Cottage Cheese
I tried it once at maybe the age of four, and threw it right back up.
I have not eaten it (by itself) since. When someone uses it instead of the much-preferred ricotta in their lasagna, I pick out as many of the curds as I can. And it really shuts down my appetite, so I end up eating a few well-cleared lasagna noodles and chunks of meat.
I love cheese generally – just not cottage cheese, or cheese curds unless they are breaded and fried.
Maybe I would have liked it better had it been breaded, lol- ours was not.
I’m afraid to know how I’m traumatizing my kid!
Anyone else remember the black beans in brownies trend? Well, my kids do and will never let me forget it.
And my S22 was apparently mortified when he had friends over and they were making pasta and we only eat - gasp! - wheat pasta .
“No one else does it mom! I thought it was normal!”
omg, Limburger cheese, my grandmother (also German) loved it, that smell…
Another:
Pickled herring
Somehow, I have always loved salads, and even as a kid I would make a plate at the salad bar.
In Wisconsin in the 80s, it was common for there to be a tub of pickled herring pieces, floating around in some sort of brine (?), at the salad bar. That was a disturbing sight to me.
Even though I’m not sure you would classify it as a food, cotton candy still gives me the chills every time I think about it or even look at it. Nasty.
I can’t remember whether it was at the ball park, amusement park or some fair, but I gagged on it and have never once tried it again.
S can’t eat green beans—they make him wheeze. He doesn’t like eggplant or okra—dislikes their texture (will eat small amount to be polite). D isn’t a fan of pork but will eat it in small amounts. I think that’s about it.
Mashed turnips - served by one aunt we rarely ever saw fortunately.
Cooked cabbage rolls - my grandmother made these. Yuck!
Don’t care for canned peas now. Don’t recall having them in my youth.
This is a very popular thread! I actually can’t think of anything in particular.
My dad only liked simpler basic food; my mom was busy earning a doctorate and teaching at the university. Her mother had been an excellent cook but she herself wasn’t all that interested. We kept a kosher house and all our meat was shipped in frozen, so that didn’t help.
We ate out a lot (the university student union cafeteria was a regular destination) so I could choose my own food. At some point early on my mother just started me on vitamins when I wouldn’t eat vegetables.
As an adult there’s a lot of stuff I won’t eat, can’t eat, and just don’t eat. But not based on childhood traumas.
Edit to add that I never ate liver and onions, but love chopped liver and liver pâté.
Me too! I also can’t eat any type of cheese by itself 
Other disgusting foods in the house (both loved by my mom) - fried liverwurst (put on bread to make a sandwich), and pickled herring. Thankfully never together AFAIK. I refused to eat both, which was generally allowed in our house.
Dad loved sardines, would eat them with potato salad. Didn’t even ask us kids to eat that.
I could add coffee. My family had a booth at the county fair they were manning and mom sent sis and I off to bring her back coffee one morning. We thought we were clever and opted to take a sip first. Gross. To this day there is no form of coffee I like or can tolerate except coffee flavored ice cream or jamocha shakes at Arby’s, both of which are super rare in my life.
Then I can add clams/oysters/muscles/squid/octopi/snails/crabs, etc. There was a clam bake at my aunt’s place and I ate a few clams. Before we got back home I was violently barfing. It was awful and set a trigger in my brain that those things or anything like them are not food. To this day I won’t touch them and don’t care for the smell either. I like shrimp and many types of fish, but not those other things.
Oh, yes, gag. And root beer.
Love both licorice and root beer. And black jelly beans! Never a coffee drinker, although both parents drank coffee. Tasted it and just couldn’t stand it. Hated milk as a kid. I can use it on cereal and like chocolate milk but could never tolerate regular milk. When I see the winner drinking tons of milk at the Indy 500, I feel like gagging!
Fish sticks on fridays ……
Licorice is another thing I don’t like, but I don’t have any bad memories from it. I just don’t like it.
We’re fortunate that our kids liked almost everything as long as it wasn’t the typical stuff on a kid’s menu.
One exception is our youngest hated sweet foods like pies, donuts, and most cookies. He took after me. I didn’t like most either when I was young. Still don’t with many of them.
My mom, bless her, was a wonderful cook, but would boil vegetables to within an inch of their lives. Brussels sprouts, broccoli, canned beets, peas, all made me gag. Creamed corn. A certain casserole that I’d choke down (it had canned corn in it). An eggplant thing that we all had to find a way to discard w/o her knowing.
She grew up in England during the war and had to eat what was served. She did the same to us. Shudder. At least she didn’t feed us beef tongue, although she apparently had it in sandwiches in her youth.
I still won’t eat peas or creamed corn, and canned corn is not my favorite. Roasted beets and Brussels sprouts are great. Broccoli, cooked properly, is the family favorite. I found the original recipe for that casserole and it brought back all the foul memories.
Cottage cheese is something I hated when I was younger. It just made me gag. Now I like it. Cheese curds alone I’m not a fan of. I don’t like the way they “squeak” on my teeth. I have to admit however that I did rather enjoy the poutine I had in Canada.
I’m feeling very very fortunate reading this thread that both my parents were very good cooks and that we mostly ate fresh vegetables (my mom had a huge veggie garden). I honestly don’t know why they served canned peas other than my dad liked them.
There are plenty of foods I don’t like as adult but not because of childhood trauma.
There’s a debate whether they actually contain fish.