Exactly, I probably know plenty of people who are picky eaters but they don’t make their issue my issue. I know other adults who make their food issues the center of every interaction.
I don’t get irritated with the pickiness. I get irritated with bad behavior.
I get that people have allergies and sensitivities and religious needs, and that they’re responsible for making sure their needs are met, and I can’t exactly fault someone for being a pain in the ass if eating tomatoes or whatever will result in their brutal, untimely demise. Or violent diarrhea, or whatever other problems they’ll have if they eat something they shouldn’t. I can’t even fault people who refuse food they don’t like, as long as they’re polite about it. A simple “No, thanks” works just fine.
On the other hand, people who use their pickiness or food issues to justify passive-aggressive, controlling, and manipulative behavior have earned my irritation. If you’re a vegetarian, the group is happy to accommodate by going to a restaurant that has vegetarian options. But if you’re insisting that we go to a vegetarian restaurant because you’re a vegetarian, well, I guess you’re not going to dinner with us.
+1
Although I haven’t met a lot of people like this, the few that I have encountered drive me up the wall.
I work in a small cafe located in our public library. If you have an event with catering in one of the meeting rooms or the multi-purpose auditorium, it has to come through us. Big groups aren’t necenssarily a problem until you have a few picky people. If we have to serve a meal for 150 people, say, making sure we have two non-gluten meals, one vegan, one vegetarian, one without nuts, and so on, can be difficult. We do it of course, but when those special meal eaters complain about how “boring” or “plain” the food is, we grind our teeth and smile anyway. Oddly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of religious considerations being accomodated though, they must just eat around what everyone else is getting.
Most of the people I know who follow a religious diet generally pick the vegetarian option, if there is one, or eat what they can and leave the rest (or give it to someone else).
Right now, I’m working on registration for a largish (300-350) person convention that’s held at a college campus. The college provides room and board, which includes cafeteria-style meals. I am very clear to point out that, since it’s cafeteria-style and all-you-can-eat, they are responsible for making their own choices. You’d be surprised how many people will ask for a special diet, not understanding that they can do it themselves.
Of course, it also goes the other way. I’m a soap-taster…cilantro tastes like someone dropped a bar of Ivory in whatever food it’s in. My first time ever having pho was at a friend’s apartment. He ordered delivery and I didn’t even know at the time that pho HAD cilantro in it. I was perfectly willing to try the pho, until I took a sip and thought for a second they hadn’t actually rinsed out the pot before making this batch. Well! I spent the rest of that weekend dealing with snide comments from this “friend” about how picky I am and “Oh, we can’t go THERE! Jim doesn’t like Chinese/Indian/“weird” food!”
Strangely, that was pretty much the last time we actually spent all that much time with this “friend”.
Update: I LOVE pho now, as long as I can order it without cilantro. My favorite eatery to go to is a pho place here in town.
MsRobyn, the easiest group I ever worked for were militarychaplains. Until it moved I worked for a very well known psychiatric hospital. Twice a years seminars on different subjects were held that were for military chaplains. We got all kinds, from all over, and all service branches.
The receptions held for them had the usual snacks and munchies, including fruit and veggie trays, and sometimes red or white wine. These folks put their disposable tableware in the trash receptacles, unlike the doctors and social workers who left their crap all scattered around. And the Jewish and Muslim chaplains never demanded special food, although sometimes they did ask questions about what was in different food items. I felt sorriest for the Orthodox Jewish guy I met a couple of times, he was pretty much limited to the fruits and veggies. The Muslim chaplain couldn’t drink or eat pork, but most of the rest of the muchies were okay. A number of these folks would also seek us out, the help, afterwards, to thank us. Rarely got such a comment from a doctor.
I thought I was the only one who thought cilantro tastes like soap. My first taste of a dish with cilantro, before I even knew what it was, and I thought “What is IN this?” I will eat a dish with cilantro if it’s served to me, I try never to be a picky guest. But I’ll eat the smallest portion I can get away with.
I only get irritated when it affects a lot of other people, like trying to to find somewhere to eat out.
My brother is very picky eater, and it’s not allergy based, in true sibling fashion I take the piss over it from time to time, but it doesn’t normally bother me until we’re trying to organise a family dinner out, and suddenly every restaurant choice has to be scrutinised as to whether they have any many items he’ll eat, and his particular brand of picky eating it really cuts down on the options. So at those times, yes super irritated, but otherwise my attitude is more ‘meh’ you don’t know what you’re missing, but that’s your problem.
Apparently, it’s a genetic thing.
I don’t understand why, but for me cilantro has that horrible soapy taste in certain dishes (like pho) but in others it’s like the best thing ever (like salsa). I must be a mutant hybrid.
ETA: mostly ninja’d by jayjay.
The *cilantro tastes like soap *phenomenon affects a decent fraction (10%?) of the US population. It’s a genetic variation sorta like the distinctive asparagus pee smell that either your entire family has or you’ve never heard of. There are threads and threads on both topics here.
I love cilantro, but some folks not so much.
I volunteered at a food pantry one summer when I was in college, and all clients had an intake interview which included any food allergies or other special dietary needs. Because most of our clientele was senior citizens, the most common were diabetic or low salt, and I also remember seeing kosher and vegetarian, as well as milk and egg allergies. Nowadays, we’d probably also see halal, gluten-free, peanut allergy, etc. We also needed to know if they had refrigerators; some didn’t.
You don’t want to give people things they can’t or won’t eat, especially under these circumstances.
We had a table in the lobby where we would put items that very few people would use, as well as items with labels not printed in English (very common in this college town) and the items I most recall (and people did take them!) were a gallon jug of ketchup with a squirt thing on it, a #10 can of jalapeno peppers, and a jar of pickled grape leaves.
Many people, especially children, also have issues with texture. I don’t care if an adult is a picky eater, by choice or circumstance, unless they make an issue out of it for other people, as in insulting their own food choices.
23andMe happily reports that I have the cilantro-tastes-like-soap gene. While it certainly has a strongly pungent flavor, I don’t know that I would describe it as soap … and I really like it.
My church also serves dinner once a month at a soup kitchen. We get people like that sometimes, too. The rule is “take what you want, but eat what you take.” It’s served buffet-style with us dishing up the food, which is required by local sanitary regulations. I’ve seen people eat 3 helpings of one thing and none of another. And it’s all OK. Our feelings aren’t hurt if a person does not want a certain item; there’s always going to be something else that they do want.
If they’re picky and not demanding that everyone else cater to them, then I don’t care. It’s the ones who shoot down ALL food suggestions because they don’t seem to like anything but one kind of food who raise my ire. That kind of thing is being a pain in the ass deliberately- nobody gives a shit that you don’t like that kind of food or are afraid to try something different, so either make do, or don’t come along. But don’t expect everyone else to continually go to the same tiny set of places because YOU have issues with the food.
However people with genuine food issues are something different- I don’t have a problem trying to accommodate someone who is say… allergic to mushrooms, or gets migraines from garlic, or things along those lines. That’s not willful pickiness, and everybody I’ve ever met in that situation tries their damnedest to work within the confines of the situation, and doesn’t demand that everyone else change what they’re doing. And sometimes that’s HARD; my MIL is a migraine sufferer, and apparently everything flavorful is a trigger. Onions, mushrooms, garlic, leeks, chiles/peppers, strong cheeses- they’re all off-limits when she comes to visit and we cook. It’s very hard to find recipes without any of those things… you’re reduced to herbs, citrus, vinegars, soy sauce, salt, pepper, and a handful of condiments.
Forget it, Jake. It’s Gawkertown. 
IMHO, getting irritated at aforementioned Gawkerian is not so much wrong, unethical, or immoral, as it is needless and pointless.
The key to this is to understand: This is Gawker. You are being trolled. That’s what Gawker does. Troll for clicks.
And getting exercised by a troll is pointless and counterproductive.
The best thing to do with trolls is to not feed them by ignoring them. Double that for Gawker, which can rot in a deep hole in a swamp for all I care.
I don’t think it’s ethically or morally wrong. In fact, being annoyed by picky eaters seems like a highly evolved social behavior to me. Human beings haven’t always had access to the amounts and varieties of food we have today; I can imagine how it could be beneficial for it to be offensive to the sensibilities of a tribe if foods were rejected for not fitting one’s exact taste preferences. The pressure of the group would encourage the person to eat up in spite of their reservations and thereby get the sustenance they need to not become a liability.
Personally, it annoys me because my grandmother and mother, both raised poor, instilled an appreciation of food in me and didn’t let me get away with deciding to not like foods (as older child, in response to peer pressure from friends who thought collard greens or pickled beets were gross). I don’t think it’s much of a stretch that picky eating is a contributing factor to the obesity and depression epidemics and who knows what else.
My DIL is a vegetarian. She doesn’t prepare meat at all. She doesn’t like the feel or smell of it and simply won’t have anything to do with it. I wondered how this would fly with my son who is a dedicated carnivore. But they simply cook their meals separately. They eat together, but each cooks his or her own food. She agreed to introduce the children to meat and let them make their own decisions as they grew up. All things considered, I think they’ve solved the issue of disparate diets quite well. No diva or divo behavior and everyone gets what they want.
How does it impact any of you what someone else wants to put in his mouth?
I think that being a picky eater is one of those luxuries that only is possible in times of extreme plenty, when you can say things like “I won’t eat anything green” or something equally frivolous. Even things not really lumped under picky eating probably fall under this category like vegetarianism. Hell, when things get tough enough, most religions relax their dietary laws. I sort of doubt that if times are tough enough that Jews are chowing down on pig, that there’s going to be some asshole bitching about how he won’t eat anything that feels pain or has a face.
So that said, I doubt that irritation with picky eaters is some kind of evolved social behavior. Instead, I think it’s just the usual irritation with selfish people being exposed via their food preferences. Most people I’ve ever met don’t really care one bit about what others eat, except when they start being a pain in the butt, because they start demanding menu changes in institutional situations, or are an impediment to a group meal because they have to be ‘special’ and can’t be like everyone else and eat the normal stuff.
It impacts me if I invite someone to dinner at my house, they fail to tell me they have a wide variety of foods they dislike, and then they sigh and moan and pick at their plate with an aggrieved expression on their face while everyone else is eating.
I would have happily (well at least I would have done it) accommodated this person’s preferences if they had bothered to let me know they existed. I also offered to prepare something else for them when I realized there was an issue, but got an attitude back.