A Method to Learn to Love a Food You Dislike

Kristin Appenbrink
Kristin Appenbrink
Kristin is the co-founder of Part Time Vegan and Silent Book Club. As a former editor at Real Simple, she is compulsively organized and loves solving people's problems. She has a weakness for desserts, especially ice cream.
published Jan 15, 2015
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What’s the one food that you just don’t like? Olives, onions, chili peppers — whatever it is, it turns out there’s an easy way to learn to love it (or at the very least tolerate it).

The secret: Eat that food more often.

We know that might not be exactly what you want to hear, but cultural psychologist Paul Rozin has a term for it: “benign masochism.”

Rozin has studied people’s relationship with food for several years, and points out that we’re not predisposed to like every food at first. His primary example is that kids generally don’t innately like chili peppers or spicy foods, but that the more they are exposed to them in a range of dishes the more they grow to enjoy them.

What’s the one food that you currently can’t stomach, that you wish you could acquire a taste for? Tell us in the comments!

→ Read more: The Secret to Developing a Taste for Food You Don’t Like Is Repetition from Lifehacker