Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Vegetables--because my mother only served the canned ones. Now I can prepare the fresh variety.

Onions- HATED them when I was younger. Now I order extra on my burgers and put green onions in everything.

Iced Tea- Because my mom & dad drink it unsweet. BLAH! I use Splenda in mine now, but I remember having sweet tea for the first time and could not believe what I had been missing.

Raspberries- Don't know for sure why I hated them when I was a kid. LOVE them now.

Yellow Squash- It just never looked appealing to me. It always reminded me of baby food. Now, it's one of my "go-to" veggies for the grill.

Brussel Sprouts- LOVED them as a kid. I ate so many I got sick of them and now LOATHE them as an adult. Go figure lol.

Eggplant is probably the only thing I remember hating (Mom used to make ratatouille that was, like, the slimiest stuff you can imagine).

Where do I start? Eggplant, mushrooms, tomatoes, bell peppers, blue cheese, avocado, plus more. Luckily I outgrew it, and now love all these. I still can't believe I turned away my parents' home grown for all those years.

Avocado. Now I can't get enough of them.

Onions,
cilantro,
thanksgiving turkey (I always thought it was too dry, and smelled so much better than it actually tasted.)

And for a long time I hated pizza because I got sick from it once.

I think I may have said this on these boards before, but it's my favorite new fact: kids have more tastebuds than adults, which is why foods you didn't like as a kid (frequently fruits and veggies which can taste bitter to those with hieghtened tastebuds) taste fine as an adult!

As for my list, I'd say eggs (my mom hated them and so therefore didn't know how to cook them - all I ever had was a radioactive version of a microwaved egg), tea (thought it tasted like hot water), vegetables with cheese (thanks to grandma's velveeta sauce, ew), and onions.

Fish! I grew up on Lake Erie at a time when it was so polluted that there were dead fish everywhere on the lake and along the shores. (Today you can practically drink the lake, and there are NO dead fish.) We had a boat, and we'd try to find places with the fewest dead fish to go swimming. The smell! So I didn't exactly want to go home and have a dead fish on my dinner plate!

Today I eat fish practically every day! If you had told me as a child that I would seriously crave raw fish on a little wad of rice, I would have howled.

Tom, I agree with you on the fish - I went to a camp on Lake Erie, and we had dead fish patrol in the morning, to clean up the shore before the other campers were up! Now I love perch from that region, and many other types of fish, but I shunned fish as a child.

Cheese is the other thing I discovered as an adult. My dad had taken me and my siblings on a tour of a cheese factory - the smell (like a dirty sneaker multiplied 1,000 times) put all of us off cheese for years.

Onions! Now I can't live without 'em!

As a kid I hated onions, salad (any raw veggie, really), most cheese, spinach, strawberries (something about the seeds), bagels, salsa, green olives and asparagus.

I liked but now hate: tongue, bananas, jello

I still hate: meat pies, pastry, fish, turnip

I disliked zucchini until my parents had a bumper crop in their garden. We were eating zucchini everything. I did like zucchini cakes and brownies when I was a kid (it's like magic, it makes those kinds of desserts so moist!). Now I like it best sauteed with rice, garlic and parmesan cheese.

I pretty much ate all the things most kids hated: vegetables, liver and onions, etc. However, I had a horror of snails, regarding them as slugs with shells. However, at a restaurant outside of Valencia ,Spain, I had (anjd loved) this dish of sea snails, cooked in a brown mint sauce. Delish. And I've had snails in Chinese eateries, and enoyed them.

Cabbage! I would leave the house when it was being cooked , I grew up in a strict household where the rule was you ate everything on your plate, so I was literally forced to eat it no matter my feelings about it. Now it is my mainstay veggie... raw ,cooked, shredded, pickled , doesnt matter I love it!

as a kid I hated veggies except for green beans, probably because mom always had canned veggies, also detested mashed potatoes(every night)
now I could live on veggies(fresh!!!) still dont like potatoes much unless they are roasted. Also never much cared for steak growing up because my mom always fried it(YUK) I still have nightmares about a slab of overcooked pan fried beef with gooey mashed potatoes and canned peas.

When I was a kid I hated fresh tomatoes. I loved tomato sauce, tomato soup, and tomato juice, but I couldn't stand raw tomatoes. Now I can't imagine a salad without them, and when I go to a country (like France, or Egypt) where the tomatoes are sublime, I pop 'em like candy.

I also hated peas as a kid--or, I THOUGHT I hated peas. My mom always served the shriveled olive drab creatures that came in the silver LeSeuer petit pois can, and they tasted like mush to me. I'm not sure I saw a bright green fresh pea until I was in my 20s.

Peas, we always had the canned ones that were mushy. When I found out they were my husband's favorite I was horrified. I didn't know that peas were actually bright green, not grey and squishy.

I hated mayonnaise and butter as a child. Conversely I loved Miracle Whip and now I can't stand the stuff.

Nicholas H, I too turned away home-grown veggies, now to my utter horror and despair. My dad had an awesome garden with raised beds and little stone walkways, and he'd bring in baskets of green beans and tomatoes and squash and zuchhini, and I hated all of it! I remember him actually getting mad once. Ug. So depressing to think of what I missed out on!

So basically, as a kid, I hated all vegetables, even the one's from my Dad's garden. I still don't like all vegetables, but I eat way more now than ever before, particularly broccoli, which is my favorite.

I actually liked lima beans as a kid, but can't stomach them now.

indian food. japanese food. basically any type of cuisine except for that served at houlihan's (where my mortified family would be forced to eat before going to the ballet or else i would never let them hear the end of it). now i love it all...

kids are ridiculous. on spaghetti and meatball night in our house i would only eat spaghetti and my brother would only eat a bowl of meatballs with sauce (his claim: "spaghetti is slimy and doesn't taste like anything"). this is now the guy who eats monkfish liver sushi and fermented fish curry at pam real thai.

still hate pepper steak and canteloupe, and i always will.

Asparagus for me too-my father insisted that it be boiled to death and served in hot milk with butter. My mom also cooked peas and lima beans this way and I'm still unable to be an adult about them. We unfortunately had a rule at home that you had to eat whatever was on your plate so any night that we had stuff we didn't like was torture.

@flootsmith--really?!?!? I thought I was the only one, and was ashamed even to admit it. Even my mom was astonished at my childhood love for lima beans. Now they taste like chalk to me.

Strawberries, yes fresh strawberries! I can't remember why though.

I hated mushrooms too, but now I find them wonderful, especially enoki.

I used to hate broccoli (and loved cauliflower for whatever reason), but now I'll eat them if adequately seasoned.

Used to hate all cheeses, but now I like most white cheeses.

Every six months or so I find my taste about one or two things has drastically changed. I hope it means my tastes are maturing, rather than my tastebuds dying.