What are some examples of your tastes changing as you got older?
I've started to really like just mustard and sauerkraut on my hotdogs and racing games over FPS because they're a little slower paced.
When you're a kid you want the icing. When you're an adult you want the cake.
I want good icing, not that awful shortening-based shit you get on most commercial cakes. And to be honest, I mostly only want good cake too (ie, homemade or from a bougie bakery).
I want all of it. Stay away from my cake!
I was that weird girl who never wanted icing. I'd always scrape it off and just eat the cake
Instructions unclear, lost interest in both.
Fat > sugar, IMO
I was never interested in frosting, but then I met buttercream frosting, cream cheese frosting, and the like. When used sparingly, without overwhelming the cake/cupcake, it's divine :D
I used to be a boobs guy but as I have grown older, I have really started to appreciate the ass. 🤌
Why not both? ¯(ツ)/¯
I hated music without lyrics.
Now most of the music I prefer has no vocalist, or is extremely limited.
I was browsing random stuff on Spotify the other day and found some really relaxing music. Just the best music to listen to while chugging along at work. Eventually I looked at the album name... It was literally waiting room/elevator music.
Nothing wrong with a bit of smooth jazz.
You should check out brain.fm The whole site is basically non vocal. Music, but it's engineered to get you to focus. When I first saw it, I assumed it was just some gimmicky way to advertise, but I swear it actually helps me to focus better. But yeah. Sounds like you'd enjoy the music they provide.
Check out Brian Eno - Ambient Music for Airports
Vaporwave, synthwave, outrun. That kind of stuff. Almost all without vocals.
Vaporwave can have people speaking but it's almost always short or garbled speaking.
I just need the music to occupy a part of my brain so I can think.
Less and less do I like those damn kids playing on my lawn.
I remember being that kid on the lawn, and I understand where they guy was coming from. Lawns are a lot of work!
I mean kids are kids, I can live with their silliness. What I can't stand is adults walking their dogs and not picking up the dog's shit. Absolute assholes!
lol kids don't play outside anymore
I like men now ;)
Amen.
Dark chocolate is tasty all of a sudden
When I was a kid, I hated dark chocolate and loved milk chocolate. As an adult, I csnt stand milk chocolate, but I love dark chocolate.
I still can't do high-percent dark chocolate. It tastes good for a split second and it's then like every bit of moisture in my mouth, perhaps the whole room, is just sucked dry.
Fun fact: dark chocolate has tannins. The same kind you find in red wine.
Dark chocolate and a cab Sauvignon is the ticket
Have always loved dark chocolate. As I got older I liked the darker stuff more. 85-90%. (Fyi 100% is no good. Lol.) Milk chocolate has always been a no for me. Best I can do is tolerate it if the flavor is mostly masked by whatever it is encasing.
Lemons were only good for lemonade when I was a child. Now they make the best cakes and cookies too.
When I was a kid, I loved pizza rolls but hated bagel bites. I have recently tried them both again, and now pizza rolls taste like shit, but bagel bites are pleasantly delicious.
Used to not like coffee. Then I started to love the taste because I associated it with caffeine. Now I get too jittery so I drink decaf. Life is ironic.
I went from basically a home made milkshake called coffee in the morning to 100% black, can’t stand a grain of sugar or drop of milk/creamer in my coffee.
Also think I became a coffee snob too :(
Guacamole was disgusting to me as a kid; not for the taste but for the texture and appearance. How can adults really want to eat lumpy green slime? This is almost as gross as smoking cigarettes!
Well, smoking cigarettes is still disgusting, but guacamole is awesome.
So many food things! Oysters, all kinds of cheese, guacamole… way too much to list.
I hated avocado because all I'd had was guacamole, it was sour nonsense and I didn't like the look of them and also thought a fattening vegetable was an awful thing (anorexic teen). But once I actually tried an avocado, not guacamole, I was hooked. Ate them all summer when I was 20 and didn't gain a pound, LOL. Now I do also like fresh guacamole but still won't eat the processed crap.
Same boat. I couldn't even stand the look of guacamole. Now you have to keep it away from me for the opposite reason!
I loved booze as a young adult. I didn't quit drinking for some noble reason, I just didn't like it anymore. And cold cookies, as in put that girl scout cookie into the fridge until it gets nice and cold, then eat it. Who knew..
Also, switched from liking rap music to preferring extreme metal, like grindcore or tech death metal.
Spicy foods! When I was younger, birds eye chilli in my meal would spoil my meal as a teenager, and I grew up in a spice loving family. Nowadays I love the kick that chill adds to foods, and I've even dared tiny bites of a Carolina Reaper (and have survived to tell this tale).
Gaming wise, I don't prefer FPS games to my old standbys of strategy and turn based RPG games, but I actually find some enjoyment in playing them now, even though objectively my reaction time is worse. I just accept I'm a mediocre player, haha.
When it comes to books, I crave reading more sci-fi and fantasy books. I don't avoid 'heavy' topics in these genres, but I don't find contemporary literature appealing and prefer a bit of escapism. Maybe I'm just looking at the wrong book recommendations.
I used to avoid spicy food too. I couldn't handle all of the heat.
Then I came down with COVID, recovered, and later went out to a restaurant called Dave's Hot Chicken with my brother and some friends. We got their Carolina Reaper chicken and I was hooked. Before I knew it I was making my own Carolina Reaper hot sauce and loving the burn.
I'm not sure if it's due to the COVID or just changes in my preferences but the timing sure was coincidental.
On the FPS front, I used to love playing games like Call of Duty and I was pretty good at them, then I moved to slightly slower paced shooters like Battlefield, and now I don't play much FPS games at all.
These days I'm more a fan of slower paced games that make you think a bit. I really enjoyed Factorio and also had a lot of fun with Stormworks. Making microcontrollers and getting to write my own Lua code to power my vehicles is a hell of a lot of fun.
Smooth Jazz and 80s music. I had to work real hard to like vegetables. It's an ongoing saga. But one day smooth jazz and 80s music just hit me, and woke something up deep in my spinal column. It's purely nostalgia, and the initial delivery method was probably Spotify being very liberal with recommendations based on vaporwave and synthwave stuff. But synth and sax and all the stuff I used to find tacky and irritating as a child just made me feel at home. The word nostalgia gets abused these days but my sudden appreciation for the sounds of my childhood and the way they consistently make me feel like I'm nestled snug into the beige carpet of a Huber home, just existing without a care in the world…that's some deep nostalgia. And it's also nice to mentally congratulate myself on evolving to appreciate stuff I was too snobby or dense or whatever to like growing up.
This exact combo of genres hit me like a truck within the past two months or so. I used to not care much for Jazz at all and now it’s been nothing but jazz and 80s inspired synth/vapor wave. I think it probably is for similar reasons. Hearing certain combinations of synth or certain jazzy combos really transports me back in time to specific eras of my child and young adulthood.
Mitch Murder - Then Again
Instantly takes me back 30 years.
When I was a kid, I hated salads. Now I love them.
I have a friend who says chicken Caesar is his favorite food. While I still think that’s kinda weird, I also do like chicken Caesar salads.
I've never cared for chicken caesar salads. My favorite is regular grilled chicken salad with honey mustard dressing. 😋
It's not my favorite, but if it's well done, grilled chicken Caesar salad is super yummy and also healthy. But the dressing and parm chz has to be quite good, and the chicken almost as good.
Lesa and less do I like those damn kids playing on my lawn.
i still don't understand salads. why would i want to eat cold leaves when i could have a tasty hot cooked meal
Salads can be made tasty and when paired with the right cheeses, nuts and proteins, they're healthy, filling, and downright heavenly.
I remember being the kid at the salad bar at school who would just load up on croutons and cheese. I felt like I was the only one that didn't like anything that I saw there!
I can eat a whole plate of lighty steamed broccoli with nothing on it. I barely ate any veg all the way up to my 30s
I didn't like pickles on my mcdonalds burgers. I don't know why, they're great.
I was the same with pickles, and now I'm getting through a jar a week.
I strangely went the opposite way on that, I liked them as a kid but find them too sour now.
That bite when you find the pickle
HomerDrooling.gif
I inherited a complete loss of the sweet tooth kicking in in the early 20s. Child me would be horrified.
Through a disease I also started liking onions which I hated with a passion before.
Mushrooms. When I was younger I just knew I hated them, then as I got older I realized it was because after I had more than a mouthful of them my throat started burning. I figured it was an allergy and that was that... then I fell in love with a woman whose third favorite food is mushrooms. She spent years trying to find a way to get me to appreciate mushrooms, and not a casual effort I should add. First we figured I was fine with Enoki mushrooms (the little beansprout-like ones you get in Miso soup sometimes), then it was Oyster mushrooms which are pretty damn versatile, if low on flavor. Started incorporating those into my cooking, and for years that was the extent of it until one day I had something with white mushrooms in it and realized the damndest thing: my throat wasn't burning. I'm not sure how or why, but whatever problem I had with mushrooms had gone away. Now I have mushrooms almost every day, usually as part of my breakfast.
TL;DR: Mushrooms kick ass.
I thought this was going to go a very different direction. Mushrooms are good though, in both contexts. I also used to hate them as a kid but my parents would always eat them. Over time I learned to love them and now I always have mushrooms on hand. They go with every meal.
The other type is also good to have on hand, but does not go as well with meals in my opinion.
Funnily enough the one time I had the other kind of mushrooms I was expecting them to taste awful based on all the warnings and my own issues with mushrooms. Turns out I don't mind the flavor that much.
According to my doctor I'm experiencing severe depression so... Everything changed.
I had doctors for my depression for years, and they would occasionally say things like “some people feel a little better when they exercise. It’s the endorphins”
What I wish they had done instead was grab me by the lapel, slam me agains the wall, slap me a couple of times, and yell “You fool, you’re depressed because your brain has atrophied from lack of movement! Your natural state is very happy but you evolved to be moving your body!”
When I finally did connect those dots, and finally saw the research on hippocampal neurogenesis, I upped my running from 2 miles maybe every other week, to like 30 miles a week.
And the depression was gone. For the first time in decades. The effect was so much more powerful than the meds.
Read up on exercise, BDNF, hippocampal volume, and depression.
Or just trust me, and go run like a caveman chasing a deer to exhaustion.
I'm actively rowing almost every day that I can and trust me it's much more demanding than just running.
Thank you for your advice but sometimes life just fucks you up and spits you out the other way.
I started to like Seltzer water. No idea how it happened, I tried it one day after always hating it, and it was like a light switch went off. Now I am always drinking it (still like flat water too!)
That's definitely a sing of growing up lol! I swear it is programmed into our genetics or something. My close friend group and I, all started drinking mineral water after we've hit 25. I have never liked it before I got older, now I am drinking it everyday.
I used to hate fresh tomatoes. Now I love it. I used to love really spicy hot stuff, but now it makes me sick if it's too hot.
If you live somewhere you can grow tomatoes, do it. There’s nothing like a fresh off the vine tomato you grew yourself.
Also they taste way better than grocery tomatoes (assuming you’re in the US)
I hated tomatoes growing up. As an adult I realized it all comes down to the texture, my parents would always cut them with dull knives and manhandle them until they were all mushy. Cut them with sharp knives and keep them slightly firm and they're suddenly 1000% better.
I used to hate fresh tomatoes and basically anything with tomato when I was a kid. Now I’ve got used to every thing that’s made out tomatoes but still can’t eat fresh/raw tomatoes. I think it’s the texture for me and sometimes it’s okay to not like some things.
I used to hate tomatoes too. Couldn't figure out why my brother and mother would eat them all the time, they dipped them in salt even. At some point I started liking foods made with tomatoes like pizza and so on. The point at which tomatoes started making sense to my is when I worked out they were a fruit, so rather than waiting for a savoury taste I knew I was getting a slightly less sweet grape. And then I deduced from that you could have a grape and Camembert sandwich. If you haven't tried this combo, you're missing out.
For the life of me I can’t bring myself to enjoy fruit now, any of it. I used to be an apple a day person but I have completely lost that kind of sweet tooth. Conversely, I spent the first 20 or so years of my life avoiding anything that resembled lettuce, and the next 20 happy to have a Caesar salad once in a while, but only Caesar salad. At this point I find myself making a salad every evening out of whatever veggies I can think of to put in it.
Hated broccoli. Love broccoli.
Tangentially related, someone told me that Brussels sprouts have been bred (er, cultivated? what's the word?) to be less bitter in recent years. So all of us who remember hating sprouts and now love 'em, it might be legitimately better!
I was very picky as a child, when I got my own place I tried cooking and started to like more and more stuff because I knew how to prepare them correctly. Now I have a bad case of IBS and I can't eat much variety because of it. The irony is not lost on me
Similar story here. Them diseases do fuck with enjoying life.
Have you tried probiotics to help your IBS symptoms? I had horrible IBS as a child and through my teens but it eventually went away as I ate more yogurts. Now the occasional probiotic pill keeps my gut happy.
I have and I remember it really helped but I had to stop because I couldn't afford it anymore for a while and I didn't start again. I had a quick look and apparently yogurt can help treat IBS but it's bonkers, like 600g a day for 400 days or so. So, I should probably give your solution a try
-Here's the weirdest one: I used to hate the French language (too "mushy"!) and was super excited that my college offered German. I took THREE YEARS of German. Now I've forgotten it all, but I'm really into French and actually considering a French immersion program to get more conversational.
-Also, I used to love loud & stimulating environments (metal shows, night clubs, etc.) while now I appreciate tranquility. Gimme a used bookstore or nature walk any day! I went to a drag brunch recently cause it seemed like the kind of thing I should like as a gay-ish Millennial woman. But it was SO not my thing ... the lights, blaring music, close bodies, and cell phones documenting every second just ruined all the nice/chill things about brunch. And I can't survive an actual concert without earplugs.
-Food-wise, I hated seafood as a kid. Now I love it, including oysters and scallops and octopus and sushi/ceviche of any kind.
May I just say that I love that liking German went with loud environments and metal shows, and liking French went with used book stores and tranquility. It just search so fitting in a way.
Haha now that you mention it...yea.
As a teen/early 20-something, I had a lot of energy and anger in general, which probably influenced my aesthetic and cultural preferences. Now I'm more chill, more content, but much lower energy.
I still enjoy hard rock & metal, but it's more in a sentimental way, or to have in the background so I clean the bathroom more efficiently ;) I'm not exactly seeking out new bands in that genre.
Well I find the chocolates and candies too sweet. I can’t eat a whole bar at once and I’m slowly moving towards chocolates with less sugar or no sugar. Also I hate white chocolate now.
Pickles
Olives. I fucking love olives.
boobs ---> ass
Pop music. As a kid I was only about classic rock, alt rock. I hated pop the most and kind of looked down on my peers that listened to it. Now I like so many different kinds of music that at the time I didn't think was for me. Like pop music is just fun to listen to and makes you happy. I was such an angsty and pretentious teen.
Mac and cheese?? Fam, that shit is delicious at all ages
Right? Just fancy it up as an adult.
Make yourself a little roux/béchamel sauce and start chuckin in some grated gouda, gruyère, havarti, or whatever kind of cheese you like until you like the taste. Mix in some cooked elbow macaroni and you're set.
It takes slightly more time and attention than the usual pot of neon-orange comfort, but its waaaaaaay better.
Also: you can remove some of the "graininess" of the real cheese by throwing in justba slice of American Cheese. The emuslifing salts in the slices helps the cheese proteins break down and gives your sauce a more velvety feel.
As we grow up our mac and cheese gets fancier 🥰
Mac and cheese is delicious for a couple of bites then it just becomes bland to me 🤷
Have you tried dipping Oreos in black coffee though?? It's a fantastic combo.
Yoo-hoo. Loved that shit when I was a kid. It tastes like the most horrible take chocolate sugar drink now.
I have always described my palate as "hidden pickiness" because I like so many foods it doesn't seem like I am picky but I do care & have things I will not eat.
As I have gotten older, it's mostly bitter things I can now appreciate (always liked spicy even when young) - mangos used to taste too much like vomit but now I taste only the delicious flavor and not the puke (though papaya remains out of reach) and I like mixed drinks with more of a bitter edge than before, and even chinotto soda. It's like the bitter element has decreased in volume, faded into the background and adds something delicious rather than just making anything bitter taste like bile. Swiss cheese, I used to dislike but now like, I taste a pleasant nuttiness to it, delicious. Still hate ketchup.
And only when very young could I like very sweet things. Kids can eat straight sugar, but once grown that is unpleasant as heck.
In music, I'd say my taste has broadened, certainly. I like more different kinds of music as I get older.
Oh I have to add the sweet, as a kid I was like you. Now I can barely get thru a can of pepsi or mountain dew. I lived on thats stuff back in the day.
The older I get, the more I like and enjoy spiciness in food. Used to hate hot sauces or anything vaguely hot, now I love it.
Pineapple on pizza. I used to hate it as a child since the fruity taste seemed weird on it. After a deep introspection, I came to accept that it's still food and the taste ended up growing on me.
Oh, but I still put ketchup on pizza, with pineapples or whatever on it.
You had me until you mentioned ketchup on pizza, why? I find ketchup is just so overpowering, all I ever taste is a sweet tomato-ish flavour and nothing else. I feel like it defeats the purpose of eating unless the food is super bland.
It's just something I never grew out of. I need it to soften and enhance the taste of whatever I'm eating, mostly meat or fried dishes. If I don't put it on the stuff I usually eat, then eating food feels like a chore and tastes kind of bland.
Not that I put it on everything I eat. Just that I use it on a lot of the stuff I eat.
Pineapple and jalapenos on pizza is an A++ combination, if you've never tried that.
Add pepperoni and you've got my favorite
As a kid I hated: Raw onion, Cream cheese, Sauerkraut, Guacamole. Now I love them all.
Still hate: mayo and sour creme, cooked fish.
Also can't deal w/ sweet now that I'm an adult, was a huge sugar addict as a kid.
I used to like pretty much anything and everything when it came to video games. But the older I get, the fewer games I find I really enjoy. Sometimes I don't know if it's the industry that's simply gotten shittier or I've simply explored enough variety to know what kind of stuff I don't like, so never even bother to try. Mostly because a lot of times I do try something just because it is popular, and I hate it.
I suddenly got craving for things I never had but have been around like potato's, salads, cucumbers with lime and salt.
Also when it gets hot outside I crave a topo chico with lime and salt, something that not too long ago I wouldn't even consider drinking.
I suddenly love broccoli with no cheese
Anchovies.
i got into mushrooms, which turned out to be a big stepping stone into making more posh dishes seem accessible
i still hate mustard, mayo, pickes, relish, ranch, etc.
I also never cared for mayo and ranch. I discovered I do like Japanese mayo, however. You might give that a shot as it's really good with some things.
Specifically food tastes?
I need food with lots of spices now. When I was younger I wanted the most bland foods, now I crave those strong spices like cayenne, cumin, pepper, fresh basil, and fresh garlic.
Lifestyle tastes?
I like to keep my social circle and setting small now. Like 5 total. That's enough.
I also like to do solo hobbies now with quiet reflection or listening to podcasts instead of music...
Used to hate olives and love peanut butter.
I like coconut and dark chocolate now, I just really liked white chocolate growing up
The first time I ever tasted molasses as a bab I was like "wft is this grandma candy". Now though? Blackstrap in my coffee nearly every morning. The flavor profile is amazing.
Hated. Vehemently hated mushrooms. Now I grow and eat them daily. Same thing with sauerkraut. Started adding it to stuff and horseradish
Friend of mine got kicked out of his apartment for the smell, but I once helped him make a batch for his sauerkraut business, and to pay me he gave me a couple jars from a previous batch.
Holy shit that stuff was delicious. I ate one of the jars on my way home walking down the sidewalk.
But yeah. His neighbors weren’t too happy with the smell.
I used to listen to a lot of heavy metal. Lots of mid-late 2000s era metal and old school stuff. By the time I had reached college, and a friend group with diverging tastes, I got into indie rock, hip-hop, electronica, reggae, post-rock, indie pop, etc.
My 14 year old self would’ve been disappointed. I really cut it down from my life. But I’ll still catch metal show and listen to it every once in a while. Or for workouts. Just not something as aggressive and angry that much.
When I was a kid, I hated onion, to the point where I could tell if a dish hung out too long next to some. Now, I can't get enough of them.
I used to not like mustard, onions, or garlic but now I do. So, tastes do change. Some foods just taste better when prepared differently from when you were a kid though. Growing up, any time I had asparagus or squash, it was boiled. Yuck. But once I grew up and put those on a grill and they became magnificent.