I’ve had a very similar experience. I just had a nectarine for the first time last year at the age of 30. My mother was a very “meat and potatoes” cook in the literal sense. All she cooked was meat.and.potatoes. I wasn’t fond of either so I developed a fear of food. Now as an adult I think I was born a vegetarian and just didn’t know it. I love fruit and all vegetables. There are still many foods I haven’t had though, like hamburgers, and peaches.

I thought I was the only one! At 26 I just ate my first strawberry. Still haven't made it into kiwi territory. I've always loved vegetables but I never liked fruit. Even the smell of it made me sick. And now as an adult I am discovering all these new delicious things. Wow, I can't believe there is another person like me out there. I immediately sent this post to my parents just to reassure them that there are other odd balls out there, not just their daughter. :)

My parents just never spent money on fresh fruit for things other than apples and bananas. That was it. And it was often pushed on us as kids when all we really wanted was chips or cookies. Now as an adult, I have the maturity (HA!) to realize that in order to keep my weight at a reasonable number, I must eat fruits and veggies and over time have come to really enjoy them. Yes, I'd like to have chips or cookies for a snack but the scale climb isn't worth it. Now I have my own grown up money and choose to spend it on delicious fresh fruit. In fact, my grocery bill this past weekend was spent mostly on fresh fruits and veggies. I bought: watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, blue berries, grapes and jicama just for snacking. Doesn't have even count all the veggies I bought to go with lunch (salad) and dinners. It's interesting to me that my favorite time of year is when tomatoes are fresh and ripe off the vine (I've been known to eat 4-6 a day!) and when stone fruit are in season. Just nothing like a ripe apricot or plum! I would have NEVER uttered those words as a kid!

when i was little, my mother lured us into going to the grocery with her by telling us we could each buy $1 worth of fruit. it was sort of like a game to see who would get the most fruit, and the tastiest fruit with the $1. i was a pro at using the scale and barcode-sticker-printer (before the days of pre-numbered fruit) at a very young age! we never had processed sugars in the house (maybe that's why i can't have it in the house now... i will just eat it ALL!!!)

I grew up eating lots of different fruits. My parents always had at least four or five varieties of fruits around the house at any point in time (excluding dried fruit!). As an adult, I've kept this habit up but I so wish I could get my husband into it. The only fruit he ever buys are bananas and whenever he's hungry, he reaches for a banana. He does eat different fruits if I cut them up and put them in front of him but he doesn't ever serve himself fruit voluntarily. I'm hoping that with time, this will change but we'll see.

Really? I'm not the only fruit refuser? My mom says my sister entered the world loving fruit, and I entered the world loving meat. I would be fascinated to learn of any scientific explanation, if for no other reason than to make myself feel better for not liking fruit. It's not fruit, per se, but rather my general disliking for sweet things.

I love the way fruit looks, but I rarely crave it. And it's a chore to eat. If I eat a piece of fruit, I'll enjoy it, but not enough to eat another bite. Worse, of the fruits I do like, I can only eat one or two, thanks to an onslaught of adult fruit allergies.

Instead of fruit, I LOVE vegetables. Raw cauliflower, bell pepper, carrots, celery, radishes, you name it.

p.s. The only fruit I can never get enough of is Fuyu persimmon. I know some people can't stand the taste, but I love it.

p.p.s. just last night, I bought some bananas to force myself to eat fruit. i don't even like the way they taste, but i figure they're so portable and easy to eat, that i have no excuse!

Hey, this isn't reassuring me my four-year-old will one day eat fresh fruit! So c'mon, what would have gotten you to try it as a kid?

Is it a barrier to trying things vs an aversion to the actual thing itself? (Whereas me, I hate cooked beets and gamely try one once a decade and still hate em!)

I recommend a pineapple guava. There is a taste for the ages!

We often had fruit around the house or stuffed into our school lunch bags: bruised apples, sad old banana, or mushy room-temperature grapes. Sometimes the family dessert was a can of fruit cocktail, the texture of which I find especially unpleasant, or chunks of fresh melon (which I loved) doused in liqueur (which I didn't). Unsurprisingly, I didn't much enjoy fruit as a kid.

At Christmas, though, our grandparents always sent us a box of incredibly delicious, slurpy pears, so I always knew that fruit could be flavorful and delightful, a treat rather than a dutiful part of a meal. As an adult, I really love buying fresh local berries (or even better, picking blackberries and eating them out of hand), heirloom varieties of apple, little local melons the size of a fist ready to split and eat with a spoon.

I have issues with texture that made trying fruits a tough sell for me growing up. Most of the fruits and veggies I came into contact with as a pre-teen and teen didn't seem to be flavorful enough to get over the sometimes-weird textures of the food. Now that I live in L.A. and have plentiful access to fresh, local fruit via farmers market, I have found myself craving fruit like Mangoes like they're forbidden chocolate, or wishing I had some cash on hand to get a mixed bag of fruit sprinkled with chili, lime and salt from a vendor on the corner. I still have texture issue and really dislike cooked (mushy!) fruit, as well as a severe aversion to fuzzy stonefruit (good plums get a pass) due to early childhood trauma, but I'm now pretty fruit-friendly. Mediocre fruits and veggies nearly turned me off fruit forever!

I think that the main problem for a lot of us then, and sometimes now, is quality Grocery fruits and vegetables are so often out of season and hot house grown. We've never had the opportunity to enjoy real food!

My mum only ever bought apples and bananas and they were for my dad's lunches more than anything. I've never liked bananas, and the apples she bought were always royal gala, which I don't believe I've ever had a good experience with.
I don't think Dad liked the fruit she bought, either, because every summer he used to bring home a crate of nectarines and eat them one after the other. I helped. But, she never got the hint.
When I left home, I discovered Granny Smith apples along with fresh pineapple, and I've never looked back (so crisp! So juicy!). I adore pretty much all fruit, now, and when I'm given something that I'm not entirely sure what to do with, I generally fling it in a smoothie. Yum.

I grew up in Alaska where fruit (at least then) was canned or the sort suited to long transport time. Which meant we had a lot of grainy apples, bland grapes, and bananas that went from green to brown in the space of a couple of days. Since then I've moved around a bit and have settled in the Pacific Northwest. Never before have I had such amazing fruit. Each time I go to the farmer's market, whatever berries or fruit I find that week I declare the best ever. (Strawberries that are red all the way through! Nectarines and peaches you can smell before seeing! Blackberries that burst in your mouth like little bundles of happiness!) I now say that the fruit I had growing up wasn't really fruit. It was just a weak facsimile of fruit - it might share some of its color or a hint of its flavor. But that 'strawberry' you can buy in the store in December isn't really a strawberry; it's a storeberry. I'm so grateful to have discovered real fruit, with real color and real flavor.

Hmm, I've always loved fruit. My mom always stocked the house with a variety of fresh fruit, and my dad loved picking up Jersey peaches from farmer's markets when his job took him that way. So ripe the juice dripped down your chin. We also had vegetable gardens when I was a kid, and there's nothing quite like a perfectly ripe tomato still warm from the sun.

I am discovering some new fruits and veggies though, like avocado and mango and beets. I guess our taste buds are always changing and growing.

This is MelB918's Mom and I can confirm that she would shudder at strawberries but would have no problem picking tomatoes from the garden and taking a bite from them. I remember one morning when she was 6 - she went on the school bus with 'onion breath' from eating chives from the garden. Now she's slowly embraced strawberries and I was shocked to hear that!

I grew up with fruit trees in the backyard (apples, figs, peaches, cherries, nectarines are just the ones I remember-in addition to a walnut and almond tree...we are Italian-that explains a lot) so I have always appreciated the joys of fresh fruit, in season. While my childhood home and land are long gone from the family, I pass on my love of fresh fruit to my daughter and husband and I'm happy to say that is one of the first things both of them grab when they want a sweet snack.

I grew up eating a lot of fruit, but I never liked bananas. My parents somehow never remembered that fact and 43 years later, they still ask if I'd like a banana.

Like many of you, I started liking fruits (and veggies) when I could eat "real" ones. My mom started growing her own vegetables and fruits when I was a teenager and I will always remember this summer dinner when I tasted her tomatoes for the first time: I completely (re)discovered the taste! Now I live in the city and cannot have a garden, but I buy almost all my seasonal fruits and veggies at the farmer's market on Saturday mornings. It's better than grocery-store, but I'm still missing the little something that comes with having seen the thing grow in the backyard...

I always had fruit growing up, but I think I have a much greater variety now that I'm older.

I'm 30 and still don't like fruit. I like the flavour, mostly, it's the texture and squishiness that turn me off. I'll eat a banana sliced on cereal, or slices of apple as long as it is perfect and not bruised or brown in any way, but that's about it and even then I'm eating it because I know it's good for me rather than because I like it. I've started having smoothies for breakfast so I do get some fruit in my diet but I just don't enjoy eating it (though I love veggies and will eat anything). I wish I could learn to enjoy them, might help get my sweet tooth away from chocolate!

I'm working on it. There's still a lot I haven't tried. I don't really like sweet things, and most fruit from the grocery store growing up was overly sweet nastiness with horrible textures and wimpy flavors. It wasn't until I spent a summer in France a couple years ago that I found any fruit that I liked--it was just completely different than what I grew up with. Now I can handle berries and stone fruit, but things like apples and pears and melons still gross me out. Yogurt and whipped cream helps de-fruitify the experience so I can tolerate more of it, but it's tough!