When I was three-and-a-half or so, my dad forced me to eat cooked carrots. He made me stay at the table until I ate them. After an hour or so I managed to force them down, then I promptly threw them back up. I think the subtext was a battle of wills between dad and my maternal grandmother over who was "in charge" of me. And I got caught in the middle.

I am about to turn 57. I still pick carrots out of soups and stews, and ignore them if they're served as a side dish. Oddly, I love raw carrots, but still cannot abide cooked ones.

Yes, I know I should get over it. Once a year or so I give cooked carrots a try -- and I still can't eat them.

Well, mine range from innocuous to disgusting.

Innocuous:
I once tried to make macaroni in one of my mom's nice glass bowls. Filled it with water, added heat and a little pad of butter, waited five minutes and then BOOM! The glass bowl cracked and spilled water EVERYWHERE. I frantically cleaned the kitchen and cried when I had to explain why their nice bowl was broken. That's the day I learned the difference between serving bowls and Pyrex.

Disgusting:
When I was growing up, it was standard fare for my parents to not believe me when I told them I was feeling sick. One of these times, I told them repeatedly, and they made me sit down to dinner anyway. I got halfway through my dinner of roasted chicken, Rice-a-Roni and mixed vegetables before it all came right back up again... onto my dinner plate. My mom stood up and quickly tried to catch it with a towel while my dad chuckled and said, "It looks just like chicken pot pie!"
I like chicken pot pie, but he was right. And I've never been able to look at chicken pot pie the same way again. (I'll still eat it though. :D)

The very first time I was given ice cream, I enjoyed the first bite so much I inhaled the rest — literally. The vanilla soft serve went up my nose and gave me the worst brain freeze ever imaginable. My mom tells me I wouldn't eat anything frozen for about a year afterwards! Of course I've gotten over it by now — who can live without ice cream!?

I still wont touch jarred mayonnaise or egg salad. Warm egg salad and ham sandwiches with mayonnaise in my school lunch box have ruined me on both forever.

I will eat pretty much anything. Offal, crazy foods, etc ... no problem. However, one lima bean (say, hidden in a bite of soup) can make me gag. I don't know what happened in childhood that was so traumatic with the beans. I seem to have blocked it out.

The second one is odder. Right out of high school, I worked at a retirement community and served dinner. One night there were canned beets on the menu. No big deal,smells a little pungent when in the steam tray, but tolerable. Somehow that night, someone knocked over an INDUSTRIAL size container of liquid smoke. I can't begin to explain the smell that came after the beets and liquid smoke mingled, but the smell of canned beets or liquid smoke can make me nauseous for hours.

Mine was also lima beans. I ate a big plate of them, liked them, but I must have been coming down with the stomach flu (as is common with 4 year old children/petri dishes) because right after dinner I went into the restroom and became violently ill for the next 3 days. Though completely illogical, both the sight and smell continue to provoke a gag reflex. I'm in my mid 20s now and I still cannot eat them.

Discovering I was allergic to shrimp at age 5. Good times.

hee hee--I also smashed limas under my plate! They are now one of my favorites and I even grow my own.

Tuna noodle casserole. We were a no-meat-on-Fridays Catholic household, and when my mom was young, she didn't know how to make any other kind of fish. So she put Mueller's egg noodles, a can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, and a couple of cans of tuna in a square Corningware casserole every Friday for my young years and baked it. I don't like those egg noodles, I don't like that soup, I don't like tuna, and I don't even like Corningware anymore. That is, I avoid trying anything anyone has baked in one of those casserole dishes for a potluck.

Not really a childhood thing... In my last place I had a kitchen with bad ventilation. One night I had made a from scratch dutch oven full of chicken and dumplings. When I went to work the next day, I was given a home-made cupcake, and despite better judgement (I try to keep sweets to a minimum) I scarfed it. Within a half hour I was violently ill and went home from work to the place still filled with the smell of the chicken and dumplings. It made me so much more nauseated. This was about a year ago, and though I don't think it was the source of my illness, I can stand to see or smell anything like chicken and dumplings yet.

Giblet gravy...Ugg..What was my grandmother thinking?

Most parents wash out their kids' mouths with soap for saying dirty words. Not my mom; she used vinegar. To this day, I hate pickles, olives, ketchup, anything that has a strong vinegar taste. And what is strong vinegar taste to me is very mild to most people.

My boyfriend, as a college student, worked one summer in a facility that made aspartame and to this day he doesn't drink anything with artificial sweeteners.

I spent ages 4 to 10 living in Southeast Asia, mostly Jakarta. My mom would take me to the fish market and the overwhelming smell put me off fish for good. Except for the occasional tuna sandwiches or the odd shrimp dish, I avoid it to this day.

Candied peel, candied ginger...makes me gag. Fruit cake forget it.

I hated canned peas as a kid. I called them water peas. Still can't imagine buying a can of peas.

Growing up we had an indoor grill and whenever we used it we'd set off the fire alarm. My parents liked things charred and my mother loved chicken wings. My sister and I would have to eat at least 4 wings until we could leave the table. The combination of dark, slimy chicken meat and what felt like an inch of crisp black skin forced me to wash each bite down with a gulp of water. And we'd be sitting at the table long after all the dishes had been cleared. I have never eaten chicken wings since. My sister eventually became a vegetarian.

We had a week at my elementary school called International Week. Each grade was assigned a country to learn about, and each class did a presentation on a certain aspect of the country. When I was in 2nd grade our country was France and we did a cheese tasting. I had my first bite of blue cheese and promptly gagged and had to drink a bunch of water. I couldn't stand blue cheese until just a couple of years ago.

Okra.. My single most disgusting childhood memory.. I hate (and still do) that slimy glutinous texture that sends my vagus nerve into over drive. What's worse, the urban legend around it was that it was THE food to eat for increasing your smarts.. I prefer to take the risk... To eating those slimy pods...

We were not terribly rich, but my aunt, uncle and cousins had fallen under even harder times so mom and dad invited the 7 of them them to live with in our basement so they wouldn't be homeless. We had a garden and Mom was a big home canner so we made do. Real milk was supplemented with powdered, etc. etc. But as a kid, there were still things I hated. One dinner, canned peaches were served along with some kind of meat, a rice pilaf and cottage cheese. Instead of passing the food around the table so I could have skipped my least favorite - the peaches - my Aunt plated everything and handed it out. I refused to eat the peaches, as well as the parts of cottage cheese and rice the syrup had contaminated.

Aunt was having none of this, and demanded we eat everything on our plates, lest we waste precious food. I refused. She pulled the "you'll sit here until you finish" card, so I did. All that meant was that by the time I was forced to eat it, the already hated squishy, slimy peaches were now even grosser and more tepid. She shoved them in my mouth (along with the accompanying cottage cheese and rice bits) and as soon as I swallowed them, I bolted up from the table and promptly barfed them up in a closet. I cannot abide even the smell of peaches to this day.

Not really a "thing", per se, more of an unfortunate coincidence.

I apparently was coming down with some sort of stomach bug when I ate at my aunt's house. I ended up getting VERY sick.

For many, many years after that, I was very reluctant to eat at anyone else's house.

My mom used to fill my Holly Hobby Thermos with milk in kindergarten. By the time lunchtime rolled around, it was warm and slightly sour. Needless to say, it took me years to get to the point where I could drink milk again!

Canned creamed corn. Every 5 years or so I forget what it tastes like and try it again. Then I'm good for another 5 years.

I was a 3rd grader having hot lunch in the cafeteria at school. Back then we were taught to eat everything on our plates, although some of us tried to hide some things in our empty milk carton. I was trying to hide asparagus this particular time and was caught by my teacher doing so. She immediately demanded I eat this asparagus. One bite down, ok, second bite happened to be one of the extremely woody ends which was like chewing a whisk broom. When I tried to swallow it I began to choke and the teacher had to remove it from my throat. Needless to say I'm now 58 years young and haven't eaten asparagus since then.

Ooooh boy lima beans are the absolute worst. My dad used to buy mixed bags of frozen lima beans and carrots that he would then steam or boil and plop on our plates without so much as a hint of salt. Horrible. I guess I'm lucky that they were frozen and not canned though because nothing is more disgusting (to me) than canned veggies.

I will eat almost everything now with GUSTO! (Not Jello, I draw the line).

When I was a child I was almost the exact opposite. I hated almost everything. I am not sure what happened although a lot of it was mental effort in my late teens, early twenties. I just didn't want to be a picky eater, so I started tryingt hings & let it roll over me.

Anyway--I have a sour milk story too, like KWHIT9TL. I hated milk from cartons, and always had difficulty opening those little cardboard cartons, once our school stopped getting bottles (I'm old). I remember having a day in 2nd grade when I struggled to get the little carton open, tore it, spilled most of it, and then when I did drink it, it was sour and warm. ERG. Then to top it all off, I took a bite out of the apple my mother sent from home, and it was rotten in the middle. The two things together sent me over the edge, and still induce nausea at the memory.

My father used to go salmon fishing and freeze most of the catch for later, baking large slabs of fish in the oven until it was absolutely dead and the house smelled horrible. It took me until I was about 26 years old to appreciate a delicately cooked piece of salmon.

My mother was and still is an avid pickler, and to this day vinegars are a nauseating smell and can be hard for me to eat - a former housemate would text me to make sure I wasn't going to be home before ordering hot wings because he knew the smell made me want to throw up. I'm slowly coming around to some things vinegar but I still mostly don't like pickles.

I wish the worst thing my parents made me eat was cooked carrots. My father will eat anything and my mother will not waste anything.

My dietary world growing up consisted of the following:

Liver and onions
Brain sandwiches
Leftover Soup - my mother will save even the smallest teaspoon of food and once she's collected enough, add all the leftovers in the refrigerator to one can of Campbell's vegetable soup. She tried to feed soup she had mixed with sweet and sour meatball appetizers and wondered why my 18 month old nephew wasn't eating!
Larger amounts of leftovers will be made into something - eg. "Swedish" meatballs with Italian sausage

Since my mother will not waste anything, everything in her kitchen is suspect. "Use By" dates are just a suggestion and I have found condiments in their refrigerator that were years past their expiration date. She will trim off "the bad part" of cheese and bread.

Amazingly enough, I don't have too many food issues except it must be fresh. Now in my 40's, I've learned that when they come to visit, I have to purge my pantry and refrigerator of anything that might expire and when we visit them, I do a lot of the cooking and make sure that everything I need isn't in her kitchen.

It's funny how many people are turned off by a certain food because they happened to eat something right as they were falling ill. This is actually what happened to me the FIRST time I ever tried a milkshake (my mom never let me have them). I had been coming down with the flu that day, and the milkshake did me in. I think I was 7 when that happened? I'm 23 now and just had a milkshake in the past year when I was at Shake Shack in NYC.

The other thing for me was hamburger helper. My mom used to make that on nights when she came home late, and I used to DREAD it. I didn't mind the noodles, but the fake cheese mixed with ground beef (which I don't like anyways) made me gag. I always ate as little meat as possible and just filled up on noodles.

Luckly my mom soon discovered burrito kits and switched to those as her late dinner/need to use up ground beef meals. Phew.

Cauliflower. Olives. They still rustle my jimmies to this day.

My worst childhood food memory was one of my own making. One night when I was in about third grade, I decided I was going to use some of the fresh cinnamon bread my mother had bought earlier in the day to make a homemade "cinnamon roll." My father warned me not do waste a piece of the expensive bread, and that if I insisted on making this, I would have to eat it, no matter how it turned out. I was fairly confident in my culinary prowess, so I proceeded with the project. However, being that I was 8, my cooking skills were in actuality, fairly limited. Case in point- I assumed that since I didn't have any of that delicious white glaze laying about, I would substitute it with something I considered to be fairly comprable- strawberry yogurt. I proceeded to smear the yogurt all over the cinnamon bread, and to top everything off, doused it with about a half pound of ice cream sprinkles. I took my first bite of what I was sure would be a heavenly treat, and almost vomitted. My father followed up on his earlier promise, and stood by while I gagged down every single bite of what I had made. That little adventure taught me two things- (1) you do not under ANY circumstances waste good bakery bread, and (2) contrary to popular adolescent belief, sprinkles do not make everything better.

While I don't remember any majorly traumatic episodes like some of the folks above (you poor people! *e-hugs*) I absolutely refuse to eat:

*boiled lima beans
*green bean casserole
*onion casserole

due to texture issues.

Thanks to the diligence and creativity of my fiancee, though, I've been known to partake of brussel sprouts recently, though absolutely detest when Mom makes them.

Oddly, even though I had a Bad Experience(TM) with Cheerios and the school nurse and a stomach bug, I love Cheerios just as much as I used to.

omg. i guess when i was little i didn't realize that fuzzy peaches (aka scary, disgusting fuzzy slices with weird red hairy things in the middle) were the same thing as canned (aka delicious and sugary and NOT hairy!) peaches....

i thought my parents were trying to trick me. and i was NOT eating them. they knew i liked peaches, so they told me i had to sit there until i ate them. i sat at the table, alone, in the dark, table cleaned up, everyone watching tv in the basement until bedtime when i finally got the guts to try a bite, was pleasantly surprised at how tasty they were, and went to bed, gobbling up delicious fresh peaches ever since!!

I loved scrambled eggs as a kid, but they were the last food I ate before getting an awful (unrelated) stomach bug when I was about ten. I've never been able to touch any kind of eggs since.

Also, when I was little, my dad told me that the fish sticks I was eating were made of fish eyes, fins, etc. He was trying to convince me to try "real" fish (aka fish in non-stick form), but his description put me off all seafood for good.

Not too bad: I refused to eat eggplant as a little kid (I mean, what kid likes eggplant). Never one to leave well enough alone, my mom told me I could have a clump of breadcrumbs because I love breadcrumbs! I said Mom, that's eggplant covered in breadcrumbs, I can see it I'm not dumb. She insisted "Its only breadcrumbs! Eat it you love them!" And because she's my mom and I trusted her, I ate it. You know it was freaking eggplant. It was disgusting. Was it worth it mom??

Terrible and lasting: I made gnocchi romano (I think its made with semolina flour or something like that) and salmon for dinner. It was pretty good! Little did I know I had the flu. Vomit, chills, fever, more vomit, for days. Its been years, I can't even think about polenta or gnocci romana or whatever it was, or salmon, without gagging! Totally unrelated but it ruined them for me.

My parents didn't have lots of time to cook some days, and on those days we would get microwaved chicken breasts. If we were lucky, BBQ sauce would be smeared on top. The result was dry, yellow, rubbery chicken. To this day I can't see a joke rubber chicken without thinking about those childhood suppers.

I have hated lima beans since I could eat solid food. They're horrible. Are they even food?

When my brother and I were kids, we had an in-house babysitter (I supposed she would be called a nanny now). Our school didn't have a cafeteria, so we would come home for lunch. When I was in Grade 5 she started babysitting another set of kids, and we went to their house because it was closer to the bus stop. Those two kids ate Kraft Dinner every day for lunch, and because we were at their house, we ate what they ate. But they didn't eat it the normal way-- they liked putting the cheese on themselves, and eating it with ketchup. So we were served bowls of dry noodles, and we poured the neon orange cheese dust on them and squeezed ketchup over all of it. It was so unappetizing that there were days I refused to eat it, and went to school hungry. To this day, I can't stand Kraft Dinner. My husband loves it though, and sometimes sneaks it into the house.

When I was about 10 I was happily eating an artichoke leaf by leaf when I got down toward the heart and found a few leaves with holes, and then a half a small worm. I had to hae eaten half of it.

While in daycare, at probably about age 4, we were served hamburger helper. I’ve always had an aversion to meat, ground beef in particular (then and now), and I refused to eat it. They made me take one bite and I stuffed it in my cheeks like a squirrel all day. I was not allowed to spit it up. When my mother came and picked me up I promptly spit it into her hand. She was horrified at their treatment of the incident (but I still had to attend day care there).

When my parents split up I was four. It left my dad with two kids and very limited cooking experience. There were a few basic food groups.... spam, hot dogs (he would cut them in half lenght-wise, broil them in the oven and make them into a sandwhich), box mac and cheese, as well as cheese and mustard sandwhiches.

To this day I cannot even look at spam. It's bad enough just as is, but add to the mix being fed spam 4 times a week for a few years, now that's a harsh food memory. The only thing I remember semi-fondly from these foods is cheese and mustard sandwhiches. With that being said, I'm only in the mood to have a plain cheese and mustard a few times a year.

I had a friend whose father married the kids' nanny after an ugly divorce. She became the evil stepmother and was horrible to the kids. If they didn't eat all of their dinner, she'd leave it out and make them eat if for breakfast the next morning.

My mom never really made us things we didn't like, and when you're little, the default setting is "I don't like it." We never had seafood until one night when I was twelve and my mom made tuna steaks. We didn't have any appropriate leftovers. It pretty much cemented my dislike of seafood.

I was mildly lactose intolerant as a kid. I could eat small amounts of cheese, but whole milk and ice cream would make me sick. Thankfully I grew out of it and eat tons of cheese nowadays, though I still don't drink milk straight up as it brings back bad memories (too many incidents to list).

Finding grizzle and a little purple bone-thing in McDonald's chicken nuggets scared me off legit meat as a kid. I'd eat homogenous gross meat products like hot dogs, but stuff that was too clearly linked to a formerly living animal grossed me out. I'm still squeamish about meat.

Second grade, school cafeteria, institutional tapioca pudding. It was like liquid. Only time I have ever literally gagged while trying to eat something.

Yeah, I hated lima beans and liver, and my mom made me eat them, but they never actually made me gag.

Age: 8. Ate a Slim Jim and threw up soon after. Haven't been able to stomach SJs or similar stuff since.

Once ONCE my mom decided to make a cheese souffle for dinner. She spent all this time, baked it, it looked perfect. She dished it out to everyone and we dove in. It tasted HORRID. We still don't know what it was exactly but it was not edible. I said something and she said I had to eat it all. I got mad and my brothers and I choked it down best we could. She finally got to easting hers with my dad, took one bite and went "Oh GOD!" and yanked the plates from us! She was so sorry and ran and got chicken nuggets for us instead!

As a teen I ate at a really nice restaurant for graduation with some friends and we all had what appeared to be a chicken gumbo. It was delicious. When we were done, a friend of mine was giggling and told me "That wasn't chicken. It was turtle soup" And it was. It was a specialty at that restaurant and it skipped my mind. I almost threw up on the spot at the idea of eating a turtle. And the fact it tasted so good!

I was a kid who would eat absolutely anything---slimy stewed okra (which I STILL love), eggplant, lima beans, you name it. The one thing I couldn't abide? Frozen fish sticks. I ate them once in my life and am still scarred by the experience to this day.

My grandmother lived with us when I was growing up, and she did all the cooking. For years I was the pickiest eater - I didn't like most cooked vegetables, berries, yogurt, tomatoes, avocado, sour cream, dark chicken meat, etc.

When I went to university and started cooking for myself, I fell in love with cooking, and started trying all the things I'd avoided for years. I realized that everything fell into one of two categories: things that I liked, but that my grandmother had just overcooked (a Scottish background means that everything is boiled or baked for at least 2 hours); or things that I hadn't liked because I tried terrible versions of them - fat-free, aspartame-filled yogurt; rock-hard imported strawberries in the middle of January, etc.

I no longer have any food aversions other than overly-processed pre-made foods!

Oh, dear. I have two:

1.) Tuna Noodle Casserole. My mother made it just once, with one of those horrible boxed kits, and it was awful. I already didn't like canned tuna, but I still won't touch the stuff. Mom looked at my little brother (who also wasn't having any of it) and told him that for every bit he ate, I had to eat one. He cleaned his plate, and it never occurred to me to argue with her. I still haven't forgiven him.

2.) Alas, I still don't like beer. I asked my dad if I could try some when I was five, and he let me. I still remember how bitter and funky it tasted, and I've never been able to get over that first taste memory, even though I know there is a whole beer world out there that I will never get to explore. Not sure how I got through college without that experience, either.

My mother made canned asparagus with some sort of cheese sauce from canned soup. She made me sit at the table until I had eaten some. I was sitting there all alone. The dish was completely cold at that point besides completely disgusting.

The irony is that my mother doesn't even like asparagus. I absolutely love it now, but only eat the fresh stuff.

I'm with @Nannypoo... I'm kind of upset by the number of stories like that on here. My parents always tried to make stuff they thought we would like and we generally only had to try it and if we really didn't like it we didn't have to eat it. The story about the charred chicken wings in particular was horrible!

We ate lots of casseroles when I was a kid (8 kids, one teeny paycheck). We had lots of potatoes, which was OK, but my mom's go to dish was ground beef with tomato sauce. If it was over noodles, it was spaghetti. If it was in a loaf, it was meatloaf. If it had gross gagerific chunks of stewed tomatoes, I was going hungry. I cannot, will not eat a canned stewed tomatoe. Makes me choke to even think about it.

For me, the 'forced food' was fried eggs; my mother would put a clock on the table and tell me I had an hour to eat one. She remembers me eating and then throwing them up, so to this day, I can't even cook a fried egg...but wait - there's more!

In second or third grade, she sent me to school one day with a babyfood jar full of half lime jello and half cottage cheese. I took one look at it and tossed it; tepid jello, especially in my least fave flavor, lime, and cottage cheese make a horrid melange of inediblity..

I didn't like "curry" (i.e., any dish spiced with curry powder) or chickpeas as a little kid. Can't remember what my problem with curry powder was, but I know it was the texture of chickpeas that got to me. I have several vivid memories of my parents insisting that I must eat a minimum quantity. Apparently my grown up tastes kicked in when I was around 12, and now I love both.

My worst and most lasting food experience was yet another brought on by an unfortunate convergence of a stomach bug and a particular food - Campbell's cream of tomato soup, in my case. I haven't eaten it since, and avoided all other tomato soups for a good twenty years.

That photo of the lima beans made me gag a bit just looking at it. My mom would buy the frozen veggie mix with lima beans and I hated their texture and flavor. Eventually she would let me eat around them, or if she just made lima beans, she'd offer an alternative for me (and basically everyone else in the house). I was even happy to see Brussels Sprouts as the table veggie, as long as it wasn't lima beans!

A few years ago, my boyfriend ordered a dish at a restaurant that was served with fava beans. Neither of us had eaten them before, and he's not a big fan of beans in general. He tried one and found it disgusting, but I bravely tried one. It reminded me of a giant lima, and I quickly had to take some bites of my dinner to get rid of the flavor.

Canned veggies are gross, especially green beans and peas. The gray-green color of them was always a turn off.

My Mom regularly cooked the meals she loved the most - chili with kidney beans and liver with onions. I was considered a picky kid for not liking those things at the time, but I will now eat just about everything, except for those two. I still can't stand them. And meanwhile, my Mom who allegedly 'liked everything' has a laundry list of foods she won't eat. The strangest of which is is cherry or grape tomatoes - altho she loves the 'regular' ones.

My Mom made many bland foods nobody wanted to eat.... but culturally my father, who was a phenomenal cook, had to hide & cook for us..... http://7th-taste.com/2011/11/13/frugal-foodies-night-vegetarian-dirty-rice-with-barbera-dasti/

Seattlej! SAME thing happened to me, worm deep in the steamed artichoke. Ick. Didn't deter me from loving artichokes although my mother for years tried to convince me that I "hated" the hearts because she wanted mine.

I had one of the "You won't eat it? You'll stay at this table until you do" conflicts over meatloaf. Around midnight, my mom gave in, removed the plate, put me to bed, and ever after made me a hamburger patty on meatloaf nights. Child 1, Parents 0. I have eaten it as an adult but I'm still not a big fan.

I almost turned myself off of English muffins, because I loved them so much I tried to make my own. At age 7. For several nights I snuck into the kitchen in the middle of the night attempting to make English muffins: flour, water, salt, mixed up and poured onto a baking sheet. Of course, I was basically making cooked glue. I managed to cover my tracks until one night I decided MORE HEAT was the answer and I burnt my glue muffins, filled the house with smoke, set off the fire alarm, woke up the whole family, and got into trouble for ruining one of the baking sheets.

What REALLY mystified my dad, I remember, is that we *had* English muffins in the house!

As a child, sometimes we ate the school hot lunches which were pretty disgusting. And one item on the menu which I hated was lima beans. Maybe it was how it was prepared (overcooked) served in those minty green plastic bowls, but to this day, I can't eat them. I've grown to like other beans but not lima. Sorry fellas.

Thousand. Island. Dressing. *shudder*

My mom once made spaghetti with bean sprouts hiding in the noodles. She'd read somewhere that this would be a good way to "trick" kids into eating veggies. Spaghetti shouldn't be crunchy!

Does anyone even like lima beans? They're pretty disgusting!

Coconut cookies and carbonated orange drinks (specifically, Polo biscuits and Fanta orange) ; I had too much of each during a Sunday afternoon car trip, they didn't sit well. Never again.

Fresh lima beans are delicious.

Being a picky eater wasn't an option for me. I learned at an early age that hot sauce is your friend!

When my older sister was twelve she had a pet lamb that my dad kept at our family fun buisness. One day my dad had it slaughtered and they had it for dinner and my dad forced her to eat it. Not out of maliciousness but out of the fact that it was food and you shouldnt refuse it and that animals are for eating or WHATEVER. ANYWAY... needless to say shes been a vegetarian since and shes 31...poor baby!

We went to England sometime in 1984 or 1985, and I was traumatized by a hamburger I had at a restaurant there. I must have been eight. It's hard to know now what I disliked about it at the time, but I think the meat may have been gamier than I was used to.

I swear, I almost cried, I felt so...betrayed by it! The funny thing is that if it had been a food I didn't recognize, I probably would have snarfed it right up.

I don't remember ever being forced to eat something as a kid. If I didn't like it, I didn't eat it. End of story.

Catfish, however, is the enemy. I stayed at a neighbor's house cause my parents were at work. They fed me catfish. Please, keep in mind, I grew up in Japan and ate all kinds of awesome fish and seafood. But the day I ate "boneless" catfish and promptly began to choke on the bone that caught on my throat has turned me off of fish for a long time.

Now, it turns out I break out in hives if I eat "safer" fish such as tuna and salmon. So fish is definitely out. Anything of the clam/mussels/oyster families are out too cause they skeeve me out and plus I'm allergic to oysters and would fear having a reaction to them now anyway.

Black eyed peas. It was pretty bad.

oatmeal. and i still can't go there.

My grandma used to always serve gritty steamed spinach. She never quite washed it well enough. It was just unseasoned green mush with dirt in it. But, I still love my grandma! :)

I don't remember being forced to eat disgusting things. We ate well as a kid and my kids eat well now. (And both adore fresh limas, briefly boiled.)

But I am revolted by a few of the foods I ate way back then.

- A1 sauce on untoasted bread
- Cheap bolgana wrapped around Cool Whip
- canned spinach

One word.....tripe.

The worst that ever happened was once as a pre-teen I left a coke outside at a backyard BBQ at our house. It got dark, and I remembered I'd left my drink outside so I went out to get it. Picked it up, drank from it and realized the sugary drink had tracked ants and they were all over my arm and face / mouth. I'm pretty squeamish about ants to this day, I get the creepy crawlies. I don't drink sugar soda anymore, either.

As a teen, I was coming down with the crud in the heat of the summer. Picture family reunion the next day at a state park and we had barbecue the night before. I chose the ham for whatever reason. The next day right after lunch at the park, in 100+heat, supper, breakfast, and the lunch reappeared. After 20 years, barbecued ham was finally appealing again.

Specific dish: something a family friend gave Mom as a soupy casserole-like dish. Friend called it "tamale pie", but it is much thinner than the versions I've found online. Has the usual ground meat, black olives, some cheese, kernel corn, tomatoes and so on. Texture is as repulsive as the appearance and taste to me. (The chicken pot pie thread above gives the general idea.) Mom makes the dish and offers me older leftovers. It was my one dish I could avoid eating at the dinner table.

Food dislikes:- oysters, raw, fried, whatever. Oddly, Sis IS allergic to them and she was never fond of them either.

I kept trying okra until I found several cooking methods I liked. I prefer it fried or steamed. The slime and bitterness depends on the size of the pods, and not over cooking them. At first, only fried dipped in ranch dressing was edible. (Grandpa couldn't see the okra pods to pick them until they were 1+ inch around and quite long. Very bitter.)

Lima beans, I'd eat, but Mom never served them as a bowl of lima beans. They were in a mixed veggie frozen package. Seems Mom hated Limas, butters and whatever similar types are out there from childhood. She still doesn't like them in her 80s.

Eggplant- I prefer the heirloom types or even better, the Asian type. Dip is good.

Radishes- eaten raw they were never sweet to me. Grilling slices until translucent- sweet heaven.

beets: Harvard/pickled = BLECH. raw or steamed or roasted are quite appealing.

I must have been about five, and was selected to be in a Mayonnaise commercial (Helman's). I had to eat tons of raw peas (they look greener on tv, and more slippery, which was part of the commercial) with mayo...I ate so much of both that I got really sick. It took me years to get beyond my aversion to Mayo (and I still much prefer home made over jarred), but to this day I still cannot stand peas, disgusting, if I had my way they'd become extinct, that was also the end of my TV career.

My parents never forced us to eat anything, and my mom is an excellent cook, so I grew up eating pretty much anything. But I have never liked bananas, and even though I've tried them as a grownup, I still think they're disgusting.

The worst for me, when I was a kid, is that my mom used to mix a can of mushroom cream soup to her white rice. I loved white rice, but the mushroom cream made it horrendous. And even after me complaining, she still made it.. several times a month.

Today, I can eat mushrooms, fresh ones, cooked ones, they're still not my favorite food, but they're not so bad. But do not open a can of mushroom cream soup in front of me : I will get nauseous.

My mom also introduced my to okras : that slimy texture, that bitter taste. I cannot fathom how some call this a «delicacy»... yuck.

14 grain brown bread and «creton» (pork based meat spread ) sandwiches : Ugh. I can have the creton on a cracker, just fine, but that particular pairing... It's the perfect example of how to demoralize a 9 year-old with her lunch box. It makes for a dry, unsavory, unflavorful, greasy sandwich.

I am intensely allergic to shellfish and just smell of them makes me nauseous. I can tell you from the smell of the parking lot if a restaurant serves them. I'm fairly sure this is due to my mom insisting I eat lobster or shrimp or something every few years while I was growing up to 'see if I had outgrown my allergy yet'.

I had my very first Twinkie given to me at the age of four by a kid I was playing with. I was so grossed out, that it became the only Twinkie I ever had. Still grosses me out 37 years later.

Also, I hate Peeps and anything Peep related....cotton candy...and the inside of the Cadbury Cream Eggs creeps me out.

One summer when my sister and I had to stay at our dad's house, we eat spaghetti at least 3 times a week. It took almost 14 years before I even looked to any sort of pasta with red sauce.
But the one I absolutely hate is corn pudding. My mum convinced me to just try a bite. It made to my mouth before the smell and texture did me in. Needless to say the only corn I eat as an adult has to be on a cob.

My parents made me eat a casserole with ham and canned asparagus, onion, rice, and some sort of cream soup mix when I was 10 or so. I won't go into details, but my father was abusive about it. I did not eat asparagus again until about 5 years ago and I am 39. I often roast it and enjoy it now. That episode really cemented the idea of not forcing foods onto kids. My daughter has to try one bite and move on if she doesn't like it.

When I was in kindergarten, someone in class had a birthday, and their mother brought in chocolate cake. Alas, after eating the cake, I threw up, and hated chocolate cake until well into adulthood. (a childhood without chocolate cake!!)

In grade 2, I got my mother's lunch by accident. It was a thermos of buttermilk, gone bad, and a sandwich made of thick slabs of bread (ugh) with slices of raw onion on it. I've never seen my mother ever eat anything like this, before or since, and so it was a shot out of the blue. I ate a donut that day, and made my own lunch from that day forward.

My poor 5 year old -- I remember being so grateful that he loved French lentil salads. Alas, her developed gastroenteritis one day, and his last meal before getting ill was... lentil salad. He vomitted lentils for days... I don't expect him to be able to try a lentil again until he is 25.

I wasn't (and am not) a terribly picker eater, but I'm also pretty sensitive to textures. I have two big food aversions from my childhood--overly "wet" tuna salad, and chickpeas. My mom used to make tuna without draining the can well, and with plenty of mayo. I was about 18 before I tried tuna again, and to this day I meticulously drain the can and only add a tiny amount of mayo or miracle whip (the tang helps).

Chickpeas, well, that was just unfortunate. My dad used to occasionally bring us to the salad bar at the grocery store where my mom worked, and he'd let us pretty much put whatever we wanted into those plastic containers for dinner. Being veggie-inclined kids, this usually worked out well, until I tried experimenting with chickpeas. No taste, awful texture, just...blah! I still don't eat chickpeas, but I do love hummus with plenty of garlic.

Something my parents called "ring baloney". My mother boiled it in water. My dad ate it with horseradish and mustard (I think). I hated the hot, greasy smell and the sound it made when you stuck a fork in it to cut the meat. Fortunately, I was never forced to eat it after the one time I tried it. YUCK! I wonder what it was (is).

These are great stories. I don't feel as bad as other posters, probably because I'm older, and back then this stuff wasn't considered "abuse" but pretty much par for the course. My first-generation Japanese father did not tolerate insolence at the table. Nor any other time, come to think of it, but that's for another therapy session.

I had two food avoidances: one Japanese and one American. The Japanese one was the mochi in something called zoni, a miso soup variant traditionally eaten at New Year's. No matter how much I chewed that stupid mochi, it never seemed to really break down properly, and it always felt like I was going to choke. As a result, my mother always made me a small one, but I was still forced to eat it (bad luck to not have it, you see), and dreaded it every single year.

The second is Fig Newtons. Threw it up as a kid, and still hate them now. I've been told many times as an adult that figs are quite lovely in a plethora of recipes, but even now the word "fig" sounds like profanity to me.

Wow--it's odd, but I LOVE lima beans. On the other hand, I can't stand malted milk balls (Whoppers)--or malted chocolate/milk anything. I ate nearly a whole box once as a kid, and made myself ill. Still can't stand them. My parents didn't usually make me eat something I disliked, but occasionally there were some oddities: a whole frame of honey (since I was OBVIOUSLY sneaking bits of it, even though I truly wasn't), toothpaste, strawberry shampoo--pretty much anything that I should not be eating and tried to eat, I got to eat a "serving" of (to get it out of my head that it was a food, I guess)! To this day, I seriously dislike peanut butter due to how often it was served when I was a kid, but I have very few food aversions. I still don't eat strawberry-scented shampoo, though.

I absolutely loathe shrimp, and those horrible 'cocktails' made with them sets the stage for my worst food experience. As a child, and to this day, I love putting ketchup on my grilled cheese. When I was about 4 years old, my grandma made me a grilly cheese, and I went in search of the Heinz; little did I know, they also make the chili sauce that my grandma used for the shrimp cocktail. Someone must have returned some unused cocktail sauce to the *IDENTICAL TO KETCHUP* bottle, which I happily dumped all over my sandwich, and dug in. I cannot even begin to explain the repulsion which I experienced upon my first taste: old shrimp, sickly-sweet/spicy chili sauce and Kraft singles... let's just agree to NEVER put them in the same recipe.
All I can say is, I am sorely glad it didn't ruin my grilled cheese lust.

School dinners - in particular, spam fritters!

I think this is my favorite kitchn thread of all time, these stories are so hilarious!

I went to a Montessori school through 2nd grade. We had to put our lunchboxes in little cubbies in sort of an open entryway area. One day when I went to retrieve mine at lunch, I discovered that the resident stray cats (again, Montessori school - we had goats and chickens, too) had gotten into my lunchbox, and had nibbled at my bologna sandwich. Instead of throwing it out and giving me something from our little canteen, or having one of the teachers or other students share their lunches with me, the teachers carefully cut around the cat teeth marks and gave it back to me to eat. When I tried to throw it away, they stopped me, and made me eat it. All of it. I cannot eat lunchmeat to this day.

Ah, the early 80s...can you imagine the lawsuit if a teacher did something like that today?

Lima beans and canned peaches.

badly cooked fish. it put me off most fish for life.

When I was around seven years old, we attended this Thanksgiving International Potluck dinner. The other kids were daring each other to taste this particular dish on the buffet spread and I took the dare and had to run the restroom to throw-up. It was a cold soup made with chopped tomatoes, garlic and other veggies. Later, I learned that it was Gazpacho. I have NEVER tried it again although I now love hot tomato based soups and even enjoy a bloody Mary now and then.

Cheese filled hot dogs wrapped in frozen crescent roll dough (cooked, of course). My parents' go-to meal for us kids when they went out on date nights.

I watched the movie The Fly with Jeff Goldblum while eating cereal. At one point,he throws up on his food and then eats it, since that's apparently what flies do.

It kinda looked like the cereal I was eating. I didn't eat cereal for the next 10 years.

*shudder*

When I was 6 or 7 I was COMPLETELY addicted to the bottled Bac'n bits.
My salads were literally Bac'n bits with lettuce. So one day when my parents were clearing out the fridge for a move, they dug out all the odds and ends in the fridge.

I spotted a nearly full bottle of Bac'n bits and was over the moon!
Over the course of that day, I ate the entire bottle of bac'n bits ON ITS OWN and by dinner time, I was puking it all out.

Till this day I can't stand the sight of it.

Faith, great post idea.
A previous boyfriend hated peas as a child and used to sneak them off the plate and stuff them into his pant pockets.
A girlfriend told me about visiting friends homes for lunch and having tuna fish sandwiched served. She hated them and would somehow sneak them out and bury them in the yard.

My issues were with over cooked food. My mom would cook beef liver and steaks until they were like cardboard. We ate them because the children in "pick your country" were starving and we couldn't waste food. Fortunately today I love liver and steaks. Only have calves liver and steak pretty much rare now.

And the veggies were always over cooked...mushy. But she always had a cream sauce or buttery browned breadcrumbs to top them off. Still like that with veggies that aren't over cooked.

I do remember a few times when I sat at the table for what seemed like hours when I didn't want to taste the food. But usually it was a matter of just taking a bite before I was excused from finishing it.

It's so sad that peeps, even today, try to force children to eat foods they don't like. As we grow older, we test new food options on our own. And can form our own ideas as adults without childhood pressures.

My grandma took my sister and I to one of her's friends for lunch. She proceeded to feed a 7 and 9 year old boiled tongue and cabbage. Granted to say this didn't go over very well with two kids. My sister took a lot of trips to the bathroom and stashed pieces of tongue in hiding places along the way. After I was told I had to eat the tongue but not the cabbage, the tongue was quickly shoved under the cabbage.

Granted to say, I actually like both tongue and cabbage today. Just not together, or boiled.

Both my midwestern Grandmothers made a "roasted" Spam that they made sometimes on Sundays. One would make it like a roast with onions and gravy the other made "Spam Loaf Hawaiian" as a special treat! Gross, gross and grosser. We also ate Creamed Chipped Beef from a jar aka SOS and Chicken (from a can) a la King on toast points. Ugh! One Grandmother had a Victory garden with the best fresh corn, tomatoes, beans, etc. but thought it a treat to have fresh corn, sauteed with Cheez Whiz - OMG even grosser! She also delighted in making all sorts of Jell-o molds with celery, carrots, etc. Oh and the "mock" apple pie and "mock" turtle soup made with Ritz Crackers - oh I get queasy thinking about all the meals I suffered through as a kid! My mother only made one meal that made me gag and that was liver, bacon and onions for iron. It was supposed to be good for growing bodies. She cooked it well done and I drown it in A-1 steak sauce, but I could never get away from the texture - like eating shoe leather. I cringe when I see that on the menu. What an interesting era, the beginning of convenience foods over freshly grown - so glad that I turned my nose up at all of that then, because I have always preferred fresh. minimally processed food ever since - hooray!

Mine is squash casserole. No matter how my mother tried, I couldn't come to like the stuff (or squash, for that matter). I've only been able to start trying squash again the last couple of years because of that childhood trauma.

Pork chops. My mother inherited a phobia of undercooked meat from her father, so always cooks meat to death and ruins it. She cooked these pork chops until they were like old shoes and I had to sit at the table until I ate it; you can imagine how much worse it was cold. Never ate a pork chop since and never will (I'm 47).

My mother also used to make a thing we kids called "barf casserole" with chicken thighs, cream-of-whatever soup, and fake Parmesan from the green can on top (I guess that's supposed to be the "gourmet" touch); smells, looks, and tastes ghastly. Amazing enough, my sister now makes it and eats it (we all still call it "barf casserole" though).

Pickled beets! My poor mom spent so much time pickling beets... and I hated them. Even as an open-minded and health-conscious adult eater, I still can't stomach beets in any way/shape/form. Wow. Way to bring back that food memory, Faith. Wonderful post! :)

What is it about lima beans? I also HATED them as a kid and would feed them to our dog, under the table (who liked them, to my surprise). I now eat pretty much everything except for...aspic.

I was lucky to escape with no bad childhood food memory's. I ate everything, although my brother was much more anti-flavour so my Mum's cooking had to cater for him. Which meant bland food including his favourite, and therefore regular dish of spaghetti casserole- just spaghetti, meat, sauce and white sauce. No herbs or spices, no onion or any kind of vegetable. After 10+ years I was over it. Can finally eat it it again in one of those nostalgic, comfort food kind of ways.

More recently I got sick after eating a chicken salad sandwich which had on it cold pickled beetroot (which I love). Tasting it coming back up and seeing the vivid violet vomit really put me off chicken salad sandwiches.

omg CBISKIT that post freaked me out! i'm still shivering in horror. also, some of these stories are crazy! eek!

I'm not allergic to shellfish, but I had an adverse tummy reaction to eating scallops so even though I do have them occasionally they make me hesitant. I usually don't order them but if someone shares a bite or makes them, I'll eat a bit. There's more to the story but I will spare embarrassment here! ;)

This post made my night! I t was hilarious!
My childhood food horror was (and still is) the veins in chicken meat. I could not eat them, I had to pull them out!!! And fish skin, which I threw in the trash and tried to beat the cat when he pulled it out! (Is there anything cats love more than fish? Didn't know that then!)
Also, the first time I ate cheesecake, it made me throw up. However, nowadays, I can't get enough of it!

Oh, and go figure... every morning my mom fried me an egg, and every morning I flushed an egg down the toilet when she left for work. Then suddenly she started scrambling them, and suddenly I started eating them!
I think it was the runny yellow stuff that i couldn't stomach! Still like scrambled well done much better!
And I eat my oatmeal practically raw: one minute in the boiling water is enough. I pour off at least 99% of the water so that the heat doesn't turn it to glue. Better raw than glue!

Rissoles and meatloaf. Ughhhhh.
I'm unsure whether rissoles are a NZ/Australia thing or not, but if you can imagine smallish charred balls of meatloaf? That's them. And they're never small enough. Always three or more bites each. And my mum burnt them every time. She doesn't make them now that I've left home, perhaps she thought I liked them ..?

She also overcooks cabbage horrifically and makes mashed potatoes with the minimum of add-ins. I had a food epiphany when she went on holiday once and Dad boiled cabbage - he left it crispy and bright green and lovely, and I ate the whole lot. He also made the most wonderful buttery mashed potatoes. Problem is, when she came back, she went back to doing all the cooking, and was [probably understandably] really angry whenever I suggested she do her mash like Dad's.

Oh, and I actually studied taste aversion as part of my psych degree - it's the most salient conditioned response, and the only one that can be time-delayed (9 hours is the standard). As a result, it's been used in all manner of hideous experiments - like the ones to combat alcoholism, where drug induced nausea is paired with alcohol.

My worst food experience landed me in the hospital. As a youngin' I remember getting pretty darn hungry one day, and I noticed this fried, breaded, cheesy tomato mash just hanging out in the fridge. I rang my mom to figure out what it was and if anyone had claims to it. She said it was veal and that I could eat it. Sweet. Baby cow to the hunger rescue. Now, unfortunately, I am known to this day as being one hell of a voracious eater and plates disappear in mere minutes. Why is this unfortunate you ask? Well, despite looking like a lunatic slob, it's especially unfortunate when you happen to be allergic to shellfish. Now, last time I checked, baby cows don't go mozying around the ocean with shells on their backs, so it caught me by surprise when I started getting that little irritation in my throat. 5 minutes later, I was getting seriously worried. The entire plate I later found out was a bunch of jumbo filleted shrimp. Long story short - my entire body *and I do mean entire*, broke out into something like one big hive ball. I had triple bags under my eyes. My father eventually drove me to the hospital where I got a shot in the ass. Now, despite the my terrible reaction, I got to say, shrimp really doesn't taste all that bad.

I don't actually have a clear memory of this one-- I must have blocked it out of my mind because I was that grossed out. But according to my mom, she cooked fish for dinner one night when I was a kid, and it turned out to have worms in it. To this day, I can't bring myself to eat seafood, period.

I can't remember any food I ate or was forced to eat that created a trauma.
However, there are several things that were served to the table that I will not eat or even try:
Aspics or food that looks back at me from the plate...

Pickled beets. My mom went through this unfortunate phase where she decided that jars of beets were an appropriate thing to feed us. I was never forced to down whole plates of things I didn't like, but I did have to have periodically try them (my mother's motto was, "your tastes change"). The beet aversion was so strong for so long that she finally gave up- and it became a family joke. I still won't eat beets (they taste like dirt to me, and not in a good , earthy way). Even the color gets to me, blech.

My Step-Grandmother made this meat-stuffed bread thing that had lots of onions and very little other flavoring in it and just shoved in a french loaf and baked. I stomached it at her house because I was a polite kid and I was strategic in getting small doses, but my mother knew I didn't like it. One night my mom made it by the request of my step-father on his birthday. We were eating as a small family (no party) and I didn't want to finish it. He made me sit at the table for 2 hours after everyone else got up to "finish" my meal. For some reason I couldn't choke it down and almost lost it several times.

Not a fun experience.

Tuna noodle casserole. Slimy noodles, chewy chunks of tuna, and crunchy little bits of celery and onion. I HATE it - always have...always will.

@Amycakes, that's the reason I'll never get in to coffee. I was about four or five when I asked to try some of my father's coffee and ended up spitting it out. Twenty years later, the smell still makes me frown. Sorry, coffee lovers!

That aside, I don't really have any food traumas. Plenty that I dislike (I'm working on it), but no real traumatic memories.

Fried Green Tomatoes. A family friend took me back east to hang with her Southern family. Their family matriarch made fried green tomatoes and I was not feeling them. I was forced to sit at the dining table for over an hour after everyone finished eating until I finally sucked it up and ate them. Only I had psyched myself out so badly that I immediately threw them up. I was 8 and by adult standards a rude guest.

I cannot STAND "potato patties" made with leftover mashed potatoes or steamed carrots with dill. I cannot stand dill at all anymore, in fact.

This one I did to myself: I had scarlet fever when I was 17 years old (who gets that anymore? This was just 8 years ago!) and I hadn't eaten anything in 2 days and my mom insisted that she get me something - whatever I wanted. I thought maybe sushi would be a good idea, and it sounded kind of okay, but it SAT in my stomach for what felt like a week and I couldn't eat sushi for several years after it without feeling ill. Honestly, I still feel a little gross when I eat sushi, which is sad, because I absolutely loved it beforehand.

canned stewed tomatoes, barbequed broccoli (that was my dad), carrot chili (mom). Don't know what they were thinking...

My only 2 real gross-outs were directly from my older sister:
1) I was 4, she was 7 and had clearly over-indulged on our Saturday morning breakfast of pancakes and syrup (we weren't allowed sweets normally, so syrup was really a treat). We were playing, post-breakfast, and she ran into the bathroom and started puking up what I would estimate to be about 2487 pancakes from her little 7 year old body. I just remember watching her puke (helpful) and also screaming "MOM! SISTER IS BARFING EVERYWHERE!" (also helpful). I still only like pancakes about 1x per year.
2) On our midwestern family road trip (as it was, the one and only), I was feeling a bit queasy after being in the car for so long. I don't usually get car-sick so it was kind of weird. My sister proceeded to eat a disgusting bag of Chili-Cheese Fritos and blow her toxic Frito breath onto my side of the backseat. Maybe this was payback for the pancake incident 6 years before? We'll never know. But it was disgusting and I got sick and still hate CC Fritos.

I also used to have a list of 'Foods That Skeeve Me Out' that I maintained through college. Included were: CornNuts, cottage cheese, McD's Filet-O-Fish, black licorice, maraschino cherries, etc. I went to the library to study one day in college and my 2 best friends conspired against me and HID all of these horrible foods around my bedroom and bathroom. They even went to McD's and ordered a F-O-F (hidden in the bathtub). Disgusting. Luckily I found all the things before they started to smell. It was hilarious, and I still vow vengeance to both of them someday!

Believe it or not but it was eating meatloaf covered in ketchup. I'm a fan of meatloaf, and have actually won an award for my recipe, but something about the ketchup, well, it just did not mesh with me.

Cheeseburger quiche! Spaghetti pie! And canned green beans!

After my fourth grade band concert (I played the oboe), I used my Book-It certificate to get a personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut. I woke up in the middle of the night and threw up until my stomach was empty. I couldn't eat pizza for years and now that I do eat pizza again (and love it again), I can't even stand the smell a Pizza Hut from my car.

Also, Caesar salad, but that was from food poisoning in high school, the night before the SATs. I can't even smell Caesar dressing anymore.

Not surprisingly, I don't eat in restaurants before or after important life events.

Liver and onions... mom thought it was good for us. :o(

Fettuccine alfredo, I had a very bad batch and threw up for hours afterwards, I can't shake the mental association.

And I am TERRIFIED of bivalves and crustaceans, basically anything with an exoskeleton. I cannot bring myself to eat shrimp or lobster unless its been cut up first.

Canned (red) beets! My mother would serve them for dinner, when we were also having mashed potatoes (which I liked). The beets were awful, and the juices would run into the mashed potatoes and turn them pink, and then I wouldn't eat the "ruined" part of the potatoes. I went to an event here in my town two years ago where various local restaurants were serving small bites of food. One of the restaurants served a "beet salad", with yellow beets, that actually looked good, and my husband pretty much shamed me into trying it. I surprised myself by liking it. Haven't eaten another beet since then, but I don't think I hate them anymore. Still don't think I could eat red beets though.

I have always been totally opposed to fresh tomatoes. No reason, no traumatic incident, just thought they were GROSS. And if you don't like tomatoes, people will constantly try to make you eat tomatoes because perhaps they can change your mind (even though no one else has as of yet). I just came around to tomatoes this summer on my own, and kind of love them. I'm almost thirty.

Canned green beans! UGH! My pre-school always gave them to us, and I've had an aversion ever since. I have a lot of texture issues with food too---sea food being a big one! I barely touch the stuff except for canned tuna. No jello with fruit in it, no stuffing (hate soggy bread texture), and mushrooms! Thing is, I keep trying certain foods I dislike over and over to see if I'll like them. I'm getting there with fresh peppers, and I even recently tried scallops which I liked!

I've never had a truly terrible experience with being force fed or anything like that, but my sister had a pretty funny experience. When she was little, my father dared her to chug her glass of chocolate milk, and proceeded to puke all over his shoes!