reroute my energy to a more interesting source of shame
February 21, 2019 4:10 PM   Subscribe

I’ve never liked cucumbers, mostly because they taste bad. My cuke avoidance is what’s known as a food aversion, and although aversions are widespread in the United States, hating a food that others love is socially coded as fussy or unsophisticated. People with many or severe aversions often experience isolating anxiety or social opprobrium. For people like me, it’s more commonly just a nuisance that might inspire an occasional eye roll...the good news, according to researchers, is that most people can reset their neural pathways to one day enjoy—or at least tolerate—a nice gazpacho. (SL The Atlantic)
posted by devrim (52 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



 
Cilantro...
posted by Windopaene at 4:18 PM on February 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


Ugh. I'm gonna read this whole article, but I need to not look at the picture of cucumbers at the top. Disgusting. (Pickles are fine, though.)
posted by poe at 4:20 PM on February 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


Cucumbers are fine but they are basically just feckless pickles.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:27 PM on February 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


I don’t like raspberries.
I don’t want to like raspberries.
I know I’m the weird one, everyone else loves raspberries.
But I don’t see the point in trying to train myself to eat a food I hate. I’ll just pass on that berry tort—or maybe I’ll trade it to you for your cucumber.
posted by ejs at 4:31 PM on February 21, 2019 [7 favorites]


I have a couple of these: tomatoes, which makes people treat me like a bit of a freak, shredded coconut, and carbonation of any kind. (Bubbles hurt my mouth. I prefer my beverages not to be painful.) I could try to change, but I don't really have any desire to. There are so many delicious foods that I do like that I'm just not concerned with the few that I don't.

I can tolerate any of those foods, though. I will eat them if it would be rude not to. I just don't like them and would prefer not to eat them.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:43 PM on February 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'm pretty good at training myself to not mind foods I disliked. The one thing I haven't been able to stop disliking is natto (Japanese fermented soybeans). My kids like it though so I've got to keep trying (not because I have to eat what they're eating but because I want to model that they too can get over their dislike of specific foods).
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:49 PM on February 21, 2019


I have deliberately trained myself to like, or at least tolerate, many foods. And the reason is it's a social bonding experience: it's good to be able to eat the same things other people are eating when we're getting together. It reinforces connections and culture.

It's also good for logistics: trying to figure out a menu when there's a group can be an amazing (in a bad way) experience, every person's constraint is one more complication.

And lastly, I have a food allergy that's non-negotiable, which is enough of a problem choosing foods. I don't want to compound that with other restrictions that I can do something about. So I do something about them.
posted by traveler_ at 5:05 PM on February 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


Be interesting to know how widely shared this aversion to cucumbers is, because
The copperhead is the cause of many snakebites yearly but they are rarely fatal. Bites occur when people accidentally step on or touch the snake, which tends to be well camouflaged in its surroundings. When touched, the copperhead quickly strikes or remains quiet and tries to crawl away. Sometimes when touched, they emit a musk that smells like cucumbers.
which suggests the possibility that an aversion to cucumbers could be an aspect of a built in fear of snakes.

And also that cucumbers might be mimicking copperheads.
posted by jamjam at 5:08 PM on February 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


I’ve never liked cucumbers, mostly because they taste bad.

I dunno, I'd call that a perfectly valid reason for not liking them.

Personally I don't think they taste like much at all, but literally chacun à son goût.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:12 PM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


For me it's potato or macaroni salad. As a kid, the sides bar at Kentucky Fried Chicken may as well have been a Cronenberg film set.
posted by bonobothegreat at 5:19 PM on February 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


I like cucumbers. Okra, however, can back right off my plate forever.
posted by thivaia at 5:28 PM on February 21, 2019 [5 favorites]


I despise all forms of cooked fish and seafood. yes, even that kind. yes i've tried it. no i don't want a bite.

i live in baltimore!!!!!! everyone is always trying to shove a giant sea bug (er, crab) in my face! for real though. i can't even sit next to someone eating crabs or shrimp most of the time. it's gotten to the point where the smell of Old Bay has started to become a nausea trigger for me. ugh!!!!

i don't know. the smell of cooking / cooked fish and seafood is just so utterly repulsive to me. I'm not a picky eater, really, it's just like, this one class of foods.

(weird thing is, i LOVE sushi. only the raw stuff though, i can't deal with cooked shrimp or anything. unagi is marginal. odd, right?)
posted by capnsue at 5:32 PM on February 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


nothing that grows on a hairy vine for me. i may be allergic.
posted by wmo at 5:40 PM on February 21, 2019


In my case, it’s most “green” vegetables in any form (peas, green beans, broccoli, asparagus, canned spinach), and most cooked fruits and vegetables, and beans. With the “green” veggies, it’s the flavor, and with all of the above, it’s the texture. I realize this eliminates a large swath of cuisines that rely heavily on beans, but I just can’t do it. I like a bunch of fruits and vegetables raw, so I eat a lot of salads. I can do cooked tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, fresh spinach, and a couple others in certain dishes. And Bananas Foster.

If challenged, I usually counter with shellfish, since (as noted above) tons of people really don’t like shellfish. Although I will note that I never cook it at home, because it stinks up the house and takes all the enjoyment out of it. I also enjoy sushi, beef carpaccio, and lox.

I also had a terrible experience with blueberry muffins as a kid: we made a batch in Home Ec at the beginning of the semester, froze them, then at the end of the semester, we made another batch and defrosted the frozen ones so we could compare. Those unfrozen caveman muffins were the most godawful, freezer-burnt atrocities imaginable, and even though it’s been over thirty fucking years, I still cannot bring myself to reintegrate them back into my life. If I accidentally wind up with one (say I bit into it, thinking it was chocolate chip or whatever), I can finish it and understand rationally that it was fine, but it doesn’t budge me an inch on my opinion.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:42 PM on February 21, 2019


The only thing I ever agreed with George H. W. Bush on was broccoli. It's a stinking mass of sulfur compounds pretending to be a cute little tree...
posted by jim in austin at 5:44 PM on February 21, 2019


I was a picky eater as a kid, but these days much less so. There are a few things that I dislike intensely because of taste or texture, but mostly they are easy to avoid and any of them I can force down to be polite if someone serves me it. But I can remember how intense some of my food dislikes were when I was young; if it is strong like that you can't necessarily force it down to be polite, nor should you.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:48 PM on February 21, 2019


Armenian cucumbers are the best kind. They make great bread 'n butter pickles. But turnips and rutabagas are not for me, I did get over disliking Lima beans. I made the Tumeric and Coconut Cake from todays Wapo, it is good! I used slightly less tumeric and a litle more soy milk, and subbed out the coconut (trans fatty madness) oil with extra virgin olive. The tumeric is still on my tongue. Ummmaybe it's the ginger I stuck in there. If only I were averse to more foods!
posted by Oyéah at 6:31 PM on February 21, 2019


If they don't have any taste, why are they eaten? People say celery is also tasteless and I have to disagree. Both smell like cleaning fluid and have a weird texture with an aftertaste that is somehow worse than the initial flavor. One of my parents hates cukes as well, so I always thought it was genetic like the cilantro gene. I also hate raw tomatoes, melon and bean sprouts.
posted by soelo at 6:32 PM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


I can get past most of my small handful of aversions but there is one which I have found a great deal of difficulty getting past... Dill. It's a visceral reaction.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:48 PM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


I really want to like mushrooms. They're biologically fascinating, many nonedible species are beautiful, and they're a mainstay of so many dishes. But I cannot with any aspect of their flavor or texture. No, not even the good ones. I know.
posted by cage and aquarium at 6:54 PM on February 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


Exactly me with mushrooms. Except I don't want to like them and they scare me (check cordyceps). My aversion to fungi extends to pharmaceutical applications. I'll take my biologics derived from E-coli or hamsters before fungi.

Also olives. Stinky sweaty sock nuggets.
posted by mephisjo at 7:07 PM on February 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


I am an adventurous eater and have very few things I dislike...except for fennel when combined with meat.

Fennel tea? Ok
Fennel candy? Fine
Fennel in your toothpaste? Alright

Fennel in your coarse-ground pork sausage?

GET OUT OF MY HOUSE YOU MONSTER
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:23 PM on February 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


If you tell people you don't like eggplant, they want to cook you up some eggplant because, surely their version will change your mind. I'm perfectly fine with not caring for turnip. Otherwise, I love broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cilantro, Lima beans, mushrooms, and kale is fine, esp. in soup. I could do without cooked red pepper, which is the Let's give it some color go-to in a lot of frozen meals, but I decided I could deal with it, even though it's so much better raw than cooked. I dislike raw fish.

I used to be a mildly adventurous eater, but what that meant when I was growing up in the Midwest when nachos and jalapeños were exotic is quite different from now. For every kid who eats only chicken nuggets and fries, there's a kid with very definite preferences in poké and Thai curry.
posted by theora55 at 7:26 PM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


I wonder how many people that have strong food aversions are "supertasters"?

The cause of this heightened response is unknown, although it is thought to be related to the presence of the TAS2R38 gene, the ability to taste PROP and PTC, and, at least in part, due to an increased number of fungiform papillae. Any evolutionary advantage to supertasting is unclear. In some environments, heightened taste response, particularly to bitterness, would represent an important advantage in avoiding potentially toxic plant alkaloids. In other environments, increased response to bitterness may have limited the range of palatable foods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster

That, or autistic as we tend to have increased sensitivities to all manner of stimuli.
posted by RuvaBlue at 7:54 PM on February 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


I spent decades thinking that I would always hate cilantro (the subject of much discussion in past Metafilter forums), but since many of my favorite cuisines often include cilantro (Indian, Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese), I decided I'd try to like it. And now I hardly mind it at all! I'm not putting big handfuls of the stuff in my pho, but, really, it's not bad. I never thought it tasted like soap, by the way.
posted by kozad at 7:56 PM on February 21, 2019


I can eat Brussels sprouts and broccoli if they're roasted and coated in other strong-tasting delicious stuff, but clearly I am doing my best to fool taste buds that want nothing to do with the brassica family. It would honestly be a relief to like them, they are So Good For You, as I am often told. I can eat them, they don't nauseate me, but they taste bad to me. It's irritating really. I'd like to be a vegetarian but many green things taste flat or bitter to me.
posted by emjaybee at 8:41 PM on February 21, 2019


Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough!
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 9:22 PM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


I have the weird ability to detect even slight amounts of alcohol in foods. It tastes, I don't know how to describe it... sharp? A friend once offered me a bite of his cheesecake, which was flavoured with some type of mild liqueur that he didn't even consciously register, and I reared back before my mouth closed on the bite. I could taste the fumes.

"Satter agrees that I might be better off if I just forgave myself for disliking certain things instead of trying to push through them. “If people can unhook themselves from the ‘shoulds’ and instead think about eating foods they enjoy, our research has shown that in the long run, they’re healthier,” she says."

I keep trying Foods I Don't Like from time to time, just to see if anything has changed, and sometimes it has. There are foods that I used to find repulsive that I actively enjoy now. But I definitely don't judge myself for continuing to not liking the taste of something. There's the remains of a Tiramisu in my fridge right now that I'm not going to bother finishing because the (incredibly minute amounts of) Marsala wine it contains make an otherwise amazing dessert just not that fun to eat. And why should I be forcing myself to eat dessert, y'know?
posted by Secret Sparrow at 9:36 PM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


I don't know what the big mystery about "supertasters" is supposed to be.

The chemical supertasters can taste that others can't is a thiouracil, and thiouracils are strong thyroid blockers:
Thiouracil refers both to a specific molecule consisting of a sulfated uracil, and a family of molecules based upon that structure.

Medical use
The substance is a historically relevant anti-thyroid preparation. Astwood E.B. used it in 1943 as therapy of Graves' disease for the first time.[1] It remains in use.

Thiouracil inhibits thyroid activity by blocking the enzyme thyroid peroxidase.[2] Its use in recent times has been replaced by advent of more potent and safer antithyroid drugs.
It's still in use as a finishing agent in feedlots because it causes animals -- and presumably human beings -- to put on weight by slowing their metabolisms.
posted by jamjam at 10:01 PM on February 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


Aw man, I can relate to that social coding bit. I get coded as a fussy eater mainly because of three things my taste buds respond poorly to: beer, wine, and olives of any color.

I don't want to hate any of them, but any of those three will just make me wretch.  It's weird, and I wish it didn't work that way because all three of them look tasty and I want to like them, but *shrug,* what are you gonna do?  It's literally—not figuratively, mind you—a physical revulsion when those flavors cross my taste buds.

Hating beer sucks because hey, it's everywhere and I can't join in with a very common social thing.  On the other hand, I'm the first male in my family to approach 50 wearing the same size clothes I did when I was teen—and I'd lay odds my beer aversion has helped that tremendously.  Wine, sadly, just all tastes like vinegar only worse, and olives—well, I'd rather not even imagine eating them, the effect is so strong.

But yeah, I get that sense of shame.  I hate being the bother when ordering and I inwardly cringe when I have to pipe up and request the olives be skipped or else simply gaze sadly at the food.  But at least olives are the only solid food on my list of three, so I guess I shouldn't complain.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 10:45 PM on February 21, 2019


I'm a goat, i'll eat nearly anything ( although the older I get, the more I avoid sugar because it makes me feel weird.)

I have a friend who is the opposite -- he' s picky. I found out last year that he never eats eggs.

HOW?!
posted by Chronorin at 12:16 AM on February 22, 2019


I have a saturation point with some foods, for example sauerkraut, which is delicious at first but starts to lose its allure midway through a serving. Seafood like shrimp or scallops is the same. But fennel seeded sausages are just fine, thanks.
posted by axiom at 12:53 AM on February 22, 2019


I gave up disliking foods a while ago. I don't know if I am a super taster, but I was one of the people who thought cilantro tasted like poison, and celery was unpleasant, and cucumbers bitter. I disliked sodas as a kid, and beers as a young adult, and coffee for most of my life. But I also love to cook, and love to eat new things, and love to travel, and it just got to the point one day where I was tired of not liking things. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who has food aversions can (or should) overcome them. But I could. Cilantro does still taste something like soap. But I can appreciate it for its soapy self and enjoy how it balances other flavors. Many things still taste intensely bitter. Like, eye-wateringly bitter. But like spicy chilies, I have learned to appreciate the nuances of the bitterness. What was important for me was that I did not decide to tolerate the foods I disliked - I'd done that for years and it was unpleasant. I decided to enjoy them. And for me, that turned out to be possible.
posted by Nothing at 2:30 AM on February 22, 2019


I have a friend who is the opposite -- he' s picky. I found out last year that he never eats eggs.

HOW?!


This is also me! And I remember eating straight-up hard-boiled eggs as a child! No adverse experiences, I just lost the taste somehow. I can only take small amounts in, ex., fried rice or French toast. Any more than that and nope. The taste of sulfur or something? IDK.

I have a relative who is allergic to eggs, so that can happen, but that isn't my deal.

I want to like those too. I want to like all of it, there are so many things to try and I don't have a legit reason for being averse. (Not a supertaster, on the spectrum, etc.)

It makes no sense:
tofu and eggplant yes, mushrooms no (texturewise)
pickles yes, olives no

It's like bodies are weird + perception is weird = double weird.
posted by cage and aquarium at 3:10 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


For me, a lot of things I don't care for in their raw form are palatable once cooked. Tomatoes, for example. I also can't stand to drink milk, but I don't mind it as an ingredient (or even in tea).

Still can't stand celery in any regard, though.
posted by entity447b at 3:41 AM on February 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


I was one of the people who thought cilantro tasted like poison, and celery was unpleasant, and cucumbers bitter.

I hate cilantro, can tolerate celery, and love cucumbers, I eat them at least five days a week.
posted by ellieBOA at 4:14 AM on February 22, 2019


Alcohol tastes awful to me and always has, to the point where I find no enjoyment in any alcoholic beverages whatsoever. Never mind the physical effects—I cannot get past that awful, bitter, burning taste. I spent decades believing that this would magically change so that I could share beverage enjoyment with others, but at 60, after tasting countless glasses of what others declared delicious, realized that this would never happen. There is a genetic component here—no member of my family ever consumed alcohol, ever; when I questioned this I was told that it wasn’t a moral choice—nobody liked the taste, period.

Interestingly, I have enjoyed wine—when using psilocybin. For some curious reason, the psychedelic altered my taste perception such that it tasted wonderful; once the mushrooms wore off, it was the same old story.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:58 AM on February 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


Is your cucumber bitter?

I'm the same as this author with cucumbers. For as long as I've had memories of cucumbers, they've been the most bitter food I encounter. I tell people about this and they can't believe it, usually saying something like this that I find completely impossible to believe: "Cucumbers don't have much flavor. They're just kind of cool and refreshing."

The bane of my life in the last decade or so is the massive increase in "cucumber water" everywhere, often as the only non-alcoholic drink available. Or maybe it's always been in the adult world and I just noticed it as I left college. Weddings, hotels, conferences, offices, picnics and other social gatherings, etc...it's everywhere! The taste is so off-putting (and no one seems to understand why it tastes so bad to me) that I will gladly choose dehydration.

I love cilantro and celery, though people do laugh when I describe raw celery as being a bit spicy.
posted by msbrauer at 5:42 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


Some cucumbers taste bitter to me and some don‘t - I always thought I‘d just bought a bum cucumber, but now I‘m wondering if it‘s my taste buds see-sawing!
posted by Omnomnom at 6:28 AM on February 22, 2019


I think I'm an under-taster, for what it's worth. I actually really like strong flavors. My food aversions are all about texture, not taste.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:29 AM on February 22, 2019


it's gotten to the point where the smell of Old Bay has started to become a nausea trigger for me.

I think under Maryland state law you might be legally required to move to Delaware.

(kidding!)

I do actually have a bunch of food aversions, mostly texture-related-- particularly anything slimy, gristly, or unexpectedly crunchy/firm in a soft food. And I don't drink carbonated beverages because the bubbles hurt my mouth. And anything with a lot of tannins just tastes super bitter, which rules out a lot of alcohol and coffee. Uh, and I can't really handle a lot of capsaicin.

But I definitely eat a much wider range of foods than I did as a picky kid! I would just prefer to avoid the ones with cucumbers, onions, or olives, and leave the tomato off my sandwich, please.
posted by nonasuch at 6:51 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


I have gone from actively avoiding cucumbers as gross to the point where I can eat half a cucumber, sliced, not even thinking about it until it's gone. Last summer I craved them; I was going through multiple cucumbers a week. I have no idea what changed in my brain. I always tolerated them with cream cheese in finger sandwiches, but now I will eat them just straight up plain.
posted by fiercecupcake at 8:41 AM on February 22, 2019


Never mind the physical effects—I cannot get past that awful, bitter, burning taste.

This is about how I feel about coffee. It tastes like dirty socks and bitter. I don't care how much milk, cream, foam, or 'chino whatever you put into it, it still tastes like that. I tried decaf and that got rid of the bitter but not the dirty socks. I have tried all kinds of milked down coffee products and it still is not yummy delicious. I have tried and tried to like it. I'll eat tiramisu to be polite but I still don't like the coffee bits of it. The only coffee-flavored thing I can like is kahlua because it isn't coffee, it's alcoholic milkshake.

Ironically, I do like the "green coffee" drinks Starbucks produces, presumably because they haven't been roasted. I don't get why ashy tasting things taste good to other people. I get drinking it for the caffeine, but drinking it because it is tasty goodness? And to me it smells as bad as it tastes and reeks throughout a room.

I hate that I hate coffee. You are very socially left out if you don't like the stuff. I think coffee and chocolate are probably the worst foods to dislike socially in America because they are everywhere and people think you are freaky for not loving them. I get so tired of hearing, "I just gotta have MY COFFEE!" and "I haven't had MY COFFEE yet!" every dang day. At least I don't live with a coffee drinker so I don't have to smell it at home. Must be genetic because my parents didn't like it either.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:44 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


I can get past most of my small handful of aversions but there is one which I have found a great deal of difficulty getting past... Dill. It's a visceral reaction.

You may or may not be interested in this but I recently put forth an askme about how to fight a similar dill (and parsley) aversion!
posted by mosst at 9:33 AM on February 22, 2019


I'll eat basically anything, but green peppers taste unpleasantly like grass to me (and cooked green peppers taste like stewed grass, which is far worse). It's always been weird to me that I really have no other notable food aversions except for this one pretty benign thing.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:20 AM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


I like cucumbers, but people who think they're bitter aren't wrong! It's that some of them are bitter, and that bitterness particularly tends to concentrate in the ends. If you cut off the ends, or, even better, sliced, salted, and drained them, you probably wouldn't taste any bitterness.

Now that's a lot of work just to eat a cucumber, so I don't blame anyone who doesn't want to bother, but I'm just trying to say: cucumbers aren't necessarily inedible for you.

For me it's always been texture. Zucchini. Okra. Just...I can't.

The one thing I haven't been able to stop disliking is natto (Japanese fermented soybeans)

My brother lived in Japan for two years and this was the one food he absolutely could not take to. Dude will eat almost anything else, but natto defeated him.
posted by praemunire at 11:30 AM on February 22, 2019


When my wife and I were first dating there were lots of foods she didn't like. She has discovered that she likes many of them now either from having more a mature palate to having good preparations. Some things she claimed to hate but now loves are cashews, brussel sprouts, and currys.
posted by ShakeyJake at 2:51 PM on February 22, 2019


This is about how I feel about coffee. It tastes like dirty socks and bitter.

I enjoy an occasional coffee drink (with lots of milk and sugar) but I don't like the smell of coffee, and most people think that's very strange. My wife, who is the coffee drinker in our family, likes a very specific, super-dark roast from our food co-op. I do all the grocery shopping, and I can barely stand to have the stuff in my car because it smells so strong. It's been a little better since we got a bean grinder and I can bring home the whole beans rather than grind them at the co-op, but it's still just way too strong for me. Diet Coke is my caffeine vehicle of choice.
posted by dlugoczaj at 3:16 PM on February 22, 2019


I experience the flavor of cucumbers as subtle and light, but also deeply unpleasant. Like unadorned celery, it's a chore to endure.
posted by Selena777 at 5:41 PM on February 22, 2019


For me it's always been texture. Zucchini. Okra. Just...I can't.

Weirdly, although I mostly don't like slimy- or mushy-textured things, I like okra just fine. It makes no sense, but somehow that is the way it is. There's no logic to it at all; runny eggs used to nauseate me and now I love them.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:58 PM on February 22, 2019


I know for sure that commercial vegetables are bred (phenochasing) to sell as broadly/ produce as cheaply as possible - leading to insane stuff like iceberg lettuce. I wonder if the same thing happened to commercial cucumbers?

Here in Canada, I see both cucumbers (basically un-dehydrated/ flaccid pickles) (which I never buy because they've watery and bland and I can get better texture out of Winter melon) and "english cucumbers" which are long and crisp and tastes like... cucumbers and are great in salads.
posted by porpoise at 8:56 PM on February 22, 2019


I find this thread refreshing because it encourages me to believe that my son, an eleven-year-old peanut butter sandwich, will survive to adulthood.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:16 AM on February 23, 2019 [5 favorites]


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