I never understood the acquired taste thing. If I don’t like the taste the first time I try something then there won’t be a second time. Why acquire a taste for something you didn’t originally like?
Multiple tries of something can lead to different experiences by tweaking different factors.
In the end, some things we just don't like, but one try is not necessarily a good sample.
This applies to almost everything. Music is a good example, someone who has only grown up listening to folk music will likely find death metal incredibly hard to listen to, but they may find folk metal a little bit relatable.
Same goes for art, when the classical artists first came out with super realistic portraits, many people found them ugly and repulsive, because they were so different than what came before. Then when things got more abstract, the same reaction occurred.
This is also why people may not like a new song until they have heard it a bunch of times, then it can become one of their favorites! It lights up the "I know this thing" pathways in the brain.
Well food is the same. People from cultures that don't eat cheese are not likely to enjoy a super stinky cheese to start with, but you can likely give them a mozzarella or a super mild Brie and they'll be fine with it (possibly after trying it a few times). Then after their brain gets used to "this is brie cheese, and it is pretty good" they may end up enjoying a slightly more aged/funkier brie cheese, and after a few years down that path they can be eating a wide variety of soft cheeses.
This is why trying food again is worthwhile.
Let me give an example.
My wife used to hate lamb. An American style lamb roast[1] was atrocious to her.
Then one day at a friends house we had super thin cut highly seasoned grilled cumin lamb. It is a completely different taste than a lamb roast. She liked it.
So after a few times of having that dish, that she was open to trying some other lamb dishes, but always highly seasoned and cut into small chunks. These other dishes she did not like before, but now she found that she did.
Her brain had adopted the idea that "small pieces of highly seasoned lamb taste good".
> I don’t like it and will never again knowingly try it.
There is plenty of horrible cabbage out there. Like, awful stuff that I would not want to eat.
But a Korean kimchi cabbage is a lot different than a Vietnamese pickled cabbage which is a lot different than sauerkraut which is a lot different that cabbage fried in bacon fat.
Seriously if you are a person who likes bacon, try some thin sliced cabbage fried in bacon fat. I know people who hate sauerkraut, but who love crispy fried cabbage.
It also depends on the type of cabbage, and there are lots of types. Different types of cabbage are as different as grapefruits are to oranges, if someone hates grapefruit they should still give oranges a try. And if someone hates lemon juice they should still try orange popsicles! (and maybe that person hates all citrus fruits equally, but they won't know until they try more than 1!)
But I also have food that I just cannot eat w/o puking it right back out. Mushrooms are my weakness, but only certain types of mushrooms. Pretty much every type of mushroom used in western cuisine makes me sick, but I am fine eating enoki mushrooms or wood ear mushrooms, and I'm glad I gave both a try despite my vomiting reaction to button/portobello mushrooms!
[1] TBF American style lamb roasts are a waste of a perfectly good lamb.
1. Some % of the time, my first experience will not be like the others.
2. I will not be the same person the next time I try something.
If your strategy works for you and you don't feel limited, that's great! Many people do feel limited if they only ate things they liked the first time. I am very happy that I eat bell peppers, onions, yoghurt, coffee, and (less happy due to calories) beer. If I only ate what I liked when I first tried it as a kid, I would be eating a lot of cheese pizza, candy, soda, and ice cream.
For me, the biggest example is sushi. I didn't like it all the first time mostly because of the texture of the raw fish. Eating it with somebody who knew a lot about it changed everything for me. Now going to a great sushi restaurant is one of my very favorite things to do.
If you only try each thing once and give up, you’ll get stuck in a local flavour maximum.
Basically, what I’m saying is: it’s perfectly possible that the best experiences you can have are those that require a certain amount of less-pleasant experiences preceding them. You can stick with the medium-level experiences and you’ll never try anything bad twice, but you’ll also never discover things that might change your life.
Just because you don’t like something one time doesn’t mean you wouldn’t in the future. You’d miss out on many great experiences this way.