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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I'm kind of a food snob. I don't eat burgers. They're horrible. I don't eat hotdogs. They're horrible.

Reading this article tempts me to want to say "Newsflash: Tasty food sells!" but I'm sure that would be flagged to death as low content snark. Also, it's possibly stupid saying anything at all because people who eat stuff like burgers and hot dogs will get all mad when you give your honest opinion that it isn't exactly gourmet health food.

I often go with, say, French fries and apple pie because it's the least worst option on a burger-based menu. When they offer chicken as an alternative to burgers, it's typically also deep fried etc. It's only very recently that some burger joints genuinely offer tasty, healthy alternatives to their bland and unhealthy ground beef patty on nasty circular white bread staple food item.

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> I'm sure that would be flagged to death as low content snark. Also, it's possibly stupid saying anything at all because people who eat stuff like burgers and hot dogs will get all mad when you give your honest opinion that it isn't exactly gourmet health food.

Tastes differ between people. I eat burgers and hotdogs because they're tasty, and their tastiness for me is inversely proportional to the amount of vegetables you put into them. I rarely eat out, but if I want to grab a hotdog, I only do so in places where I can get a bun, sausage, ketchup and mustard, and exactly zero of all the other dressings.

And from my POV, vegetables and fruits tend to ruin the taste of everything. I just don't like them, period. I accept some in appropriate context - common mushrooms, onions and peppers when the food is salty, carrots and apples and maaaaybe tomatoes on the sweet end.

I can't tell you why I am like this, though I am very curious about what shapes one's tastes. I eat plenty of healthy stuff, but I'd love to make myself somehow like it, - all I've managed so far is to not feel completely miserable every time I eat a healthy meal.

I also used to feel largely this way, but it turns out my parents just weren't good at cooking tasty vegetables.

I encourage you to seek out an adventure by trying a vegetarian restaurant where the chefs know how to cook veggies. Truly breathtaking the difference in experience.

Thank you. I'll try. FWIW, my wife recently started experimenting with vegetarian recipes and so far, results are much tastier than I expected.

I'm also quite curious, because palak paneer and other vegetarian indian dishes are awesome, veggies or not, and you didn't specify these sorts of options when you specify disliking vegetables in any form. If you hate tomatoes, does that mean you despise chili, or pasta? Are curries terrible? Is an apple pie better off with just shortbread?

> and you didn't specify these sorts of options when you specify disliking vegetables in any form

I haven't had a chance or inclination to eat much Indian food yet. I'm going to try, at some point.

> If you hate tomatoes, does that mean you despise chili, or pasta?

Not really. Here's the thing: it all depends on the processing, and usually the more processing was involved, the better I like the end result. So e.g. I don't like raw tomatoes, e.g. in a sandwich or on a pizza. But I do like tomato soup and tomato sauces, and I double-plus love ketchup (the commercial kind). Similarly for other kinds of vegetables and fruits. I like very few of them "standalone" - particular few kinds of apples, carrots, cucumbers and bananas. But for instance, I don't want to see any of the four anywhere near bread.

Maybe one day I'll try and note this down to see if I can find connections.

Some thoughts:

I grew up in a meat and potatoes family. Learning to eat vegetarian meals was a long process.

I grew up in Georgia and it's a long ways from Hawaii. All I knew of pineapple was canned pineapple. For probably the first thirty years of my life, I had a terrible opinion of pineapple.

Then I lived on the West Coast, a lot closer to Hawaii, where fresh pineapple was readily available most of the year at not crazy prices. I finally tried fresh pineapple that hadn't been rotting in transit for weeks and weeks and absolutely loved it.

Fruits and vegetables need to be fresh. There is an art to selecting them. People with a meat-centric diet seem to often not really know how to cook them well.

Overcooked veggies lose a lot of their flavor and nutritional value. Undercooked vegetables can be hard to digest or have other issues.

I have a mild tomato allergy. I can eat pizza and ketchup. I react poorly to raw tomatoes.

It's not obvious I'm allergic because I need to keep eating tomatoes regularly over several days before I get hives. But I do need to limit tomatoes and the more processed, the better.

Growing conditions, harvesting methods, storage conditions and on and on can impact taste for fruits and vegetables.

I would recommend then trying roasted vegetables or veggie soups or sauces. Disliking raw carrots by themselves is very different from disliking roasted carrots and carrot soup and carrots in a curry and carrots in a dumpling and carrot cake, all of which drastically change the carrot taste and texture. It's a bit like saying that "i don't like any sort of pork product at all, as I've had unflavored pulled pork and didn't like it".

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