From dictionary.com: acquired taste
n. One that is unpleasant on immediate experience or is likeable only after being experienced repeatedly.
Oh hai. I don't like beer. I have never liked beer. I have tried it before and I know what it tastes like and I know that I don't like it. So on the many occasions when people have learned this about me I am faced with the question, "How can you not like beer?!" and we go through the discussion about how it is an acquired taste and how if I just try hard enough, after a certain amount of time, surely I will like it then. How if I just try it again and again and again, a time will come when I may come to enjoy it.
This has always struck me as very very odd. How on earth can the solution to trying something and disliking it be to put yourself through trying it over and over and over again until it 'isn't so bad'? From the wikipedia page for "acquired taste": "Intentionally changing one's preferences can be hard to accomplish. It usually requires a deliberate effort, such as acting as if one likes something in order to have the responses and feeling that will produce the desired taste." This concept is so weird to me. And not I wouldn't think weird in a way that should be surprising to anyone. It is sort of an obvious fundamentally strange thing about human nature. If you google "acquired taste beer" you will find all sorts of articles teaching you "How to Enjoy the Taste of Beer" which generally is "drink it again and again and again and eventually you may develop a taste for it".
I plan to continue not ingesting things that taste horrible on rumour that someday they may taste good. But that's just me. And I'm an acquired taste.
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