I can’t imagine being so closeted that I couldn’t imagine that someone else might have better things to worry about, and better ways to find a greater variety of sublime satisfaction, than food. I mean, it’s just fricking food. No food has ever given me the rush I can get from watching an extremely superior movie (which not all movies are, of course - I’m a picky movier). I would hate to live a life so bland that food variety could seem relevent and important.
While I’m on the subject, I’m also a little tough to go to movies with - I like many blockbusters but I like some eclectic stuff that few others do, and there are whole swaths of comedies that make my brain hurt for the stupid. This isn’t really a problem, though, because people aren’t personally offended by my lack of interest in Adam Sandler. Food is even less of a problem, despite the fact that at the last restraunt I went to, only about two things on the menu looked even vaguely interesting to me - my self-limitation didn’t effect the person across the table from me, who picked the restraunt. And oddly enough, she wasn’t personally offended by the fact I didn’t eat everything in the place, either. (I don’t think she was even aware I was leery of the food.)
I have to wonder about the people who find themselves being actively bothered by their associates’ food pickiness - are the picky people really that impossible to find a place to eat at with, or are the non-picky people just offended that the other people aren’t trying the veal? Or both? I know it’s case by case, but what are the trends and proportions here?
Food snobbery is just as annoying. I agree, it’s just another form of pickiness. I’m not a food snob. In my experience, most foodies aren’t. They like to try new things, they like to cook, they like to expmeiment, they like the really fine things when they can get them, but the’re also very capable of appreciating and enjoying normal comfort food, fast food, junk food, even Appleby’s. Foodies like food. Food snobs, I think, don’t really enjoy food as much as they say. I think it’s a pose for them, or that they’re working out some kind of class resentment thing.
For the record, I don’t go around sweating other people’s food choices or giving them any thought at all, but there are a couple of situations where picky eaters become PITAs, and that’s when it comes to dining out with them – in which case you can’t go anywhere remotely challenging or exotic or intersting because they won’t eat anything but chicken strips and mac and cheese – or, even worse, when it comes to entertaining and cooking for people. I like to be a little daring, use some spice, try unusual ingredients, etc. With picky eaters, I have to dumb everything down to the TV dinner level, which deprives me of the pleasure I get from challenging myself in the kitchen.
I have an uncle who doesn’t eat any seafood. He never had it as a child (grew up in a completely land-locked country) and never developed a taste for it as an adult.
My sister eats seafood but, as she puts it, “no invertebrates”. So no shellfish, just regular fish. She accidentally ate a shrimp at a Japanese restaurant once when she was a teenager without knowing what it was and almost threw up.
Why in the heck should I eat what you tell me to? So that you can chuckle in glee at my suffering? Gee, what a brilliant idea!
There are clearly a couple of levels of picky eater. I know several people who eschew entire foods - my sister claims to be allergic to potatoes. Physically allergic, with physical reactions, I mean. Obviously she is a dirty liar, since no human being on the entire planet is allergic to potatoes (keep your facts to yourself, please), and she occasionally gets some light ribbing for this, which she takes well - and then proceeds not to eat or order the potatoes. Strangely, this doesn’t stop me from ordering or eating the potatoes, but I suppose I have superpowers to allow me to do this or something.
At a higher level of pickiness, I know exactly one person who takes his pickiness so far as to actually dictate the places we go to to eat: my father. He’s willing to eat at other places, but left to his own devices he’ll always pick the same two or three places, and eat the same two or three things. We go along with it without noticeable complaint, perhaps because he’s always paying the full bill for the group. (Amazingly, he prefers inexpensive buffets. Guess he just likes re-warmed food or somehing - that must be it.) Thing is, though, everybody else in the group can always find something they can stand to eat. Apparently this is a frikking miracle.
I will say, it’s a good thing that we don’t have anybody in the group who is adventurous and can eat anything and like it - apparently such folk are too picky to eat at the same restaurants every time, and if we had one of them around they’d apparently whine endlessly about the lack of variety and start fights and cause endless problems. We sure dodged a bullet on that one!
Just do what we did with my dad for a while, when he decided to be a PITA about it - make a meal for the group, and at the last minute throw a TV dinner in the microwave. Or hand them a box of EZ-Mac and point them at the kitchen. (We’ve had lunches where four entirely different things were eaten - each prepared by the person or people eating them. I just ate what my dad had, though, 'cause I’m lazy.)
Admittedly, if the person will only eat sungrown peaches picked fresh from the vine and still wet with dew, steeped in a specific wine venigrette that takes three hours to prepare, then that will be a problem. But from the sound of it here most picky eaters don’t require a whole turkey to be cooked for them each meal.
That’s genius, begbert. I have an acquaintance that sounds a lot like your dad - this person has a list of two or (on a good day) three restaurants that she’ll consent to eat at, and dinner parties with her are a nightmare. I think next time we invite her over for something - she’s good company, apart from the food issues - maybe I’ll just make her a grilled cheese sandwich and everyone else can enjoy the actual dinner that we make.
Glad to be of help - it actually took us a while to figure this out. There’s sort of an inherent resistence to ‘coddling the picky person’ - it can be seen as a personal insult that they don’t like the laboriously cooked meal you made. Of course once you get past that it can be pretty easy to give them their own little junky meal and all the strife and tensions just melt away.
You’re the one who said “it’s just frickin’ food.” I agree.
And I seriously wonder why you keep projecting your anger stemming from other people’s reactions to your eating habits onto me. The idea that everyone who doesn’t like dealing with a picky eater is secretly wanting to harm you is a bizarre form of paranoia.
I see there as being a difference between “not wanting to try a broad category of foods shows that you are immature and can’t see the merit of opening yourself to new experiences in general” and “Sure it tastes like shit to you, but your petty food preferences are irrelevent and you should just shut up and eat it 'cause I said so.” I was responding to the former. You responded with the latter.
And I don’t know you from adam - other than the fact that you are arguing the “shut up and eat that crap you don’t like, because I want you to eat it” position. That position is of course selfish and shortsighted at best. And I don’t have to be angry or paranoid to point out that that position IS asserting that the non-picky eaters should be able to force people to endure eating whatever spicy, slimy, made-from-offal slop is being placed on a plate, without respect for their desires.
There are approximately two situations relevent to discussion here: cooking for a group at home, or going out to eat as a group. In the ‘cooking at home’ case, all that needs to be done is to ensure there is something on the table that each person is willing to eat. Requiring that everyone like everything on the table is foolish; in my experience it’s quite common for one person to dislike the peas, and another the potatoes, and another the cranberry sauce. Because we don’t forcefeed each other foods we don’t like, that’s not a problem, unless you are offended by the fact that, as host, you may need to take extra steps to ensure there’s food for everyone.
When dining out at restraunts, the obvious simple way to address the situation is to draw a venn diagram of all the restraunts that people are willing to eat at. (Not the meals offered, the restraunts.) Only if there are no restraunts that all people will eat at is there actually a problem. If there is even a single restaurant, be it McDonalds or Applebys or a buffet or a swank place, then there is no legitimate cause for complaint. What, you don’t want to eat at the same place all the time? Then don’t eat with that group of friends three meals a day 24/7/365. It’s that simple.
But what ARE you compromising? Your god-given right to drag people to places they don’t want to eat at and make them eat stuff they don’t want to?
You can’t be losing your right to eat funny food; you can do that when your friends aren’t around.
You can’t be losing your right to eat with them at a restraunt, unless there’s nowhere they want to eat.
I suppose you could be losing your right to not have to take into consideration the preferences of your companions. Do I have that right too? 'Cause it doesn’t sound much different than my right to make you eat at McDonalds every single day.
Fun. I’m compromising on the ability to enjoy myself because I’m going to be forced to eat dull, boring food that I can make at home. It’s like only being able to go to a G-rated movie.
No one has said this. No one has said anything about “rights” at all. I’m just saying that these people are buzzkills to go out to dinner with because they will only go to places where they can eat children’s food.
why is the absolutely no ocean foods hard to believe?
There has been times when I have eaten absolutely no waterborn life - no fish, shrimp, scallops, lobster, crab … all the way down to no worchestershire sauce, and no chinese foods. I had a roomie with serious issues with waterborn proteins. Not even sea salt =( Her issues were bad enough she had to be careful which brands of calcium suppliments and tums-oid meds [though I really doubt that something as processed as calcium would be an issue, but I went along.]
And I can see not eating beef, there are a bunch of hindi in the US who go to great distances to avoid beef products. Just like there are people who avoid pork <shrug>
That’s pretty glib. These people can be relatives, or relatives of spouses, or spouses of relatives. They can also be friends of friends who are part of a larger group. It would be pretty lame to refuse to go out for any group dinner if a single picky eater is going along. That’s not a realistic or reasonable thing to suggest.
It is no lamer than suggesting that your preferences are the determining factor for the entire group’s activities. Especially when your complaint is the weaksauce lame whine that the food isn’t interesting enough for you. Sure, you like McDonalds okay, and Fred over there will throw up if you take him to a sushi bar, but by gum, its more important that you not be bored than that Fred is able to keep his stomach contents. And Sue over there? You know she won’t enjoy herself if you take her to Spice R Us, but it’s more important that you have fun than that she does.
Yes, you want to be able to go to places that you can enjoy yourself, but they do too. Is your displeasure at going to McDonalds worse than their displeasure at eating cow stomach? If not, who is the more selfish to demand to have things their way?
I didn’t suggest that. I said that I’m the one who has to compromise. The picky-eaters are always the deciders. That’s what makes them pains in the ass. They are the ones who will never compromise. There’s no reciprocity.
Welllll now, that depends on how you define “picky eater”, doesn’t it? Cause it’s been established that there’s two types: picky eaters, and PITA picky eaters. I’m a picky eater, but you probably wouldn’t notice unless you insisted that I sign up for your Ethnic Food Of The Week club. Which I wouldn’t volunteer for.
If you scotsman picky eaters down to ones who are assholes about it, then all picky eaters are assholes. But the same goes for the people who want to try new wild things all the time.