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I am not a fussy eater.  I truly enjoy almost any food if it’s well-prepared.  The astute Jeffrey Steingarten has written hilariously and well on the topic of food aversions, coming to the conclusion that anyone can eat anything and like it if they just give it enough chances. 

I have to admit I have a certain impatience and disdain for fussy eaters, being that there are so few foods I don’t like myself.  I honestly can’t wrap my mind around not liking beets or brussel sprouts.  Up until two short months ago, the foods I didn’t care for were lamb, cantaloupe, and tarragon.  Weird, huh? 

This past summer, for some unknown reason, I began to crave lamb, seared or grilled to a medium rare.  Gone are the  days when my husband and I would sit pondering a restaurant menu, and I would suggest he order “the lamb, since I never make it at home.”  Steingarten’s theory of overcoming food aversions hangs on the premise that at some point we either accidentally or intentionally consume a food we don’t like a certain number of times.  In other words, we cross a threshold from dislike to like simply from a certain amount of exposure.  I think he must be right, because while I’ve never hated lamb, I had never, ever sought it out.  I would try bites of it here and there, just to see how I felt about it. 

My friends with children tell me that when introducing flavors to infants, it’s essential to try feeding them new foods on several occasions.  More often than not, the babies will end up liking the flavors and stop refusing them.  Also key is making the flavor introduction a positive experience, with no forcing or acrimony.  My mother never forced me to eat anything, but then again, she never had to.  I’m a big eater from way back.

So I’m figuring that at some point in the future, I’ll start to like tarragon and cantaloupe.  Maybe there is some deep-seated trauma I subconsciously associate with these flavors.  It’s true that tarragon tastes like a cobwebby dried bouquet that’s been sitting in someone’s closet, but every so often I’ll accidentally ingest some in a sauce or soup.  And as far as I’m currently aware, cantaloupe still tastes faintly rotten and slippery, as if it’s just been rescued from a garbage pail in July.  So perhaps I first tasted these things while hidden in a closet or too close to the trash, respectively. 

What foods don’t you like?  Think you could try the exposure experiment to see if it works?  Get back to me.  I’ll keep working on the tarragon and cantaloupe.