So who are all these poor souls who cannot bear to eat such delicious foods as oysters, kidneys and oxtail?

Who are these misguided folk who are horrified at the thought of creamy, succulent rabbit because it used to be such a fluffy little bunny?

And who are the hordes, united in their squeamish response to a bowl of meltingly tender tripe and onions?

They are some of the sadly deprived readers of a national foody magazine who voted those and other items such as black pudding into the list of the top 20 most loathed foods in the land. Number 1 on the hate list was tripe.

Granted, a portion of white honeycomb tripe on a butcher's slab is not the most inspiring sight.

But cooked gently in creamy milk with onions, lots of black pepper, bay leaves and parsley and served with mashed potato, it becomes a magical feast.

After all, those who love Spanish holidays and tuck into plates of calamares do not usually dwell on the frightful looking squid that this Mediterranean delicacy comes from. And yet, strangely, squid also features in the top 20 hate list at number 5.

Many of the voters said they could not bear foods with a slippery, slithery feel in the mouth such as the aforementioned tripe, snails, oysters, mussels, oxtail and virtually anything in aspic.

And yet, in spite of the intensely flavoursome appeal of these foods, the people who reject them are perfectly happy to go to the supermarket and buy a tin of equally slippery, slithery and disgustingly tasteless pre-cooked spaghetti rings (not listed).

For the most part, it is not about money either. The numbers of people who stack their shopping trolleys with packs of pre-prepared meals for the micro-wave is a depressing sight.

They spend twice as much as they would on the simplest of fresh foods they could easily cook for themselves.

These are the same people who sag in front of the TV with a takeaway chicken chow mein to watch Delia or Jamie or Nigella create delicious meals before their eyes.

They dream of one day doing the same thing but they never will. They are too busy watching Gary, Rick and Anthony doing it.

The end result is the nation's taste buds have become dulled. Even inoffensive little foods such as Spam, peanut butter, crab sticks, tapioca, tofu and haggis have made the hate list.

Tofu and haggis? Tofu is a bland curd made from soya beans. Haggis is the Scottish dish made of sheep's offal mixed with oatmeal and suet cooked in a bag made from the animal's stomach.

It sounds tasty but, like most Scottish food, is monumentally boring. Even so, it is hard to understand how anyone could work up anything so positive as hatred for them.

Perhaps we just prefer fantasising in front of TV chefs and reading magazines about healthy foods rather than simply eating healthily.