Well, I would consider a “picky eater” to be someone whose eating preferences are narrow enough to have a negative impact on daily life.
This includes things like not being able to find options at restaurant or only being willing to eat at a few restaurants, avoiding social or work occasions because of food, avoiding travel because of food, having nutritional deficiencies because of a narrow diet, or having your preferences affect family life.
I think the line is generally crossed when you go from thinking about “things I don’t eat” and to “things I do eat.”
There’s not a hard and fast definition, but in my mind, there are 3 main components- how big your comfort zone is, how willing to venture outside of that zone you are, and finally, how freaking weird your food preferences are.
So if you have a narrow set of foods you like, are unwilling to try new ones, and dislike many foods you have tried due to arbitrary reasons like “I don’t like white sauces” (a comment from a former roommate who lumped bechamel and mayonnaise into that category :rolleyes:), then you probably are a picky eater.
I work with a person who describes herself as picky, and everyone who knows her would wholeheartedly agree.
She’s very polite about it. She’s not obnoxious or anything. If you offer her something, it’s not like she’s going to bore you with a tirade about why that thing is gross.
But she has a very limited number of restaurants she’ll eat. When folks bring in food for the whole office, 9 times out of 10, she’ll be the only one who doesn’t try anything because she knows she won’t like. She also asks a million questions before eating something unfamiliar. If it has the wrong kind of nut or the wrong kind of spice or seasoning or texture, then she won’t eat it. Even if everyone tells her how good it is.
FWIW, she is not nerdy. She has her quirks and her special interests, but she’s not nerdy.
According to American palates, I’m probably not. The majority of things I won’t eat are right there in line with what we culturally don’t eat. The exceptions, things I won’t eat that might be culturally fine (though not necessarily common), are pretty much calamari and octopus. Oh, and mint.
I guess my point is that we’re probably all pretty “picky” in that we define things as not just “not good food” but probably “not food at all” under certain cultural circumstances.
No, she isn’t, quite the opposite. Feeling passionate love and telling me so in words and actions, an excellent, warm mother, emotionally intelligent and expressive. And one of the pickiest eaters I know.
Wouldn’t an essential part of being a nerd be making arbitrary lists of others’ preferences ?
Some lush, incontinent, promiscuous extravert, able and eager to eat anything, has the right of gross indulgence, but scarcely the right to puritanically judge the restrained for their powers of discrimination.
I’ve been described as a picky eater ever since I was a child because I don’t eat any vegetables (yucky texture - soup is ok), very little fruit (and without pleasure), fish and seafood.
But I don’t think that’s accurate. Once you what I don’t like - and I admit that it’s a long list - I’ll be fine with anything you offer me. One of my ex-girlfriends used to say that she liked everything. But every single day, when told what was for dinner, she’d complain that she didn’t feel like eating this today. That is a picky eater to me. Plus I’m more than happy to try “exotic” food. Thai, North African, Indian and Chinese are some of my favourites and I’m always ready to discover some new (to me) cuisine.
As far as nerdiness is concerned, my interests are classical music, ancient and early medieval history, linguistics, art history, “serious” literature as well as SF and horror. Make of that what you will.
The difference is that a non-picky eater will try it more than once, because they want to enjoy those foods as much as other people enjoy them, and they know this will be a matter of becoming accustomed to those tastes.
We all have foods we recoiled from at first and later learned to love. For me, the list would include jalapeño peppers, alcohol, and raw oysters - and many others.
Yes. I make it a policy to try new things at least twice before deciding I don’t like them. And things I have always disliked, I still try every once in awhile. The fear of disliking something doesn’t automatically trump, even if I’ve disliked it before.
No, we don’t all have foods we recoiled from first and learned to love. The only things that I’ve ever been motivated to “aquire” a taste for are alcohol and coffee and that is due to the physical effects. What is the point of learning to love oysters?
Not picking on you, Ellis. We’ve had this discussion many times here (I believe **Ascenray **will recall a heated one from several years ago that went on for many pages :)) Some of us just don’t place much importance on food.
WOOKINPANUB, does that mean you eat the exact same foods now that you ate when you were ten years old? I’m ready to believe you, but I do find that remarkable.
Extrapolating from that, (per even sven and monstro’s points upthread), I imagine you’ve turned down many an invitation to a restaurant or a dinner party over the years. That never gets… embarrassing? Or have you structured your life in such a way to minimize the chances of those things happening? (Not picking on you either, just trying to understand). I guess this is all a digression since you’ve already described yourself as picky, but not nerdy.
To me, the point of learning to love oysters is to add a source of pleasure to life, to increase the variety of life by that little bit, and to not be the type of person who gets invited to meet up at an oyster bar and has to say, “Eww! No way! Those things gross me out!”
Why is it picky to only want to eat at Burger King but not picky to only want to eat at an Indian or Thai restaurant? If the salespeople are having an argument over Indian vs. Thai then that indicates that at least some of them consider only one of these choices acceptable. Otherwise they could just flip a coin or something. I’m not seeing how someone who strongly prefers one of these three lunch options over the others is less picky than someone who strongly prefers a different one over the others.
I say this as someone who would very strongly prefer not to eat at Burger King, but I’m not kidding myself that this is for any reason other than my own pickiness about food and dining environment. If I weren’t at all picky I’d be just as happy at Burger King as at a nice sit-down Thai restaurant. And despite my distaste for Burger King, if I were on a tight budget or in a hurry I might choose it over a restaurant I’d like better – which may be what the engineers at your company are doing.
Did you really take my comment to mean that the salespeople only eat at Thai or Indian restaurants? I find that hard to believe. Seems like you are trying very hard to create a strawman. I meant that one group of people were open to trying any number of different cuisines, while some, but certainly not all, of another group, were reticent to try something new.
Anecdotes aren’t really helpful to the conversation, either. I recently dated a woman whose daughter was a cheerleader and part of the “cool kids” who was one of the pickiest eaters I have ever encountered. I don’t mean this to be a universal thing. I just have found that there is a loose correlation between picky eaters and a certain type of personality.
I also should have made it clear that I meant adults, not little kids. A lot of kids are picky eaters, but most grow out of it. Some carry it on to adulthood.
No, I took it to mean that some of the salespeople wanted Thai food but not Indian food for lunch that day while others wanted Indian food but not Thai food. You said they were arguing, and if all the salespeople were fine with Indian or Thai (or Burger King) then there’d be nothing to argue about. I don’t see how objecting to Indian in favor of Thai (or vice versa) is any less picky than objecting to Indian in favor of Burger King.
WTF. You said people were arguing about what to have for lunch, and I took you at your word. This required no special effort on my part and is certainly not a strawman. If I misunderstood you and you really just meant they were discussing the different options then fine, it’s not a big deal, but I have no idea why you’d jump straight to accusing me of dishonesty rather than considering the possibility that your choice of words might have given the wrong impression.
Again, unless the engineers actually told you this was their reason then perhaps they were simply trying to save time/money by getting fast food. Even if they are truly uncomfortable eating anywhere but Burger King (which seems unlikely to me), I don’t see why an un-picky person would care if this only comes up at a once-a-year meeting.
No, I took it to mean that some of the salespeople wanted Thai food but not Indian food for lunch that day while others wanted Indian food but not Thai food. You said they were arguing, and if all the salespeople were fine with Indian or Thai (or Burger King) then there’d be nothing to argue about./QUOTE]
This is adding unwarranted baggage to a brief description of human interaction. Are you unfamiliar with how groups of people make decisions like this?
All it means is that in that moment, some were advocating Thai and others were advocating Indian. It doesn’t mean that as a matter of character traits that they fundamentally objected to the other choice.
It does seem to me that you would have to intentionally misunderstand this kind of s description of a common type of incident.
Well, not exactly, but not too far off. I’ve added Indian and Thai and I enjoy the occasional crab or lobster - all things that I hadn’t really encountered as a kid and probably wouldn’t have tried if I had. But my aversion to cheese remains as strong as ever. Cream based sauces, mayonnaise based dishes, seafood - these are things that the mere thought of putting in my mouth literally makes me queasy.
The only time it gets akward is when someone else is focused on what I’m eating and tries pushing things on me. Believe me, I know any number of tactful ways to accomodate my own food quirks. No one would even notice unless they were for some reason paying way too much attention to what I was or was not eating.
If a group wanted to meet up at an oyster bar, per your example, and I really wanted to share time with the people, I’d have a cocktail and find something else to eat (surely they would serve salad, or shrimp or something besides oysters?). There are any number of ways to remain social and not be a pain in anyone’s ass while also not eating something I don’t care to. For me, food in general is not a huge source of pleasure in my life (it’s not a sosurce if *displeasure *either, just not very important).
Adventurous-eating risk-taking nerd checking in. Like Ellis Aponte Jr., I make myself eat foods I don’t like until I do like them. I usually pick just one a year though. This year it’s tomatoes.
