What food can you never eat again?

For me, it's prawn cocktail mousse. What food can't you ever touch again, because it made you so ill?

Frothy neon orange

I feel sorry for the guy who was sitting in front of me. How could he know that, whilst on his way to sunny Spain, a sickly girl would projectile vomit in his direction? It wasn’t my fault, mind; it was the prawn cocktail mousse that I ate. Who serves prawn cocktail mousse on an aeroplane, I ask you?

I must have been about 11 or 12, and going through a stage where I’d eat anything put in front of me – even aeroplane food. But my little body couldn’t handle Monarch Airlines’ prawn mousse, which is why moments later it reappeared as neon orange puke… frothy neon orange puke. I couldn’t get to the bathroom in time, so it was the poor man in seat F12 who got the worst of it. Happy holidays!

I haven’t been able to touch anything with prawns in it ever since that traumatic day – especially if the prawns are in a sloppy sauce. So I haven’t eaten a prawn cocktail in over a decade (although I have it on good authority that our recipe is quite good) and even the smell of Skips makes me giddy.

Simon and eggs

It seems that this is a common occurrence. Not being colourfully sick on a man whilst on the way to Spain, but having a bad experience with a certain type of food which put you off it forever. Our News Editor Simon Ward, for example, can’t stand eggs.

Here he describes his horrible experience: “When I was at infant school, a particularly overzealous dinner lady was very keen that I eat all my scrambled egg up. I don’t know what it was I objected to – the texture, the taste, the authority – but it didn’t end well. My snivels turned to tears turned to vomit, and I was eventually forced to eat the by-now congealed mass. And that was that for eggs and me.”

How about you?

I asked the same question to our Facebook fans, and got some nauseating responses back: “Black pudding! I was 10 years old – it returned as it had entered and in the same state,” said Sarah McLelland. “Mine is dill,” said Louise England. “Years ago I had some cheap smoked salmon with dill around the edge. I was throwing up for hours and all I could taste was dill.” For Lisa Hoshino it was “a pomegranate that I guess wasn't so good... it looked the same coming back into my sink, which I then had to scoop out and into the toilet...”

Sharon Tracy Griffiths had a “jar of mussels which made me so ill that I was covered in a rash from head to toe! It was about 30 years ago and I haven’t eaten any since”; for Nicole Malin it was chocolate cake with Sangria; Emma Ruthven Hughes threw a Wagon Wheel up when she was five and still hasn’t got over it; and Ali Gardner has never been able to eat fig rolls again after an unpleasant tummy upset experience. 

Psychologically damaged

Interestingly, some people only avoid certain foods because of what they associate it with. Facebook fan Stu Mosby explains: “Mine is quiche. I had a shop-bought quiche and the next day I was admitted to hospital with Viral Meningitis. Totally unrelated to each other, but 13 years later even the smell of a quiche will still make me sick!” Paula Smalley suffered the same fate: “Mango – in Sri Lanka I was ill not long after eating one, though it was not the cause. But I was so ill that the association has really put me off eating them.”

We heard of another example on Twitter... @samparkercouk can't stand Crispy Pancakes: 

Poor old Sam. That’s much worse than my prawn mousse experience. What about you, though? Which food have you never given a second chance? We’d love to know all the gory details, so talk to us in the comments box below.

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