For as long as I can remember, I’ve avoided tuna.
The one exception occurred shortly after seeing a friend eating tuna one day and enjoying it. I thought I might like it, so I wanted to try it again to be cool.
After reminding me multiple times that I didn’t like tuna, my mom whipped up a sandwich for me. As soon as I plopped down to eat, though, I knew I’d made a mistake. I didn’t like tuna.
My mom wasn’t too pleased since she’d purposely warned me and I’d purposely blown her off. She made me sit there until I finished. I don’t remember exactly what happened in the end, but I’m pretty sure I never ate the sandwich. I think I took whatever punishment my mom offered instead.
And that was the last I messed with tuna.
Since then, though, I slowly, slowly developed a taste for chicken salad sandwiches. I used to hate those too. Slowly, they became, well, still not my favorite, but I could eat them.
Finally, after living in Korea for four months and adapting to all the seafood, I figured I might be able to adapt to tuna too. Actually, as I remember, my experience with carrot juice pushed me over, because as far as I know, tuna is the last food I don’t like.
Or was.
This post was supposed to be a tuna [EXPERIMENT] post. I committed to eating tuna every day for a week in an attempt to learn to like it. But the experiment didn’t turn out to be much of an experiment.
I liked it immediately.
I literally sat down on a bench with a can of tuna the first day and ate the whole thing, with Korean chopsticks. It blew me away. Not only could I eat it, I enjoyed it.
Twice now, I’ve converted my tongue on purpose, first with carrot juice and next with tuna. It’s possible. It’s probable. It’s just a matter of focusing the effort, gradually or perhaps not so gradually.
Taste is a response, not a reaction.
