Some of us are adventurous eaters- we’ll try anything and everything that comes our way. Some of us are picky. I knew a man once who rarely ate anything other frozen pizza and orange soda. We all have our likes and dislikes, but some of us are at home with the world’s cuisines, while others rarely stray from the tried or true. Whenever board discussions about food choice come up, there is always one underlying question that never seems to get fully addressed. Now is the time- is being a picky eater inherently bad?
For me, I will say “yes.” I do believe being a picky eater is inherently worse than being an adventurous one. Why?
The first is that it is the sign of a small comfort zone with an unwillingness to step out of that comfort zone. To me, that seems like a sign of an underlying problem- perhaps it’s a lack of intellectual curiosity. Perhaps it is some kind of anxiety that makes you uncomfortable with new things in general. Perhaps it is just plain laziness. The truth is that food revulsions are easy to overcome- the common wisdom is after giving a hated food seven good tries you will end up being okay with it. So what is keeping picky eaters from getting over that? It seems to me to be an unwillingness to push limits. And I really think it’s better for people to keep expanding their comfort zone as they learn more about the world around them.
Sure, maybe you like grilled cheese. But that guy who only ever reads Star Trek novels also really likes Star Trek novels. Wouldn’t you all live a richer fuller life if you branched out a bit?
The second is that it DOES hold you back. Maybe you don’t even notice it most of the time. But I’m in China right now, and several of the new foreigner in town are picky eaters. This has a huge effect on their life- they are always having to worry about this thing, to make excuses about why they aren’t eating, etc. It’s starting to limit where everyone else can eat. Indeed, in most cultures food is a way of expressing friendship, and if you start refusing that food, you are going to lose a lot. You lose a lot of the world when you won’t eat their food, and that is a shame.
And that’s not just true for foreign countries. I lived with a picky eater and it was a pain in the butt all of the time. He kept me from enjoying many of my favorite things, and it was just always a problem. Wouldn’t you want to, for the sake of your friends and family, work on the things that make you high maintenance and difficult?
I don’t say this lightly. I was a picky eater as a child, and as an adult I was vegetarian for ten years for no better reason than meat squicks me out. I decided that not eating meat was holding me back. So I learned to deal. Now, living in China, I’ve had to learn to eat a lot of pretty disgusting things- like congealed blood and duck throats. It’s not always easy. But I recognize that I will become a better person the more I learn to eat (and even enjoy) these things, and so I keep working on it whenever I can.