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I used to hate tomatoes when I was a kid, but my Italian boyfriend re-introduced them to me 2 years ago and now I love them. I think nobody ever prepared them in a way that tasted good or I was just never exposed to good tomatoes. In addition to eating them, now I'm growing my own tomatoes on the balcony.

dislikes from childhood that disappeared after i visited france: cheese, eggs, mayonnaise and yogurt

fruits i always thought were so pretty that i beat myself into submission (and now love) for: persimmons and papayas

I don't know what happened, but for the first 34 years of my life, I *hated* mushrooms. Didn't matter what type - the flavor, texture... well, EVERYTHING about them made my stomach turn. I blame my mother for hiding them in our meals as a kid. Then one day I had a big, fat portobello arrive on top of my ribeye steak (thank you Jackson Grill) - and I decided to take a bite. It was the most delicious thing ever. Now, I can't get enough and travel frequently to River Valley Ranch, a mushroom farm in SE Wisconsin. Incredible.

I used to never have a taste for spicy food and now am craving it weekly.

Same goes for classic coleslaw.

pickles -- have always hated them, wish I didn't

Bleu cheese, salmon, all kinds of smoked fish, sushi, onions, wine, rare-to-medium beef (only liked it well-done), mushrooms... too many to count! I've discovered that basically anything edible, given enough chances and a good preparation, will start to taste good.

brussel sprouts, mustard, rice-based dishes

mushrooms and mustard and anything pickle-y

Tomatoes and Mushrooms are the most significant. I used to hate them in all forms (except ketchup and maybe spaghetti sauce). I now LOVE tomatoes and I really like cooked mushrooms (I guess I still just tolerate raw mushrooms, but even that's an improvement).

Mayonnaise, cheesecake, and brussel sprouts.

Sauerkraut!

I didn't like wine at all until I was about 22. My aunt has an absolutely incredible collection and to think of all those family dinners that I passed on trying (we're Jewish, drinking a little wine with meals is allowed for children) some amazing bottles.... it's such a shame. I also hated cottage cheese as a kid, but now it's one of my favorite snacks.

Olives. All varieties sent me running, but the greatest offender in my childhood mind was defiantly a green olive stuffed with pimento - yuck! Olives promised to ruin any good pizza & leave a bitter taste. Now, I could happily plop down with nothing but a jar & a toothpick & much away.

eggs.

i spent a decade avoiding eggs as a dish because of a bad experience with a Spanish omelet a long time ago (eating one dead cold when already sick makes for a very, very bad thing). the other half started making me egg white scrambled eggs with sausage and cheese, then he'd toss in a full egg to get me warmed up to the taste of egg yolk. after 2 years of perseverance, i enjoy them again. i still need stuff mixed in, though, for them to be thoroughly palatable.

Eggplant - a victim of bad preparations, I ultimately discovered I like it when it's prepared right.

Coconut - I still don't like dried coconut. But fresh coconut is amazing.

Sweet Potato. hated it as a kid, now i love it.

As a kid, I hated mushrooms, onions, asparagus, zucchini, parmesan cheese, feta cheese, and hollandaise sauce. Love them all now!

beets - i eat them regularly now, but there are still some preparations of them that i can't tolerate.

right now i'm working on summer squashes, but it's proving a much harder battle than the beets.

Spinach! who would have ever said that I'd cook them regularly?
On the other hand, my mom says that I loved liver as a child the only time she prepared it, but I was so sick after eating it that she never got it inside the house afterward. When I tried it again as an adult, it made me gag... maybe my body remembers something I have fortunately forgotten.

Cheese. Until a fateful day at a family barbecue when I had the best cheeseburger in my life. My waistline has regretted that day ever since.

I hated sausage when I was a little girl. I liked hot dogs pretty well, but I thought sausage was disgusting. I love it now.

Olives! Used to make me gag, but now I love, love, love them.

All of the other things I've learned to like (tomatoes, onions, sweet potatoes) I only just like... I never really crave them. Olives are absolutely the exception. My taste buds did a 180 and I can't get enough of them now!

Mine would be oysters too. That and whole boiled crabs. The idea of dissecting them freaked me out as a kid til i got in there, ripped some lungs and guts out and started eating.

@MrsCatbird, I'll second the eggplant. I used to detest it because it was so often mushy or rubbery. Now I cut it into 1 inch cubes and roast it at 500 degrees for 20 minutes, tossed with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and it comes out perfect -- creamy on the inside and a little crispy on the outside. Delicious!

Olives and wine used to be much too strong for me. Now I could happily live on them alone ;)

Sea urchin. I thought it tasted like dirty sea water the first time I had it. Now I'm really fond of its complexity.

i hated mayonnaise and can't imagine i'd ever eat anchovies or sardines as a kid but i like all these things now. i'm also warming up to sun-dried tomatoes though one hardly ever sees them anymore.

Avocados and all avocado related foods...now I can't go a week without some guacamole! Fish of any kind and sweet potatoes are now on the enjoy list as well!

I used to despise tomatos raw but now I'll eat them and even look forward to them showing up in the markets. Onions are another one.

Mustard. As a kid I couldn't stomach the stuff, but now I find myself scraping the bottom of the dijon jar wondering how it ran out so quickly.

Sadly, I still get squicked out by mayonnaise. Do former haters have any tips on how to overcome that one?

Olives and cheesecake. I hated them as a kid. I adore olives now and can enjoy a really good cheesecake once in awhile. Oddly, I used to be a fiend for sweets, but I think I've grown out of it.

I really disliked eggplant and persimmons as a kid (although I ate them dutifully, since they're so prevalent in Filipino cooking). Thankfully, I love both now!

Cheese and olives - I never liked cheese, which made me a pretty weird kid I guess. But when I was dating my husband, his mother kept feeding me St Andre cheese and kalamata olives on crackers which I ate to be polite. I love them now!

Wish that I could like smoked salmon... I love smoked and I love salmon, but something about the raw texture is just challenging to me.

Bananas. I refused to eat them as a kid. Then, between the drinking and the running, I started getting massive potassium cravings and now I like and even crave them as long as they're ripe enough.

Still can't stand mayonnaise, though. The fact that my father shudders and makes faces at the very mention of it got me far too indoctrinated to change my mind.

I hated meat as a child. All of it. Pork, beef, chicken, lamb, didn't matter. Now I love it!

as a once-picky-child, i have an amazing number of foods that i didn't like and now love, among them being:

tomatoes, beans of all types, blueberries, brambleberries of all types, coffee, tea, mustard, avacados...not to mention, mexican food, chinese food and sushi.

life is a lot more interesting now that i like all these things.

Oysters are the only thing I can remember disliking as a kid and enjoying now as an adult. Even then, I've only relatively recently started enjoying them. As in, only a couple of years ago.

I never used to like shrimp, but don't know if I actually tasted them...I just had an aversion to shrimp based on the fact that, to me, they looked like "bugs of the sea."

But then I tasted them and found out what everyone knows: they are delicious! I still get a bit of a creepy-crawly feeling about them sometimes, but they are too good not to eat.

Like MissMae, I was a picky child, and now I'll eat nearly anything. Formerly revolting but now crave-able foods for me include:
tomatoes
olives
mayonnaise
capers
real butter (I know, it's weird: but I grew up strongly preferring margarine!)
hamburgers
pickles

I used to loathe avocados. For some reason, I thought that they would taste too earthy and "green." When I met my current boyfriend, I noticed that he ate everything with avocados, so I let him make me a sandwich with some avocado slices. HEAVEN ON EARTH. Had I been missing out! It's like nature's butter. No more picking avocados out of sushi or sandwiches, no more avoiding guacamole.

Sooo much. I was a pretty picky eater as a child and there are many, many foods that I refused to eat back then that I now adore. Including but not limited to:

avocados
a lot of vegetables - red peppers, onions, cauliflower, cucumber, etc. etc.
oysters
sushi (this probably isn't all that uncommon but i didn't give it another chance until i was in my twenties)
mustard

...
beer.

Oh my god.

Tomatoes, Onions, Peppers, Mushrooms, Any kind of Seafood (some I still won't touch, most varieties of fish.), Sushi, egg salad, potato salad, asparagus, artichoke. The list goes on.

I blame all of this on my mother who is a terrible cook, and the pickiest eater alive.

Red wine is something I had to teach myself to like - and now I love it.

Tomatoes are something I will never learn to like. And I'm just fine with that!

oysters, red wine, and blue cheese. Thank god I came to my senses. Oh and sushi but that was years ago (OK, over a decade!) when it first becoming popular but now a week doesn't go by without it (though I can't stand "sushi for North Americans" like california roll, philadelphia roll, etc. - blech!).

I wish I like eggs more. I don't know but they don't taste nasty at first but then after a couple of bite they become odd tasting to me. My son doesn't like eggs either. But I used to hate raw onions. After I had my son I fell in love with onions. Now I enjoy heaps of raw onion in mostly anything. Still don't like much raw tomatoes but I like them crushed or cooked.

I used to *hate* olives, kimchi, sauerkraut, artichokes, goat cheese, beans and eggplant. Now I can't imagine my life without them. I'm working on liking beets, but it's slow going.

Despite being raised in a food-appreciating family with skilled cooks, I was a picky kid, and haven't gotten over a lot of things to date. Conquered foods include:

raw tomatoes, raw onions, cilantro, sushi, beets, wine, eggplant, tofu, red & yellow bell peppers (in progress).


I am still working on but presently can't stand:
hard-cooked egg yolks, green bell peppers, coconut (love the milk; hate the meat), anything pickled in brine - i.e. pickles, capers, olives - although I can stand olives in tapenade form, and love asian pickles (e.g. kimchi, oshinko, etc.).

olives, mayo and chocolate cake.

The first time I tasted amazing olives was in France -- and now I know that most of the olives we get in North America are but a pale shadow of what they can be when fresh, here.

There are 5 olive sellers in our Saturday outdoor market (in France), but only one of the them is really good.

With chocolate cake, I got a stomach bug in kindergarten, the same day that someone brought in cake for their birthday (yeah, I threw it up). Took close to 20 years before I could eat chocolate cake again without gagging! (man, what a loss!)

And mayo, well, I still don't like stuff drowning in it...

Celery, cucumbers, red bell peppers, raw onions, olives, beans, avocados. I avoided them in my childhood and in some cases, even in my adulthood (like beans and red bell peppers). I guess turning into vegetarianism in my early 30's made me less judgmental about flavors... LOL...

Mustard
Cooked bell peppers (didn't like the texture when I was younger)
Peas
Coleslaw

beets and watermelon

I used to not like butter when used as a straight ingredient - like on toast. But can appreciate it in small doses now.

But mayo I am still not a fan of - not because it tastes bad, per se, but because I find it unnecessary in almost all instances. I don't think it adds anything, even in texture.

Eggplant. It fell firmly into the "slimy" category and I wouldn't touch it. Bananas were also "slimy" and smelled weird. Since I was an experimental eater as a kid and liked almost everything else my mom didn't push me on those two.

I now love banana ice cream and baked goods, and have come to terms with them raw. But eggplant I CRAVE.

I loathed the though of eating tomatoes all of my life, up until this past year. That was when I started reading food blogs. I saw so many delicious looking recipes on your site and just had to give them another try! So thanks to you fine folks here at The Kitchn I am now head over heels in love with all tomatoes.

I'm a lot more willing to give things a good effort now, if you're a picky eater, I reccommend you read "The Man how Ate Everything", it really opened my eyes to all the foods I might otherwise not have given a first chance let alone a second.

As a kid, I used to hate pretty much anything that was raw or green, which included all lettuces, fresh herbs, and veggies (esp. tomatoes and celery). I also disliked anything remotely spicy and would spend a solid 10 minutes picking things out of my food at each meal. Crazy!

Somehow over the years, as I learned to try more foods, my palate opened up and I was able to eat and enjoy almost anything I wanted. Gone was my aversion for all things spicy. I eat habaneros and srirarcha regularly now and enjoy raw oysters on the half shell, sushi, celery, and fresh raw tomatoes with reckless abandon.

Anchovies --- Too salty and too fishy (although I have loved many types of fish as far as I can remember). I eat them at least once a week now. Amazing in pasta or just by themselves w/a piece of great crusty bread.

Lima Beans --- Loathed them as a kid for seeming very "waxy" and dense, but now they are such a great meal when combined with.

Currently, I don't believe there is any REAL food I don't like.....although my in-laws make Cuttle Fish (aka Sepia or Scarpetta) and although I have tried it 3X, the thought of chewing a bicycle inner tube is what I equate it to...:)

Green beans
Green olives
Mustard

Now I love them all and can't get enough.

Cheese. Beets. Pies. Casseroles. Oysters.

I look forward to Christmas when my sister in laws make pies because growing up Filipino/Chines I didn't have pies growing up.

Anchovies.

To all you commenters who hate mayonnaise--just count yourselves lucky!!

I love it....but it's so fattening that I wish I didn't!

CHOCOLATE!


I know, weird. But I think I disliked the ridiculous sweetness that went with it. Now, I only like dark, dark chocolate. Btw this only happened like 4 months ago!

olives (went to greece and saw the light... now I love kalamatas!), lima beans, avocado, and spinach.

Avocado I used to think had an off-putting texture, but ever since I was introduced to guacomole, I'm in love, and will eat it in any form.

Lima beans and spinach are funny. My mother cooked them in pretty awful way (boil, add salt and pat of butter... serve). Therefore, she gave me a very negative first impression of most vegetables. I ate persian lima bean rice with saffron and mint and fell in love. The beans were fluffy inside and fragrant. YUM!

And spinach I now LOVE. Quiche, omlettes, creamed, in rice, in soups... I just don't like it steamed with butter ;-)

I've always been extremely picky. Just off the top of my head, a few of the things I used to hate but love now are: mushrooms, any kind of fish, anything spicy, and curry. I still absolutely despise tomatoes, though.

Another picky eater here.
I used to hate olives, avocado, and the thought of sushi (once I plucked up the courage to try I loved it). I adore them all now. Fish eggs and oysters are a step too far though.

And now I've completely gone off the idea of meat, just can't stand the idea of it anymore.

I love almost every food (the only thing I don't eat is cilantro). What I used to dislike: coconut and raw tomato. I got over coconut by liking coconut milk (in thai food especially), and those dang Girl Scout Cookies. Seriously, they won me over. Now I love coconut.
Tomatoes: that was a tough battle. I found out that I like grape and roma tomatoes the most, oval ones are tastier to me than round.

Never had a brussel sprout until about two years ago! My FAVORITE vegetable now :)

Dim sum chicken feet!

Otherwise, I'm not very picky, so I haven't really had the potential to learn to love things as I already was eating them when I was young.

Lettuce, spinach, coconut, shrimp, rare steak...

I don't know how I ever hated avocados and guacamole, but I wouldn't touch them. Now that I've been converted, I think avocados are one of the most perfect foods in the world!