[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
The OP’s whiney, psychomsomatic “gag reflex” seems to be exclusive to developed, western cultures. I spent two years in third world Africa and, funny, it doesn’t seem to exist over there. No picky eaters either.
[QUOTE]
Reading through this and the other thread, it has occurred to me: you can only really have the luxury to be picky about food if you live in a rich society where food is abundant…
I highly doubt that people in poor third-world countries have the luxury of being picky. Hungry people are grateful to just to have anything to eat.
If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything. Don’t like seafood? Well if you were shipwrecked on an island and that was the only thing available, you better believe you’d be scarfing down some seafood.
The the OP, whenever your feel that gag reflex coming on, just be thankful that you live in a place where you have the luxury to be picky about your food.
And to the people who don’t eat fruits or vegetables? All I can say is that is extremely sad and twisted. All forms of life have survived on vegetation for billions of years. Why are you so different? If your aversion were more common in any creature, that creature would have become extinct eons ago.
If you had bothered to read the thread before posting, you’d not only have seen that at least two other posters have already advanced that theory, but that it has also been thouroughly and repeatedly debunked.
Yeah, and if your airplane crashed into the Andes, you might become hungry enough to eat your fellow passengers. Excuse me if that hypothetical does not make cannibalism any more palatable for me.
Okay, we’ve already done ten fucking pages of this shit. I’m running out of invective. Go back and find something I wrote to LoadedDog or Diogenes, and just mentally substitute your name for theirs. And add a couple more “fuck yous” for posting without reading the thread while you’re at it.
“All forms of life?” All of them? Every single one of them has eaten plants? And this has been going on for billions of years? Billions? Plants haven’t even exsisted for “billions” of years. And does the word “carnivore” mean anything to you? Jesus. There’s been some stupid shit posted in this thread, but you take the cake.
Yes, yes, there are children starving in India, so eat your pickled macaque intestine. Sheesh, haven’t we already addressed this topic? Did you bother reading my discussion of food aversion on page nine? (Given the content of your post, I’m guessing not. Posting without reading just makes you look stupid, dearie.) Food aversion is not dependent on hunger because the brain has wiring, deep down in the reptilian part (I use poetic license here: this trait is so fundamental that it’s found in invertebrates as well) to stop you from eating something if it’s been associated with nausea before. Yes, it’s present in all humans, even the starving children in India. You can make claims about our decadent society all you like. They’re irrelevant since neither you nor I are starving. And they’re false. But you can make them.
Actually, there was a Viking colony; I can’t remember whether it was in Greenland or Canada, but the archaeological evidence is clear.
When starvation set in, they ate their seed crops, their horses, their dogs, pregnant cows, calves, and each other. They were desperate enough to stave off starvation for the short term that they ate everything at hand, without regard to the effects on their future survival. Eventually they all starved to death. And yet they never ate any fish. There are bones present that allow the situation to be reconstructed - and there are no fish bones at all in these archaeological sites, despite the abundant presence of fish in the waters nearby. So, evidently (that’s when we argue based on evidence instead of on silly lies our parents told us), starving Vikings still don’t resort to eating seafood.
My darling cats beg to differ, moron.
Are you going to lie about what you said earlier? You were one of those claiming that those with food aversions were pussified babies, or something along those lines. It doesn’t seem worth my trouble to reread the inanities you spouted earlier in the thread to find out exactly which words you used to excoriate them. To paraphrase an old Honduran woman, I’m too old to read that kind of chit. So whatever portions didn’t apply to you exactly - given that I obviously just used your post as a jumping-off point to discuss the various issues raised in the thread - assume they were meant for your cohorts. Either way, my feelings about you remain unchanged.
Yeah, you made a completely unjustified assumption based upon your own prejudices, without regard to the actual facts of the matter. Look at the earlier portion of this post regarding starvation and seafood. You’ll find it illuminating as to the attitudes of those who’ve actually starved to death, rather than simply morons like you who wish to expound on the topic and lend credence to their own stupid views by assigning them to others.
You certainly do appear to remain an ignorant asshole. Weren’t you going to leave the SDMB over this thread? How 'bout getting on that?
I think that we can all agree that a polite guest should eat food that a gracious host offers. I also think we agree that a polite host sets up a vomitorium for guests to expel foods that they cannot stomach. That is the simple and polite solution to all of this animosity.
Okay, I’m hijacking again, but as long as this thread is I think it hardly matters anymore!
More than you might guess, although it varies a lot depending on the level of preservation in the area and what kinds of food are involved. It’s relatively easy to identify bones from animals that have been butchered, but tubers and other soft plant foods usually leave nary a trace.
*Going just from the reference I have at hand, there are sites in South Africa where people were eating shellfish (and throwing the shells in a big ol’ pile!) from about 120,000 years ago. That’s the late part of the Lower Paleolithic, and about as far back as our species goes. It actually predates the best numbers we have for the Homo sapiens sapiens subspecies, which could be evidence that even our early Archaic Homo sapiens ancestors were eating shellfish. Anyway, people there ate shellfish for tens of thousands of years and didn’t stop until the dropping sea level meant they were no longer near the coast.
However, I can’t find any other mention of shellfish until the Mesolithic, about 10,000 years ago. There’s a specific mention of a Japanese site where people were obviously eating lots of shellfish by about 6,000 years ago.
That’s about the extent of my knowledge on the subject, except for the semi-interesting fact that shells can be a huge help when it comes to determining what time of year a site was inhabited. Mollusk shells have growth rings kind of like tree trunks, and since we know when their reproductive season is in it’s possible to count the rings and figure out when in the year the shells were gathered.
Not quite. I can agree to disagree with you re: a host pestering and forcing a guest to feed said host’s ego by monitoring every bite the guest takes.
Your call for “truce” seems one-sided to me. Gee, the guest should eat whatever is put in front of him, regardless of its effect on the consumer. Some truce.
Uh, no. I will politely decline and applaud your efforts and compliment you on some other offering.
I have no comment on the vomitorium.
for it’s entertainment value alone, I have enjoyed this thread.
This isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve read on this board by a long shot, but it is the stupidest thing I’ve read here in awhile. I’m not a particularly picky eater, but I don’t like a few things based on texture. I didn’t realize that this cast me as immature. Now that I’m officially immature, I can more easily tell you to fuck right off.
Of course, I don’t eat things I don’t like. But when having dinner at someone’s house, there has always been something I liked even if there were some items I didn’t care for.
If this makes me rude, then I’m rude. Somehow though, my unfettered rudeness never seems to have lost me a friend.
My wife’s friend since childhood, Suzie was out of a job and very depressed that she hadn’t had a date in over a year. My wife helped her by giving her a job at the booth at the Fancy Food show in NYC one summer. For some reason, one of my wife’s customers became fascinated with her at the show. He was an attractive, 35 year old man, and a multi-millionaire that established his own dessert manufacturing company that suplies restaurants all over the U.S.
He asked Suzie out and she gladly accepted. They went to a swanky Beer and Wine bar and Manhattan and were hitting it off pretty well. The waiter came over and asked for drink orders. John ordered and expensive glass of wine. Suzie looked up and said “Oh, I don’t really care for beer or wine. I think that I will just have a glass of milk.”
Scrrrreeeechhhh! They finished the date but blew her chance because she showed herself as an unsophisticated simpleton (which she is).
The moral to that story is that you have the right to eat and drink whatever you want but don’t be surprised when people judge you negatively for your simpleton ways.
Wow. So the asshole dropped her just like that? Do you even know enough about Suzie to know why she declined? A lot of people choose not to drink. He was willing to drop her for being a recovering alcoholic? Or a member of a religion that prohibits alcohol? Or someone with medical reasons to avoid alcohol? Just like that?
Wow. Should I ever meet you, I don’t think I’ll need you to introduce me to your circle.
And Shagnasty does it again! Coming from behind, just as the thread was dying down and everyone was shaking hands and mumbling apologies, he shits another story about poor, unsophisticated simpletons who can be recognized as such because they DON’T DRINK!
Seriously, the guy wasn’t worth getting upset about, if Suzie did. He was apparently as shallow as could be if someone who doesn’t drink alcohol is considered a simpleton just for that reason.
Um, since I don’t know what a whoosh is (not only a pussy, but a simpleton, too!) I doubt I was doing that to you. Is it fun? Does it involve the exchange of bodily fluids? I am just kidding re: the simpleton/pussy thing. But I truly don’t understand what whooshing is–unless this entire mb is a advert for Nike (heh)
I was straight up responding to Shag’s “truce”. The “truce” where his POV is the correct one and the other side is completely dismissed…
On preview:
Milk, eh? that is an odd thing to request in a bar. So odd, that I look askance at the millionare for not exploring the reasons for such an order. Sounds to me like they wouldn’t have gotten along anyway. One is depressed and the other is not intellectually curious–bad combo!
Jesus, I simply cannot believe this disgusting thread. And yes, I’ve suffered reading all 10 pages, but have tried to refrain from posting until this bullshit “true story,” after which I simply couldn’t hold out any longer. For all that asshole knew, the woman was an alcoholic, or had an allergy to alcohol, or simply wished to refrain from alcoholic beverages by choice. What a jackass. No wonder he was still single, he doesn’t sound like such a great catch to me. Here’s a woman who clearly wasn’t acting like the Dreaded Picky Eater/Drinker all you assholes have been bitching about, by not turning down a particular establishment due to her personal tastes, and yet, she’s portrayed as the Bad Guy anyway. You can’t win for losing with you arrogant pricks.
A whoosh is when someone says something sarcastic, and it flies straight over your head, generally making a “whooshing” sound as it passes. I’m thinking the truce was a joke - expecting guests to choke down food they hate and then throw up being a rather suboptimal solution to the problem. So either you missed the sarcasm, or you responded in a way so deadpan that I missed yours.
I am just kidding re: the simpleton/pussy thing. But I truly don’t understand what whooshing is–unless this entire mb is a advert for Nike (heh)