I'll never forget that first olive. Spat out like a bullet from a gun. My face contorted with disgust. Salty and sour like nothing I'd ever tasted, I swore I'd never eat another. I was convinced my mother had tried to poison me.

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Now, of course, I can't eat enough of the things. Kalamata, Ligurian, Manzanilla, Spanish ... bring them on, I say. In salads and pasta sauces and on happy hour grazing plates and pizzas. I've grown to love them in spite of the childhood trauma of tasting one for the first time.

Same thing with anchovies. How could anyone enjoy these horrible, hairy, oily fish fillets, I wondered as a young adult confronted by them for the first time on a pizza. It wasn't long before they made their way into my pasta sauces and were even added to a leg of lamb before it went in the oven (and before it required a second mortgage).

As a child, I thought lemons were the work of the devil, chillies the fruit of hell. Even that salty. evil looking Aussie staple, Vegemite, took a lot of parental cajoling before it was allowed anywhere near my toast. As for oysters, who in their right mind would enjoy something with the consistency of a golly?

It wasn't that I was a fussy eater. My tastebuds were doing exactly what they were meant to do - dissuade me from eating anything whose chemical makeup might be suss.

Over time, thankfully, I acquired the taste for the very things which once repelled me. Now, I can't imagine life without them. The wake-up call imparted by chillies, the intense savoury flavour of olives, the pungency of anchovies - all unimaginable as a kid now sought after as a man of a certain age.

I've always wondered how humans learned to eat certain foods. Who was the first person to look at a........

© Canberra Times