I seldom pit individual Dopers, but my blood is boiling after reading this thread.
Fuck you all. Guess I’m a lesser person in your eyes, because my diet is less diverse than yours.
Yes, I’m a picky eater, although my diet is much larger than in the recent past. My problem, though, is something embarassing that I absolutely, positively cannot control: gagging. If the taste and texture of a type of food converge in just the right way, for the life of me I simply cannot swallow it. Love cherries, but I can’t eat cherry pie; I simply cannot swallow it. There are some foods I simply will not eat; I’m physically repulsed at their taste and texture. Olives, mushrooms, beans, broccoli, beets … forget it. I can’t stand most salads, although I usually don’t have a problem with ingredients in other settings. Can’t eat potato salad. Can’t eat certain types of cheeses. I don’t mind the use of eggs in dairy products, but I can’t eat them individually, in any form. Just watching someone eat a hardboiled egg will kick in my gag reflex, and may even cause me to retch. (I coughed just now even thinking about it.)
I can find something to eat at just about every restaurant I go to, no matter how exotic, but I’m very careful when trying new foods. I avoid settings where box lunches are distributed, or any environment where I have no control over what food is being served, such as a corporate luncheon. I hate explaining to people like you I’m picking stuff out, or why I won’t eat what is supposedly a wonderful salad.
If there was just one thing I could change about me … just one, it’s that I DON’T WANT TO BE A PICKY EATER. It’s fucking hardwired, though. It’s not because I protested when my parents tried to feed me beans as a toddler, or because I crave the taste of meat. IT’S BECAUSE I SIMPLY CANNNOT SWALLOW CERTAIN FOODS.
As StGermain said in the thread …
It’s considered very rude to harangue those with vegetarian, kosher or halal diets, so why is it okay to force picky eaters to eat something they wouldn’t like otherwise, or judge them as lesser people? Why question them about their eating habits? My friends have learned to stop bugging or polling me about the types of food I like and don’t like. Why can’t the rest of you?