My first exposure to curry and chili based dishes was when I had a Malaysian room-mate midway through my university years. But we never shared cooking. My mother, to help me in their own low-income way, was she cut up meat and packaged in dinner size amounts. So I ended half of small freezer filled with packets of frozen chicken, pork and beef. Some fish. That was her "care" gift to me during university years. I made my own dinners (peasant Cantonese style dishes which a lot of restaurants don't serve because it uses steaming technique)...and enjoyed it. It was cooking, mindless therapy away from all that reading and studying.

I didn't even know about rice cookers until I met room mate. As a teen, I learned to cook rice in pot the "old fashioned way", on the stove.

Methinks the texture and taste/smell thing are such high influencing factors.
I'll eat carrots, but I find them..boring. So I end having tomatoes or butternut squash to get more carotene.
I agree with your friend nyc, you do have to take the attitude to like a broad range of foods. That helps a lot. Not the other way around....which I see way more often these days among children.