Cucurbitaceae family<\/a> of plants, which comprises gourds and melons, including squash, pumpkins, zucchini and watermelons. The vegetable is incredibly popular worldwide, and it has seen a steady increase in production over the past couple decades or so. Here in the U.S., the growing popularity of salads and snacking cucumbers has led to a serious increase in demand, and as of 2022, cucumber production spans 105,647 total acres.\n<\/p>\n While in theory, I get cucumber\u2019s popularity, it\u2019s just never been for me. I have a strong aversion to it. So much, in fact, that the smell alone can turn my stomach. And it turns out this aversion runs in my family. My grandfather, who we affectionately called \u201cPopPop,\u201d loved all food, though he greatly preferred the components of a meal on his plate to stay in their own place (he said it was from his time in the military). But he, too, couldn\u2019t stomach cucumbers. PopPop, and my grandmother, actually exposed me to lots of different foods as a kid, taking me out to nice restaurants to try oysters, lobster or duck.\n<\/p>\n
It runs even deeper than my grandfather, however. PopPop and my grandmother had 16 grandchildren, and I recently learned that one of my cousins hates cucumbers, too. When we both found out we shared this hatred of cucumbers, it was like discovering we loved the same small indie band that no one else had ever heard of or we liked the same quirky straight-to-video movie. It was a relief, actually, to know I wasn\u2019t alone in my dislike of all things cucumbers.\n<\/p>\n
A Pickle of a Theory <\/p>\n
Technically this aversion to cucumbers could be genetic. Afterall, there are (or were) a few of us with the same bloodline that hate cukes. Perhaps the most common genetic aversion is related to cilantro. Some people have a specific gene variant that makes cilantro taste soapy. Cucumber aversion could come from the TAS2R38 gene, which makes some folks highly sensitive to the bitter compounds in vegetables. I\u2019m not sure this lines up for me and my cousin, and my late grandfather. Cucumbers don\u2019t taste bitter to me, they taste like garbage\u2014literally, cucumbers taste like degrading compost or the bottom of a wet bag of trash.\n<\/p>\n
I truly want to like cucumbers. They grow so well in our garden, I love sushi (it\u2019s embarrassing asking the chef to make me some without cucumbers) and Greek cuisine is one of my all-time favorites. In fact, every year I commit to trying a bite of one freshly picked from our garden. My daughters think it\u2019s so funny because it\u2019s like this ritual where every summer I plug my nose, pop a slice of cucumber into my mouth and proceed to gag and spit it out.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
There is one way I can eat a cucumber and actually enjoy it and that\u2019s pickled. Yup, I love pickled cucumbers. But they have to be very pickled. If they are simply marinated in a bit of vinegar and spices, then it\u2019ll taste too much like a cucumber and I\u2019ll have to spit it out. And those trendy cucumber salads with chili oil? Nope, I can\u2019t stomach them.\n<\/p>\n
Another Offender <\/p>\n
I can probably count on one hand the foods I\u2019ve tried that I don\u2019t like. Even if I don\u2019t love something (I\u2019m not partial to water chestnuts or sundried tomatoes, for example), I\u2019ll still eat it politely. But there\u2019s a close relative to cucumbers that I sometimes can\u2019t stomach. Watermelons are in the same family as cucumbers, and while the bright red flesh tastes sweet and delicious, the closer I chew down into the greener portion, the more it tastes like cucumbers to me. An unripe, pinkish-fleshed watermelon has a flavor so similar to cucumbers that I find it incredibly gross.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Without fail, next summer I will again happily grow a wide variety of cucumbers in our garden. My daughters will pick a ripe one off the vine, peel off any bitter skin, add a pinch of salt and watch as their dad tries in vain to overcome this aversion. At this point, fully middle-age, I doubt there is a time I\u2019ll pop that slimy piece of hot garbage into my mouth and actually enjoy it. Perhaps someday I\u2019ll overcome this aversion to cucumbers, but until then, I\u2019ll just stick to pickles, thank you very much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even chefs and food writers can have strong aversions to certain foods.Cucumber aversion may have a genetic link,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[49,48,84,395],"class_list":{"0":"post-331988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-nutrition"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}