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Reminds me of a funny story. My parents were visiting friends, kids eating in another room - there were 8 to 10 of us. They gave us chow mein out of cans. We weren't allowed outdoors until we all ate every bite and we all hated it. My sickly 7 year old baby sister who probably weighed 40 lbs. (we called her Garbage Can Pat 'cause she could and would eat anything and didn't gain weight) ate everything on the table so we could go out! What a trooper! My mother swears she had a hollow leg. I love Chinese food, but haven't had chow mein since. I wonder if she has? I'll have to ask.

At home, Mom was a fabulous cook, but we had to eat everything. Today, we all do eat everything, except the baby of the family. The rest of us were grown and I believe they were way more lenient with him. He and his family just visited me. I served a fruit salad. His middle boy didn't want any. My brother told him he had to eat one piece. He sat there and gagged and gagged and gagged. It was terrible. Not the time or place.

I cannot remember anything that totally freaked me out as a kid, although just about everyone I know has "something". My mom used to make split pea soup and the icky green sludge grossed me out but they didn't make me eat it. Now I eat everything that's not nailed down.
I did manage to scar my son with eggplant, however. Our rule was that you had to at least taste it. He may have sat at the table for two hours that day. Many years later, one of his girlfriends made him a fancy Italian dinner, all her family recipes that I'm sure she was very proud of. The menu happened to include eggplant parm. Obviously, the relationship didn't survive. My work as a mom is done.

my mom loved asparagus on toast, the canned variety, she made me taste it once and I thought I would die! never was able to eat the stuff untill 2 yrs ago when I had grilled asparagus at Claim Jumper in Phoenix. OMG now you can't keep me away, unless its canned!

I had a really nasty experience with chicken teriyaki when I was in 8th grade. I've never been so ill in my life. 19 years later, I still won't eat anything with teriyaki sauce.

Had a similar experience with a meal at a friend's house about a year later. Her father made a dish called "tofu surprise." Oh dear lord. Fortunately, this is not a common menu item, and I have not encountered it since.

huney_bumper - what's this thing with the grilled canned asparagus that is so awesome? Tell, tell! My mom always had canned asparagus at home for us and I don't remember liking it so much, but my parents weren't mean like me . They didn't make us eat stuff we didn't particularly like. And I think I grew up to be a pretty well-rounded eater and snooty little foodie in spite of all that. She would be so proud. ha ha...

Bad scrambled eggs. I was raised vegetarian, and I was also a somewhat picky eater when I was little, so I didn't get much protein. My mom made me eat scrambled eggs every other day, but she made them so poorly - they were really dry and brown and had that gross crusty stuff on it from the sides of the pans. They were so horrible that I had to wash them down with red Kool-Aid, as that was the only thing that was strong enough (flavor-wise) to mask the taste of the horrible eggs.

I very rarely eat scrambled eggs now. But I do love a good poached egg.

PerkyMac- Just a quick question; what was a urine sample doing on the kitchen table?
Anyway, that aside for me it was fish. Everything seemed to have been overcooked 40 years ago and fish was at the top of the list. I guess people thought you had to cremate it to kill the germs or something! These days I love most fish, especially rockfish, flounder, sea bass.....

Wow...I guess it's true confessions time.

Before my mother and dad split, my dad was prone to fits of anger. One night at dinner, my mother made something she called a "Scratch Rice-A-Roni" which, of course, in no way resembled the salty, crappy stuff my eleven year old palate craved. My dad got angry and grabbed a handful of the rice mixture, and threw it across the room. To this day, I can't watch someone throw food. A switch gets flipped.

I even got the heebie jeebies watching the "food fight" scene in Animal House but eventually got my psyche to understand that particular instance was in fun.

As far as food I got forced to eat as a kid and can't look at now - There really isn't anything that qualifies. As an adult, I like most all of the foods I had to choke down as a kid.

I have one that will amaze you. One Christmas when I was ten my dad and uncle decided it was time I was a grown up and could have a glass of red wine at dinner. No, not a small watered down glass, a full adult size glass of red wine. I couldn't leave the table until I finished it, because it was an "expensive bottle of wine". I drank half a glass over two hours of sitting at the table then got sick. When my dad brought me home to my mom, well, you can imagine the rest. To this day I still don't like wine but I do use it to cook!

Unsweetened apple sauce. I hated taking medicine as a child, so my mom would smash baby aspirin and mix it into the apple sauce. So, so bitter. I can eat sweetened apple sauce now, but the thought of unsweetened just makes me gag.

I've said this before on here, I think...but my mother told me as a child that Tuna in a can was cat food. To this day I still gag when I see or smell someone eating it.

Pepper. My grandmother smoked and I was convinced that the pepper in her food was ashes (even though she never smoked in the kitchen). I've since gotten over the phobia but for years and years I refused to eat anything that had visible specks of black pepper.

@RichardCrystal........she was a pretty clever lady and I learned a lot from her. Just ask my kids! haha

Hot dogs, chili dogs, etc. especially those with the red food coloring. My mom made hot dogs every saturday, without fail. I hate the smell, taste, and texture of hot dogs/balogna. I've never really liked any lunch meat, and I think it's because they (and hot dogs) all have that same smell. And dairy milk (don't drink it because I can't stand the smell). I lived on a farm; we had milk cows, and there was always so much milk.

sorry i meant the grilled fresh is awesome not canned yuk!

I could not eat mayo for years I had fallen down as a child an was knocked out for hours the tec who took my head ex rays when I woke smelled like mayo......

we had some really wacky "backyard neighbours" when i was growing up. we lived second house from the corner so there were about 5 backyards that attached to ours. one of those houses had a family with a boy and girl close to the same age as my brother and i. one time my brother was at their house (about 7 years old) and he double-dipped. the son ratted him out to his mom, and she reamed my poor brother for it. then, that summer i (age 9) was over at their house and the cherry tomatoes in her yard were ripe for the picking. she kept insisting i try one, and i kept insisting i didn't like tomatoes. she finally just shoved it into my mouth and forced me to eat it. i got my revenge though, as i promptly got sick on her. haven't been able to eat a tomato since.

Yes pig's liver. My dad used to buy it, slice it and cook it for dinner. I didn't mind it, it was quite nice.

However, one time the gall bladder in the liver had ruptured and all the bile had leeched into the liver itself. It was so disgusting, I've never been able to eat it ever again - ewwww... I can taste that disgusting taste now...

reading through other comments i have to say i have also always hated liver. mom once tried to lie to me and convince me it was "breaded fried steak". i didn't buy it for a second.

also, i absolutely hated mushy boiled broccoli. one night i was particularly snarky about it, so mom insisted i had to eat it before i could watch 90210. i sat at the table until i heard the intro song in the next room. then i stuffed it in my mouth, chewed, and drank milk to help swallow it. to this day i still can't stand mushy broccoli.

does this count? i ate a magic brownie at a 60's party once and it was so potent, and i was so miserable for hours after i ate it, that i was never tempted to indulge again. {in the magic part -- i still love brownies!}

chisai..........I love all of those foods, but never prepared like that, and not together. Blech, yukkk and ewwwww!!! She truly was evil! You poor dear, I'm so sorry you had to stay with Auntie Cruella and endure such harsh punishment. I hope there was a Prince Charming and a glass slipper to remember too. ;)

This is also not my story, but my mom's. My grandmother apparently used to make some kind of casserole with canned tuna, frozen peas, sour cream, mayo, rice, and ground beef (plus some other stuff that I can't remember). My Mom and her siblings imagined it was some kind of Swedish import and named it "Smorglob." Delicious, I'm sure... :-P

chiff....I'm ducking also. Mom had an iron deficiency and cooked l&o once a week. We'd smell it the instant we walked in the door and want to hide. Sometimes we had to eat it, and sometimes she'd make us something else. It must be an acquired taste, because I later learned to love it. She started it with bacon. It was never overcooked and always delicious. Later, I went to weight watchers and also had to eat it once a week and I cooked it with V8 or tomato juice, sans the bacon and gravy. I still love it, but don't eat it often.

We had liver once a month at home for the iron content. I have not eaten liver since I left home almost 25 years ago, except as pate. I've tried, but I can't do it. My husband LOVES it, so he often orders it in restaurants if it is available. At least I can now stand watching that.....

Re the kids and hooch thread - I have one of those stories myself. For a year when I was about 8, my family lived in Manitoba, which at that time, allowed parents to serve alcohol to their minor children in restaurants. I had been allowed to drink a sherry glass of wine on special occasions since I was about 4. My dad had been living in Manitoba for a few months before we moved, so had missed out on an occasion in my life that he felt warranted celebration. So, my mom got me all dolled up and he took me out for dinner. Ooh, I was so excited - a big girl dinner with Daddy. And then HE saw fit to order an entire bottle of SAKI, and split it with me! I was 8! I might have weighed 50 pounds TOPS (I was a tall exceedingly skinny child). Needless to say, I got completely loaded. I ended up sitting on his lap, giggling and laughing, and generally embarrassing him. He made the mistake of showing me a brand new 50 dollar bill that he had - they were redesigned that year to have the RCMP musical ride printed on the back. I would NOT let him use that to pay for dinner. The man ended up scrounging change out of the seats of the car to pay the tab.

We arrived home, and my mother took one look at me and said "She's drunk!" And I was. The next day was NOT pretty - between the hungover child, the contrite husband, and the miffed mother.

Didn't put me off the wine tho! (grin!)

When I was four or five, my mum insisted I eat this stuck-together blob of spaghetti, sauce, and grated parmigiano that had formed about the last bit of unmelted butter in which the spaghetti was routinely tossed before serving. I haven't been able to eat most cheeses to this day. I'm not super keen on the tossing-pasta-in-butter concept, either.

And there was something with scrambled eggs that I cannot remember, it sort of lurks as an edge of the mind memory... but I DO remember that on one occasion, many years after my loathing of eggs was well-established, being served eggs for breakfast by the (not very easygoing) mother of friend, after I'd slept over at the friend's place the night before. I could feel the blood drain from my face, but my motto was 'manners before personal interests' (or something of that sort). In a sort of daze, I bolted the eggs as politely as possible, praying that I wouldn't be sick at the table, since the only things I had ever read that involved redressing dishonour involved suicide, and I recall wondering how I could possibly word an appropriate suicide note to my parents if such a contingency should arise.

Well, yes... I probably DID read the wrong sort of books for an impressionable child :D

One time my parents went out of town and my brother made me dinner. He made salmon.

He didn't cook it right or something because it made me sick and I haven't been able to think of salmon the same way ever since!

Hillary
Chew on That

For me, it's venison. I was about 12, and we had gone to dinner at a family friend's house. It was my first time to have venison, and I didn't really think it was great or terrible. However, the ancient, bottled poppyseed dressing that the hostess hauled out of the back of her fridge caused everyone in my family who tried it to get severe food poisoning. Because venison was involved in the meal, I haven't been able to stomach it in any form other than sausage ever since. (I think the spices in sausage trick my head into accepting it.) I also don't trust bottled poppyseed dressings, but I'll occasionally make homemade dressing without any lingering fears.

MrsMoosie and Lex... the film or chalkiness on your teeth from cooked spinach is caused by oxalic acid, which spinach contains a lot of. It's actually not very high in iron (only compared to other vegetables), and oxalates make most of spinach's iron unavailable to the body.

Anyway. Yes, association is a huge one, isn't it? As a child, I was almost obsessed with eggnog. When I was about 9 or 10, we went to a Christmas Eve party at the home of my parents' friends. I was the only minor present, and the adults were all drinking, so I was pretty much free to run amok. There was an enormous punch bowl full of eggnog, which I dipped into pretty much every 15 minutes. Must've drunk at least a half gallon of that stuff! Later that night I came down with a GI bug and got to experience all that eggnog again. I didn't drink eggnog again for about a decade.