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There's obviously a lot of ways people's tastes change throughout life. Exposure to new dishes or foods from new places, that shifted your preferences away from or towards certain styles. Things you used to like say as a young person but now dislike. Subtle tastes you used to ignore but now appreciate or vice versa, perhaps things you used to feel used to tickle your tastebuds but now seem bland or plain.
How has your taste changed personally? Do you feel a large difference in the favourite foods you have? The foods you think of when you think "yuck" or "yum"?
Last edited by Stumbler.; 04-04-2012 at 09:10 PM..
Around the time I entered adolescence, my mom had sort of a culinary awakening and began more experimentation in the kitchen, but mostly I grew up on meat-and-potatoes, with plenty of dessert, and that's what I knew and preferred.
My diet is much lighter now, not much meat, lots of salad, and also lots of flavor. Stuff I once hated (brussels sprouts) I now enjoy--I'm a bit better at seasoning and other aspects of food preparation.
I was less picky as a kid than I am now. I used to love pork chops, now I can't stand them. I used to eat Shrimp chow mein as a kid but now I don't like it because of the sauce. Growing up we ate a lot of fried foods, boxed rice mixes which are loaded with salt, red meat and pork, starches at every meal sometimes 2 starches and loads of bread/biscuits with butter. I eat much healthier now, cut out red meat but once a year I will have it, I fry chicken cutlets maybe once a year nothing else is fried, I eat more fruits and veggies. Use alot less butter and use olive oil instead. I eat more chicken and fish and eat turkey occasionally.Pasta we have once a week.
I see my tastes in food as having been "educated" rather than changed.
Most of the stuff I disliked when I was seven I still dislike now, though. But I've learned there are ways of preparing some ingredients that are much different than how my mother prepared them, especially vegetables. My mother, like most Midwestern cooks, separated them from the rest of the dish and served them minimally garnished (generally with only butter and salt) and whole. I dislike them this way, and even have such an aversion to many of them that I can't eat most salads. I thought they would never be tolerable, much less appeal to my taste buds, until I discovered different cuisines, especially those of India and Ethiopia. Spinach, for example, which I once wouldn't eat even if you paid me to, I now adore in palak paneer.
I still don't like raw vegetables and mayonnaise-based products, whether they are in typical American cuisine or Lebanese cuisine or any others.
I agree with tVdxer, I don't think mine have changed as much as grown. I was never a picky eater but I didn't eat the variety that I do now. We were exposed to differerent foods more than many of my friends, but there just wasn't the ethnic foods there are now, nor the spices. Mom and dad used a variety of spices and yet I don't remember even seeing, Cumin, or Curry at home or in the grocery stores. No one used fresh herbs, cillantro and peppers were always bell, not Hatch chili, red and green bells, jalepnos, etc.
I was very lucky that my depression-era parents taught me to like everything, or to sit there at the table until I learned to like it. My taste is still the same, I still like everything.
Traveling in countries where I would eat whatever everyone else was eating at market stalls or wayside bus stops, I never encountered anything I didn't like, even though I usually didn't even know what it was.
I got burnt out on spaghetti and have had enough to suit a lifetime. I much prefer lasagna, baked ziti, pizza and anything else. I grew up on a lot of farmer food. Sometimes I get burned out on that too. I want Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Greek or something else. Baked ham and mashed potato type stuff starts to get old. I'd rather have a steak seasoned and cooked on the charcoal grill instead of a roast with gravy all piled on it. The same with baked steak/Swiss steak type stuff. Blah!! LOL I'm glad to be able to shift it all around and mix it up now. Thank goodness for that.
The funny part is, some of the guys I know who love the typical "farmer food" type stuff won't eat fish, lobster, crablegs, shrimp, clams or anything like that. Sheesh, you're very mixed up bud! LOL
I was a really picky eater as a kid. I didn't like much, but I was raised by 2 picky parents. A lot of things I didn't think I liked just because my parents turned their noses up at them. I never tried them, I just knew I didn't like them. As a teenagers, I started broadened my horizons just a little bit, mainly due to peer pressure, but I was still really picky. As a young adult I started discovering more of the food world and began to really explore different types of foods. Today, I love all almost all kinds of foods and tried to raise my kids to be adventurous in their foods as well. They were pretty picky as kids, but they were at least willing to try things. And now as young adults, they love all kinds of things I would never have dreamed of eating at their age.
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