Is being a picky eater inherently bad?

Great Debates
81

I am not sure about the parent vs. childfree debate but I am a parent and I will back you up here…it is incredibly rude to bring outside food into a restaurant (with the exception of allergies etc. where there is literally nothing in the place that can be eaten and it has been okayed in advance by the management and possibly a small bag of cheerios or something similar for a baby or toddler who simply cannot wait until food is brought to the table, and again cleared with the management). If for some reason the children couldn’t or wouldn’t eat the food, the proper etiquette would be to get the take out from McDonalds, and then get the take-out Chinese for the parents all to be eaten at home or leave the kids with a sitter (or have someone take them to McDonalds) while the parents dined at their restaurant of choice.

That is so true (and sad). My oldest was born in Texas and he started going out with me and his father from birth (to casual places and only when he was well behaved etc.) By the time he was old enough to eat food he had already tasted a lot of the Mexican foods that his Mommy loves. Yet every time we took him out (when he was old enough to eat) the wait staff tried to force boring “kid food” on him. He loved the spicy stuff and would have eaten bowls of salsa if I had let him (too acidic for his tummy so I did limit quantities) and the staff was always surprised when I declined the grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs and french fries in favor of letting the boy have quesadilllas and salsa or tamales (very smushable!) or whatever other delicacy I was eating. One time our waitress actually called everyone else over to the table to “watch the baby eating salsa!”. He was always a good eater (and not too picky) but always has had a preference for spicy and it was commonplace to us, but these waitresses had never seen such a thing. I think it is sad for their own children who are probably being raised on chicken nuggets and french fries. :frowning:

82

I’m not a movie person, but I like Indies and foreign films as well as Blockbusters. I travel when I can afford it (both time & money). I’m currently planning a trip to a place where I don’t speak the language at all (but I am going to need to learn more than “hello,” “goodbye,” and “thank you,” I’ve got to figure out how to navigate public transportation while I’m there). I never stay in resorts (I travel to see things and do things. (not eat things) I don’t spend time at the hotel, if it’s clean and has a lock for my stuff I’m good. Hostels are wonderful.) I have a Pavlovian reaction to the word “museum” and will stop and go in if the building is open. And I’ve tried to learn several foreign languages.

Trying out new food - not so much fun. I’ll give most foods a shot, but I just don’t end up liking a lot of stuff. Food is never the point for me.
ETA: When travelling, given the choice between stopping for a meal and seeing one more thing, doing one more thing, going to one more museum, taking one more side street - food will always lose. I’ve been accused of trying to starve travelling companions.

83

You are me.

84

And me.

85

Picky eaters are a pain in the ass, but that doesn’t make them bad people, or even people who are less special/enlightened/well-adjusted/whatever than me. Hell, it doesn’t even necessarily make them more of a pain the ass, given that we’re all pains in the ass about something.

I think the whole correlation between pickiness and personality is one of the bigger loads of crap I’ve ever heard. I could name you a half-dozen people off the top of my head who are outgoing and fun to be around and who won’t touch unfamiliar food with a 10-foot pole. And I’m the classic introvert’s introvert and will eat damn near anything once. It doesn’t make them less likely to seek out new experiences or me less content to mooch around the house in my underpants knitting with the cats.

Yes, there’s a lot to be said for being able to do anything if you really need or want to do it, but there’s also a lot to be said for knowing whether or not any given thing is something you truly want or need to do.

86

My son grew up eating Dim Sum and loved the chicken feet. I told one of my friends in China about it and he blithely said “oh, all kids like chicken feet”.

87

I’m a relatively picky eater, though I’m willing to find something I can eat on any menus but seafood or thai places. I like museums which is probably evident by my last CS thread asking for museum recs, watch a lot of indie movies/listen to more indie music than mainstream, y puedo leer, escribir y hablar en Español. I’m not big on travel, though, because there’s always some more pressing use for my money.

88

I think some clarity on what makes a picky eater is needed. Are vegetarians picky? Is pickiness validated by health conditions?
Personal example - if I eat more than a bite or two of pineapple, I get a weird kind of burning in the back of my throat. I can still eat, but it feels really uncomfortable. So if I decline your offer of freshly baked delicious Hawaiian pizza, am I being picky?

89

I don’t believe there is any ‘inherent’ in anything we’re discussing here - I think it’s a flaw or red herring in the debate.
Picky eating is or is not bad depending on whether it happens to make bad things follow in whatever the situation happens to be.

I probably ought to admit at this point that I just don’t really understand what it must be like to be a picky eater - I mean, there are some things I like better than others, but I just don’t grok the “I don’t like this, therefore I can’t eat it” thing. I’m not saying it’s not a real problem for those that experience it, I just don’t get it, is all - so I try to live and let live as far as possible.

Where picky eating is bad (IMO) is when people say something like “We (large social group) can’t go to this restaurant because I (individual) don’t like anything on the menu”. It’s fine if you want to eat what you want to eat, but when that choice starts to restrict lots of other people, it’s unreasonable (although exceptions probably exist - if for example the menu is unusually biased somehow)

90

I’m curious in my eating habits while abroad and enjoyed locusts in peppered, dark chocolate sauce, fried maggots in Indonesia and that very bitter but extremely tasty Okinawan seaweed soup. I won’t touch deliberately anything endangered and no rabbits too (promised that to my sister when we were kids). And while I’ve seen some crawly things being eaten that I found too strange to even categorize as food, I’d be more inclined to try some of them, than habitually eat things that seem to be considered normal by quite a lot of folks, like pre-cooked dishes or, shudder, these pies that I encountered in the US and that are, basically, sugared fruit, layered in sugared pastry, topped with sugared cream. How anyone can enjoy such overwhelming sweetness, is beyond me.

I’m picky when it comes to quality: The meat we eat at home, the eggs and most of the fruit and vegetables don’t come from the supermarket but from farmers who do not produce in an industrialized way (and a very proud - and rightfully so - to show you around). My family loves, for example, the pears and apples from an orchard in our region where sorts are grown, that are nowadays almost forgotten – don’t ask me why – but taste incredibly rich.

I think, I haven’t eaten a frozen pizza in more than a decade and the only reason to go inside a fast food restaurant are my children, who, of course, all had their fast-food junkie-phase.

But with each passing year, my wife has turned them more and more into food cultists which means that we have higher expenses in that area than are the norm, but, otoh, we have done as much as we can to reduce the risk to encounter one of the health problems that are associated with present day eating habits. Plus, it simply tastes better.

You can find great food everywhere, but the people who put me in awe on a regular basis were the Japanese, regardless if it was a restaurant or a private invitation. They don’t eat, they provide infinitely nuanced sensual experiences. Just … wow.

91

I’m not sure what a blockbuster movie really is, if it’s one of the popular movies then I like some but not all. I’ve watched all sorts of different movies, and enjoyed movies from all over. It’s the movie I like, not how popular, foreign, indie, or unpopular it is.

I’ve never been one for museums, I prefer to see things as they are in the real world. I’d rather spend the day at Newgrange then the Louvre, of which I’ve done.

I am a picky eater, though not as bad as some people I’m sure. I very much like ‘bland’ tasting food, I don’t like sauces, spices, and lots of other stuff added to my food. I like to taste my food as is, plain pasta is perfectly fine to me, and actually you can taste the different flavors and textures that you can’t do with something on top. I also can not eat certain things, they will, as I said before, make me sick, or at least give me a nasty upset stomach, why would I want to spend my day in pain when I could just forgo that and eat what I know? I don’t care about eatting, except to live, and if it were healthy enough to live on plain pasta for the rest of my life I probably would.

As for traveling, I’ve been to all the lower 48, by motorcycle, 22 or so countries, 15 of those by motorcycle. I’ve slept in everything from 5 star hotels, to flea bag hotels, hostels with 10 other people in them, to the side of the road on a tarp, and even picnic tables.

Quite frankly I’m tired of people looking down on me because I’m a picky eater, or I don’t like this movie, or that band. I can understand it’s a pain in the ass to deal with a picky eater that says I only go here. I don’t do that so please don’t try and lay a guilt trip on me, that’s just as annoying as the picky eater.

92

Agreed. It’s not always flavor. I’m sensitive to food textures. Some people might be sensitive to the appearance of certain foods. And, of course, not every good-tasting flavor matches with every other good-tasting flavor.

I’d still say that not liking certain flavors (or combinations of flavors) or textures is qualitatively different from being unwilling to try unfamiliar food.

Tell me about it. We went to China on a tour because we keep kosher, and figured there was a better chance of getting something we could eat that way.

93

I went on a cabin trip once with a group of friends, one of whom describes herself as “a picky eater”. I had volunteered to be the cook if I could get out of certain other chores, and since no one else in the group felt comfortable cooking for a crowd that was happily accepted. The picky friend asked for the menu before the trip, and brought her own food for a few of the meals, which she prepared without fuss. She ate with us and never commented on our food, nor we on hers.

A friend of mine travels a lot for work with the same group of four people every time. They rent a single car, so unless they want to eat in the hotel they pretty well have to go to the same place to eat. They travel to different cities, some of which are known for their great restaurants or for a particular type of cuisine. But one of the members of this team always wants to go to chain restaurants. He knows what they have at, say, Outback Steakhouse, and he knows exactly what he intends to order, and that’s the way he likes it. If the other three suggest that he eat at the hotel (or somewhere within walking distance) while they go eat at someplace they’d like to try, he says he hates eating alone. So basically every business trip they have to figure on either only eating at chain restaurants, or spending a lot of time having the same tired discussion.

I’d say each of the anecdotes above is about a picky eater, but only one of those picky eaters causes a problem for others.

94

Depending on how finely chopped or mashed up the pieces are and the particulars of the sauces, I can totally see thinking that, though being rude enough to say it is beyond the pale. Lord knows the first time I went to an Indian buffet, I whispered to DoctorJ, “Is it supposed to look like somebody already ate it?” And if you think honestly about Western food, we’re typically pretty big on discrete recognizable chunks, and only time that sort of food has the texture of saag paneer or korma sauce is, well, when it’s been recycled. There’s a paradigm that has to shift there, and that takes a little bit of time even for a fairly adventurous eater who loves the taste of the food.

I think you’re misunderstanding what he’s saying. People who are leery of trying foreign foods because they might be nasty typically aren’t thinking "this is foreign, so it’s probably nasty, " they’re thinking “I have no freaking clue what’s in this and it looks/smells nasty, so odds seem good it would taste nasty.” This tends to be especially bad with people who have been repeatedly assured they’ll just love something and found it nasty. The more times this happens, the less likely they become to believe anyone who says “oh, try it, you’ll like it” without any further explanation.

What I’ve found over the years is that if you explain exactly what’s in something and what the unfamiliar ingredients taste like, and acknowledge that something looks or smells weird, folks like that are often willing to try a little bit of it. They don’t mind trying something if they understand what they’re getting themselves into, but they don’t want to fly blind.

95

Like everything else in life, it depends on how much.

I know a woman who eats the same thing every day: Bagel and coffee for breakfast, pint of frozen dessert for lunch, big salad for supper.

She doesn’t get invited out to eat much.

96

My grandfather used to be like this. He would get upset if we were going to a restaurant and he didn’t know before we left home what he was going to order there. I wonder how online menus might have affected him, had he lived to see them as common as they are now.

97

As someone pointed out earlier, there’s no objective definition of picky. It’s like pornography, we know it when we see it. I would classify vegetarians and especially vegans as picky eaters. I do not classify someone who was on a restricted diet for health reasons to be a picky eater.
Odesio

98

What about people who observe religious dietary restrictions? Are we picky?

99

Thank You Sven! I wrote it all down and will slip it under his door. He doesn’t seem to be a picky eater. He goes to free hot wings night at the local pub and plays darts every week. I like spicy but those wings are atomic! He should be fine with the hotter dishes. His girlfriend is worried he will be enticed by a Geisha and she will never see him again but I told her it is just two weeks and he will be too busy to even notice the Geisha’s. :wink:

100

Geishas are in Japan, not China.

Dave Barry Does Japan has a chapter on geishas that his girlfriend should read.