Try the food you hate, cooked another way

They change, many separate conversations say, and the people saying it have the plates to show for it: many accounts in one note found they liked foods they had refused for years once they left the family home, many in another once the food was made well, and many in another simply on reaching adulthood. Many conversations name the usual suspects — sprouts, asparagus, spinach, tomatoes, steak — and single accounts add broccoli, beets, baked beans, mustard, olives, seafood, fish, lamb and lemon desserts. More than one conversation says the change comes from exposure and from growing up rather than from any fixed clock; this page checked one piece of that: a 2009 study of 143 children aged eleven to fifteen found that the ones whose liking for sweetness had fallen also showed a lower marker of bone growth, which is the accounts’ hunch — that a growing body wants sugar and a grown one wants it less — with a number behind it and no more than that. Other conversations say the change arrives sideways: you eat the thing without noticing, in a dish at a friend’s table or a restaurant, and only afterwards realise what it was. One account extends the whole idea past food — camping, holidays, sports you hated as a child feel different when you choose them — and one account says the same cycle can be broken while still at home by learning to cook for yourself.

No. This is the claim the conversations argue over, and the accounts took it apart: several accounts in one exchange call the number folk knowledge, several compare it to the story about swallowed gum, and one notes that nurses sometimes repeat it. This page checked: the cells in a taste bud renew quickly, living on average around ten days, some for less and some for three weeks or so — days and weeks, not years — so a seven-year cycle is not the mechanism for anything. The change in what you like is real, several corrections in these conversations say, but it comes from somewhere else: what you were fed, how it was cooked, what you have since tasted, and the body growing up. One account says the wider myth that the whole body replaces itself every seven years is wrong too — some cells last a lifetime — and one account says your brain pre-judges a food as bad before your mouth gets a vote, which is why one taste does not settle it. So the permission slip you came for is real, but it is not the one you were sold: you may like it now not because your tongue is new but because the plate is.

Because, many separate conversations say, you did not hate the food; you hated a plate of it made one way by one person, and several accounts in one note realised exactly that. The accounts are specific and not unkind about it: parents are not chefs, several accounts in one note say, and one says it is taboo to say so out loud. Meat cooked until grey and dry, because one account says an older generation learned to cook it hard for safety and never learned the thermometer; fish hammered flat; vegetables boiled or steamed to a soft grey and served with salt, pepper and the same two or three seasonings — more than one conversation says a household like that makes every meal feel flat. Many conversations say the method is the whole difference: roasting where it was boiled, a hot pan where it was steamed, browned edges where it was mush, and steak cooked less — or, one former chef says, more, for some cuts — than it was at home. More than one conversation says the food itself is better than it was: produce and even tinned goods have improved since the accounts were children, and one account says a watery, bland stalk of celery is a quality problem, not a celery problem. One caution says trying a food once more is not enough if that one try was also badly made — taste it from more than one kitchen. And one account says a mushy texture or a bad smell can be spoilage, which you were right to refuse, not a food you dislike.

One food at a time, cooked another way, ideally at another table. More than one conversation says a way in is a dish where the food is already part of something you like — seafood in a dish you did not know had it in, broccoli from a takeaway rather than a saucepan — because you meet it without the twenty-year verdict in the room. Other conversations say swap the variety or the pairing: a different mushroom, a red onion instead of a white one, the stuffed olive instead of the plain, and one account eats the disliked thing in the same bite as something they love, so the good flavour carries the texture you are not sure about. Accounts in more than one conversation put a strong flavour they like on a food they do not — ketchup on eggs, peanut butter with raisins on celery — and one account eats the disliked ingredient alongside a favourite until the association softens. One account introduces a hated ingredient slowly into a dish it already makes, a little more each time, and one says repetition is the method: the automatic no fades with exposure, not with argument. One account frames a food inside the cuisine it comes from — a side dish among its own companions rather than a lone vegetable on a plate — and finds it lands. Several accounts name a restaurant or a competent friend’s kitchen as the place to try it, because it separates the ingredient from the cook; eating out costs money, which these conversations do not address, and this page has nothing from these conversations for the reader who cannot afford to eat out. Recipes, a step-by-step protocol, and what to do when family criticise the new taste are gaps in these conversations.

Then you hate it, and several separate conversations say that is a real outcome, not a failure. Some aversions are textural — celery, liver, mushrooms, raw tomato, melon come up by name — and several conversations plus a handful of single accounts say those do not move with age or with roasting; cautions in these conversations say a texture aversion can persist even when the flavour is fine, and one says it can be neurological rather than learned. More than one conversation says bitterness is partly inherited: this page checked, and a common variation in one taste gene does govern how bitter people find the cabbage family, so a sprout that tastes harsh or soapy to you may simply taste that way to you; the accounts add that some produce has been bred less bitter than it was, and one says an acidic follow-up helps a little and fixes nothing. Accounts hold firm lines — on watermelon, shrimp, black liquorice and olives, and one on onions in every form, and one says even a food whose flavour improved is not worth the strings in the teeth. Several single-conversation exchanges argue it out between “nearly every childhood dislike is the cooking” and “some are permanent whatever you do,” and the accounts’ own decider is the individual and the food. More than one account says a narrow diet is a real problem for health and that repetition programmes exist to widen it; one objection says being a fussy eater is an inconvenience and not something that needs fixing if you are well. Both are in these conversations, and this page does not choose for you. Strategies for texture aversions specifically, and medical reasons a food stays repulsive, are gaps here; one account says a changed sense of smell can turn liked foods repulsive, and that is a doctor’s question.

It could, and the safety line at the top of this page is the answer: if the allergy was ever more than mild, do not test it on a plate. More than one conversation says people with a mild childhood allergy or a psychological aversion sometimes tolerate the food as adults, and one caution records a nephew whose peanut allergy eased with age — a single account about a medical condition, not a rule. More than one conversation and several cautions say the other direction is real too: allergies can begin in adulthood, in people who had none, and can worsen with repeated exposure. How to tell an allergy from a dislike, and how to test safely for a new one, are gaps in these conversations; an allergist answers them, and one caution says to carry medication if you know you are at risk, which is a prescription conversation, not this page’s.

Single accounts in these conversations think so, and they say the same thing from two sides: keep offering, because tongues change, and do not label a child picky or a food yucky, because one caution says do not shame a child for a dislike they may later drop and one objection says relatives who call a child picky reinforce the bad association. One account says telling children plainly that their tastes will change helps them keep trying. That is what these conversations carry for children — how to introduce foods to a child, and how to feed a household where one cook controls every pan, are gaps here — and one account says the child who refuses everything may simply have a heightened sense of taste, which one account says can become an asset in a kitchen.