Shrrrrooooommmmsss!!!!

‘Shroom haters nightmare turned ‘shroom lovers heaven!

 

I swung by the frugalwoods the other day and saw their $0.39 per serving rice and beans recipe. It looks and sounds mouth wateringly tasty and so naturally it got me thinking about food, but not just as in putting some food into my belly right that second (as if I ever needed much help on that one!), but my my thoughts went off on a few random tangents.

 

force feeding

Have you ever tried to force yourself to like a certain food you have previously disliked for a long time, or am I the only weirdo out there who engages in this practice?

The Frugalwoods’ recipe included mushrooms you see, which I have previously hated since about the age of 5, so it got me thinking they maybe it’s time I harden the fuck up 1 and get back to liking them again.

Why miss out on eating this natural and healthy ingredient just because of some arbitrary change in my tiny irrational mind made me decide to dislike the taste and/or texture of those wonderful ‘shrooms one day?!

So I decided to give my previously tried and trusted 3 step method of overcoming a dislike of foodstuffs:

  1. Force feed yourself the hated food in question
  2. Keep doing this until you can at least stand eating it without gagging or wincing
  3. Finally ratchet back to normal eating habits and include foodstuff as normal people would, and around 6 months to a year (maybe even sooner!) you will find you actually damn well LOVE the previously hated food

This is just another example of how it is really quite easy to change our habits, whether they be eating, financial, exercise, personal hygiene (you know who you are 🙂 ) or just stopping a bad kind of habit altogether and replacing it with a good one instead.

 

it’s worked before, olive you believe!

So what have I been successful in forcing myself to like?

Well the obvious one that I bet a lot of you out there must have gone through is the whole “Olives” thing.

There is an urban myth that it only takes you X* amount of olives to become addicted to them.

*Replace X with whatever number the Billy Bullshitter telling you the myth decided to insert. I often heard it was 10. Pah!

Whilst I don’t quite believe it’s that cut and dry, I do think that many people trying olives for the first time (I guess they would be called olive virgins? And if another came along they’d be an extra olive virgin? Oh stop it… I’m too funny I know!) will a bit like…

“What the f*** did you just tell me to put in my mouth!?!??!”

… And at that point they may never eat another olive again. Or they may persevere and after a while find the taste quite pleasant.

I happen to have been in the latter group and now if you put a bowl or olives in front of me and especially if I have a beer or wine to go with it, they will be gone before you can say “popeye… saaaaave meeee!!!!” in a shrill, whiney voice.

Previous to that, I didn’t like tomatoes and thought that was just a bit stupid and inconvenient when a lot of sandwiches and other things came with tomatoes in them, so at around the age of 18 I just started eating them. Again… now I bloody love the things! I have also succeeded in liking chick peas and beans – as in kidney beans, not baked beans. I still hate those but have no desire to want to like them as they are essentially crappy sugary beans out of a tin and easy enough to avoid at most good eating establishments (i.e. anywhere without the word “Greasy” in the name). This may turn out to be a short sighted attitude when the zombie apocalypse finally comes but I guess I will have to deal with it!

 

what’s the worst that could happen?

I can imagine there are certain things this trick would not work with, particularly strong tasting food like smelly cheese may be a bridge too far for some people. And I wouldn’t advise trying to get into deep fried mars bar donuts if you currently don’t like them. But I reckon most people dislike at least one major food type that is either healthy and so they are unnecessarily missing out on getting some nutrients, or is present in a lot of dishes and therefore causes them to look like the picky barstard when eating out.

Why not give something you previously have disliked another go and see if you can change your default behaviour of “not liking it” to “liking it”?

It’s a fun experiment.

And obviously let me know how you get on, or if you’ve tried this sort of thing before already either successfully or not.

Notes:

  1. Thanks to Mr Zombie who put me onto that one on his letter post. Hilarious! It’s almost like a parody of MMM on steroids!