The One Food You'll Never Catch Maneet Chauhan Eating

Maneet Chauhan harbors a grudge against pineapples — not eating it, cooking it. "I personally hate to work with pineapple," she told Food Network. "That was the one ingredient that played a critical role in me (and all my predecessors) being eliminated on my season of 'The Next Iron Chef.'" In another interview with Food Network, she called it "the jinx fruit." But that's not the food that Chauhan refuses to touch with a ten-foot pole.

Of the questionable dishes that the chef has valiantly stomached as a judge on "Chopped," balut is probably her least favorite. "It's a fertilized duck egg," Chauhan told Insider. In the call of duty, she tasted it, anyway. Chauhan also used to have a thing against bitter melon which she called on The Gram "definitely NOT my favorite vegetable." Because her husband and her sister like it, however, she too, admits to having developed a taste for it.

And yet, there is a single food that you'd be hard-pressed to catch Chauhan close to.

Maybe Maneet Chauhan's willingness to try balut and bitter lemon has to do with her motto in life, "nothing ventured, nothing gained." It's a motto that, Chauhan wrote for Cosmpolitan, she "very strongly stick[s] by." 

It's not, however, a motto she extends to learning to like Spam. At least according to an interview she did with Food Network, Maneet Chauhan refuses to go near the canned mystery meat ... which is almost certainly a combo of pork with ham. If, however, you choose to believe the conspiracy theories, Spam could also be "Scientifically Processed Animal Matter" (via Eater).

Whatever the case, Chauhan's in good company with her distaste for the canned meat. Andrew Zimmern once tweeted that he "reject[s] spam on moral grounds." Meanwhile, Gordon Ramsay's personal loathing for Spam as a childhood diet staple drove him to be a chef, as per what he told The Telegraph in 2012. Ramsay — it should be noted — may have since come to peace with the Spam. At the very least, the "Hell's Kitchen" guru has found a way to stomach it when mixed with scrambled eggs. Watch him make the dish on YouTube if you want proof.