"It's an aquired taste..."

[Eggsnham]

I used to hate fried chicken, something about me having an incident with it when I was young.

And now, at the time of writing this, I have just finished a lunch involving some greasy, nasty, artery clogging KFC.

 

[Continuity]

Someone recently spewed this little cliche after I expressed my distaste for Greek olives, and for whatever reason it set me off. How exactly does waiting a few years to eat something you hate supposed to make you hate it less. Never in my life have I pulled a complete 180 and decided one day something I've always disliked was now a delicacy (with the exception of coffee, which completely fucks my argument.) Anyway, before this becomes a full blown rant about nothing, have you ever "acquired" a taste for something that never appealed to you. And if someone knows some science about maturing taste buds or some shit please enlighten me.

acquiring a taste for some things is a genuine psychological phenomenon, there is usually some superficial element that puts you off a particular food and as a child you don't have the maturity to look past, sometimes that acquired irrational dislike can be carried into adulthood.
Fish for example can have a strong smell, blue cheese looks unpleasant, olives have a strong taste etc...
On the other hand there is for example Beer which no one finds pleasant on their first try but repeated exposure plus psychological association with the affects of alcohol change your perception of the taste making it more pleasant.

All of this is often misunderstood as pretentiousness or simply other bowing to peer pressure, this is just a natural psychological response to shift the fault onto others - its much easier to accept that others are in the wrong, especially when you are young, but with maturity you learn this is often not the case.

Just my opinion.

 

[^=ash=^]

I think it means to like it requires conditioning. I used to dislike black tea / coffee but after positive conditioning, it's now how I prefer it. To be truly honest I'm not sure why I did it .. maybe it began as an experiment. I was an unusual child.

 

[ginty2]

for me it was beer,gin, scotch and other whiskies i used to hate but now i love all of them. i still don't like olives, even in a martini, i'll only eat them after finishing a martini.

still can't get a taste for vodka, it seems like such a girly thing to drink, kinda like lite beer.