Peas. Never. Never. Never have I liked them, nor will I. Almost every other food I hated as a picky eater has entered my regular eats, but not peas. Give me an entire shepherd’s pie with just one pea in it and I will know from the first bite.
And I will eat calve’s liver, but don’t ask me to cook it. The smell of it raw grosses me out.

Coconut. Since birth I could detect the tiniest amounts of it in things. It’s the texture and the taste. I would never turn down any food involving chocolate unless it had coconut in it. Just to torment me, people seem to like to mix coconut and chocolate.

For some reason I don’t mind coconut milk in Thai food though.

Your bunnies are super cute. My cat has turned out to be a picky eater. I bought her some fancy food yesterday that I thought might be better for her, since she seems to throw up more often than cats should, but she has barely touched it. They must put crack in Friskies, because she loves them.

red bell peppers.
especially roasted.
*gags*
oh, and pretty much any organ meat. i hate to say it because it’s so cliche and girly to say “eewww…i don’t wanna eat thaaatt” but i’ve tried. it’s a texture thing.
i also have a weird thing with avocado. love love love it. but it has to be mashed up completely. again, texture. i will gag if i bite into a whole piece of avocado.
the red bell peppers has nothing to do with texture..i purely despise them for exactly who they are.

I seem to recall a recent article in the “New Yorker” discussing childhood food aversions. Evidently, parents have only a few years in which to introduce their children to a wide range of flavors. After the window closes (before age five, if I recall correctly), it takes years for the child to come around to new flavors. In this sense, a wide “taste vocabulary” has to be introduced earlier than spoken languages, which typically can be broached into the preteen years. I would imagine, however, that no parent could hope to teach a supertaster to overcome an aversion; the genetic component is just too strong.

I’ll eat just about anything, but many foods I simply don’t seek out, which I suppose amounts to a gentle aversion to things like popcorn and mussels.

turnips are a turn-off, no matter how hard i try. a dear friend made a birthday meal for me one year and i requested, (out of character) cheeseburgers and fries. She made turnip fries, thinking that would be more “me.” I had to gag them down, and it still makes me queasy to think of it.

and i am completely convinced some people’s palettes are just different. Like how some folks can taste cilantro, and others think it tastes like soap. Or those little papers they give you in biology class that taste like aspirin to some, and nothing to others. I forget what they were, but oh, gross.

Liver of any kind! I’ve tried it fried, in Pate, blended into Dirty Rice, with onion, you name it and there’s NO WAY I’m going to eat it. That old penny smell….it just makes me gag. I also agree with you on annis seed, although I do like Terragon and Fennel.

Parsley. I hate it. The taste makes me gag. I don’t mind whole pieces as garnish that I can pick up and take of my food but what is with the sprinkling it over everything.

I have to ask for no parsley whenever I order food in a restaurant as I’ve had too many meals ruined with that insidious weed.

Also bean shoots, but that’s more a texture thing, well that and when I was a kid my brother convinced me they were dead worms. I’ve never been able to eat them since then, even knowing what they really are.

Brussels sprouts, though I’m sure it is because I’ve never had one the way you cook them. Oddly, and I meant to post this on your blog, but I LOVE cow tongue. Growing up, my grandmother served it regularly and called it, get this, Maryland Ham.

I love all of your hates! More Panda licorice for me…

Food I HATE: parsnips; raw onions not in salsa, but even then I tend to avoid them with some deft chip maneuvers; Heinz Beans, which my husband eats every weekend.

game-y meat, like lamb and duck.
tarragon.
fruit AND meat combos
i used to be anti carrot for most of my life, but i am okay with raw carrots nowadays. when rendered extra sweet and soft, my gag reflex goes into serious action.

Wow. I’ll eat anything. Overcooked broccoli does make me want to die, though. And the red gloop this dank island calls sweet’n’sour sauce is pretty nasty.

Wow! What astonishes me about these hates y’all are confessing is how ubiquitous some of the ingredients are. How does a Chinese person negotiate an antipathy for allium? How do egg-fearers breakfast at diners?

Diana, I reread my lavender post and was reminded that I hated it as a child but find that the objectionable part of the flavor disappears (for me) on cooking. Provence always smelled terrible to me!

i hate yams/sweet potatoes. i dated a black guy in college, thanksgiving, xmas and easter meals were excrutiating.

i’m also not a fan of peas.

i’ve never had it but i think i wouldn’t like figs or dates. fig newtons don’t count tho.

After some careful consideration, I’ve decided that there is one type or more like food technique that I absolutely abhor, and that is: foam! When I see foam on a menu or even worse on a plate, I want to rage against the chef who though it a trendy touch. It is neither trendy nor tasty. Usually it tastes like a soapy, salty, bodily fluid.

I can’t abide flan or souffle. It’s a texture thing, but I find them to be nasty. Also commercial salad dressings and flavored chips (other than Kettle Chips) they taste like chemicals and sugar.

Hominy or hominy grits. I can remember, as a child growing up in the south, crying when grits were served on my plate.

Oh, good Lord, water chestnuts. *gag* I’m a raw-onion hater, as well–cook them and it’s all good.

There are a few other things I don’t care for, but I try to eat them anyway from time to time. It’s my attempt at trying to evolve from such dislikes.

But not with water chestnuts. Or raw onion.

caraway seeds…if those little mofos are in any form of bread, i will pick every single one off. They ruin any dish for me. i see them from a mile away and protest the dish.

These comments are a crack up! There are so few things that I won’t eat but lots of things I don’t like but not to the point of gaggiing. I don’t like eggs when they smell eggy or burnt. Well-done scrambled eggs are one of the few things I just can’t force myself to eat.

Temperature is the other thing that gets me. I want my hot foods HOT LIKE THE SUN and cold foods so cold, they burn a little.

I also really dislike the box-can-bag style of cooking (is that cooking?) You know, the “add a box of stuffing to a can to cream of mushroom soup and a bag of shredded cheddar! Bake and chow down!” Yucky.

I have nothing to add to the discussion, except: that is one freakin’ cute bunny photo.

Just realized I hadn’t read your blog for a while, so am now browsing through the archive and the comments on this one made me laugh. I totally lean toward the nurture theory. Stop being fussy! Ali claims he is a “supertaster”, but I am very sceptical. I know I may not be one to talk, given my dietary choices, but within the “veggie” limits I’ll eat absolutely anything. Actually the only things that I severely dislike are pork/bacon and fishy-smelling seafood, but wretching would still be a rather extreme reaction. What is wrong with everyone?!!