9 Nasty Truths About Your Favorite Foods
Famous Death Row Last Meals
"No matter how beautiful its carmine and orange stalks, the sight of a bunch of chard in my organic bag always makes my heart sink." -- Nigel Slater, The Kitchen Diaries
A boyfriend once told me that if I ever wanted to make him cry, I could serve him scrambled eggs on a Wednesday night in the winter. I had no particular interest in making him cry (though that changed later on...), of course, but I asked him why. He wasn't especially keen to elaborate, but it had something to do with childhood, and his mother having choir practice, and his now-estranged father taking over kitchen duties the only way he knew how.My best friend's husband is only now, at 35, accepting small wisps of mayo on his sandwiches after an incident 25 years ago involving his older, stronger brother, a spatula, and a family-sized jar of Hellmann's. My own grandfather, the child of immigrants who settled in a small Pennsylvania town, refused garlic for the first several decades of his life for fear of, in his words, "smelling Italian". It breaks my heart to know that, and it absolutely underscores the massive emotional impact that certain foods can have on us.
Food is uniquely powerful in that besides our multi-sensory involvement with it, it also becomes part of us. While other aesthetic details -- songs, smells, etc., may imprint themselves on our memories of situations both joyful and otherwise, they're not as likely to, well, make you feel like you're gonna hurl. It goes deeper than an aversion to taste or scent or mouth-feel. Food certainly warms the soul, but it can also make it heave.
My trigger food? Tuna-noodle casserole. And no, I don't wanna talk about it.
What are the foods that hit you where you live? Let it out in the comments -- we're here for you.
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1-31-2008 @3:27PM tsalagiwesa said... My goodness! There are SO many traumas dealing with food! I HATE the taste of liver! No trauma, just can't stand the taste or any other organ meat. Also, I am concerned with people eating raw meat. I've seen too many documentaries showing worms from the intestines of people who ate raw meat of all kinds.
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1-31-2008 @6:44PM Brenda said... Any kind of seafood... especially oysters...look like slimy snot. Also frog legs are nasty. I don't eat anything that hops or crawls sideways.
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1-31-2008 @10:50PM jayne knew said... Spinich. I can eat to raw or in Spinich dip but don't give it to me cooked with butter. It's not the taste I mind so much as the slimy feel of it going down my throat. Oysters do the same thing to me. But Mountain Dew and Bugles are the worst. I was allergic to the preservative they put in bugles when they first came out in the early 1970's. I had a snack of them with mountain dew. Everytime I take a sip of the dew or a try to eat a bugle, even though they stopped using that preservative, I'm in upchuck city immediately.
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2-01-2008 @12:20AM Lynne said... Wow, I've had some great laughs reading all these. Seems many of us have some common hates... tuna... the smell turns my stomach, have to leave the room and open windows. Creamed any vegie...looks like throw-up. Cauliflower - raw I can tolerate to be around, but cooked...especially overcooked like Mom used to do... mushy and smelly...it's another thing that just the smell of it is horrid. Funny how if we eat something when we're sick it can affect us for life...years ago I made brownies with peppermint patties in them, got sick that night, and the other day my teenage daughter found a recipe for them and I wouldn' let her make them, the thought makes my stomach churn. I can have each of them plain, but don't put them together! Also mushy vegies like peas, lima beans, kidney beans, etc. they're gross sawdust vegies.
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2-01-2008 @2:54AM Elizabeeth Ruybalid said... Yuckkkkkkkk-o food for me is LIVER. Any form is gagging.
Also, those turkey "giblets": horrible. Hubby likes these!!!
Also canned corn is too sweet. I love frozen or fresh corn on cob.
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2-01-2008 @9:14AM Michael Potter said... Lima beans are super heinous! I will eat around every single lima bean in a bowl of vegetable soup . . . their "mushy" insides have a very un-pleasant taste - yuk!
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2-01-2008 @12:32PM Shirley said... Broccoli!! I don't care how you fix it or try to hide it in soups, casseroles or veggie mixes. YUCK!!!
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2-01-2008 @2:07PM Desty said... Liver!!! any kind of liver, can't even think about it.
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2-01-2008 @2:51PM Abby said... Tomatoes, but I love tomato by products. Beets. Once I fed my daughter baby beets because I thought I should give her the chance to like them. When I opened the little jar, the smell made me throw up. No more beets for her.
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2-01-2008 @2:39PM joe said... DO NOT PUT CHEESE ON MY FOOD! I hate chefs that think everyone loves parmesan cheese. I hate , it stinks like puke and I don't want on or near my food.
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2-01-2008 @3:00PM Chrissy said... Ew. All I can say is red meat. The thought of eating some dirty animals nasty flesh and fat just creeps me out so bad.
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2-19-2008 @1:21PM QueenB said... LOL @ #8....cooked raisins looking like FAT TICKS! LOL
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2-01-2008 @3:16PM Sara said... Hamburger Helper! We were poor growing up and all we could afford was a big thing of ground beef and hamburger helper meals. My mom thought that was somehow nutritious and delicious! I can't even look at the hamburger helper meals when I walk down that aisle at the grocery store!
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2-11-2008 @10:40AM Etta said... Nothing makes me gag as much as to think of eating chitterlings - pig entrails (guts). They are so nasty smelling while they cook and to think of eating this "stuff" that smells like an outhouse or worse just plain turns my stomach. I generall love food and am willing to try tasting new items, but to think of eating this just makes me puke.
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2-01-2008 @3:45PM Susan said... one word - SPAM
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2-01-2008 @4:38PM Johnny said... EGGPLANT! That's disgusting, and I've tried to like it. I've had it fried, baked, in Asian dishes, parmessean, etc and I just can't do it. Give me liver and onions anyday, just keep the eggplant away!
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2-01-2008 @4:59PM groovekitty ~^..^~ said... RAW tomatoes (it's that gushy stuff w/the seeds that grosses me out) other than that i do like Tomato Sauce, Stewed Tomatoes & Tomato Soup.
Also Bananas (ironically loved them as a child, but no more), it's the mushy texture that bothers me....
Asparagus...ewwwwwwwww the stringy stuff and they smell funky when cooked!
Raisins...yuk! they are Grapes w/their lives sucked out of them...lol!
Cooked celery...i don't like the mushy texture...i can eat it raw...same goes for Brocoli and Carrots...i pretty much HATE canned and/or cooked veggies..they have to be steamed and/or raw...they taste much better that way...not all nasty looking in some funky casserole...yuk!
Even though i love fried Calamari, i just can't look at it..lol! The tentacles freak me out, so i have to eat it looking away!
I DESPISE cold Macaroni Salad...goes back to childhood..lol! The smell still makes my gag reflexes start up...lol!
Yet, I was the weird kid growing up who loves Brussell Sprouts, Lima Beans Spagetti Squash and Liver n' Onions...crazy huh! lol!
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2-01-2008 @5:01PM Tori said... I just realized I have kind of a big list:
okra (my grandma put it in my school lunch once in a styrofoam cup) eww, brussel sprouts, liver (stepdad made me choke it down and I had to dip it in ketchup to do so), chicken on the bone (especially drumsticks), beets, radishes, purple cabbage, green bell peppers, cranberry sauce, mayo has to be a very thin spread - no big dollops, buttermilk, o.j. with pulp, scrambled eggs in mac and cheese or in scrambled eggs (the smell is SO GROSS, I can only imagine the taste), spam, cooked carrots, canned veggies, gingersnap cookies (stomach virus ruined those), sweet potatoes (another stomach bug), sourkraut, raisins, raw mushrooms. I'm sure there's more, just can't think of them right now!
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2-01-2008 @5:26PM c said... all i can say is vegetable lasagna
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2-01-2008 @5:49PM wENDY said... When I was a kid, my parents would make stew. It had, tomatoes- which I hated, brussel sprouts- which I hated, lima beans- which I hated and it was a thin runny broth with chunks of stew meat, potatoes, celery and carrots. They would ladle it into bowls and that would be our entire dinner. I added so many condiments to that slop to try to eat it. I picked out what I could stand, but once you add canned tomatoes to something like that, everything tastes like them! My parents still make this wretched concoction.
I cant even smell it
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