8 ms·
The mystery of why some people hate raw tomatoes
- zzalpha 10y agoAlas, despite the title, and my hope that someone could finally help me justify my deep aversion to raw tomatoes, the article provides little enlightenment: Frankly, the scientific community has been sadly remiss in getting to the bottom of the mystery of why raw tomatoes make some of us gag, despite a few scattered flavor studies. Oh well. I guess it'll remain a mystery...
- exabrial 10y agoI'm really glad to see I'm not alone haha. The first part of the article read like my childhood.
- killjoywashere 10y agoI think a big part of it, at least for me, is the mucoid layer around the seeds. If I seed raw tomatoes, they go down fine. But those seeds: it's like eating someone else's boogers.
- tyingq 10y agoOkra is worse. https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-cbf76cc77c20cdd2e9041360241ca88d-c https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-cbf76cc77c20cdd2e90413...
- 13of40 10y agoWhile we're at it, don't forget natto. Though I guess it's cheating since it's not "fresh". http://www.sakura-hostel.co.jp/blog/assets_c/2011/10/natto%201-thumb-320x370-1546.jpg http://www.sakura-hostel.co.jp/blog/assets_c/2011/10/natto%2...
- pmarreck 10y agoThis is interesting because the sliminess of okra bothers me, but of tomatoes, not at all
- pmarreck 10y agoThis makes it sound like a texture aversion. What you experience as "slimy boogers," I experience as "juicy tanginess"
- SippinLean 10y agoYeah that was the only question I thought the article would answer. The title should have just been "Why I Hate Raw Tomatoes and You Don't: Who Knows?"
- simplemath 10y agofor me, its texture. I hate the goop and love the flesh of raw tomato. I cannot stand cooked large chunks of tomato.
- barking 10y agoYes that was a really annoying title, very poor form by the scientific american.
- dang 10y agoThanks for digging out that bit for the rest of us. We've changed the title accordingly. If someone suggests a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.
- ghaff 10y agoI don't hate them and they don't make me gag. I'm fine with a nice Caprese Salad with fresh summer tomatoes. That said, I routinely pick tomato slices out of sandwiches and generally avoid them in situations where they're the norm. With me it's at least as much of a texture as a flavor thing.
- Fomite 10y agoThis is it for me too - I really don't like sliced raw tomato, especially cold, due to the texture.
- antisthenes 10y agoProbably because American sandwich food chains insist on using the lowest quality, absolutely bland pink tomatoes, which are slimy and disgusting after having been in contact with a patty on one side and presumably some condiment/bun on the other. Compare that to a fresh, sweet, homegrown tomato off the vine, still warm from the summer heat.
- pmarreck 10y agoIs it the texture? Texture seems to be a significant component of taste. What I might perceive as "juicy/tangy" in a tomato (positively), someone else might experience as "slimy/acidic" (negatively). Expectation matters a lot, as well. Have you ever, perhaps while half-asleep, drank orange juice thinking it was milk, or vice versa? That first half-second is weird...
- anotheryou 10y agothanks, I was really lost skimming the article, fishing for the mystery
- dropit_sphere 10y agoWell this was vindicating, and then frustrating (they still don't know why some people don't like raw tomatoes).
- dashoffset 10y agotl;dr We don't know yet.
- yesimahuman 10y agoI hated raw tomatoes, and then I had a proper heirloom tomato which made me realize it's actually that most mass-produced tomatoes are terrible
- miguelrochefort 10y agoI'm the opposite. I don't like heirloom tomatoes. I prefer the pink-ish, barely ripe, fast food tomatoes.
- anonemouse145 10y agoIt depends why people don't like tomatoes. If your problem is that your supermarket tomatoes seem kind of tasteless and with bad texture.... You're right. They are. Get an heirloom or other flavor first tomato fresh out of the ground so all the aromatics of the earth haven't faded away yet, different experience entirely.
- frabbit 10y agoExactly the same experience for me. I can remember my surprise when I bit into a ripe, fresh, yellow heirloom at the instigation of friends that wouldn't shut up about how good they were. I love _that_ sort of tomato, but every time I get some weird artificially delayed/ripened thing in the winter, no matter whether it is "on the vine" or not I am nauseated. I would say there is a faint rotting sea-food odor to them, especially to beef tomatoes.
- athenot 10y agoThis is why tomatoes are a big reason for my vegetable garden. It's near impossible to get a good-tasting tomato in the store. The ones that taste really good either don't look good (marketing suicide) or can't make the thousand-mile journey through our food supply chain. Of course some people may still have an aversion to fresh tomatoes for other reasons. We're all wired slightly differently when it comes to food. As an aside, the article mentions brussel sprouts. They have a very different taste when they are fresh (usually if they are not sold on the stalk, they likely aren't fresh). I've suprised many people who told me they didn't like brussels sprouts then tasted fresh the ones I cooked. Same for peas. Growing up in France, we'd get peas that were harvested less than 4 hours before eating. Past that threshold, the sugar becomes starch and the taste changes significantly.
- NeonVice 10y agoAny correlation to not liking olives? I really don't like raw tomatoes, but a hint of olives (green or black) is repulsive to me.
- senthil_rajasek 10y agoIn my case, one of the reasons I hate raw tomatoes is because the seeds look like an alien egg cluster sac and I know they can pass through human digestive system and still remain viable unharmed by the digestive juices.
- maxerickson 10y agoIf someone offers you Kopi luwak, refuse.
- Y_Y 10y agoBecause the civets are usually kept in terrible conditions just to make novelty coffee?
- maxerickson 10y agoThat's a fine reason. But I was just being immature.
- mmanfrin 10y agoI love tomatoes -- but a majority of tomatoes that people get are in prepared food, and those are selected or engineered to be stiff, flavorless hunks of red plantflesh. You owe it to yourself to try off-the-vine heirloom tomatoes (with balsamic/olive oil/salt) if you don't like tomatoes; it is truly a different experience.
- red75prime 10y agoMy parents grew heirloom tomatoes 30 years ago. I wasn't able to enjoy them raw. Cucumber and tomato salad with a bit of oil is tolerable though.
- nevir 10y agoI'm the complete opposite - I can't stand the flavor or texture of cooked tomatoes. Raw tomatoes are great, as are tomato based sauces
- double0jimb0 10y agoIt took me the better part of 35 years to determine I have an allergy to most nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, ...) https://draxe.com/nightshade-vegetables/ https://draxe.com/nightshade-vegetables/ I think my body knew this before it registered consciously... I now chose this to explain my life-long aversion to tomatoes and eggplant. But french fries are still my kryptonite :(
- pacaro 10y agoI'm in the same boat w.r.t. tomatoes, and like very few of the nightshades, potatoes and chili peppers being the exceptions. I find the smell of tomato plants to be totally repulsive, far worse than the tomatoes themselves. My gagging when forced to eat tomatoes as a kid was seen as histrionics. It's satisfying to have some external validation
- danaliv 10y agoI will never understand this attitude that everyone must like the same things, or that there must be justification for disliking something. And then of course you get the inevitable "oh well you just haven't had a real tomato/cilantro/Harry Potter/whatever" people, which adds a lovely dollop of hipster authenticity fetishism to the whole chauvinism shit sandwich. It's a matter of taste, people. Some people don't like the things you like and that's that. Deal with it. sunglasses descend onto face
- SerLava 10y agoI'm with you on the main point you're making generally, but regarding vegetables, those people often have a point also. Many of the vegetables in grocery stores are bred to deflect armor piercing bullets and last a thousand years- with the side effect of tasting like poison. I am one of the people who gags from eating raw tomatoes, but I've found that I have absolutely no problem eating those brown tomatoes - the ones that grow mold after 2 days.
- GlueChemist 10y agoThe point of this article and those other studies does not have much to do with personal taste directly. These examples are of interest because they offer clues of where to look for chemical sensors the body has. We do not often get such direct clues about how sensory input maps back to protein sensors and the genes that encode them. So this is less an exploration of taste preference and more of an exploration into how and why some things taste fundamentally different between individuals.
- pmarreck 10y agoYeah, you might think that and then meet my friend who HATES both chocolate AND coffee (at the age of 45... plenty of time to adapt to coffee, but not liking chocolate is unfathomable to me), and go "WTF, seriously?" ;) Tastes are one of those things that we just can't (no matter how hard we try, or want to) grasp rationally. These entirely subjective experiences are just... not rationally conveyable. This spills over into sexual preferences as well, btw (not to derail the topic, but thinking of sexual preferences as mere "taste variation" is useful IMHO).
- petercooper 10y agoOh awesome. This got me to dig out my raw 23andme genome data and it turns out I have the "supertaster" gene for bitterness as well. Explains why I hate all the foods (cauliflower, raw tomato, broccoli) and drinks mentioned (tonic water and alcohol generally) - very cool to know :)
- vram22 10y agoOther side of the coin: I don't like cooked tomatoes. Iranian cuisine has them, on top of rice dishes. I like Iranian cuisine otherwise, which I've had in a few restaurants in India, but not the fried/boiled tomatoes. Prefer them raw like in a salad.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- danfinlay 10y agoI'd like a genetic analysis.
- weisser 10y agoMy understanding is that people don't like the "mealy" taste of many supermarket tomatoes. The reason they develop this taste is that they are picked prematurely so they can ripen in transit. Tomatoes are meant to ripen on the vine, hence why some are great and others are not.
- Udik 10y agoThere's a thing that annoys me in the article (and in the comments here). And it's this: which tomato you don't like? What do you mean by tomato, exactly? All of them? Or just the slimy pale slice in your hamburger? Here, check a picture of a tiny sample of tomato varieties: http://img1.amando.it/imagesdyn/articoli/52/21/65408.jpg http://img1.amando.it/imagesdyn/articoli/52/21/65408.jpg Now, many of these taste as different from each other as they look. They also have different uses- some are excellent for sauces, some others in salads, some can be eaten as fruit. So what's the point in talking about tomatoes in general? Can we be a bit more precise, in the name of science? :)
- tracker1 10y agoI don't care for cilantro, mention in the article... but after forcing myself to eat it, quite a few times, I've gotten over it... About the only foods I don't care for and have tried to get past, and eat them.. are any kind of squash, other than pumpkin, the texture of raw meat, and any kind of organ meat I just don't care for. But cilantro, and lots of other veggies, I've gotten past, and now some things like just by making myself try them. Growing up, we had a rather limited sample palette, my mom didn't like a lot of things. It's as an adult I've come to expand things.
- chrisbrandow 10y agoThere is a component in tomatoes that has a "grassy" flavor and that by my observations gets stronger when a tomato rots. I wonder if that (a) is true (b) related to the effect for some people.
- frik 10y agoBaby/small child don't eat /shouldn't eat tomatoes.