Food You Like and Dislike

Posted October 27th, 2009 in Food, Ume's Interests 2 Comments »

Since I was a kid, eating was one of my hobby and I could eat almost any food.  The common food that kids normally dislike include green capsicums (called “pi-man” in Japanese), carrots, tomatoes… basically vegetables.  Like other kids, pi-man wasn’t my favorite food either because of its bitter taste, but I started to like it since I was 10.  Now it’s one of my favorite food.

  

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To reduce kids’ dislike food, Japan’s school including kindergarden started to take “food education” seriously and worked hard to make kids like vegetables.  Most of schools in Japan (mainly public schools)  serve lunch to students (called “kyuushoku”), and cooks prepare meals to students everyday.  Those cooks try to make the food interesting to kids, so that kids would eat them and reduce their dislike food.  They cut vegetables into shapes of stars and hearts, and create a face or some scene with those cut vegetables.     

To recall my memory, I started to like lots of food as I aged.  I hated natto (fermented soy bean), rakkyo (a kind of pickles), umeboshi (pickled plum), chili powder, wasabi, etc etc before, but I love most of them.  (now I even love eating fresh chili and sambal)   I also didn’t like beer few years ago, but now I often feel like drinking it.

There are actually three food that I still can’t eat …  and I had never been able to eat them since I was a kid.  They are raw eggs, yama-imo (yam potatoes) and okura (okra).   I think the reason is their slimy texture…  Lots of Japanese enjoy a bowl of steamed rice mixed with raw egg and soy sauce, but I hate it and watching people eating it makes me feel like vomiting.. :p

Anyway, I may be able to eat all of them eventually as I age, but I’m not sure…  I can’t think about it at this point!  Do you have any food that you never thought you could eat them but it happened to be your favorite food??  Aging changes people’s food preferences … I think so.


2 Comments on “Food You Like and Dislike”

  1. 1 Bishonencam said at 8:29 am on October 28th, 2009:

    Yo! U-chan!

    I totally agree!

    It’s funny how kids only really like sweet stuff and dislike vegetables, but when you get older you eat more vegetables and healthy food.

    But for me there has been some food which I liked as a kid, but don’t like now (bell pepper, ginger, pears). I think this is mostly due to the fact I’ve had bad eating experiences with those foods and not just because I’ve naturally stopped liking them.

    But as a child I didn’t like steak, skim milk, raw tomato, tinned tuna or red onion, (I was pretty picky) but now I love them all ^_^

  2. 2 umepontarou said at 2:04 pm on October 28th, 2009:

    Hi Bishonencam

    haha,

    Actually, yes I have some foods that I used to like but not anymore… most of them are Japanese kids snacks :p

    I didn’t eat meat often while I was in Japan, but now I eat them quite often here.
    I think preference of food is affected by the environment (where you are) too.


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