I was born in Philadelphia and raised in a suburb only about thirty-five minutes away from the city.  So, as you may have guessed, I absolutely love everything that is “Philly,” like cheesesteaks, soft pretzels, and Tastykakes.  However, I still experience a horrible taste aversion to this day from a Philly classic that I absolutely despise: cream cheese.  Taste aversion is a hatred of foods if they become sick afterwards.  Sometimes people are unaware the reason why they dislike a certain food is because they have a subconscious taste aversion to it.  Others are consciously aware of the reason why they hate a certain food because it had made them sick on a previous occasion.  Even if this specific food was not the actual reason you got sick, you still link the food to the illness and then stay away from that food in order to stay healthy.  As we learned in class, a study was done with wolves and sheep which tried to prevent the wolves from hunting the sheep.  After concluding that poison is what would make the wolves sick, researchers coated the sheep’s wool with poison.  When the wolves tried to kill the sheep, they tasted the poison.  The wolves associated the taste with getting sick, and they no longer hunted the sheep.

My taste aversion experience happened when I was young.  I was introduced to cream cheese as a child, so naturally it was my “go-to” spread whenever I was eating a bagel.  One day, my dad brought home a bunch of bagels for my family for breakfast.  He brought out the cream cheese, but he had also bought strawberry flavored cream cheese for us to try.  I was excited to try the new cream cheese, so I took some and lathered my bagel in the spread.  After eating the bagel I started feeling a little bit nauseous.  About ten minutes later I sprinted to the bathroom and I got sick. I ended up being sick for three days.  After this awful experience I will never eat strawberry cream cheese, and I am still a little hesitant to even try strawberry flavored foods or snacks.  I blame my hatred of strawberry flavoring and cream cheese in general to my taste aversion.  Whenever I even see foods like this, I cringe and I get the chills.  I had a bad experience being sick, so in order to prevent that from ever happening again, I still refuse to eat anything that reminds me of cream cheese or strawberry flavoring since I associate them with getting sick.