Flavours that put you off the actual food.

[Bored Of Education]

Pineapple - I love a fresh piece of pineapple. Once I start eating them, I can't stop but it is usually because they are put in front of me. However, I rarely buy them (aside from the food miles reason) because the horrible cloying sickly sweet "pineapple flavour" sweets and whatnot are invariably disgusting and link in my mind to the fruit. I think its central role in the abominations of Ham and Pineapple PIzza and Sweet & Sour sauce doesn't help.

Cherry - I love cherries and can just about handle the cough mediciny taste of some cherry flavour stuff but some of it is sweet-astringently awful.

Banana - although I find bananas a bit boring, I would politely eat one if it were offered and probably enjoy it. However, anything banana flavoured is gruesome. This isn't an adult post-organic fad either - I have always hated banana flavour anything. Foodstuffs made with actual banana in though e.g. proper banoffee pie and my wife's banana bread, I love.

Vanilla - it's not so much that I hate vanilla flavour, it was just that the vanilla ice cream of my youth was always regarded as the default 'plain' flavour in the same way as ready salted crisps were regarded as 'plain'. Of course, like most, I changed my mind on eating stuff made with real vanilla but there is a residual 'meh' feeling about it that I can't rid myself of.

The reverse of these is pear. i really like pear drops and hate the actual fruit.

[3 Colours Red]

Yeah, there's a reason why vanilla is used as a synonym for boring. Mind you, I don't even think real vanilla is all that.

Let's see... there's a few "real" flavours I can't stand so any artificial recreation of them is only going to make me run a proverbial mile:

• coffee
• liquorice
• beer - both lager and bitter
• coconut

Inversely - I like cheese, I like onion but can't stand cheese and onion crisps. They just taste of slightly sour mustiness.

[Sporting]

Perhaps conversely (and not food at all!), I like the smell of pipe tobacco when it's being smoked but don't like smoking it myself very much.

[Sits]

Smells better before it's lit. A childhood pleasure was sniffing my Dad's tobacco pouch.

Why does that sentence sound so wrong?

[treibeis]

A classmate sitting behind me in a French lesson in 1981 threw up over my back after over-indulging on strawberry-flavoured Chewits. Since then, I've despised strawberry-flavoured food, and thus strawberries, in particular (even though strawberry-flavoured food doesn't taste like strawberries) as well as people in general.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I still can't really get my head around the premise of this thread.

[Sporting]

I still can't really get my head around the premise of this thread.

Nor me, to be honest.

[Ginger Yellow]

Can't think of any that put me off the actual food, but I can't stand coffee flavoured things, despite loving coffee. To be fair, this includes "coffee flavoured milk", aka a latte.

[Jah Womble]

Inversely - I like cheese, I like onion but can't stand cheese and onion crisps. They just taste of slightly sour mustiness.

Absolutely - the one crisp flavour that I cannot abide. They smell like wee to me.

Add me to the list of OTFers that don’t quite get the core thrust of this thread, however.

[ursus arctos]

Adding the word "Artificial" at the beginning of the title would help a good deal without doing any violence at all to Bored's original post.

[treibeis]

I still can't really get my head around the premise of this thread.

I think it's "being introduced, and accustomed, to the flavoured/processed/shitty version of food and thus disliking the "real" version".

Think beetroot. Many people have told me that fresh beetroot is the food of the gods. When I was growing up, beetroot was vinegar-saturated shit in a jar. Because of that, there's no way I'm ever going to try fresh beetroot.

Edit: Or what ursus said.

[Simon G]

Perhaps conversely (and not food at all!), I like the smell of pipe tobacco when it's being smoked but don't like smoking it myself very much.

Reminds me of the old Wymans Road terrace at Whaddon Road. The smell in the middle of winter was phenomenal and almost gave the impression of warming you up.

I struggle with cheese flavoured things, particularly sauces - yet I love cheese.

[pebblethefish]

(even though strawberry-flavoured food doesn't taste like strawberries) .

I remember being very shocked when I tried Strawberry Ribena once, and it actually tasted of strawberries, rather than of pink.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I think it's "being introduced, and accustomed, to the flavoured/processed/shitty version of food and thus disliking the "real" version".

Think beetroot. Many people have told me that fresh beetroot is the food of the gods. When I was growing up, beetroot was vinegar-saturated shit in a jar. Because of that, there's no way I'm ever going to try fresh beetroot.

Edit: Or what ursus said.

Yeh, that certainly makes more sense, though I must say that I've never eaten something with an unpleasant artificial flavour, a strawberry mousse say, and then been unable to eat a bowl of fresh strawberries later. But maybe some people are affected in that way.

I can also see the argument about being exposed to a badly prepared or cooked foodstuff and being unaware of how good it can taste, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't Bored's point.

As for beetroot, the smell of it boiling in the kitchen when I was a kid and the recollection of it in diced form in school salads have both left me with a problematic relationship with the vegetable. But I like beetroot crisps, I think I've managed to keep down the odd bowl of smooth borscht, which my wife adores, and even had some chocolate cake with beetroot in it.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I love pineapple on pizza. I order it on a seafood one.

Anyway, for me it's pasta. Plain pasta. Or, indeed, pasta in a creamy but bland sauce, like a wine and parsley type thing. Don't misunderstand me I love pasta in a rich marinara or bolognese type sauce. But the taste of the actual pasta itself ... has to be masked. I probably ate too much play-doh as a child (which is broadly the same recipe).

[ursus arctos]

It is indeed different oop north

[Simon G]

I love pineapple on pizza. I order it on a seafood one.

Anyway, for me it's pasta. Plain pasta. Or, indeed, pasta in a creamy but bland sauce, like a wine and parsley type thing. Don't misunderstand me I love pasta in a rich marinara or bolognese type sauce. But the taste of the actual pasta itself ... has to be masked. I probably ate too much play-doh as a child (which is broadly the same recipe).

I also adore pineapple on pizza - I especially love a grilled pineapple on a gammon steak (in place of the egg that I can't stand).

[Nocturnal Submission]

One of the chef's specials at my local Indian is Kashmiri Tikka Masala, described as chicken tikka or lamb tikka with lychee and pineapple in a medium sauce.

I've yet to summon the courage.

[treibeis]

It is indeed different oop north

He's about as northern as The Wurzels.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The Wurzels ARE northern compared to me.

One of our local curry houses does a “Malaya”, which is my wife’s favourite and similar to the Kashmir described above is a mild korma flavoured with banana and coconut. And would presumably make Bored scream in horror.

[ursus arctos]

I was operating under the assumption that decent pasta had made it to Devon since you left

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Oh, even sat in a trattoria in the hills of Umbria I wouldn’t and don’t order a plain pasta dish. It has to have a rich and preferably tomato based sauce.

[treibeis]

I was operating under the assumption that decent pasta had made it to Devon since you left

Look, I'm the king of the West Country here. No, decent pasta never did reach , never has reached and never will reach us. It's not what we do.

I left the West Country - is that the North American equivalent of the Midwest? - 33 years ago.

[Bored Of Education]

Adding the word "Artificial" at the beginning of the title would help a good deal without doing any violence at all to Bored's original post.

I was toying with that but wasn't sure whether the issue was artificial flavourings per se although, on reflection, it probably is.

treibeis seems to get the premise of the thread spot on and he doesn't seem like a man to suffer fool[ish thread title]s lightly.

[Bored Of Education]

I am not having any truck with this anti-Cheese and Onion crisp lobby. At the risk of derailing my own thread, it is the king of crisps (even if I toy with ready salted, salt & vinegar and more exotic flavours such as Reggae Reggae and jalapeno/dill). My only issue is that I can't eat them on a school night for professional breath reasons.