IT'S WASTE, NOT FOOD:

"Feces is the universal disgust, like the first disgust," says Paul Rozin, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania who has researched disgust since the 1980s. In addition to being an expert on disgust Rozin is also the researcher who coined the phrase "benign masochism" to explain why some humans enjoy the burn of chili peppers.

Disgust, theorizes Rozin, originally evolved as a way to keep humans safe. Hanging around each other's excrement, for example, is an excellent way to spread diseases so we learned pretty early to avoid the stuff.

"Disgusting foods are contaminating," says Rozin. "If you put a little bit of it in something, other people won't eat it." [...]

As far as Rozin knows nobody has ever done a study specifically on mayonnaise disgust, but based on his previous research on disgust he posits that it's mayonnaise's texture that's the culprit. It's viscous quality is the sort of thickness that you'd get from fluid oozing out of a rotted carcass as anyone who has ever poked a rotted squirrel with a stick can attest. Disgust also tends to align strongly with our revulsion about bodily fluids. We don't exactly market lemonade by saying that it looks like pee. And the creamy appearance of mayonnaise isn't dissimilar from what would emerge from say a popped zit. Delicious.

Of course the fact that mayonnaise triggers my sense of disgust, doesn't really matter to any company's bottom line. Stores like Ready should only care about my condiment vendetta if there are more of me.

"The percentage of people who don't like mayo it's probably close to 20 percent--it's not trivial," says Herbert Stone a food sensory consultant. I'd called Stone to figure out whether I was unique in my mayonnaise aversion. While he can't put a precise number on how many of us just dislike mayonnaise versus experience disgust, the big take away is that I'm not alone. Even a quick survey of Popular Science's office found that at least one other staff member doesn't really like mayo but she'll eat it when she has to, while another, like me, wholly avoids eating Ready's sandwich selections because the ubiquity of mayonnaise on their menu. And a quick Google search reveals websites and songs, devoted to people's hatred of this ubiquitous condiment.

"You will find this kind of polarization in other countries around the world," adds Stone, who has among other thing consulted with the Hellmann's (Best Foods) brand of mayonnaise. "And it's not just Western Europe--you will find a similar degree of like dislike in Asia as well."

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