No I don’t mean taste in clothing or soft furnishings, I mean actual taste. Why is it that some people seem to be able to eat absolutely anything and others are deemed “picky” because there are certain foods that taste bad to them? I think about this just about every time someone asks me why I don’t eat seafood. The simple answer is; I just don’t like it. It tastes bad to me.

I understand how confusing this is to seafood lovers; just as confusing as it is to chocolate lovers when I say I’m not that impressed by chocolate. After all, I dated a guy for a couple of years who wouldn’t eat anything but meat, potatoes, bread and the (very occasional) green pea. It was incredibly frustrating to have to leave all the vegetables I loved out of everything I cooked, and it set the maturation of my palate back… well about two years I guess.

But think for a moment about a food you just can’t stand. There’s nothing you can do to make it taste better. You’re not being picky, you just can’t like it because it happens to be food. Sometimes it changes as you get older… there are quite a lot of foods I wouldn’t have touched a few years ago that I eat all the time now, and I’m not just putting up with them, I’m enjoying them. As a kid I absolutely detested raw tomato, but now I’m eating those little grape ones straight out of the punnet on the way home from the green grocer. I also hated avocado, but if any of you have ever seen me with a plate of nachos… well it’s one of the few times you can actually get a word in edgewise.

And then there’s the fact that you grow out of certain foods as well. I know I can’t stomach a bowl of froot loops these days, much less stand stuffing an entire roll of bubble tape in my mouth at once.

So what’s my point? There are two actually, one for the pickees and one for the pickers. Pickees: I was once one of you, and my advice is to regularly try foods you think you don’t like. Your taste changes over time and you can open up whole new worlds of culinary delight you never knew existed… and if you still don’t like it at least you can be sure. As for the pickers: Leave picky eaters alone. It’s hard enough dealing with the fact that you might only find one thing on a restaurant menu that you can eat, they don’t need you making them feel like bad tempered two year olds who are only being picky to get attention.

This has been the first of many random thoughts on my new blog. I figured I might make a bit of room in my brain if I got some of the ramblings out in print.