Connection Between Nerdiness and Picky Eating?

[gallows_fodder]

May I ask why you are forcing yourself to eat tomatoes if you don’t like them? Now, I occasionally forget I don’t like tomatoes (because they’re so red and wonderfully juicy-looking!) and then buy one and then eat a slice and suddenly remember (“Oh right! …Oh…right… :(”), but I’m not going to deliberately shove unpleasant food down my throat just for the hell of it.

I mean, I could understand it if you’re moving to, I don’t know, Papua New Guinea where your food options will be limited and you’d better learn to love the local cuisine tout de suite or you’ll be in trouble, but… I’m first-gen Italian American, am surrounded by raw tomatoes at family gatherings, and it’s never a problem for me or anyone else that I don’t eat them. More for everyone else!

Do you (this is open to anyone who does this, not just you LibrarySpy) think it’s a sign of weak character if you don’t like certain foods (not even at the level of being “picky”)? I think it’s completely normal and non-remarkable if someone has a short list of food they don’t eat. Do you also make yourself listen to music you don’t like, or wear perfume you don’t like?

Re: the oyster bar example, I don’t think I’ve ever had raw oysters. I would go and join you there and try one. If I like it, I’ll keep eating them. If I don’t like it, I’ll look for something else on the menu to enjoy, or just happily stay there and talk with you and share in your company while you enjoy them. But I’m not going to keep eating them if I don’t like them just…because? Because you think I should like them? That doesn’t make any sense to me.

I don’t consider myself a picky eater, I love to travel and try local foods**, I love to try new foods (I’m, like, constitutionally incapable of eating the same thing twice at the same restaurant…trying new foods is a big pleasure for me), and I really really love to eat and have the ass size to prove it. I’m also not a masochist and can find something else to enjoy rather than choke down food I don’t like just on principle.

**My father just went on one of those riverboat cruises in Europe, from Budapest to Amsterdam, and he said (to my horror!) that in an effort to watch his weight, he didn’t eat a single thing out in any of the cities he visited, just what was served on the boat (which was local cuisine, but it wasn’t…you know, local local). My mind reeled, because to me the whole point of travelling to another country is to experience the culture, which IMO is accomplished by learning their history and eating their food. So I’ve eaten a lot of atypical-to-an-American things (escargot, snake, bear), and learned that I don’t like certain unusual things (bear), so that will be the last time I eat them.

[Ellis_Aponte_Jr]

Thanks WOOKINPANUB, for answering honestly.

Regarding raw oysters, I understand why people don’t like them. They’re slimy. I didn’t care for them myself until I was in my 30s. And the oyster bar scenario is maybe not the best example to use, because as WOOKINPANUB suggests, there would probably be something else to consume there instead. Seldom is anyone shamed for refusing oysters. I would just say that my general desire is to want to like as wide a range of foods as possible so as to maximize the opportunities for dining camaraderie. This is an area where it’s more fun to be a participant, and I do think of social eating as a type of fun. There are definitely things I won’t eat and am not willing to work at liking. Chicken livers, for example.

I would certainly hesitate, at the least, to apply the label of “weak character” to anyone with regard to their attitude toward food, since I think enthusiasm for food or the lack thereof is too tied into personality. It’s like nerdiness, to bring this back to the original question, which I suppose could be diminished somewhat in an individual but not completely replaced with non-nerdiness.

[Lamia]

@Acsenray

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.

How is that different from what I just said? “[S]ome of the salespeople wanted Thai food but not Indian food for lunch that day while others wanted Indian food but not Thai food.”

It doesn’t mean that as a matter of character traits that they fundamentally objected to the other choice.

I’m not the one suggesting that where someone chooses to eat lunch at a once-a-year event reveals anything significant about their fundamental character. That was the OP. I’m saying that I don’t think it’s any pickier for one group of people to go to lunch at Burger King than it is for another group of people to go to lunch at some other restaurant. If the second group had to argue about which restaurant to go to (even if it was just a “discussing the pros and cons” argument and not a “heated disagreement” argument) then if anything they sound pickier than the group that easily settled on an option that was acceptable to all of them.

It does seem to me that you would have to intentionally misunderstand this kind of s description of a common type of incident.

Well, you seem to have totally missed my point, but I’m not accusing you of dishonestly feigning a misunderstanding. Should I be?

[Lamar_Mundane]

@Lamia

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.

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.

@Lamia

How is that different from what I just said? “[S]ome of the salespeople wanted Thai food but not Indian food for lunch that day while others wanted Indian food but not Thai food.”

You explicitly said in your first post that one group who were discussing food choices were split ideologically and wouldn’t consider the other option (or many others). You pulled that out of thin air and based your argument on that premise. That’s the very definition of a strawman argument.

[Claverhouse]

Can’t affect me, but for the determined omnivore, even if You are not interested in Adventure, Adventure is interested in You.
A recent Ars Technica article:

Lovely grub—are insects the future of food?
[ That’s actually quite clever. ]
*At first my meal seems familiar, like countless other dishes I’ve eaten at Asian restaurants. A swirl of noodles slicked with oil and studded with shredded chicken, the aroma of ginger and garlic, a few wilting chives placed on the plate as a final flourish. And then, I notice the eyes. Dark, compound orbs on a yellow speckled head, joined to a winged, segmented body. I hadn’t spotted them right away, but suddenly I see them everywhere—my noodles are teeming with insects.
*
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. On this warm May afternoon, I’ve agreed to be a guinea pig at an experimental insect tasting in Wageningen, a university town in the central Netherlands. My hosts are Ben Reade and Josh Evans from the Nordic Food Lab, a non-profit culinary research institute. Reade and Evans lead the lab’s ‘insect deliciousness’ project, a three-year effort to turn insects—the creepy-crawlies that most of us squash without a second thought—into tasty, craveable treats.

…

The next morning, Reade and Evans join 450 of the world’s foremost experts on entomophagy, or insect eating, at a hotel down the road in Ede. They are here for Insects to Feed the World, a three-day conference to “promote the use of insects as human food and as animal feed in assuring food security.”

[Lamia]

@Lamar_Mundane

You explicitly said in your first post that one group who were discussing food choices were split ideologically and wouldn’t consider the other option (or many others). You pulled that out of thin air and based your argument on that premise. That’s the very definition of a strawman argument.

You may want to check that definition again, because a strawman argument is not when someone bases their own argument on false premises. It’s when they misrepresent their opponent’s argument so that it can be defeated more easily.

Speaking of straw men, I didn’t say anything about ideology. I said that there would be nothing to argue about if everyone in the group considered both Indian and Thai to be acceptable choices. I didn’t specify “for lunch that day” until my second post, but only because this had seemed obvious from context. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would be necessary to explain to you, the person who was actually there, that the argument was about where to go for a particular meal and not an epic battle between those who had sworn to never eat anything but Indian food and those who had taken an equally solemn vow to never eat anything but Thai food. Until this most recent post of yours I wasn’t even sure this was what our misunderstanding was really about. I thought you were more likely trying to clarify that the salespeople’s argument hadn’t been an angry argument.

I can’t really find it in myself to apologize for the misunderstanding since you were so quick to accuse me of dishonesty, but I certainly regret my role in it.

[Tuxie]

It is not surprising that individuals are quick to point out exceptions here.

Also true is the fact that not all nerds are picky eaters, and not all non-nerds are adventurous with food.

HOWEVER, the internet has a way to magnify these things and make them seem more common than they are. Perhaps more nerds feel comfortable sharing their picky eating habits online, which makes it seem like an intrinsic trait of nerdiness.

It is very easy to look for patterns. So when you see some nerds getting really obsessed with a particular media franchise, it comes as no surprise if it turns out some of them consume nothing but Doritos and Mtn Dew.But I think these are the most embarrassingly loud and visible middle of that Venn Diagram.