This happened a while ago but I still remember every time I meet someone who is a picky eater.
Have this friend of mine who just wouldn’t eat onions at all, when we hanged out together at bars and such she’d straight up refuse to eat anything that has touched onions.
I started making fun over her being such a picky eater as it was quite extreme, at one point I asked her jokingly if someone beat her up with an onion or something, turns out the truth wasn’t far from that.
A couple of drinks later she’d confessed how that came to be. Turns out she had an abusive step-mother when she was a kid who REALLY didn’t like her. And on top of the usual abuse (which I won’t describe) she’d intentionally set out to make food she didn’t enjoy.
One day the step-mom found out she hated onions and just started putting it on everything by the loads, and when my friend refused to eat, the step-mom would grab a raw onion and force it down her mouth until she started chewing it.
Needless to say I learned my lesson and now I never bother anyone for being a picky eater ever again.
TL;DR: Food trauma is real
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That’s extreme but there are also tons of people who get sick from eating onions: r/onionhate and it’s pretty common for others to dismiss them.
I hope your friend gets the therapy she needs, there is likely much more happening “under the hood” , not just a little food avoidance and stuff they don’t talk about.
Also… nobody deservers to live without onion rings.
I have an older patient that adamantly refuses all onions.
We weren’t sure if it was an allergy; they clarified it was not. Instead, his mom would make him wear a stewed onion on his neck during a cold/fever as a folk-medicine healing amulet. This was 80-90 years ago that they were a child.
It’s just… interesting how something so ordinary can become tied to something so profound, and I’m genuinely curious about what other ways trauma can manifest beyond just a dislike of onions, could someone explain that a bit further, perhaps with an example or two?
Onions are the devil and should be avoided at all costs. Also: asparagus is my thing. I was forced fed asparagus as a child, like it was SHOVED IN MY MOUTH while my head was held, so yeah, at 56, I don’t eat that. It is fun to bring up at company meals, though.
Allium intolerance is very real, so if someone refuses to eat onions you should be aware that it may be due to that. It’s like lactose intolerance where some people can’t properly digest lactose, except allium intolerance is a difficulty with digesting plants from the allium family which includes onion and garlic.
It really sucks because onions and garlic are so tasty and are used in damn near everything.
It’s honestly a little jarring how something as innocuous as onions can become linked to such deep-seated trauma, and I’m probably saying that wrong, like, it’s not my place to analyze someone’s experiences, not at all, but I do wonder if maybe there’s a way to think about food aversions not just as dislikes, but as signals, somehow, though I’m probably completely off-base, I hope I’m not being insensitive because it’s a tricky subject, and I’m probably making it even trickier… because, honestly, I’m a mess today.
Yeah, stay away from saying anything about these kinds of topics. Be it simple food, alcohol or something else: so many people have such fucked up traumas….it’s just not worth it.
My mother would not accept that I hated onions so she would either pretend that she didn’t put them into the food, even though it was obvious they were in there, or get really mad with me for not liking them. The number of times I was forced to eat food I couldn’t stomach…..same reason I can’t eat fish (though I do enjoy seafood). Like most people, I have outgrown a lot of food dislikes from my childhood, but every food forced upon me by shouting and slapping me is still on the no no list.
She recently asked my jokingly if I still haven’t grown up when it comes to onions and fish and said it was weird that I didn’t like them…..I suggested that forcing a child wasn’t the best idea. Since my young son was with us and he eats whatever he wants to eat, when he wants to eat it, she quickly shut up and agreed that maybe my way was better