Since this blossomed before I had a chance to respond, I’d just like to say something about these pussified babies who have the temerity to eat the foods they like and not eat the ones they dislike.
Yeah, you should.
You know, Diogenes, I’ve only been here on the SDMB for a bit over a year. And still I’m pretty sure that at one point, I enjoyed your posts. A bit over the top, sure - but you generally seemed like a decent human being with some interesting things to say. And it didn’t help that you and I seem to have a number of views in common.
Lately you seem given to thunderous rage at anyone who dares disagree with you. You don’t even limit it to people who insult you in threads - you lay down the most ridiculously out-of-proportion anger to anyone who simply disagrees with you, no matter how polite they are. Referring to those who have food dislikes, as in the current example, as “stunted babies” is just screamingly excessive. I wonder if you’re all right. Sudden, inexplicable rage can be a medical symptom. Are you like this in real life? If it’s just online, then take advantage of the medium’s lack of immediacy and revise before you submit, because frankly, you’ve turned into an enormous fucking dick and it’s making it impossible to like you at all.
Cite? No, don’t worry, I’ll spare you the trouble. You think food aversion is a modern Western phenomenon? Well, that’s because you’re ignorant on the subject. I just hope there’s enough people still following this thread that this post makes a difference.
Food aversion is a very real phenomenon, and it’s often referred to as Sauce Béarnaise Syndrome, since the researcher who discovered it was inspired to study it after developing an aversion to sauce béarnaise. He ate it on a steak, and later came down with a stomach bug and threw up - it was something going around, and he knew, rationally, that he had not gotten sick from the bearnaise sauce on the steak. Even so, ten years later he still couldn’t stand the stuff.
One of his research partners was inspired because, while studying radiation sickness in rats, he discovered that, due to nausea, they wouldn’t eat their rat chow during the experiment. Furthermore, they wouldn’t eat it again when it was over, due to lingering memories of nausea.
It’s been found in many, many species, including slugs, and whatever your mother (or Diogenes) may have claimed about starving children in West Africa, it most certainly is not something that is conquered by mere hunger. You see, some of the most basic wiring in the brain is devoted to food - eating is a core drive in animals. And part of that wiring is adaptations designed to prevent poisoning. If a food is associated with nausea, the brain works hard to make sure you never eat it again - so the sight, smell, and texture of it are enough to inspire nausea, and permanently.
What makes this interesting psychologically is that previously-known forms of conditioning depended on the stimuli being close together, and Sauce Béarnaise Syndrome happens even if the food and the nausea are hours apart. And while normal conditioning can disappear if the stimulus occurs without a reaction, or if the stimulus is absent for a period of time - it’s known as extinction - food aversions just don’t work that way.
You may think that food aversions are childish, but you’re working against some of your brain’s core programming. If someone was nauseated once after eating a hard-boiled egg, they may never be able to eat one again, despite your own insistence that it’s a perfectly ordinary food item.
As for “foodies”, while I myself am quite the food slut, I’ll reserve this term for folks like Diogenes and TheLoadedDog since a term that sounds like baby-talk is utterly appropriate to the sheer childishness of insisting that others should be capable of liking everything you do. I’m pretty inclined to try new things, and despite being a vegetarian, I’m quite willing to try anything - animal, vegetable, or mineral - at least once. In fact, if I was traveling in New Guinea and a tribe of cannibals offered me the opportunity to try human flesh, I’d be there in a second.
But if your guests don’t like your ragoût of broccoli, mushrooms, cilantro, and yak spleens, suck it up and deal with the disappointment. It doesn’t matter how long you slaved over a hot stove cooking it, there are plenty of legitimate reasons a guest may choose not to eat something. It’s not up to you to determine if their reasons are valid, since medical conditions are not appropriate discussion for the dinner table anyway, and polite guests would be very unlikely to raise the topic of their religion’s food injunctions at a dinner party. Do not obligate your guests to resort to food allergies as an excuse, since it is appallingly rude to make inquiries as to your guests’ medical histories.
Don’t think I want to excuse the actions of those who decide to center dinner conversations around their own likes and dislikes, since there are a few people like that, and they shouldn’t be allowed into polite society. But get over your need to force your guests to try just one bite of the egg salad; chances are they have all tried egg salad enough times to know whether or not they like it. Whether the food is normal or exotic, your guests have every right not to like it, and you don’t have the right to critique them over it.
You can harbor an irrational hatred for those with food aversions all you want. But all you’ve done is show that you’re an ignorant asshole without the capacity to understand that others are different, and have different experiences from you. Since that developmental milestone normally occurs before five years of age, I think I can safely say that you assholes are the childish ones, not the guests who simply decide they don’t care to try the fish.
Besides, hasn’t anyone ever read any Miss Manners? A polite host simply lacks the capacity to notice what her guests do or don’t eat, just as she goes temporarily deaf if a guest should pass gas.
Marry me, Rufus Xavier!
