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“Don’t Hate It Until You Try It”: 40 People Are Sharing Their Unpopular Takes On Food
Pickles wrapped in cheese, popcorn with beans and ice cream on meatloaf are just a few of the surprising food combinations Americans said they love, according to this survey. It’s not to say these pairings are must-try, but they definitely show just how unique our taste buds can be.
So when Twitter user Michael Realman called for “canceling each other over food takes today,” it hit a soft spot for many. Immediately, people started sharing their own “cancelable” food combos that hit all too close to home, or rather the kitchen, for the rest.
From ketchup on waffles to Nutella pasta, some of the pairings will definitely raise our brows but hey, who am I to judge when I put salt and pepper on my porridge! And if you too are no stranger to some quirky food combo, be sure to share it in our comment section!
Image credits: trichesfaucons
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Most of us have at least one eating habit, if not more, that chances are we developed way back in our childhood. The first year of life is a period of rapid physical, social and emotional growth, during which eating patterns also develop. During this first year, infants transition from consuming a single food (i.e., breast milk or formula) to consuming a variety of foods more characteristic of an adult diet.
Moreover, parents influence children's eating behavior in many ways. First off, adults actively make food choices for the whole family, serving as models for dietary choices and patterns. Children also learn about food by observing the eating behaviors modeled by others. For example, research reveals that children's intake of fruits, vegetables, and milk increased after observing adults consuming the foods.
Our food preferences, whether common or unusual, are also part of our eating habits that formed early in life. They often include unique food combinations, too. The registered nutritionist Charlotte-Stirling Reed, who’s the author of “The Baby & Child Nutritionist,” told Bored Panda that when it comes to weird food pairings, parents often have a preconceived idea of what “flavors” go together. “They find it unimaginable that their young children eat certain pairings. But little ones, especially during weaning, don’t have the idea that breakfast HAS to be sweet, for example, until we introduce that idea,” she said and added that “They might not see the problem of having a courgette porridge in the morning or avocado ice cream!”
This is a pretty common dish (specifically in the UK), so I don't see this one being cancelled.
Both of those ingredients bring my daughters IBS up big time!! Goes from a flat stomach to looking five months pregnant! Hard to cook without them but possible!!
Had to cook without them for half of my pregnancy and for 5 more months after giving birth. As you say, not easy, sometimes a little bit sas, but possible. Missed them all the time.
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Would you rather I said 'I don't like onions or garlic' or 'Onions and garlic will make me sh*t for 6 hours straight'?
How about, "I can't eat onions or garlic"? No need to be crude. My wife LOVES both, but can't eat them.
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ALL my favorite foods, you say? Well, to my recollection, no one ever made my birthday cake with garlic and onions. If they had, they would’ve ended up wearing their creation!
I don't have a problem with flavor so much as the texture. If there are large chunks of onion in them I can't.
I have since forced myself to get over the texture issue, but I spent 25 years completely unable to eat an onion without throwing up. Green or white. Put it in the blender, fine, I don't mind the taste. But I could not get past that texture.
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Love onions, they don't love me, have to be careful. Garlic, ok in very small amounts.
Do you have the same problem with all Allium species (Inc. chives, leeks, scallions, etc)?
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How about, "I don't like the taste of garlic." Does THAT work for you? Geez.
Buddhist vegans (su vegans) don't eat garlic, onions, leeks, or scallions. One reason is that they interfere with meditation. My reason is that once you get them out of your system, they are as appealing as rotting gym socks. (BTW, I used to love onions) This is standard vegan fare in Greater China.
I can't eat anything without tons of onions and garlic in it. Onions and garlic are my "salt and pepper".
I always say that people who don’t like onions or garlic probably don’t like sex either.
I love thie😆 but i hate onions and can taste onions in everything. Even the most miniscule amount
Raw onion is disgusting and if it is in something I eat then I can't task any other ingredient. It lingers in my mouth for hours on end.
Garlic smells horrible baking or cooking, but I don't mind the taste.
I love onions and garlic, always have. My friend has gut problems and the sulfur sets off her methane production big time. download-2...40bfd4.jpg 
No Doc, you’re wrong. I guarantee there are no onions, and no garlic in my Orange sherbet, or Pecan pie.
I'm allergic to onions and our mass food industry insists on putting onions into EVERYTHING! It's like they use it as cheap filler.
I hate onions, but love garlic. I will pick out any visible signs of onions and will make sure the other flavors drown out the onion if I know there's some in it.
I like garlic in my food but, the smell of it cooking gives me a headache.
I hate raw onion. Not incorrect. Not factually incorrect. Raw onion is disgusting. If you cook it into oblivion, onion is ok.
My 11 year old will say whatever I'm making smells good if I am cooking mushrooms but claims she hates mushrooms and refuses to eat them
I worked in restaurants where they sauteed some onions and garlic to make the restaurant smell better.
ok I don't like onions but I absolutely love garlic it's amazing and there can never be too much garlic
I don't like onions if they are like raw on a burger or something but if they are chopped up in a dish, I'm happy to eat
I am allergic to onion! They make me physically ill... so no, I am not incorrect in the FACT that I do not like them. I do like garlic, in moderation... too much gives me terrible heartburn!
Me too..I love the smell and the taste, but if I ate a small amount of garlic or onion I have cramps and stomachache for at least 48 hours.. I put scallion or onion in cooking oil..to get the taste.. and I remove before adding other ingredients, I don't tolerate more than this 😓
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Onion makes my bowels immediately evacuate, and will for the next 2-3 weeks anytime I eat anything. Any amount of onion. Powder, flavoring, cooked, raw, a chunk on a pizza that was ordered with mushroom and black olive and some got flung on there by mistake. Onion is poison to me. So YOU are factually wrong.
Uh, no. I hate garlic. It's disgusting. It always leaves a rancid taste in my mouth. It makes food taste like it has literally gone bad. Garlic is disgusting. My favourite foods do not have garlic in them. How do I know? Because I made them. This person provided no facts, only suppositions and opinions, then said "you are factually incorrect".People who act like their opinions are facts and can override someone else's are the absolute worst of humanity. Anti-choice people are all like that. So are homophobes. So was hitler.
It’s not that I don’t like onions in general… I just don't like big and crunchy, still raw onions in my food
I have a Russian friend who HATES onions, and I totally get that. I don't care for garlic. But you know what's worse than these two? Their variety found in shaker bottles>>> powdered onions and powdered garlic is awful!!
He's not wrong. Onion or garlic-flavored foods: Hot dogs, salami and most other sausages. Tortellini, ravioli and most stuffed pasta. Spaghetti/pizza sauce. Lo mein. Salsa/pico de gallo. Pesto. Guacamole. Barbecue rub/sauce. Ketchup, teriyaki, taco sauce, and other condiments from around the globe. Ranch, Italian and most other salad dressings. Stuffing and stuffed anything. You may not like when people put too much, but without at least a modest amount, any one of these foods would taste weird, bland, and terribly wrong.
“In fact, my children recently chomped through some fruit sorbet with a stick of cauliflower on the side (their request). Sometimes children just follow their own innate intuition of what foods and flavors they want at that moment,” Reed told us. She said that parents should be happy to see that and “let them go for it!” Moreover, the child nutritionist added that she has carrot, beetroot and courgette porridge options as regular breakfasts for her kids, “and to them that’s quite normal!” If you and your little one feel adventurous enough to try some of the Reed’s unique porridge recipes, check them out right here.
I don't see anything unusual? Not my favorite, but if there was a cookie shortage, I'd at least consider them.
Sensory scientists and flavor experts have been studying just what foods and flavors pair well with others, pleasantly surprising our taste buds. One such pretty widespread combo is pineapple and ham (but beware to never order this kind of pizza anywhere in Italy!), which seem to work perfectly together.
Paul Breslin, a sensory scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center and a professor of nutrition at Rutgers University, explained this combo: “Really fatty foods, like ham and other meats, tend to leave your mouth feeling fatty, which is an undesirable state. Enter the pineapple. The fruit, which is naturally acidic, cuts through that greasy mouthfeel, creating a balanced (and tasty) result,” he said.
Pears and blue cheese have a similar effect. Breslin says that dressings typically contain three components: fat, salt, and acid. In the case of this classic pairing, the blue cheese provides the fat and salt, and the pear does its part with the acid.
Meanwhile, Niki Segnit, UK-based author of The Flavour Thesaurus, argues that “there are many wonderful matches to be discovered, and you don't need a PhD in molecular gastronomy to start experimenting.” She told the press that “interesting and unusual flavor matches can be made with common store-cupboard ingredients, like cheese and marmalade, or chocolate and aubergine.”
This 2020 survey commissioned by SPAM found that 41 percent of American respondents were most likely to have discovered their favorite food combinations from family or friends. The most popular food combo Americans love is the dipping of French fries in their chocolate milkshake. Other top combinations were chocolate and popcorn or sour cream and onion chips with chocolate. Interestingly, over half said they’ll have a “freak out” if their different foods touch each other while on their plate, the same survey found.
Hear me out. Vanilla Greek yogurt, a spoonful of fig preserves, a good sprinkle of chopped toasted walnuts.
People put stuff in Starbucks coffee because Starbucks coffee is terrible.
You forgot the fact that they sit on the bottom of the ocean and eat all the fish poop that drifts down, and they are full of poop when people eat them.
OMG! Finally another human being that shared my aversion to Ranch! It's totally gross! My favorite food is bacon cheese fries. I ALWAYS get it without ranch, because ranch is just gross. I usually always get it WITH ranch because some brain surgeon in the kitchen thinks that EVERYBODY likes ranch. 😝
"There are 3 stages in life - I hate olives; I don't despise olives and OMG OLIVES"
this might kill you but, i sometimes eat raw onions as a snack when i’m done grilling burgers, like chips. *powers up defibrillator *
I can't stand BBQ pizza, and also don't much like chicken on pizza, so totally disagree.
I've tried hot sauce on vanilla ice cream. It's an odd combo, but I've done it more than once.
If taste of flavourless grass is someone's thing...not judging but actually judging.
As long as it's medium rare, then I don't care if it looks like it was hit by a 4x4 and the grill left an imprint
Note: this post originally had 117 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
let me just say, after looking at some of these, i refused to look at the rest of them, and just came here to say that
What is the purpose of this post? Just don't eat it and stop judging what others do
"Hunger is the best sauce" ---- a proverb for a reason. When you're hungry, you'll eat anything. Been there, tried that.
There are a lot of these where i really wonder if they've ever had a good example of the thing they hate. Like nowadays, especially in Canada and the US, i can easily imagine someone who has never had good bread or a good tomato. It's sad. otoh, if they have and they just don't like them, fair enough
We have amazing breads and tomatoes in the US, lol! I grow heirloom tomatoes every summer and bake breads all throughout the year. Darn, now I'm hungry for warm, fresh bread.
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I like Hershey's chocolate and Goldfish Crackers. Probably the sweet and salty combo.
I thought I was the only one. It's one of the many weird food habits I've passed to my daughter. One of the others is pepperoni, jalapenos, onions, and pineapple on pizza.
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Skin on fries are not fancy. You're just too lazy to peel the f****n spuds!
that sounds like the best way to have rice pudding when you have no rice pudding I have ever heard
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Add another one. I've never even bought it. I tasted it once at my sister's house and thought I was going to die from a sugar overload. I don't understand the appeal.
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I suggest we cancel the cancellers. Why should anyone care what other people like or don't like to eat?
If we cancel the cancellers then aren't we cancellers and should be cancelled?
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With some of these horrible posts.. Do you upvote them (after all, this is a list of food combinations that should be cancelled) or do you downvote them, because they are just terrible?
I think we're upvoting the ones we don't want to cancel
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Cheez-its and black licorice are a snack sensation you gotta try at least once. Tastes like gourmet sausage
I don't get the love for those sickeningly sweet brown sugar and molasses concoctions some people think are BBQ sauce either, but a nice tangy or spicy sauce can compliment just about any meat.
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These folks are amateurs :) When I was 5 or early 6yo and alone at home while my parents were working and sister in school (my parents were quite trusting or that was a different time, I guess), I got hungry and started looking for something to eat. I ended up mixing bread crumbs with some sort of powder for instant vitamin drink and ate it dry. I liked it. Made it again quite a few times, especially while still a kid.
This list made me sad- half the food was things I can no longer eat, the other half food I have never heard of/tried :(
If you're referring to the peanut butter spread they try to pass off as peanut butter then you're right. It might as well be classified as icing. It's like saying miracle whip is the same as mayonnaise. I prefer natural peanut butter like Adam's. It actually tastes like peanuts. If you don't like peanuts then it really doesn't matter which one you try.
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Coffee creamer, straight outta the container. Pure chemicals, almost styrofoam, sure, nummy, yes!
Rice with anything is a crime against humanity. Absolutely revolting stuff.
For the most part, rice is just a filler carb. But, sushi wouldn't really be the same without it.
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let me just say, after looking at some of these, i refused to look at the rest of them, and just came here to say that
What is the purpose of this post? Just don't eat it and stop judging what others do
"Hunger is the best sauce" ---- a proverb for a reason. When you're hungry, you'll eat anything. Been there, tried that.
There are a lot of these where i really wonder if they've ever had a good example of the thing they hate. Like nowadays, especially in Canada and the US, i can easily imagine someone who has never had good bread or a good tomato. It's sad. otoh, if they have and they just don't like them, fair enough
We have amazing breads and tomatoes in the US, lol! I grow heirloom tomatoes every summer and bake breads all throughout the year. Darn, now I'm hungry for warm, fresh bread.
Load More Replies... I like Hershey's chocolate and Goldfish Crackers. Probably the sweet and salty combo.
I thought I was the only one. It's one of the many weird food habits I've passed to my daughter. One of the others is pepperoni, jalapenos, onions, and pineapple on pizza.
Load More Replies... Skin on fries are not fancy. You're just too lazy to peel the f****n spuds!
that sounds like the best way to have rice pudding when you have no rice pudding I have ever heard
Load More Replies... Add another one. I've never even bought it. I tasted it once at my sister's house and thought I was going to die from a sugar overload. I don't understand the appeal.
Load More Replies... I suggest we cancel the cancellers. Why should anyone care what other people like or don't like to eat?
If we cancel the cancellers then aren't we cancellers and should be cancelled?
Load More Replies... With some of these horrible posts.. Do you upvote them (after all, this is a list of food combinations that should be cancelled) or do you downvote them, because they are just terrible?
I think we're upvoting the ones we don't want to cancel
Load More Replies... Cheez-its and black licorice are a snack sensation you gotta try at least once. Tastes like gourmet sausage
I don't get the love for those sickeningly sweet brown sugar and molasses concoctions some people think are BBQ sauce either, but a nice tangy or spicy sauce can compliment just about any meat.
Load More Replies... These folks are amateurs :) When I was 5 or early 6yo and alone at home while my parents were working and sister in school (my parents were quite trusting or that was a different time, I guess), I got hungry and started looking for something to eat. I ended up mixing bread crumbs with some sort of powder for instant vitamin drink and ate it dry. I liked it. Made it again quite a few times, especially while still a kid.
This list made me sad- half the food was things I can no longer eat, the other half food I have never heard of/tried :(
If you're referring to the peanut butter spread they try to pass off as peanut butter then you're right. It might as well be classified as icing. It's like saying miracle whip is the same as mayonnaise. I prefer natural peanut butter like Adam's. It actually tastes like peanuts. If you don't like peanuts then it really doesn't matter which one you try.
Load More Replies... Coffee creamer, straight outta the container. Pure chemicals, almost styrofoam, sure, nummy, yes!
Rice with anything is a crime against humanity. Absolutely revolting stuff.
For the most part, rice is just a filler carb. But, sushi wouldn't really be the same without it.
Load More Replies...