I used to love umeboshi. The sweet, sour and salty dried Japanese plums are a versatile ingredient and a tasty snack. If you haven't tried an umeboshi onigiri with some nice green tea, you should. They are objectively delicious. But they are not delicious to me.
A month ago I caught a fever and with it some pretty uncomfortable stomach problems. I won't get into the details here. Right before his sickness period, I had eaten lots and lots of umeboshi. And as you probably can deduct I stopped liking them afterwards. This is a phenomenon I have heard many other people experience. You stop liking the some food items you ate right before you got sick. It kind of makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. The body thinks that maybe the food item was the source of the sickness. I am, however, pretty sure that the plums had nothing to do with it and when that is the case the phenomenon is called: "Conditioned taste aversion". Either way, this is the first time something like this happened to me. And it really fucked me up.
My newfound dislike of umeboshi is not very intense. The thought of it doesn't make me gag or anything. In fact I tried to eat one yesterday. I chewed it and the familiar sour, salty notes filled my mouth. Really they tasted just as I remembered. I swallowed slowly. Nothing dramatic happened, yet at the same time I did not reach for another piece. The plums had not changed one bit, but I did not care for them anymore. How can something I used to love so much, stop being loved even though it did not change. The umeboshi was still perfect and remained perfectly itself. Also, my taste buds correctly assessed the flavor. It was not like having a cold, where food sometimes taste weird and unrecognizable. The phenomenon is just a weird quirk of the brain.
The Wikipedia page on "Conditioned taste aversion" did really explain how it happened medically. I probably wouldn't understand it if it was explained anyways. It also does not mention any treatment, though a quick web search suggest gradual reintroduction. There's hope. Still this stuff scares me. If my brain could so blatantly destroy my love for a dried plum, what other relationships in my life could it ruin on a whim. What else in my life has stayed the same, materially is being sensed it the same way, but stopped giving me any joy?