What is your least favorite food? Maybe the smell makes you gag or the texture is too much. Perhaps the flavor is unpleasant--or maybe you can’t stand the sensation that shoots through your teeth when you take a bite. But what is at the root of your reaction? “Unappetizing: The truth behind the foods we hate” is a series of personal essays that explores what is at the core of the foods that make our stomachs turn. Maybe they’re tied to a memory or a circumstance. Maybe they’ve overstayed their welcome. Or maybe, it’s the food that doesn’t like us. From heart breaking to hilarious, “Unappetizing: The truths behind the foods we hate” covers the full spectrum of why we steer away from the dishes we detest.
A pinwheel lollipop takes me back to summers with my big sister. I accidentally dropped mine so she gave me hers. It was the first time I remember her being nice to me. The scent of almond transports me to my grandmother’s kitchen, her bony hands carefully folding fragile dough at Christmas. She memorized the recipe for her banket and continued making it even after she lost her sight. And if I need a hug from my mom, who lives on the other side of the country, all I have to do is eat something with what she would call the “correct amount of green chiles.” My nose and eyes may run from the spice, but I instantly feel like she’s with me.
Food nostalgia can be a welcome escort — a tour guide of happiness and sentimentality. It can also be a son-of-a-bitch. And the second I smell a very particular brand of artificial cherry, my stomach drops and my chest grips.
I was 15 in the summer of 2005, just before my sophomore year of high school. My days were filled with a summer landscaping job, soccer practice and juicing fruits and vegetables for my dad. Three years earlier, he’d been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. An error made by a nurse during one of his treatments caused massive organ failure and then led doctors to discover that his cancer had been misdiagnosed, which meant it had been incorrectly treated from the beginning. Now, his cancer was back and treatments weren’t working. My mom rigidly enforced an all-organic, juice-based diet, a hail Mary recommendation from an alternative medicine oncologist. So I juiced. A lot. It’s a wonder that I still enjoy eating beets,celery and carrots because that summer, my hands were stained with their pigments. Instead, it’s Twizzlers that send bile to my throat and tears to my eyes.
They’re crammed together like sardines, making it nearly impossible to peel one from the mass of glossy ropes. Especially when left in the sun, which they were one day on Lake Michigan. I had noticed a change in my dad’s eyes that day, a sense of distance. My teenage brain told me he was simply soaking up the scenery and enjoying himself. But that didn’t explain the childlike way he was moving his feet or the way he giggled at everything.
We were floating on a boat, allowing the waves to drift us along when he asked my mom, “Hey, Pat. Can I have a Twizzler?” I watched her consider his request and I wondered why. He knew he shouldn’t eat things like that. The goal was to be cancer-free. We were on the all-organic plant-based road to recovery.
Eating a Twizzler could undo months of work. A Twizzler could make the cells grow faster. A Twizzler could ruin my summer vacation. I waited for my mom to snap at him, but she didn’t. Instead she stood up, grabbed the bag of Twizzlers, stripped one from the sticky bunch and handed it to him. “Here, Mike Drake. Have a Twizzler.” And then she sat with him and smiled, watching as he gleefully chewed, and joyfully squeaked, squeezing his shoulders up to his ears.
I don’t hate the taste of a Twizzler. I used to love biting off the ends; converting the candy into a straw and sipping a Sprite. What a treat–a symbol of childhood innovation! But now instead of being transported to a movie theater or a summer road trip, food nostalgia (remember that sneaky son-of a bitch?!) takes me back to the summer of 2005. The summer I watched my parents disintegrate in front of me. My dad, taken by illness, my mom, hollowed from his passing. He was only 48.
So, yeah — I really don’t like Twizzlers. They’re the worst.