oh my god [picky eater]

In My Humble Opinion
1

yeah title says it all.

My girlfriend will not eat a sandwich unless it is on a bun. Vegetables of any kind, oh no, nothing save for raw spinach that she can personally dip into a blob of cesear dressing (huh?). Fish? Well only if it is chinook salmon caught wild immediately prior to cooking, the same thing from a store, or that has sat around for more than 24 hours prior to cooking, no way. Gravy, had better be thin and watery using corn starch or not good enough. Cheese, I’m lucky to have been able to get her to try havarti other than mild cheddar or processed cheese slices. She’s never even tried lamb, deer, moose, caribou, or any game. Very picky with beef, chicken, lamb. Make a soup after xmas of turkey and dare to add mushrooms to soup or spaghetti sauce she wont even touch it, not even pick things out. If certain things have come into contact with raw, unminced and uncooked onions, it is infected, she will not touch it. I could go on and on and on.

While I am making headway with her and I can tell she is enjoying it, I can totally see the “anti-picky” side here with how frustrating and rude this behavior appears to be. My parents made fresh wild pacific salmon for dinner once, she wouldnt touch the salmon because the smell “turned her stomach”. Now not all the things that my parents make are beautiful but this was a very well prepared meal with excellent spicing and cooking, my dad went to cooking school in Chicago.

After getting totally frustrated (I used to cook a big proper family meal every meal we shared in the courtship phase, now I’m just sick of making sh*t and having her pick through it or only eat 20% of the items on display) I let her make me meals to try to figure out what she liked.

Well she cooked an entire package of bacon, mixed in perogies and added oil. I nearly puked. But at least I damned well tried it. She said this was an amazing meal and bragged about how good it tasted, but I just couldn’t handle it at all.

I just couldn’t take that I was eating 275 calories per teaspoon. A whole pack of bacon added with salt and starch? I was more pissed that the bacon I bought that was supposed to last a month was opened and dispatched of in one sitting and that these shreds of bacon mixed in tarrified grease were all wasted. I wanted to pick out the good bits of bacon to not let it go to waste but I just could not handle it it made me want to puke.

So she can handle that - – 400,000 calories of starch, grease, and pork ---- but I go and make a peice of battered filleted sole and she just cant stand to even think about it. Ironically, the same batter with cod or halibut is fine, and unlike the salmon it doesnt matter if its been previously frozen or has sat around for a day or two in a fridge.

If it was simple… like, “I Just cant stand the smell or taste of fish” I could handle that kind of pickiness.

But this whole, I like fish but only salmon if it has been caught within 6 hours, halibut and cod are fine from frozen or sitting around, sole is no good and while I love lobster and crab it has to be fresh out of the ocean or I will not touch it at all. Vegetables I like, but I hate all of them except spinach and pickles. I hate cooked vegetables but I hate most vegetables raw including the ones that I complain about turning me off of vegetables because they were force fed to me overcooked. I love sandwiches but they must be on a multigrain dinner roll and they absolutely cannot have mayonnaise or onions or tomato or lettuce.

I mean, I know her dad enabled her by catering to these rediculous whims. But I love cooking… I cant even bring myself to cook this sh*t anymore. I was a sous chef. I can make restaurant grade meals for childs play and I am supposed to make all this crap like a 1/2 pound of mashed potatoes and runny gravy with salisbury steak every night?

I like the woman but I am starting to like some of the suggestions, that if they arent going to eat what you are wanting to make screw them. They can sit there and suffer and get up and make their own weird garbage like pickles with ice cubes or some crap.

She can cook for herself if she wants to be so picky. Its annoying and it’s rude.

2

Hi computerolgy! Welcome to the Straight Dope. The thread that you posted to is a little old, and we like to keep things fresh around here, so I’ve given you your own thread! I’ve also added “picky eater” to the title, so everyone knows what it’s about.

3

Did she actually tell your Dad, in his house, that the smell of something he cooked “turned her stomach”? If so, and you’re still seeing her, the sex had better be incredible. That is mind-numbingly rude. Brought up in a cave by wolves rude.

4

I’m not fucking surprised. I suggest you follow the route you suggest here. Cook good food for yourself, and tell her she has to cook for herself because she has abnormal requirements.

Does she acknowledge her pickiness? It sounds to me like she’s less of a fussy eater and more like someone with an eating disorder, albeit not one of the ‘classic’ manifestations.

5

This is ridiculous. She can’t help if she does or doesn’t like certain food items.

How is this rude?

Am I being rude to gay people for not being gay?

(Oh, and welcome to the Dope computerology.)

6

In a decade or two this will probably be a named disorder :wink:

7

Blech. That sounds horrible. I have a very picky eater in my family and it can be very frustrating. My husband has often voiced his opinion that had he gone for my sister instead of me, way back when, he would have killed her by now.

I really don’t know if a relationship can survive that kind of major difference in something as basic as eating. Have you been together long?

Welcome to the Dope. And good luck.

8

I agree. Sure, everybody has certain foods they just don’t like, but this woman is out on the fringe.

I dated a woman once who saw no point in trying to cook good meals. “It’s all going to be gone in twenty minutes anyway, why bother?” OK, that’s fine, to each their own. The dealbreaker was that she didn’t want me to cook good meals either. It turned out that enjoying my food three times a day was more important to me than being with her. The OP may have to make a similar decision.

9

Telling someone that something they have cooked “turns your stomach” - even if it does - is rude. Her eating habits? Well, I wouldn’t be taking her to dinner - no point in wasting the money - and I guess she’d get tired of watching me eat sooner or later.

10

The OP does not make it clear that she actually said that to the entire family. She could have very well said it to her BF privately.

11

If she is cooking or purchasing meals for herself exclusively, it isn’t. On the other hand when you interact with other real humans, you have to make compromises. Being bizarrely picky severely limits where and what you eat with them. It is obnoxious.

12

Dump that crazy chick!

13

It starts out, with the picky eater, rather amusing, and mildly puzzling. Ha, that girl/guy won’t eat___, or eats only___, ha-ha! They are missing out on SO much good eats, ha-ha! Jump ahead a few years and it is no longer amusing at all, or cute. You can’t go to many many restaurants. Family dinners are awkward as the picky one sits there staring at their plate, nibbling a slice of bread or a carrot stick, whatever they can stomach. If YOU try to cook something new and different at home, they weep and wail about the ‘stench’ in the house and won’t even look at what you cooked. You end up cooking twice at every meal because most foods just won’t fly.

It is grounds for justifiable homicide, IMO. It can be unbearable. I would seriously think twice about a relationship with the picky eater, knowing what I do now.

14

I ended a rather long relationship with a guy in part because of his picky eating. Dude would eat plain chicken, plain beef, hamburgers (plain), nachos (no veggies), rice and collard greens. Half the time that we went out to eat, we’d split up and eat at different restaurants because there were only a handful of restaurants he’d eat at.

In his case, it was a sign of larger set of incompatibilities. He had an extremely small comfort zone, low tolerance for risk and was generally immature. I also blame his parents for never teaching him how to step outside his comfort zone.

15

Wow. Just … wow. As someone else said she better be the best lay in the world for you to stay with her.

If you have to stay with her, make her cook and eat her own meals, and buy her own ingredients. Assign her a shelf in the fridge and one in the freezer for her own foods, and she keeps her hands off your ingredients. Make her eat alone too, that mess she made sounds absolutely nasty. [can you tell I would get rid of her?]

I have some eating quirks thanks to meds and medical conditions and I will have something I normally eat smell disgusting [I have a couple very bland default meals I can get ready really fast if this happens, or I just eat the sides or whatever isn’t making me nauseous] as this can happen at the drop of a hat. With me meat is usually the culprit - generally pork. Somehow I don’t think this is the case [has she ever been on Byetta?] and is just something with her food problem.

[Really, salmon has to be fresh caught, but other fishes are fine frozen? Is she the little girl from Signs?]

16

I think you should make her this: Century egg - Wikipedia

but in all seriousness, that’s rough. It sounds like she’s slowly making progress, which is good, but there’s either going to have to be some way to compromise and keep your sanity (she cooks for herself 5 days a week, for example), or it’s the end of the road.

17

I’m pretty lax when it comes to many human quirks. But picky eating is not one of them. I’m not proud of this because I recognize that people can’t help what they like or don’t like. And yet that doesn’t stop me being annoyed by them.

If you are passionate about cuisine and cooking, and your SO has psychological hang ups about the kind of food you like best, I think it’s wise to break up. It would be like someone who is sexually adventurous and likes it twice a day pairing up with someone who can’t handle anything except missionary with the lights off, twice a month. Not. Gonna. Work.

18

I know that some people have real issues with textures and smells, and can be really OCD-ish about what and how they eat.

But Girlfriend seems (according to the OP) to have no set patterns as to what sets her off, which leads me to believe this is more about attention-getting and less about real physical aversions.

I say cook what you like, and she is free to either share or make her own meals.

19

My first two thoughts were what a spoiled bitch, and damn she must be the best lay ever for him to put up with this shit.

20

This is my rule: everyone is allowed one thing (max two) you really do not like.

But just not liking anything?! She would simply not be invited back to my house. This is just unimaginably rude. If anyone said anything this rude about my parents’ cooking, it would be game over.

Like for the OP, cooking & food is important to me, and so are general manners. If she wants to join the adult world, she needs to shut up and finish her food. Or get rid of her.

Honestly, with children I have worked with the rule was always: eat a little tiny bit of what is served, after that you can have everything you like. After a few weeks of this, the problem was permanently solved: all children learn to like everything except their one “dislike”. I wish you could do that with her. Make her sit on the naughty step and everything!