What foods did you hate as a child, but enjoy now?

Soda, because I thought the carbonation was slightly painful, and things I voluntarily ingest shouldn’t be painful at all.

Similarly, spicy foods.

brocolli, cauliflower and liver

Avocados. I love them so much now. Most strange veggies I also didn’t like, but am willing to try now.

Asparagus and eggplant

I was raised in a home with parents that had parents that grew up in the depression.

Liver, kidneys and tripe. (cow stomach) And, an Italian favorite, Capozzelli (Roasted lambs head) Cheep pore peoples food.
Ya had to eat it.

Thank god I do not any more.

Otherwise and maybe because of, I usually like everything that was/is put in front of me.

Eggplant. I tried for so many years to get to like it. It always looks so delicious in the market, with that deep purple skin. But then I’d try it and would again be disappointed. This continued until by some inspiration about 5 years ago I threw some thick eggplant slices on the grill, basted them with olive oil and sprinkled basil on them. Ka-ching!!! They were delicious! Now I’ve gotten to appreciate the taste and prepare eggplant in many different ways.

Brussel sprouts. I thought they were disgusting as a kid, probably never gave them a real chance though.

i hated bacon,
and i still hate it now.
but i loved meat loaf. which i hate now.

Espresso coffee.

All I can think of is foods I used to like but don’t anymore like eggs and hot dogs and such.

But I know that I used to hate plain tomatoes. I still won’t bite into a tomato just to eat it, but I love pico de gallo, especially in burritos or as a form of salsa.

I HATED mustard, but now I can’t live without it. Also potato salad and some good honeydew.

I never cared much for lentles as a kid. I wouldn’t say “hate”, but I just ignored them and didn’t eat them much. I love them now and cook them quite often myself.

But the funniest is the opposite: both me and my sister used to love snails as children, because our grandmother made them really tasty. And both of us hate them now as adults and won’t even touch them.

Salad, sauerkraut, olives, beer and wine.

None… I’ve maintained my 5-year-old palate.

Relish, olives, tomatoes, eggplant, pickles, sour cream, cottage cheese, peppers, avacodos, asparagus, peas, broccoli

Hot peppers and mushrooms. I despised them both as a child, and love them as an adult.

Of course, I still think a cheese omelet is the most disgusting thing a person can put on my plate. Maybe because I was forced to eat those nasty things growing up. Death to the proponents of cheese omelets!

@PapaLeo thanks for the idea. I’ve always wanted to try eggplant, but never knew a good way to cook it. I’m giving that a try this weekend. =)

@evelyns_pet_zebra Mmm, eggplant is delicious. You’re going to love it.

Any kind of seafood and really spicy meals, now I can’t get enough of either.

@erniefernandez Uhm. You had beer and wine as a child?? :-/

@MrItty: I’m sure ernie means that he tried those tastes as a child and did not enjoy the taste, but now does. As a child, my parents always gave me the “pinky-dip” taste of their alcoholic beverages.

@girlofscience I must be weird then. That never happened in my household. My first taste of alcohol was at age 17 – my uncle the priest said mass at my grandmother’s house because she couldn’t go to church any more, and he passed around the Chalice in addition to the bread.

@MrItty

I don’t know if it’s “weird” to not do it, but I know more than one person who has done that. I haven’t, but it is something people do.

Nothing wrong with a pinky-dip taste. :)

mushrooms and I’m with @erniefernandez I remember being given tastes of wine when I was a kid.. and I didn’t like it at all (My family makes wine every year, it’s obligatory for everyone to taste… even my daughter now gets a “pinky-dip taste” (love the expression @girlofscience)!

Olives and leeks

I always hated peppers, now I love them. Sweet peppers, hot peppers, all kinds of peppers. I even grow them in mass quantity in my garden I enjoy them so much.

I also was a self declared vegetarian at about the age of 5. Since marrying a cook, I now do enjoy a NY strip state now and again. And I can’t say no to his delicious mushroom burgers.

When I was little, I always hated any vegetable and even most fruits! Now, I love fruits and I can go for a raw veggie now and then, but I still won’t eat them if they’re cooked =/
I used to love grape jelly and I couldn’t stand strawberry! But now, somehow my tastes have switched…I couldn’t handle spicy foods on my baby tastebuds; but now I’m the biggest fan of those foods in my family! (Except Uncle Pablo haha)
Things I’ve never liked and probably never will: Seafood, cooked veggies, mustard, pickles, uncooked/unprocessed tomatoes, (green beans in any form will always make me woosey…ick!), and much more.

Like many others, I hated spicy food as a kid and I definitely tolerate it better now, and can enjoy spicy food. (Curry! Never would have liked that as a kid, now I make it all the time.) I used to really like chinese food (the americanized version, I should say) and really don’t anymore. I much prefer vietnamese or thai food if I’m going to go to an asian restaurant.

I also acquired a taste for coffee at some point. The easing into that little addiction was aided and abetted by Starbucks’ heavily sweetened “coffees” which got me used to the flavor, now I’ll drink regular coffee (although not black, I’m still dependent on two creams and two sugars!). Other than that my tastes haven’t changed too much.

@jamielynn2328 Peppers!!!! Mom used to always make two versions of cornbread, one plain and one with peppers. I HATED the latter. Until I discovered peppers. Now I love them and can’t get enough of them. Serranos, jalapenos, habaneros, you name it! The higher the Scofield rating, the better!

@casheroo LOL! “Brussel sprouts” show up regularly as “the most hated food” amongst the youth here in Holland. But they’re also a solid underpinning of the Dutch culture. “Spruitjes geur” (“Spouts odor”) refers to a very basic Dutch cultural reference (like “apple pie” in the US).

Anyhoo, try them sauteed in pure butter with pine nuts, onion and tarragon. They’ll wow you!

Beer, Indian food, most vegetables, fish including sushi

Mushrooms, pineapple, cheese

asparagus, now I keep a jar of baby asparagus in the fridge and my husband and I will share it as a treat! (The baby kind is pretty expensive). It doesn’t taste at all like fresh and I notice it is a product of China, but it is so good and there is nothing in it except asparagus, water, sugar and salt according to the ingredients listed on the label.

@casheroo, there’s a recipe where you take off the outer leaves, brush them with olive oil, sprinkle them with a bit of coarse salt, pop them in a 400 degree oven for about ½ hour and they’re like Brussel sprout poppers. It’s the only way I can eat them.

@aprilsimnel @PapaLeo Sounds good. I love brussel sprouts now that I’m older, and actually gave them a chance. It was just as a child that I found them gross.

I hated so many things as a kid. Liver and onions. Lima beans. Chicken livers. Any kind of fish. Hamburgers. Steak. Fried corn. Olives. Anything remotely spicy.

Now, I still can’t stand liver, fried corn, lima beans, and olives. Not a fan of squash, cauliflower, or brussel sprouts. Almost everything else I didn’t like as a kid, I now love. Although I realized that was due to my parents’ cooking and not the foods themselves. The first time I had a nice, tender steak cooked to a perfect medium, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

@girlofscience, if you had my five year-old’s palate, you’d go into spasms of ecstacy over sushi, Italian sausage, turkey sandwiches with spicy mustard, steamed artichokes, and pizza loaded with onions, peppers, and mushrooms, brie and lingnonberry jam on crackers…well, almost anything you can think of. The other day he pulled an onion out of the garden, washed it off, and ate it raw. Maybe his taste buds are broken.

@MissAusten I used to do that as a boy, maybe your son and I are related somehow. =) I’d always eat raw onions out of a garden.

liver
pasta
tuna

cabbage

I used to hate brussels sprouts too, but now they’re one of my favorite veggies – I can’t live without them!

I was okay with most other veggies when I was little, but my mom had a trick for any of the ones I didn’t like: I would eat pretty much anything if it was in pancake form, so she used to make all sorts of veggie fritters – corn, zucchini, carrot, you name it – if it was a pancake, I’d eat it! That’s sort of still true – I love my pancakes!

Everyone keeps saying “liver”. No one ever cooked liver in my family, despite the fact that my mom likes it. She’s the only one who likes it, though.

Also, people are saying tuna a lot. That’s something I still don’t like. (I don’t really like any seafood except for sushi). I remember I tried tuna when I was 4 or so and I threw it up almost instantly after trying it; I haven’t eaten it since. I hate the smell and generally, foods taste very similar to the way they smell.

tomatoes
potatoes
olives
mushrooms
anchovies

Still hate anchovies, but love the other four. Someone once told me that tomatoes, which are in the nightshade family, are related to poisonous plants and that perhaps some people don’t like them as children because of a leftover evolutionary sense of caution. Mushrooms could have the same explanation.

@sarahsugs

Or that they simply don’t taste that good. They’re fruit, but they’re not sweet; they have an odd flavor and I find them much better when they’re in things rather than by themselves. Ketchup is made from tomatoes and most kids like ketchup. Most kids probably like tomato sauce as well; it’s just the plain tomatoes whose flavor is not that great.

Tomatoes are in the nightshade family, Solanum, but so are potatoes, peppers, eggplants, and anything else it seems with that shiny smooth solid-color fruit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanum

@DominicX Interesting that a lot of people who responded above don’t like peppers or eggplant either!

@DominicX
i LOVE tomatoes. especially the baby ones that you can eat in one go.

I liked all kinds of kid-unfriendly foods. Liver and onions, broccoli, eggplant, just about everything. Brussel sprouts tasted bitter to me as a child, but now I can’t get enough of them. Of course, they have to be swimming in butter, salt and pepper. I hated hominy – ugh! I can’t believe my mom even served it, let alone made us eat it. But then I married a Hispanic man, and his sister got me hooked on pizole, an Aztec soup made with pork and hominy.

I hated fish, and now I love fish. I hated macaroni and cheese, but now, you should see my mom’s face when I ask for Mac n’ cheese… hysterical.