ling is also used), prepared with lye, in a sequence of particular treatments. The watering steps of these treatments differ slightly for salted/dried whitefish because of its high salt content. The first treatment is to soak the stockfish in cold water for five to six days (with the water changed daily). The saturated stockfish is then soaked in an unchanged solution of cold water and lye for an additional two days. The fish will swell during this soaking, attaining an even larger size than in its original (undried) state, while its protein content decreases by more than 50 percent, producing its famous jelly-like consistency. When this treatment is finished, the fish (saturated with lye) has a pH value of 11–12, and is therefore caustic. To make the fish edible, a final treatment of yet another four to six days of soaking in cold water (also changed daily) is needed. Eventually, the lutefisk is ready to be cooked.

Mmmm... Dried fish that's been soaked in bathroom cleanser for days until it turn into an (almost) tasteless jelly.

Sign. Me. Up.

The kicker is that you have to be careful to not soak it the lye for too long. Otherwise, the fish turns into soap.

 

[Merkuri]

And with good reason- most Asians are lactose intolerant. Lacking the enzymes neccessary to properly digest the stuff, it makes them quite ill.

Huh, maybe that's why I like Asian food so much. It's one of the few cuisines I can partake in freely without ever having to worry about whether there's milk in what I'm eating. I think crab rangoon is the only thing I've ever had to stay away from, and I get the idea that that's a very Americanized food.

Personally, I have a rule that I'll eat anything once as long as somebody else eats it first. (That last part is an escape clause so my smart-mouthed friends *coughAwayfarercough* can't say "eat some of this dirt, then!")

Last summer my boyfriend and I went to go visit my sister in California. She lives near San Francisco, and was extremely excited to bring us to all of the restaurants out there. My parents had visited her a few months earlier and weren't very receptive to all of the strange cuisines she wanted to try on them. She had called me up a week or two before we were heading over there and asked me what kind of food we were willing to try. "Thai?" "Sure!" "Korean?" "Sure!" "Ethiopian?" "Sure!" When she had gone through about half of her list and I'd responded positively to all of them she said, "Oh, you make me so happy!"