So, I'm watching You Are What You Eat and I'm wondering why the propensity in people to be turned off by veggies. BTW, let me state that I love nice fresh produce to cook with. I love good, plump, crisp, vibrant veggies in everything I make. Where I live in Puerto Rico, there is a cultural predisposition against the eating of green and colored vegetables. Here only root vegetables are eaten, making it rather hard to find good produce when I want to make a nice veggie salad or a good, fresh stir-fry. Very frustrating. **This is not a Veggies vs Meaties thread!!** My question is, to those of you who don't dig on veggies...why? What is it about veggies that you find unappealing.
I couldn't survive happily without them. Just so fresh and delicious! I think it most likely comes from their parents possibly forcing them to eat veggies in a traumatizing fashion? Or not forcing them or encouraging them at all?
I don't like veggies OR fruit, but that's just because I'm allergic to a lot of them. The problem is, I'm not sure which I'm allergic to and which I'm not, so it's always a fun surprise when I bite into something and then my throat starts to close... I love carrots, though. Sometimes I eat them anyway and just pretend my throat isn't closing...
I love veggies but hate all fruit because it all tastes too sweet and I can't stand dribbles. I'd never give up meat, though.
I adore fruit in all its forms (especially dipped in chocolate!), and vegetables are okay with something like cheese whiz or peanut butter on celery, or cheese sauce on cauliflower or broccoli, or ranch dressing and basically any vegetable. But alone, I guess I find that veggies are kinda tasteless? Like Ashleigh said: all water and no chocolate. Also I don't like some of them cooked, like peas. Yuck! But stick me in a garden and I'll eat the peas and the pod, too. And carrots seem to taste better with a bit of dirt still on them. Or is that just me? I kinda agree with Lavarian. I have many a memory of sitting at the diner table for hours because I wouldn't eat my veggies. But as I get older, some of them are becoming less loathsome. Maybe by the time I die, all I'll eat with be vegetables.
You know, I think there is anti-veggie culture in the West. I never heard of any child not eating their greens in Turkey. We snack on cucumbers and pickles here, and the kids eat hardly any sweets at all. And we eat tomatoes and olives for breakfast, no sweet stuff at all.
I like all vegetables but pretty picky on fruits. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, parsnips, carrots, daikon, radishes, beats, onion, cucumber, tomato, etc, etc, it's all delicious. Problem is some kids grow up with frozen, reheated crap that's wet, limp, and overcooked, so we have crowds of kids living with the wrong idea of vegetables.
LOL, I feel like that sometimes. But most of the time, I love my veggies. They just have to be made properly, which is why I quoted Ashleighh. When I was younger, I hated vegetables; there was no worse punishment because I always ate them raw. And in many cases, yes, raw vegetables have a very high concentration of water, so I always called them "crunchy waters." Boring... I think most people dont like vegetables because they dont know how to make them properly, how to make them taste just as good as chocolate. The only vegetables I enjoy raw are carrots, and I cant even eat them very often these days! Did you know that you could overdose on beta carotene (which, duh, carrots have a high amount of)? I didnt, until my face started turning an interesting shade of orange and my hair started falling out!
For me it started out when I was a kid. Little kids, little mouths. I still remember well trying to eat carrots and having to chew on it for at least five minutes before I could swallow, and even then it always felt like I was going to choke. It doesn't help that they're tasteless either. As for onions, it's because they taste like extra sharp cheddar, and when I say cheddar I mean dung.
I was once at a party that had a chocolate fondu thing for the fruit plates. They also had veggie plates. One guy stuck a carrot into the chocolate. I tried it. Didn't taste that bad at all. You've never had a sweet cherry tomato!
I love my vegetables, but hate buying them from our local supermarkets because when you have worked in a packing shed and know what eating quality food is like, you don't want to buy throw away vegetables from the shops. Went to buy a cauliflower from our Coles supermarket and it was rotting!! ROTTING!! I'd rather buy frozen vegetable than buy rotting vegetables. Although from now on I get mine delivered to my door freshly picked from the farm. I don't wnat to feed my children on frozen vegetables, or rotting vegetables when they love them more than chocolate. (they get that from me!) My niece and nephew on the other hand don't like vegetables that much. I asked my nephew once what he didn't like about the vegetables. His response was as follows: Peas: I don't like how the skin slides off the middle part. It just feels horrible in my mouth. Brussel Sprouts: I can't stand the taste, but the little leaves peeling in my mouth just feels horrible. Pumpkin: I don't like the feel of it in my mouth. Broccoli: It is like sticking dirt in your mouth. Mash Potato: It honestly feels like vomit in my mouth when Mum makes it, but I don't mind it when Granny makes it for me, so long as a little bit of cheese is added. It gives it some flavour, otherwise it is just too boring and tasteless. So basically, he mentioned that it isn't just the flavour of the vegetables that has tarnished his love of them, it is also the texture. I am sure it won't be like that with every person, but I myself find the texture of pumpkin and squash to be quite off putting, but I do enjoy the flavour, same with zucchini. So maybe it isn't all to do with the flavour of the food, but maybe the texture. It sure was more the case with my nephew. He actually said that if broccoli didn't feel like dirt in his mouth he'd eat it and if other vegetables didn't feel so horrible in his outh, he would eat them. He just can't get past the texture of them.
I feel that way about some vegetables. Tomatoes and onions especially freak me out because of the way they feel in your mouth, not the way they taste. And bananas. Ugh. Bananas.
I love just about all fruits and vegetables - the only exceptions being rockmelon, asparagus and artichoke, I will eat absolutely everything else (as long as it hasn't been pickled). I think that sometimes the aversion to veges comes from the way they're presented - and I don't mean the visual appeal, more that there's an underlying, automatic belief that children need to be convinced to eat them, which = an expectation that they won't, and I believe kids pick up on this and ergo automatically assume they won't like what's on offer. I have a very simple credo when presenting any type of food to kids - It's good food, eat it. No troubles... yet!
That's actually an extremely good point! I wont eat grapes (I know that's a fruit) because the texture and size and shape... makes me feel like I'm eating eyes! I dont have any problems with vegetables I know of though. Hmm. I dont like pumpkin because I dislike the taste, but the texture, to me, is particularly off-setting.
Hilarious, and I agree with both points. I can stand carrots, but I have the same problem chewing them. ...Some vegetables are okay. Corn is genuinely tasty. Carrots, broccoli and fresh spinach have their place, but I won't go out of my way to eat any of them. Cucumber is tolerable, but it tastes almost identical to eating the rind of a watermelon. I have a difficult time grasping how tomatoes are part of this discussion, because even though they may be considered vegetables in some culinary circles, they are botanically a fruit and taste like a fruit to me. A delicious, mouth watering fruit that refreshes and invigorates me every time I eat a good one. Pickles, olives, and anything else in the pickled family all strike me as absolutely loathsome and hardly fit for human consumption. The smell alone gives me an immediate headache.
My younger brother, when he was still with us, hated the feel of oranges and mandarines. Yet, he did enjoy drinking orange juice. He hated peacehs because of the way they felt in his mouth. I tend to agree with you on that one to a degree. My two angels are very different when it comes to knew foods. My daughter is willing to try almost anything in the way of new foods, vegetables and fruits, my son however, I expect him not to want to and he generally is hard to get to try them. He always does, and 99% of the time it gets to his tongue and he says he doesn't like it. One thing they do suggest with children is that in the first two years of their lives, to introduce them to as much as possible. The first few times they may not like the foods, but after 1-6 times of tasting the foods, they will become use to the tastes/textures, and enjoy it later in life. They feel that children who are fussy eaters as they mature are only that way because when they are younger, were not introduced to the foods. Things like avacado, pumpkin, brussel sprouts, are common things for children not to like, I know many children who dislike them, but it is mostly due to the way you cook the food and whether you introduced the foods to the child early enough. A varied diet as a toddler is the best way to get your child to want to eat all foods later in life. Though, my children love fruit and vegetables more than junk food and even eat cabbage raw... (hope all that made sense...)
From the OP... This has been quite enlightening. There seems to be a general consensus that texture plays an important part in the yucky-yuck of veggies. Texture can be a make or break deal for me as well, but rarely with vegetables. My texture issues are of a different sort. I don't like one rather famous and ubiquitous Spanish desert called flan. It feels like heavy phlegm in my mouth and the painful part is that everyone here makes them and takes great pride in their particular recipe and local etiquette says you can't refuse when being offered. There aren't any veggies I can think of that violate my texture needs. I completely agree with those who have made mention about the importance of freshness in vegetables. Veggies in the process of going off can be appetite killing. My parents have land to give away and I'm trying to talk them into letting me start a vegetable garden.
I hate flan. Everybody in my family loves flan just like they love cheesecake. I hate cheesecake too; my cake shouldnt be slick. I say go for the vegetable garden! Nothing better than fresh vegetables. And Tor, you really do have little angels! I've been told that I hated everything but cookies when I was a little kid.
I used to think just like that with cheesecake. I couldn't stand it!! As far as I was concerned, cake wasn't meant to feel like slime in my mouth, same as custard. But now I enjoy cheesecake, yet I still can't stand custard and jelly, just because I can't stand the way it feels in my mouth.
