True. But again that is not really the pickiness that is the problem. It’s sometimes a fine line, but it is his managing the pickiness and the insistence that it be acknowledged and catered to that is the real issue.
Insisting on always getting your way is rude (and speaks to character as well) no matter what your reasons are; whether you only like that food or only like to eat on yellow benches. He could be just as picky without troubling his family and without the drama, but he may not always be as pleased that way.
It’s very frustrating, but seeing as how we’ve only recently acquired the boy and he’s on the verge of adulthood now, my husband is not inclined to try repairing any of the damage.
Whose choice was it to eat there? I’m guessing yours, and it sound rather inconsiderate to choose a place your companion probably wasn’t going to like.
See, that’s the other side of the coin - people who insist that everyone must eat at X without taking anyone else’s preferences into account then whine that people who were badgered into going somewhere are picky for not liking the menu. Many of those situations could have been avoided if the non-picky person put more effort into compromising about where to eat rather than decreeing it had to be at X.
I used to be on a restricted diet. My line was, “Don’t worry about me; I’ll enjoy it vicariously.” I associate with my friends primarily for their company.
To clarify: I don’t think he should learn to cook as some sort of punishment for his pickiness. I think he should learn to cook because that’s something all 18-year-olds should know how to do.
I think most picky eaters are just picky eaters, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but then again I have known picky eaters where it’s clearly a pathological condition- it’s a big control issue, an eating disorder. Which still doesn’t indicate any defect of character, but more of a mental illness.
Parents and the silly things they come up with sometimes… I was once chastised for “insisting on having the last word”. The right response to that one, FTR, is silence, not “Is that a problem because you want the last word?”
It gets ugly when people start being honest about the last word.
I don’t know if this is possible, but I think we need to be clear that there is a difference between being a picky eater and having an aversion to certain foods. For example, if you’re one of those people who just doesn’t like spicy foods I certainly wouldn’t classify you as a picky eater. I don’t like Thai food (nothing to do with spice level) but I don’t consider myself to be a picky eater. If everyone else in my group wanted to eat Thai I’d go with them and order off the menu. I just wouldn’t go there of my own accord.
Odesio
Agree with odesio. I’ve been on a lacto-vegetarian diet for a year now, and I never have problems eating out with my friends or going to my friends’ houses to eat. I have one friend who is diabetic, another who is prone to gout (which I am too), and another who is lactose intolerant (or so he says, I have my suspicions). Somehow, we all manage to eat with each other without all this drama.
You all must hang out with some real assholes and nutjobs (I keed, I keed).
So, what is the difference between being a picky eater and having an aversion to certain foods? 'Cause last I checked, that was the definition of being a picky eater, with the only subtleties being 1) how restrictive your preferences are with regard to selection, 2) how averse you are to the things you don’t like, and 3) how much you whine if things aren’t as you prefer them to be. Oh, and 4) how hard your friends try to get you to eat things they know you don’t want to eat.
Personally, to me the instant a person chooses one food over another due to a preference they’re being picky - they’re picking something, aren’t they? They’re excluding a food in preference of another, aren’t they? Don’t you want that apple with all the bruises, or the soup with the flies in it? Then you’re picky. But to me it’s not a problem to be picky unless your pickiness becomes a problem.
I’m going to disagree with the OP. I’ve done a lot of travelling on business, and there were usually two types of business travellers that got by pretty well.
I was the kind that embraced the differences and ate as close to what the natives ate that I could. I spent 5 months in China and I ate a lot of sheep lung and duck feet and donkey dumplings and the like. I, and people like me, got by fine.
The other kind that were successful worked very hard to maintain the eating habits they would have had at home. In a city of almost 3 million people with maybe a thousand places to eat I saw people spend months at a time and only eat at three different places, because they had western style menus with English translations.
Oh, I’d kid them about it, and tell them that they were allowed to eat food that their mom’s hadn’t packed for their lunch in middle school, but they got by fine as well.
Those folks stuck in the middle had trouble. They wanted to try different places, but some of them were too different, and without English menus they couldn’t tell until it was too late and the calf’s brains were floating in the soup.
So, picky, not inherently bad, as long as you know it in advance.
I’ll tell you when it gets really tricky- when you’ve got a picky eater, and then you throw religious or philosophical dietary restrictions into the mix. This is what I face when I want to go out to dinner with my parents. They’re becoming less adventurous eaters as they get older. They’re to the point where they pretty much won’t eat any dish they’re not familiar with. Ethnic cuisine other than Americanized Italian or Chinese is out of the question. I keep kosher, so I won’t eat any meat, poultry, or seafood (other than kosher fish) in a non-kosher restaurant. Places that serve the standard American food my parents like often tend to be places that don’t serve a lot of things I can have.
I deal. I make sure that any restaurant that I’m going to take them to has something familiar for them and something Mr. Neville and I can have. If they stay for an extended period of time, we will often go out for something like sushi that we’ve missed while they were visiting right after they go home. I’ve learned to accept that this is just the way they are, and it is not my job to try to change them. We manage to eat out, with a minimum of drama.
I think some people who don’t like picky eaters need to accept that we’re adults, and as such get to decide what we will and won’t eat. I don’t try to change my parents’ non-adventurous eating habits- if they want to eat that way, that’s their choice. Accepting that choice cuts down on the drama.
I think there are two separate classes of “picky eaters”.
One is where you have an aversion to one or several ingredients or flavors. People who don’t like spicy foods would fit into this category. Someone in this category might be willing to try an unfamiliar dish, as long as they could determine that it didn’t have anything they don’t like in it. If you had several such aversions, or had them to common foods in your culture, you could be considered a picky eater.
The other is people who are afraid to try new combinations of foods. The people in this category are the ones who hear “There’s not a thing in here that you don’t like” a lot. My parents are an example of this. There’s no particular ingredient they object to, but the idea of eating unfamiliar foods is uncomfortable for them.
CHoice? It was the Dad’s choice and wholeheartedy endorsed by the 13 and younger set which includes the picky eater I mentioned. An off night for her, hence the pout about the food when she knew darn well special requests would be accommodated, Heather our waiter even said so!
You can eat with even a very picky eater without drama, if you and they both want to. The problem comes up when someone doesn’t want that. The problem might be a person who uses their food preferences to get attention, or it might be someone who makes a big deal out of it when someone else won’t eat something.
It is a rare individual who will literally eat anything that is edible as most of us have aversions to certain foods based on personal preference or cultural norms. Those with picky eaters have an exceptionally narrow group of foods that they do not have an aversion to.
You’re being pedantic. While you might be literally correct that isn’t how most people use picky. I don’t like chicken gizzards but nobody’s called me a picky eater because of that.
It sounds to me like the OP is the problem - in his sphere, anyway. He’s actively bothered by people who won’t eat try anything and everything - and by gum start liking it! He’s seriously floating the idea that being personally selective in what you eat is “inherently bad”.
I listed four ways to be a picky eater, but only three of them had to do with the habits of the person themself. 4 was “how hard your friends try to get you to eat things they know you don’t want to eat.” In this case there’s a problem, but it’s not the picky eater, it’s the person or people making a stink about it.
Sure, there are people who whine if they can’t have their PB and J for every meal. Many of them are still in elementary school. But among adults, I think the people making the problem are likelier to be the non-picky ones. After all, the picky ones are happy to just keep eating the same stuff they like - its the others who are more likely to want to branch out into areas of contention, due to boredom or the (misguided?) desire to ‘improve’ their more conservative companions’ diets.
