Bananagram Six

Let's talk for a moment about quintessentially American dessert foods. By my calculations, you should have already thought of banana splits. You may even be eating a banana split right now. (Fictitious Surveys reveal that 4 in 5 people are eating a banana split at any given time, anywhere in the continental US.)

(On the off chance you're reading this and have no idea what's going on: a banana split is a sundae, consisting of a scoop each of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream, drizzled in caramel, hot fudge sauce, and strawberry sauce, covered in whipped cream, and fenced in with a banana, split in half and placed on either side of the ice cream. Yagh.)

The banana split I consumed was free; I set out to eat no banana that day. My friends and I, innocently sitting in a coffee shop eating a perfectly lovely chocolate pot du créme with peanut butter, intended no splitting of any sort or kind. And then the staff "accidentally" made a banana split for the wrong table and offered it to us for free -- "so it won't go to waste." We aren't fools; we accepted.

And if it had been a nice, rare Châteaubriand, I would have accepted with a smile on my face. Perhaps a neat stack of profiteroles? Why can nobody ever accidentally serve me a smallish tower of profiteroles, draped in caramel and chocolate? No, it was a banana split that now adorned our table. I set to it with a sigh and a grimace.

 As I've reported, I can now comfortably eat bananas in all manner of baked things. This seems to have done nothing whatsoever to my ability to eat a raw banana. Even mostly frozen and covered in good ice cream, I could barely choke my half banana down, and keeping it down took both time and effort.

I remark a curious trend: there is a list of other foods I've never been too fond of. Sweet potatoes, for instance, have never held a high place in my estimations, squash and brussel sprouts likewise. And yet, with no focused effort of any kind on my part, I'm starting to like all of them. Even given the amount of willpower I've dumped on bananas, I still find them nearly inedible -- my body just doesn't seem convinced that they qualify as "food." I have no adverse reactions beyond powerful disgust: no nausea, no sickness, no allergic reactions of any familiar form. Yet I can't help but wondering if there isn't something more visceral at work here than simple dislike?