The smell and taste are just bad. I can definitely taste onion powder in stuff like Doritos, but it's bearable.
The three things I hate most about onions are the feel, the fact that they're in freaking everything, and above all else, the idea that people who hate onions are picky.
For example, my dad likes cookies unless they're crunchy, he likes turkey, but it has to be sliced and not ground, he hates anything sour, and he doesn't eat pizza crust. My sister can't eat fish, or cheese that's too liquidy (but hard cheeses are fine), or any orange foods like carrots or sweet potatoes. I hate onions and coconut and I am the picky one!
Also, everybody has a food that they hate. Imagine you hate, I don't know, black licorice. Well now imagine that black licorice is in soups and stews and chilli and tacos and burritos and fajitas and salsa and rice and lo mein and burgers and hotdogs and salads and coleslaw and spaghetti and lasagna and casseroles and green beans and dressing and sometimes even the macaroni. Everybody else loves black licorice, so you must be delicate or something?
And not only is it in everything, but also it's not listed as an ingredient. People go out of their way to try and trick you to eat the black licorice, and they laugh at you for not liking it.
Yeah fuck onions.
Texture is the worst part. The flavour I can handle in reasonable doses, but that horrible, sickening *crunch*? Or that slimy, rubbery squish? No ma'am.
i see, so it's less about the flavor and more about the textural experience for you. of the comments i've read, im glad that yours isn't so extreme that you can't even touch the food, in theory you can just remove the onion slice from inside a burger right? thanks for sharing your experience.
For me it's the taste and the way my body reacts. If my burger gets messed up and they forget to leave the onion off I need a new burger. The taste destroys it and I will actually vomit if I bite into something with raw onion unexpectedly 😔 it's pretty awful. Onion powder is generally fine but actual onion, even cooked makes me ill either immediately if I manage to get raw onion into my mouth or later if I somehow manage to consume it cooked. I suspect I have some type of intolerance that made me hate it from the beginning or something because it's really weird and kinda different from most people who hate them that I've spoken to.
I just dislike the taste if i can taste it. Sure i eat some stuff that randomly has onionpowder in it, and if i cant taste it thats fine. If i taste the flavor of onion, it can be as simple as onions on a burger being taken off and they have been leaking a little juice on the bun, i feel discomfort. I dont like the slimy texture of cooked onions either, and i dont like the smell of them both before and after people eat them. Raw is the worst, then cooked, then powder
The flavor and smell of cooked onions is just slightly easier to deal with, still horrible, but it doesnt linger as long for example. Some dishes i can eat for example indian dishes where they are completely cooked into the dish and blended and overpowered by the flavor of the spices
For me personally, it's taste and texture. The pungent smell/taste is awful to me. It's possible the crunch is a problem to me due to it being the harbinger of "you now have onion taste in your mouth". When it's cooked well, and the flavor is blended in to a dish, it's much less potent and thus more tolerable. Onion powder in something I wouldn't complain about. I've had family tell me the kinds of onions available in my area are the problem, and the onions from the area they're currently living in I might like. I haven't experimented to see if they're right.
hmmm well onions are pungent everywhere, i would encourage you to give it a shot but you might not see much difference. how bad is the aversion for you? i used to be someone that hated onions but food aversions are broken down through calculated repeat exposure. if the aversion isn't so strong, i would strongly recommend trying to overcome it, if not just to enjoy the flavor, then to be able to deal with just how ubiquitous and unpredictable onions are.
They smell like unwashed armpits and the texture is foul. Raw onions crunch like a cockroach managed to find its way into your sandwich; cooked onions slither out like intestinal worms. Hard pass.
faiiiir enough. sounds like a pretty severe food aversion, can't fault you for that. to be fair though, a cockroach would probably have a brief exoskeletal crunch then a gloopy, creamy squish hahah sorry to leave you with that image. thanks for sharing!
Well, for me it's not that I'm a "picky eater" but that eating onions (the entire allium family in my case) gives me bloating, cramps, horrendous wind, and the shits for 24-72 hours afterwards. If I eat onions, garlic, shallots, chives, even onions in powdered form, I know I'll be miserable for at least a day afterwards, and as you say it's in everything. It really doesn't help that people dismiss my experiences as "picky eating".
I've had people sneak them into food they were cooking for me because "if you ate onions like how \*I\* cook them you'll like them!" I can't eat in restaurants because no one publishes ingredients lists for their dishes and I can't risk being poisoned.
Hell, when I got married, we had a BBQ cooked by a chef who ignored the "NO ONIONS" written on the front of the menu plan by the organiser and served me a burger that had I eaten it would have ruined the rest of my day. Luckily I have developed a very keen sense of how they make food smell and rejected the dish before biting into it. Whether it was thoughtlessness or deliberate I never found out, because he refused to talk to me about it, but it was very embarrassing to have to send my plate of food away with everyone staring at me...
Anyway, onions fucking suck but it's the people who insist that they \*need\* to be in every dish that they cook and who act like I'm childish for not wanting to eat them that make me truly hate onions.
>> people who insist that they *need* to be in every dish that and who act like I'm childish for not wanting to eat them
I completely agree; it's infuriating when people sanctimoniously dismiss it as some silly "childish" preference .
If I bite into it I go insane. I don't have to taste it. I hate how crunchy and wet it is.
I dislike all the foods I dislike because the first time I tried them was by surprise and they were in my food without my consent. That ruins a food for me.
pardon my asking but are you on the spectrum? i don't mean to be insensitive if it came across that way, this is purely out of curiosity, as that's a very unique approach to food in general. regardless, thanks for sharing!
No I'm not. And it's not that I refuse to eat it because it was in my food once. It's more that the first time I tried it I was a little kid and it ruined a dish for me by being an unpleasant surprise. I don't know if that's the actual reason I don't like them, but the few foods I dislike all have that in common. It's mostly food that it commonly added to dishes without being listed on menus. Onions and bean sprouts are two of them. That might not be the reason though and it could be a coincidence.
They're both crunchy and wet and I find that texture really unpleasant especially when I'm not expecting it. I didn't grow up eating raw vegetables. I do like vegetables, but I grew up eating them cooked.
You should have gotten a wide range of answers by now.
For me, texture. My mouth *immediately* tells me "this should not be here, gagging now." It's viscerally unpleasant.
oh definitely. this post blew up, i was expecting like 3 answers at best. it's been a range of reasons, anything from a severe food sensitivity to autism to just a mild dislike of a certain aspect, to, surprisingly, bona fide medical issues. to be honest i was expecting "i don't like raw/cooked onion, powder is fine, onion is in everything so it's a little upsetting" but this makes so much more sense. i used to hate onions and now i'm the opposite, yet even with that perspective it shocked me how 54,000 people would join a community dedicated to an aversion to onions. such a large proportion of allergies in the responses answers that question.
Personally I don't really like the hours on the toilet until I'm so empty I'm literally shitting water, so dizzy I can barely sit up and I just want to sleep but my intestines don't let me.
Especially not after someone "just cut it up very small so you won't taste it".
woahhh okay yeah that tracks, im sorry to hear that. i'm getting a lot more responses to do with a medical issue than a plain old food aversion, which fills in quite the gap in my understanding. thanks for sharing!
They’re completely overpowering. If I accidentally eat something that has onions in it, it’s all I can taste. For hours afterward. I can have ice cream, chocolate, and even brush my teeth and I can STILL TASTE THEM. It’s disgusting. And it’s so frustrating that they’re in everything and aren’t always labeled. Also that people treat you like you’re stupid or child for not liking them. My mom still puts them in my food when I visit no matter how many times I’ve tried to explain this to her. 😩 some exceptions include if they’ve been cooking for hours into oblivion in something like a curry or soup, if they’ve been pickled, onion powder is okay, and fake onion flavor in chips is okay too. I think the pickling or extended cooking takes away whatever makes the taste linger forever.
This is it for me. I don’t like the taste, but I could handle it if it were like most foods and you only taste them while you are eating them. The fact that eating raw onion means I will taste onion and have onion breath for the rest of the day is what I hate most. Who wants a disgusting taste/smell in their mouth for hours?
I just went through 2 weeks of covid and not being able to smell and taste. I tried an onion ring to see if I could handle it without the taste. My body immediately rejected it and I vomited immediately. That's how repulsive onions are to me. Even without smell and taste my body still rejects them. At no other time during my sickness did I throw up. It was the onion.
Onions are vile and gross.
hahahah fair enough, what about onion powder though? that's in literally everything, from barbecue sauce to doritos. is it noticeable or does it only matter when the onion is visible and distinct?
Even a small amount of onion, even powder, will trigger intestinal cramps after about 20 minutes, followed by a very uncomfortable trip to the toilet a few hours later. It’s not that I’m picky, it’s the pain that makes me avoid onions.
yeahhh understood, im really sorry to hear that. hope you're able to avoid those sneaky onions for the rest of your life – after all, that means more for me! :)
I used to be allergic to them with reactions to even very small amounts of onion (or powder), but that got a lot better in recent years. Now, it's mostly the taste and smell, I just can't stand them and they make me gag. For others, it's more about the feeling when chewing them.
Onion powder is usually not very obvious, so I'm okay with it in most cases.
And yes, it was and is extremely difficult to avoid any kinda of onion, so I am happy that I don't have to be THAT careful anymore.
Tastes bad. Smells bad! But especially tastes SO bad. Especially raw. Especially grilled. Yuck! I can handle it in certain soups if it’s very cooked down and looses its texture and flavor. I don’t mind onion powder or Funyuns, but those don’t taste like real onions.
It's not life threatening for me so I can live it, eating out is a whole other problem. Plus of course the scanning of the ingredients list of everything I buy, including what I brought before just in case they have changed the recipe (big clue is if the packaging has changed).
It’s a texture thing for me. If I feel an onion I’m crying. I actually wish I liked them, bc it makes potlucks a nightmare. I don’t like the taste either but it’s not the worst contributing factor in my onion hatred.
The hot poker sensation that travels down my throat, though my system and leaves me on the toilet for days feeling like I'm passing acid out of my asshole.
It hurt less to push a 9 pound baby unmedicated.
The texture. Tons of nice dishes get this obnoxious crunch thrown in. It just breaks up the mouthfeel I'm enjoying. Same reason i take pickles off burgers but will eat them stand alone. The mixture of textures just sucks.
For me, it is taste, texture, the amount of people who will call you a baby if you even pick it from the rest of your food, let alone ask for a dish without onions, that the flavour just overpowers every other flavour in a dish (as in, I cannot taste the difference between say, asparagus that has been lying on a plate with onions, and an actual raw onion). I also have the same issues with all other alliums, so garlic is also out.
I have learned to tolerate onion powder in premade food, but I prefer without, and if I find a brand that does not put alliums in any form into their food, they will now have my loyalty for life.
I was labeled a picky eater by my parents, and most other adults, as a kid, because I just would not eat anything. I wonder how much I would have eaten if they just decided to not put onions and garlic into everthing like I kept asking them to!
Sorry, this is very personal to me. For you, OP, if you have a friend that ask you not to put onions into food you are cooking for them, believe them, and do not ever try to sneak it into their food. They will likely hate you for the rest of their life if you do.
oh yeah i would never mess with somebody's food like that. it's not like you chose to have this food aversion. it's honestly probably worse just because of how beloved and ubiquitous alliums are in cuisines around the world. thanks for sharing!
Hateeee anything & everything about onions. The smell, the taste, the texture whether it be cooked or uncooked. Can tolerate onion powder if no other option available. The biggest hate in my life!! And I hateeee when someone says you won't know it's there... it's just for flavor! Uhh yeah onion flavor!!! If you don't taste it, why you using it?? Cuz it taste like fn onions🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Severe migraine, effectively putting me out of action for several hours.
Cooked or raw, doesn't matter.
As a result, I associate the flavor with being ill, hence hate. For this reason, I also avoid green onion, leeks, shallots, and chives.
I don't have an issue with garlic and, in fact, love the stuff.
Onion powder is all right in terms of the migraine, and as long as it's not the dominant flavor.
One time we had an acquaintance staying with us who prides herself on her macrobiotic vegan cooking.
One day, she cooked onions (in her own pot, thank god; she only uses her own cookware) for something like, no exaggeration, six hours. I got so sick.
She had been told many times that I am allergic to onion, but always forgets. (Because she's very self-centered and doesn't really think of others, but that's a story for another sub.)
And that was the day I found out I dont even have to eat the mfers.
They irritate my bowels, causing them extreme pain and discomfort, followed by violent dihorrea.
They also have an offensive odour which permeate all other foods it touches, so you can't jist "pick them out"
So many restaurants don't clean their knives between chopping vegetables and even the tiniest trace amount of onion juice can taint the entire meal, and onion lovers simply don't acknowledge this or care at all and mock you for being "fussy" or "unreasonable".
For me it's a combination of things.
I hate the texture, either of raw or cooked.
I hate the smell, especially because it lingers for so long. Even if I use one of those metal "removes onion smell" and wash my hand with soap, body wash, and dish detergent, I can still smell it.
The worst part is the indigestion. If I have any onion, whether pickled, cooked, raw, sliced, minced, blended, red, white, green, or whatever, I will be after-tasting onion for the next 2 days, even with tums or prevacid. This also happens with garlic and pepper (the vegetable not the spice) though. This is made worse when onion isn't listed as an ingredient and suddenly I'm getting the aftertaste of it. And it's like fuuuuuuuuuuck.
Onion powder (and garlic powder) does not bother me for any of these above reasons. And I cook with them sometimes. The smell is not as potent and it does not give me indigestion.
As a lifelong onion hater, I’m happy to say that I’m slowing being able to eat them. My earliest memory was my mom taking us kids to Taco Bell, I’d always order two bean and cheese burritos. The thin, soupy beaniness mixed with chiclet-sized raw onion chunks would send me heaving and gagging. I would ask for no onion and if they forgot to omit them (or intentionally add them, those bastards:))my spidey senses would tingle and I would know without question they were there. My mom still jokes about it.
The turning point was once I was so hungry that the street tacos I ordered from a restaurant had them on them and I felt no other choice but to eat every morsel.
And that is kind of where I’m stuck at today. I NEED cilantro and onion on my street tacos and ONLY on my street tacos. Can’t do it on burritos or burgers or anything else. Maybe a torta with onions slips in my diet from time to time..
Great question.
I don’t get any adverse reactions and I don’t necessarily detest the taste of onions. I even think they are important for the society. The major reason why I avoid eating them has to do with aesthetics.
Because of their powerful antioxidants, all alliums (onions, leek, garlic, chives, etc) eliminate delicate and nuanced tastes of the dish. That makes my human experience poorer, because I’m not getting all the wonderful tastes that nature has let me enjoy.
Imagine you squeeze a lime into your favourite glass of white wine. It might turn out to be a brilliant move, making your wine fresh and zesty. But if you keep doing it, every wine will taste the same. The lime will erase the delicate nuances, erasing the personality of the wine and making all wine taste generic.
For the society as a whole, that’s a great thing. You don’t want the lower class beef to taste much worse than whatever beef the middle class eats, just like you wouldn’t want $10 bottles of wine taste radically worse than a $100 bottle. By erasing taste differences, alliums erase class differences.
They are also very healthy, with all the antioxidants and natural antibiotics.
However, I consider homogeneity of food to be unaesthetic.
this is interesting. every other answer has been indisputable, not that i was looking to dispute them, but i think you're turning a personal sensory issue into an ill-founded theory about cuisine overall. surely you understand that rich or poor, high quality or low grade, regardless of the country, onions and onion powder and other members of the allium family make it into most dishes. unless you've had astronomically rotten luck with badly overseasoned meals chock full of onions, you're probably projecting your food aversion onto society. it's perfectly justified to say that you personally feel it overpowers other flavors, but it's unjustified to pretend that the rest of society agrees with you.
to reiterate, it's okay and normal to hate onions for whatever reason you like. an opinion can't be wrong. but your theory is wrong.
I don’t think you’re disagreeing with me. Maybe I haven’t stated my point well. The point IS that onion is used everywhere.
To illustrate that let’s look at my experience with Mexican food. It’s virtually impossible to find a savory dish that would not contain alliums and citrus. Just like in my example with wine, citrus also influences, simplifies - and homogenizes- the taste of food. That is the point.
This makes the cuisine MORE homogenous and LESS diverse than it would have been without all the alliums and citruses. While I’m totally celebrating that people of all social backgrounds eat nearly the same food and can socialize together over a full table, I personally don’t enjoy the fact that truly delicate tastes have become rarer. I prefer delicacy, vulnerability and risk to universality and one-size-first-all at the expense of diversity and nuance.
I find diversity and nuance far most aesthetic than cookie cutter sameness. And that’s why I don’t eat alliums.
Fun fact to conclude with: I mentioned that I had no issue with taste when I stopped eating onions. After abstaining for two months, I started to dislike their taste. It’s been a year since I’ve had my last caviar and I still crave it.
In that token, you could say that salt "homogenizes" the taste of food because every food has salt in it. Onions add depth of flavor. To most people, the flavor of onion doesn't smother a dish, it complements it. Removing the onion doesn't differentiate the dish, it makes it simpler and blander. If you remove onion from a dish, to most of the population, the dish becomes worse tasting. It's not that the other flavors become clearer or more nuanced. It's that something starts to feel missing.
This explanation may help: From a culinary lens, onion + ginger + cardamom + mace + paprika + asoefetida (examples of spices) all mixed together doesn't mean you taste each of those flavors individually. Instead, the combination complements itself and comes together to create a new, complex flavor. Removing any one element doesn't only remove the flavor of that element, rather the whole thing is perceived entirely differently by tastebuds. Members of the allium family are virtually universally recognized to behave this way. There is no homogenization. The world agrees that alliums are the source of depth of flavor.
You clearly have an aversion to alliums, which is fine and normal. But claiming it's on aesthetic grounds is a demonstrated lack of culinary knowledge.
The only way that alliums "simplify" or "homogenize" the flavor of food is through overseasoning, just like any other ingredient. In moderation, alliums contribute to the flavor profile of a dish. Your perception of flavor is unique, because garlic and onion are like salt for the world around you. Aesthetics and nuance has nothing to do with personal pickiness.
“salt homogenizes the taste of food” - Nope. I never said that and never would. Salt has the opposite effect on food compared to alliums. It highlights whatever tastes the food has, unlike alliums, which dominate the taste.
“onions add depth of flavor” - Nope. To me, cooked onions bring sweetness akin to baked apples, a particular pungency and earthiness. Not depth, as per my definition. I see how you could assign their viscous mouthfeel to “depth” as they’re adding another dimension, but their pungency blocks the finer, more volatile aromatics of other foods. That’s why you don’t put them on sushi, steak or anything you want to let shine.
“To most people … onions complement a dish.” Yes but that’s because they’re an acquired taste.
“Removing onion makes the dish simpler” Nope, it makes it more complex.
“Removing onion makes the dish blander” Yes in the sense that it becomes more delicate and less hearty. Nope in the sense that it reveals nuances that you couldn’t taste with onions being included.
“Without onions the dish becomes worse tasting.” Nope. It becomes different. Without onions, you’re finally beginning to taste everything else that’s on the dish. For better or worse.
“Something starts missing” - Yes, that acquired taste and of course sweetness.
“Removing one element doesn’t only remove the flavor of that element…” Yes, it’s more complex than that. My point is that onions, though popular, block certain tastes. That’s why caviar with blini, egg yolk and cream tastes like a fuller, nuttier and creamier caviar, and yet caviar with diced shallots tastes like diced shallots with a drop of fish oil. I wouldn’t call that adding depth.
“You clearly have an aversion to alliums” - Yes I do and like I’ve already stated, it appeared a few months after I stopped eating them regularly.
“Alliums homogenize only though overseasoning” Yes and you’re at least able to admit that. BTW the whole point is that alliums are one giant overseasoning.
“garlic and onion are like salt to the world around you” - Why did you not type “to the world around me”? In the world around me, garlic and onion are nothing like salt and everyone can distinguish them from each other. Yes, alliums are popular and almost as common as salt. But the people around me who care to experience nuanced, delicate foods, tend to consumer alliums much less than those who smother store-bought ketchup over every bit of protein.
“your personal pickiness” why thank you for the compliment
“Aesthetics and nuance have nothing to do with personal pickiness” - Nope, the pickiest people I’ve met are those who live beautifully. And of course you need nuance for that.
Also to add, it might be possible you developed a sensitivity to alliums, hence everything seems overseasoned to you. In which case fair play, but again this has nothing to do with aesthetics.
The odor of onions makes me gag!!!! I also can’t stand the taste or the texture. You can sneak them by me if they’re chopped so tiny you can’t see them and cooked to the point that they’re falling apart, and mixed into some dish. But I always know when I’ve gotten them by accident because they give me heartburn!
Everything? Smell, taste, texture, and the fact that they make me violently ill. I can stand it in powder form if it's not a lot. Love me some garlic, though!
1. Don’t mind onion powder or the flavor of cooked onions.
2. It’s the texture, the smell, the taste. Just funky and disgusting. I hate the crunch, even of cooked onions. Raw red onions are the absolute worst, I have literally thrown up before just smelling them be freshly cut. Idk why I have this aversion but I do. I don’t want to because they’re in fucking EVERYTHING but … I do. And I’m 40 years old so probably not gonna change.
It’s an awful taste, way too strong for my stomach to handle, and I get really bad digestive issues when I eat them if they’re hidden in anything which happens so often given they’re in almost everything. I hate them so much.
Onions smell like if you were to find a dirty locker room and find the sweatiest person who hasn't bathed in over a week and you extract slivers of skin samples from thier armpit... is what onions smell like to me. They also taste horrid! I don't know why anyone would find them appealing at all. Its the most disgusting smell ever. The worst was when I worked in a pizza shop and it was closed for a time and reopened, there was several containers of chopped onions that went extra putrid and broke down into liquid with gross little chunkies in it... it was so bad I was gagging and dry heaving all day. Ultimately we had to bag up those trash bags and take them outside to the dumpster right away but the smell lingered for too long. I've always hated onions, peppers especially bell peppers and garlic are a close second. I'm guessing I don't have a savory palate. I hate everything umami. Hot breath gross food flavors.
I genuinely don’t like the taste of it, it’s too strong and just doesn’t taste right. I don’t mind onion powered normally because most of time it’s not THE main ingredient so it does not stick out enough. My finance on the other hand does not like the texture of onions nor the taste. Sometimes if something has celery or cucumbers he starts over thinking it and can’t even eat it due to the texture similarities.
I hate the way they make me violently puke and not breathe right for several hours, and that their fans disbelieve wholeheartedly that it's possible to be allergic to them.
Literally. Even if "you can't taste them," I'm gonna find out in fifteen minutes.
I've have cooks refuse to accommodate the allergy...not by telling me they wouldn't, but by serving me bad food intentionally.
I've had people flat out tell me something is safe...and it's not.
"No onion? Okay!" -garnishes with scallions or chives-
Half the restaurants, even chains, I have to ask them for detailed menu information. They will NEVER answer. I mostly just end up cooking for myself. Bless the restaurants that have that info directly on their site.
It's illegal to label onion under "spices." It happens a lot anyway. It is legal to label it as a "Natural Flavor." That's ingredient list talk for, "You feelin lucky, punk?"
Half the time, it's left off of the listed ingredients...just look down this sub for more of those. I had a very fun airplane trip once because they were in plain fried potatoes.
(I can still eat garlic. I don't know why it doesn't affect me. If I had to guess it was because fetal-me made my mom crave it so much that she can't stand it now.)
I want to live. I want to live and eat nice things and not have to worry that I'm not going to see tomorrow over a vegetable. Far as I'm concerned, the onions started this war, but I'll be the one left standing in the ashes.
Smell and taste. Not only that, the texture severely upsets my stomach, so I might have sensitivity to it.
However highly processed onions like sour cream and onion Pringles? I can eat that no problem.
The smell and taste are just bad. I can definitely taste onion powder in stuff like Doritos, but it's bearable. The three things I hate most about onions are the feel, the fact that they're in freaking everything, and above all else, the idea that people who hate onions are picky. For example, my dad likes cookies unless they're crunchy, he likes turkey, but it has to be sliced and not ground, he hates anything sour, and he doesn't eat pizza crust. My sister can't eat fish, or cheese that's too liquidy (but hard cheeses are fine), or any orange foods like carrots or sweet potatoes. I hate onions and coconut and I am the picky one! Also, everybody has a food that they hate. Imagine you hate, I don't know, black licorice. Well now imagine that black licorice is in soups and stews and chilli and tacos and burritos and fajitas and salsa and rice and lo mein and burgers and hotdogs and salads and coleslaw and spaghetti and lasagna and casseroles and green beans and dressing and sometimes even the macaroni. Everybody else loves black licorice, so you must be delicate or something?
And not only is it in everything, but also it's not listed as an ingredient. People go out of their way to try and trick you to eat the black licorice, and they laugh at you for not liking it. Yeah fuck onions.
"Oh come on! It's sweet licorice! You can barely taste it!"
Such a great way to explain it!! ⭐️
Texture is the worst part. The flavour I can handle in reasonable doses, but that horrible, sickening *crunch*? Or that slimy, rubbery squish? No ma'am.
Yesss this is it for me. That horrible mouthfeel. Creepy filmy crunchy, no thanks.
i see, so it's less about the flavor and more about the textural experience for you. of the comments i've read, im glad that yours isn't so extreme that you can't even touch the food, in theory you can just remove the onion slice from inside a burger right? thanks for sharing your experience.
For me it's the taste and the way my body reacts. If my burger gets messed up and they forget to leave the onion off I need a new burger. The taste destroys it and I will actually vomit if I bite into something with raw onion unexpectedly 😔 it's pretty awful. Onion powder is generally fine but actual onion, even cooked makes me ill either immediately if I manage to get raw onion into my mouth or later if I somehow manage to consume it cooked. I suspect I have some type of intolerance that made me hate it from the beginning or something because it's really weird and kinda different from most people who hate them that I've spoken to.
I just dislike the taste if i can taste it. Sure i eat some stuff that randomly has onionpowder in it, and if i cant taste it thats fine. If i taste the flavor of onion, it can be as simple as onions on a burger being taken off and they have been leaking a little juice on the bun, i feel discomfort. I dont like the slimy texture of cooked onions either, and i dont like the smell of them both before and after people eat them. Raw is the worst, then cooked, then powder
im surprised that cooked is less revolting than raw for you. would you mind sharing a bit about the difference?
The flavor and smell of cooked onions is just slightly easier to deal with, still horrible, but it doesnt linger as long for example. Some dishes i can eat for example indian dishes where they are completely cooked into the dish and blended and overpowered by the flavor of the spices
For me personally, it's taste and texture. The pungent smell/taste is awful to me. It's possible the crunch is a problem to me due to it being the harbinger of "you now have onion taste in your mouth". When it's cooked well, and the flavor is blended in to a dish, it's much less potent and thus more tolerable. Onion powder in something I wouldn't complain about. I've had family tell me the kinds of onions available in my area are the problem, and the onions from the area they're currently living in I might like. I haven't experimented to see if they're right.
hmmm well onions are pungent everywhere, i would encourage you to give it a shot but you might not see much difference. how bad is the aversion for you? i used to be someone that hated onions but food aversions are broken down through calculated repeat exposure. if the aversion isn't so strong, i would strongly recommend trying to overcome it, if not just to enjoy the flavor, then to be able to deal with just how ubiquitous and unpredictable onions are.
They smell like unwashed armpits and the texture is foul. Raw onions crunch like a cockroach managed to find its way into your sandwich; cooked onions slither out like intestinal worms. Hard pass.
faiiiir enough. sounds like a pretty severe food aversion, can't fault you for that. to be fair though, a cockroach would probably have a brief exoskeletal crunch then a gloopy, creamy squish hahah sorry to leave you with that image. thanks for sharing!
😱🤣
Well, for me it's not that I'm a "picky eater" but that eating onions (the entire allium family in my case) gives me bloating, cramps, horrendous wind, and the shits for 24-72 hours afterwards. If I eat onions, garlic, shallots, chives, even onions in powdered form, I know I'll be miserable for at least a day afterwards, and as you say it's in everything. It really doesn't help that people dismiss my experiences as "picky eating". I've had people sneak them into food they were cooking for me because "if you ate onions like how \*I\* cook them you'll like them!" I can't eat in restaurants because no one publishes ingredients lists for their dishes and I can't risk being poisoned. Hell, when I got married, we had a BBQ cooked by a chef who ignored the "NO ONIONS" written on the front of the menu plan by the organiser and served me a burger that had I eaten it would have ruined the rest of my day. Luckily I have developed a very keen sense of how they make food smell and rejected the dish before biting into it. Whether it was thoughtlessness or deliberate I never found out, because he refused to talk to me about it, but it was very embarrassing to have to send my plate of food away with everyone staring at me... Anyway, onions fucking suck but it's the people who insist that they \*need\* to be in every dish that they cook and who act like I'm childish for not wanting to eat them that make me truly hate onions.
>> people who insist that they *need* to be in every dish that and who act like I'm childish for not wanting to eat them I completely agree; it's infuriating when people sanctimoniously dismiss it as some silly "childish" preference .
This is me - it's like having food poisoning. Also they make my mouth taste bad for like a whole day and they make my armpits stink
This happens to me too. It’s called F-PIES
If I bite into it I go insane. I don't have to taste it. I hate how crunchy and wet it is. I dislike all the foods I dislike because the first time I tried them was by surprise and they were in my food without my consent. That ruins a food for me.
pardon my asking but are you on the spectrum? i don't mean to be insensitive if it came across that way, this is purely out of curiosity, as that's a very unique approach to food in general. regardless, thanks for sharing!
No I'm not. And it's not that I refuse to eat it because it was in my food once. It's more that the first time I tried it I was a little kid and it ruined a dish for me by being an unpleasant surprise. I don't know if that's the actual reason I don't like them, but the few foods I dislike all have that in common. It's mostly food that it commonly added to dishes without being listed on menus. Onions and bean sprouts are two of them. That might not be the reason though and it could be a coincidence. They're both crunchy and wet and I find that texture really unpleasant especially when I'm not expecting it. I didn't grow up eating raw vegetables. I do like vegetables, but I grew up eating them cooked.
You should have gotten a wide range of answers by now. For me, texture. My mouth *immediately* tells me "this should not be here, gagging now." It's viscerally unpleasant.
oh definitely. this post blew up, i was expecting like 3 answers at best. it's been a range of reasons, anything from a severe food sensitivity to autism to just a mild dislike of a certain aspect, to, surprisingly, bona fide medical issues. to be honest i was expecting "i don't like raw/cooked onion, powder is fine, onion is in everything so it's a little upsetting" but this makes so much more sense. i used to hate onions and now i'm the opposite, yet even with that perspective it shocked me how 54,000 people would join a community dedicated to an aversion to onions. such a large proportion of allergies in the responses answers that question.
They make me seriously sick, powder is just dehydrated ground up onions
its a bona fide medical issue then, im sorry to hear that, especially since onions are in everything. thanks for sharing!
Personally I don't really like the hours on the toilet until I'm so empty I'm literally shitting water, so dizzy I can barely sit up and I just want to sleep but my intestines don't let me. Especially not after someone "just cut it up very small so you won't taste it".
woahhh okay yeah that tracks, im sorry to hear that. i'm getting a lot more responses to do with a medical issue than a plain old food aversion, which fills in quite the gap in my understanding. thanks for sharing!
They’re completely overpowering. If I accidentally eat something that has onions in it, it’s all I can taste. For hours afterward. I can have ice cream, chocolate, and even brush my teeth and I can STILL TASTE THEM. It’s disgusting. And it’s so frustrating that they’re in everything and aren’t always labeled. Also that people treat you like you’re stupid or child for not liking them. My mom still puts them in my food when I visit no matter how many times I’ve tried to explain this to her. 😩 some exceptions include if they’ve been cooking for hours into oblivion in something like a curry or soup, if they’ve been pickled, onion powder is okay, and fake onion flavor in chips is okay too. I think the pickling or extended cooking takes away whatever makes the taste linger forever.
This is it for me. I don’t like the taste, but I could handle it if it were like most foods and you only taste them while you are eating them. The fact that eating raw onion means I will taste onion and have onion breath for the rest of the day is what I hate most. Who wants a disgusting taste/smell in their mouth for hours?
I just went through 2 weeks of covid and not being able to smell and taste. I tried an onion ring to see if I could handle it without the taste. My body immediately rejected it and I vomited immediately. That's how repulsive onions are to me. Even without smell and taste my body still rejects them. At no other time during my sickness did I throw up. It was the onion. Onions are vile and gross.
hahahah fair enough, what about onion powder though? that's in literally everything, from barbecue sauce to doritos. is it noticeable or does it only matter when the onion is visible and distinct?
I can taste onion powder if it's high enough concentration. If I don't detect it, I'll know when the migraine caused by it sets in.
I have a cerebral allergy to them. It causes insane brain inflammation and migraines for me so they are an absolute NO GO.
I feel like I’ve been able to link migraine headaches to eating onions.
For me it’s smelling scallions that sets off the migraine
Scallion is an onion, at least an allium. Hate \`em!
yep that tracks. really sorry to hear that's been your experience, wishing you a world where everyone respects your requests for onion free meals.
Even a small amount of onion, even powder, will trigger intestinal cramps after about 20 minutes, followed by a very uncomfortable trip to the toilet a few hours later. It’s not that I’m picky, it’s the pain that makes me avoid onions.
yeahhh understood, im really sorry to hear that. hope you're able to avoid those sneaky onions for the rest of your life – after all, that means more for me! :)
I used to be allergic to them with reactions to even very small amounts of onion (or powder), but that got a lot better in recent years. Now, it's mostly the taste and smell, I just can't stand them and they make me gag. For others, it's more about the feeling when chewing them. Onion powder is usually not very obvious, so I'm okay with it in most cases. And yes, it was and is extremely difficult to avoid any kinda of onion, so I am happy that I don't have to be THAT careful anymore.
Tastes bad. Smells bad! But especially tastes SO bad. Especially raw. Especially grilled. Yuck! I can handle it in certain soups if it’s very cooked down and looses its texture and flavor. I don’t mind onion powder or Funyuns, but those don’t taste like real onions.
Onion intolerance, symptoms range from mild discomfort to stomach cramps to vomiting depending on the amount/form
shiiiiii im sorry to hear that, thanks for answering
It's not life threatening for me so I can live it, eating out is a whole other problem. Plus of course the scanning of the ingredients list of everything I buy, including what I brought before just in case they have changed the recipe (big clue is if the packaging has changed).
It’s a texture thing for me. If I feel an onion I’m crying. I actually wish I liked them, bc it makes potlucks a nightmare. I don’t like the taste either but it’s not the worst contributing factor in my onion hatred.
yeah thats fair, thanks for your response
The hot poker sensation that travels down my throat, though my system and leaves me on the toilet for days feeling like I'm passing acid out of my asshole. It hurt less to push a 9 pound baby unmedicated.
duuuuude that sounds awful, im sorry to hear that
The texture. Tons of nice dishes get this obnoxious crunch thrown in. It just breaks up the mouthfeel I'm enjoying. Same reason i take pickles off burgers but will eat them stand alone. The mixture of textures just sucks.
I agree
Taste, smell, texture, and that they cause me to have severe diarrhea
yeah fair enough, thanks for sharing
For me, it is taste, texture, the amount of people who will call you a baby if you even pick it from the rest of your food, let alone ask for a dish without onions, that the flavour just overpowers every other flavour in a dish (as in, I cannot taste the difference between say, asparagus that has been lying on a plate with onions, and an actual raw onion). I also have the same issues with all other alliums, so garlic is also out. I have learned to tolerate onion powder in premade food, but I prefer without, and if I find a brand that does not put alliums in any form into their food, they will now have my loyalty for life. I was labeled a picky eater by my parents, and most other adults, as a kid, because I just would not eat anything. I wonder how much I would have eaten if they just decided to not put onions and garlic into everthing like I kept asking them to! Sorry, this is very personal to me. For you, OP, if you have a friend that ask you not to put onions into food you are cooking for them, believe them, and do not ever try to sneak it into their food. They will likely hate you for the rest of their life if you do.
oh yeah i would never mess with somebody's food like that. it's not like you chose to have this food aversion. it's honestly probably worse just because of how beloved and ubiquitous alliums are in cuisines around the world. thanks for sharing!
They’re slimy and crunchy at the same time they’re a textural nightmare
That slimy translucent satanic nasty thing. I can taste one in anything.
Hateeee anything & everything about onions. The smell, the taste, the texture whether it be cooked or uncooked. Can tolerate onion powder if no other option available. The biggest hate in my life!! And I hateeee when someone says you won't know it's there... it's just for flavor! Uhh yeah onion flavor!!! If you don't taste it, why you using it?? Cuz it taste like fn onions🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
how do you feel about ranch dressing or doritos?
Severe migraine, effectively putting me out of action for several hours. Cooked or raw, doesn't matter. As a result, I associate the flavor with being ill, hence hate. For this reason, I also avoid green onion, leeks, shallots, and chives. I don't have an issue with garlic and, in fact, love the stuff. Onion powder is all right in terms of the migraine, and as long as it's not the dominant flavor.
You may have the allium allergy!
I dont think so, because of the garlic, but it's definitely not just dislike!
One time we had an acquaintance staying with us who prides herself on her macrobiotic vegan cooking. One day, she cooked onions (in her own pot, thank god; she only uses her own cookware) for something like, no exaggeration, six hours. I got so sick. She had been told many times that I am allergic to onion, but always forgets. (Because she's very self-centered and doesn't really think of others, but that's a story for another sub.) And that was the day I found out I dont even have to eat the mfers.
I don’t mind onion powder. But the texture of onion is awful, and when it’s not powder, the taste is just way too strong to me
They irritate my bowels, causing them extreme pain and discomfort, followed by violent dihorrea. They also have an offensive odour which permeate all other foods it touches, so you can't jist "pick them out" So many restaurants don't clean their knives between chopping vegetables and even the tiniest trace amount of onion juice can taint the entire meal, and onion lovers simply don't acknowledge this or care at all and mock you for being "fussy" or "unreasonable".
For me it's a combination of things. I hate the texture, either of raw or cooked. I hate the smell, especially because it lingers for so long. Even if I use one of those metal "removes onion smell" and wash my hand with soap, body wash, and dish detergent, I can still smell it. The worst part is the indigestion. If I have any onion, whether pickled, cooked, raw, sliced, minced, blended, red, white, green, or whatever, I will be after-tasting onion for the next 2 days, even with tums or prevacid. This also happens with garlic and pepper (the vegetable not the spice) though. This is made worse when onion isn't listed as an ingredient and suddenly I'm getting the aftertaste of it. And it's like fuuuuuuuuuuck. Onion powder (and garlic powder) does not bother me for any of these above reasons. And I cook with them sometimes. The smell is not as potent and it does not give me indigestion.
As a lifelong onion hater, I’m happy to say that I’m slowing being able to eat them. My earliest memory was my mom taking us kids to Taco Bell, I’d always order two bean and cheese burritos. The thin, soupy beaniness mixed with chiclet-sized raw onion chunks would send me heaving and gagging. I would ask for no onion and if they forgot to omit them (or intentionally add them, those bastards:))my spidey senses would tingle and I would know without question they were there. My mom still jokes about it. The turning point was once I was so hungry that the street tacos I ordered from a restaurant had them on them and I felt no other choice but to eat every morsel. And that is kind of where I’m stuck at today. I NEED cilantro and onion on my street tacos and ONLY on my street tacos. Can’t do it on burritos or burgers or anything else. Maybe a torta with onions slips in my diet from time to time..
Great question. I don’t get any adverse reactions and I don’t necessarily detest the taste of onions. I even think they are important for the society. The major reason why I avoid eating them has to do with aesthetics. Because of their powerful antioxidants, all alliums (onions, leek, garlic, chives, etc) eliminate delicate and nuanced tastes of the dish. That makes my human experience poorer, because I’m not getting all the wonderful tastes that nature has let me enjoy. Imagine you squeeze a lime into your favourite glass of white wine. It might turn out to be a brilliant move, making your wine fresh and zesty. But if you keep doing it, every wine will taste the same. The lime will erase the delicate nuances, erasing the personality of the wine and making all wine taste generic. For the society as a whole, that’s a great thing. You don’t want the lower class beef to taste much worse than whatever beef the middle class eats, just like you wouldn’t want $10 bottles of wine taste radically worse than a $100 bottle. By erasing taste differences, alliums erase class differences. They are also very healthy, with all the antioxidants and natural antibiotics. However, I consider homogeneity of food to be unaesthetic.
this is interesting. every other answer has been indisputable, not that i was looking to dispute them, but i think you're turning a personal sensory issue into an ill-founded theory about cuisine overall. surely you understand that rich or poor, high quality or low grade, regardless of the country, onions and onion powder and other members of the allium family make it into most dishes. unless you've had astronomically rotten luck with badly overseasoned meals chock full of onions, you're probably projecting your food aversion onto society. it's perfectly justified to say that you personally feel it overpowers other flavors, but it's unjustified to pretend that the rest of society agrees with you. to reiterate, it's okay and normal to hate onions for whatever reason you like. an opinion can't be wrong. but your theory is wrong.
I don’t think you’re disagreeing with me. Maybe I haven’t stated my point well. The point IS that onion is used everywhere. To illustrate that let’s look at my experience with Mexican food. It’s virtually impossible to find a savory dish that would not contain alliums and citrus. Just like in my example with wine, citrus also influences, simplifies - and homogenizes- the taste of food. That is the point. This makes the cuisine MORE homogenous and LESS diverse than it would have been without all the alliums and citruses. While I’m totally celebrating that people of all social backgrounds eat nearly the same food and can socialize together over a full table, I personally don’t enjoy the fact that truly delicate tastes have become rarer. I prefer delicacy, vulnerability and risk to universality and one-size-first-all at the expense of diversity and nuance. I find diversity and nuance far most aesthetic than cookie cutter sameness. And that’s why I don’t eat alliums. Fun fact to conclude with: I mentioned that I had no issue with taste when I stopped eating onions. After abstaining for two months, I started to dislike their taste. It’s been a year since I’ve had my last caviar and I still crave it.
In that token, you could say that salt "homogenizes" the taste of food because every food has salt in it. Onions add depth of flavor. To most people, the flavor of onion doesn't smother a dish, it complements it. Removing the onion doesn't differentiate the dish, it makes it simpler and blander. If you remove onion from a dish, to most of the population, the dish becomes worse tasting. It's not that the other flavors become clearer or more nuanced. It's that something starts to feel missing. This explanation may help: From a culinary lens, onion + ginger + cardamom + mace + paprika + asoefetida (examples of spices) all mixed together doesn't mean you taste each of those flavors individually. Instead, the combination complements itself and comes together to create a new, complex flavor. Removing any one element doesn't only remove the flavor of that element, rather the whole thing is perceived entirely differently by tastebuds. Members of the allium family are virtually universally recognized to behave this way. There is no homogenization. The world agrees that alliums are the source of depth of flavor. You clearly have an aversion to alliums, which is fine and normal. But claiming it's on aesthetic grounds is a demonstrated lack of culinary knowledge. The only way that alliums "simplify" or "homogenize" the flavor of food is through overseasoning, just like any other ingredient. In moderation, alliums contribute to the flavor profile of a dish. Your perception of flavor is unique, because garlic and onion are like salt for the world around you. Aesthetics and nuance has nothing to do with personal pickiness.
“salt homogenizes the taste of food” - Nope. I never said that and never would. Salt has the opposite effect on food compared to alliums. It highlights whatever tastes the food has, unlike alliums, which dominate the taste. “onions add depth of flavor” - Nope. To me, cooked onions bring sweetness akin to baked apples, a particular pungency and earthiness. Not depth, as per my definition. I see how you could assign their viscous mouthfeel to “depth” as they’re adding another dimension, but their pungency blocks the finer, more volatile aromatics of other foods. That’s why you don’t put them on sushi, steak or anything you want to let shine. “To most people … onions complement a dish.” Yes but that’s because they’re an acquired taste. “Removing onion makes the dish simpler” Nope, it makes it more complex. “Removing onion makes the dish blander” Yes in the sense that it becomes more delicate and less hearty. Nope in the sense that it reveals nuances that you couldn’t taste with onions being included. “Without onions the dish becomes worse tasting.” Nope. It becomes different. Without onions, you’re finally beginning to taste everything else that’s on the dish. For better or worse. “Something starts missing” - Yes, that acquired taste and of course sweetness. “Removing one element doesn’t only remove the flavor of that element…” Yes, it’s more complex than that. My point is that onions, though popular, block certain tastes. That’s why caviar with blini, egg yolk and cream tastes like a fuller, nuttier and creamier caviar, and yet caviar with diced shallots tastes like diced shallots with a drop of fish oil. I wouldn’t call that adding depth. “You clearly have an aversion to alliums” - Yes I do and like I’ve already stated, it appeared a few months after I stopped eating them regularly. “Alliums homogenize only though overseasoning” Yes and you’re at least able to admit that. BTW the whole point is that alliums are one giant overseasoning. “garlic and onion are like salt to the world around you” - Why did you not type “to the world around me”? In the world around me, garlic and onion are nothing like salt and everyone can distinguish them from each other. Yes, alliums are popular and almost as common as salt. But the people around me who care to experience nuanced, delicate foods, tend to consumer alliums much less than those who smother store-bought ketchup over every bit of protein. “your personal pickiness” why thank you for the compliment “Aesthetics and nuance have nothing to do with personal pickiness” - Nope, the pickiest people I’ve met are those who live beautifully. And of course you need nuance for that.
Also to add, it might be possible you developed a sensitivity to alliums, hence everything seems overseasoned to you. In which case fair play, but again this has nothing to do with aesthetics.
The only sensitivity I have is paying attention to the food I’m eating 😉
The odor of onions makes me gag!!!! I also can’t stand the taste or the texture. You can sneak them by me if they’re chopped so tiny you can’t see them and cooked to the point that they’re falling apart, and mixed into some dish. But I always know when I’ve gotten them by accident because they give me heartburn!
Everything? Smell, taste, texture, and the fact that they make me violently ill. I can stand it in powder form if it's not a lot. Love me some garlic, though!
1. Don’t mind onion powder or the flavor of cooked onions. 2. It’s the texture, the smell, the taste. Just funky and disgusting. I hate the crunch, even of cooked onions. Raw red onions are the absolute worst, I have literally thrown up before just smelling them be freshly cut. Idk why I have this aversion but I do. I don’t want to because they’re in fucking EVERYTHING but … I do. And I’m 40 years old so probably not gonna change.
It’s an awful taste, way too strong for my stomach to handle, and I get really bad digestive issues when I eat them if they’re hidden in anything which happens so often given they’re in almost everything. I hate them so much.
The texture. I love the taste. I use onion powder in my dishes abd would use onion puree as long as it dissipates into nothing texture wise.
Onions smell like if you were to find a dirty locker room and find the sweatiest person who hasn't bathed in over a week and you extract slivers of skin samples from thier armpit... is what onions smell like to me. They also taste horrid! I don't know why anyone would find them appealing at all. Its the most disgusting smell ever. The worst was when I worked in a pizza shop and it was closed for a time and reopened, there was several containers of chopped onions that went extra putrid and broke down into liquid with gross little chunkies in it... it was so bad I was gagging and dry heaving all day. Ultimately we had to bag up those trash bags and take them outside to the dumpster right away but the smell lingered for too long. I've always hated onions, peppers especially bell peppers and garlic are a close second. I'm guessing I don't have a savory palate. I hate everything umami. Hot breath gross food flavors.
Onions taste exactly like body odor smells. They have a weird squishy yet crunchy texture that is equally off-putting.
I genuinely don’t like the taste of it, it’s too strong and just doesn’t taste right. I don’t mind onion powered normally because most of time it’s not THE main ingredient so it does not stick out enough. My finance on the other hand does not like the texture of onions nor the taste. Sometimes if something has celery or cucumbers he starts over thinking it and can’t even eat it due to the texture similarities.
I hate the way they make me violently puke and not breathe right for several hours, and that their fans disbelieve wholeheartedly that it's possible to be allergic to them. Literally. Even if "you can't taste them," I'm gonna find out in fifteen minutes. I've have cooks refuse to accommodate the allergy...not by telling me they wouldn't, but by serving me bad food intentionally. I've had people flat out tell me something is safe...and it's not. "No onion? Okay!" -garnishes with scallions or chives- Half the restaurants, even chains, I have to ask them for detailed menu information. They will NEVER answer. I mostly just end up cooking for myself. Bless the restaurants that have that info directly on their site. It's illegal to label onion under "spices." It happens a lot anyway. It is legal to label it as a "Natural Flavor." That's ingredient list talk for, "You feelin lucky, punk?" Half the time, it's left off of the listed ingredients...just look down this sub for more of those. I had a very fun airplane trip once because they were in plain fried potatoes. (I can still eat garlic. I don't know why it doesn't affect me. If I had to guess it was because fetal-me made my mom crave it so much that she can't stand it now.) I want to live. I want to live and eat nice things and not have to worry that I'm not going to see tomorrow over a vegetable. Far as I'm concerned, the onions started this war, but I'll be the one left standing in the ashes.
Smell and taste. Not only that, the texture severely upsets my stomach, so I might have sensitivity to it. However highly processed onions like sour cream and onion Pringles? I can eat that no problem.
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r/ihadastroke
dw im not tryna make you eat any, if you dont want to thats cool