Mmm, Spaghetti, so many different kinds of spaghetti.  I loved spaghetti, and I love it today, but for a period of my life I couldn’t even stand the smell of it.  If you become ill after eating something, you acquire a taste aversion and I had a taste aversion towards spaghetti for many years.

When I was about 8 years old, I fell asleep on my parents bedroom floor one night.  I was woken up abruptly with vomiting, all over the floor.  I’ll never forget how gross it was, or how terrible I felt.  Most likely it wasn’t even the spaghetti that made me sick.  But for years after, I had a hard time even spelling spaghetti sauce, because it brought back my awful experience with it.  Taste aversion can occur even when someone knows the reason for their illness was not due to the food but a virus or something similar.  Sadly I became repulsed to spaghetti for many years, but thankfully my body got over it.  They can last for years or months and fade away at any moment.  The blaming of food for the nausea/illness, even if the food was not the cause for the illness, is called the Garcia effect.

Along with my experience, which I have also had with coconut to which I have not been able to eat/drink for over five years, my friends have gone through the same thing.  My friend Jess loved buffalo pretzel pieces.  In her first week of college, “syllabus week,” she had eaten them.  I’m sure I don’t need to go in depth with details, but she had become ill after eating them and has now created a connection of these buffalo pretzel pieces and nausea.  Jess knows that those are not what made her sick, but her body just won’t let her eat them still.  With time she may be able to eat them again, but everyone has different experiences with taste aversion.

Many people experience taste aversion, and it may hold them back from eating these foods again.  I have thankfully gotten over my spaghetti indifference and hope coconut is the next to cross off my list in the future.