I’ll try almost anything, but I guess in some ways I’m still a picky eater.
I’m not big on spicy foods or certain ethnic spices. Some of this comes from being raised eating bland food. Now, I could train myself to become used to these foods, but I mean, where’s the fun in forcing yourself to acclimate to something you don’t like? Smell is a big thing for me, and East Indian spices are just way too strong for me. Even if I ask for milder versions of food, the cooking smells are very strong and overwhelm me. But I wouldn’t reject a meal, I would just probably spend most of it eating naan bread and rice.
I’m more picky about sauces and spices than the base. I use less salsa with my nachos, but I still like them. I use less peanut sauce with my noodles, but the hint is enough for me. I like some barbeque sauce on my ribs, but please don’t slather them.
Texture, smell and taste are my main roadblocks, and my range of acceptable food is narrower than most peoples, and I’m always reluctant to try new foods because if it’s something I don’t enjoy, more often than not, it’s something I don’t enjoy to the point of extreme revulsion.
So I’ve adapted by eating fairly repetitively.
Now, when I do try new foods, it’ll be something that has passed the look test (for approximating texture) and the smell test (for approximating taste), and it’ll have nothing to do with how ‘weird’ the food is. I ate rattlesnake meat on a boy scout campout once. But I won’t eat fried eggs.
My view is that this shouldn’t be a big deal to anybody, and people who get upset about picky eaters perplex me.
Yes, in food matters, “picky” is an accusation. I’m kind of amazed at how angry the picky girlfriend thread made me. Guess there’s a lot of past ridicule and past suffering I’d buried.
I kind of get the texture thing. (I’m not a picky eater by any means.)
The one that gets me is over-ripe bananas. I love bananas, but they have to be under-ripe, still firm with green on the ends. Once they start getting brown spots, the texture changes immensely, and I can’t stand them. It’s the mealy texture they get at that stage. It’s almost enough to make me gag.
On the other hand, I don’t like bananas until they start going brown… to each their own. I will, however, make a standing offer to take off your hands any bananas you think are just a bit over-ripe.
I don’t consider myself a picky eater anymore though I certainly was one as a child. There are still a fair number of foods I don’t like, but I’m willing to try almost anything at least once or twice. Actually, I’d probably say that willingness to try things I didn’t think I liked is a large part of how I stopped being so picky. Around the time I went to college, I resolved to try more foods and it turned out that I liked (or at least could put up with) a lot of foods I’d ruled out years earlier.
The foods I still don’t like are varied enough that I have a hard time pointing to one thing that makes me dislike them all (it’s not as though they all have a common texture or flavor) but I can’t think of any foods I dislike entirely because of their texture (though it’s part of the reason I dislike some foods, like bananas.)
For 20 years of my life, I was either dieting (and not eating when I was hungry) or binging (and eating when I was not hungry). I finally took a year to learn to eat what I wanted when I was hungry. In short, to eat like a regular human being.
Yes, I am very picky about my food. I want it exactly right.
I can’t stand picky eaters, because the ones that I know I perceive as “stuck in the mud.” I feel that it’s not just about the food, it’s about hang-ups or blocks that they have…For instance I had a friend who loved calamari, but once I told her what it was, she was angry with me. OF COURSE I can’t speak for all…but that’s just my experience. I could never see myself with a picky eater
I don’t consider myself to be particularly picky and I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being picky, but while I like eating and I enjoy a variety of different foods there are several fairly common foods that I avoid.
There are some that I’m pretty sure gross me out because of unpleasant early childhood experiences. One of my earliest memories is of a time when I was about two years old and managed to get a jar of mayonnaise out of the fridge. I thought it was frosting or ice cream or some other sweet substance. I opened it up, ate a BIG handful, and had a very unpleasant surprise. I can’t recall if I was actually sick from this, but it basically put me off mayo for the rest of my life. I’m fine with it as a component of certain dishes like potato salad, but it grosses me out to discover it on a sandwich or something. If the sandwich is otherwise appealing I’ll do my best to wipe off the mayo and eat it anyway, but I don’t like the taste of the bits of mayo that remain.
There are other foods that I’ve had an aversion to for so long that I can’t remember ever even eating them, or that I have tried as an adult but felt an “irrational” aversion towards – they don’t taste bad to me exactly, but definitely didn’t feel right in my mouth. I thought for years that this was a texture thing, but not that long ago I figured out that I probably have oral allergy syndrome (OAS). There are a number of fruits, vegetables, and nuts that contain proteins that are similar enough to certain types of pollen that they can set off a reaction in people with pollen allergies. It’s usually nowhere near as dangerous as other food allergies, but it can be pretty unpleasant. What I experience is an itching, burning, or tingling on my lips and in my mouth and throat, and on some occasions my lips have visibly swollen or developed hives.
I’m self-diagnosed so I can’t say for sure my problem is OAS, but I do suffer from hayfever and while I have no problem with many of the listed foods, everything in my personal “icky but I can’t explain why” category is on the list. There are also some fruits/vegetables that I’m fine with cooked but that bothered me when raw, which is consistent with OAS.
I would guess that a number of “picky eaters” do suffer from OAS and realized at a young age that certain foods weren’t fun to eat but didn’t understand why. Since people with OAS can have reactions of varying severity or even no reaction at all to the same food depending on whether it’s cooked, whether their pollen allergies are in season, and whether they’re taking medication for their pollen allergies, it may be difficult to connect a particular food to the unpleasant reaction.
Checking in, having been a participant in picky eating threads in the past.
Through the years, my diet has expanded enough to the point where I really no longer consider myself a “picky eater”, but rather a “timid eater”. Instead of the short list of foods I can eat when I was younger, there’s now a short list of foods I feel uncomfortable putting into my mouth. However, that list still includes some items that are often unavoidable, especially in settings with catered or box lunches. “Okay, you’ve got a choice of tuna, egg salad, or ham and pickle sandwiches.” The explosion in ethnic cuisines in the US, tapas restaurants, four years in New Mexico, and patient girlfriends have been a godsend in expanding my palate.
My experiences echo some others on here. For me, pungent vegetables and food with odd textures remains untouchable, triggering my gag reflex. I have ADHD, so maybe my aversion to certain foods, along with some supertaster traits, is related to being on the spectrum. Maybe part of the blame lies with my parents, who indulged in bland, overcooked 1950s-style cuisine, rarely venturing out past anything more exotic than Chinese buffets when they left the house. (I introduced them to Indian and Mexican food!) Dishes that looked like they came off the pages of cookbooks seen on The Gallery of Regrettable Food were a regular part of family gatherings.
It’s ironic that on the SDMB, many of the people that deride picky eaters are also the same ones that go on about how revolting they find the food at Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Chipotle and other chain restaurants. Why aren’t always-on foodies considered picky eaters?
I’m really suprised that some people can’t understand an aversion to certain textures. Surely you recognize that every food feels like something in your mouth, and not all the same. For some people, it’s quite possible for something to hit the mouth in a gag-inducing way, and not because of taste. It’s not something you can reason your way past; It’s a lowest-level, visceral reaction.
For me, the vast majority of things on my will-not-eat list are there because of texture. I can count on one hand the number of common foods I avoid because of taste alone. Because of that, I can’t say “I don’t like onions”, because I eat them all the time…in all varieties, too. But I don’t like onions as they end up in many dishes. Finely diced onions are great, sauteed onions are superb, and onion rings are fucking fantastic. Hell, most of the things I cook start with me chopping up an onion. But I cannot stand a big hunk of onion, especially raw. And no slices on my hamburger, please.
In the other thread, I expressed the same issue with tomatoes. Tomato juice, ketchup, spaghetti sauce (smooth) are all great. I love tomatoes once they’ve been mashed up beyond recognition. But a slice of tomato on a sandwich, or a chunk in my sauce, and I’m squicked out. Chunky salsa or pico de gallo is also not gonna happen. But put that shit in a blender and I’ll practically drink it.
I actually have a situational kind of pickiness that is the somewhat the inverse of Ogre’s anecdote. I am far more likely to find an “iffy” texture palatable if I’ve cooked it myself. It’s like whatever deep-seated, instinctual mistrust I have for the odd texture is eased by handling the ingredient from start to finish. So in my own cooking, I’ll leave pieces of onion in the food far larger than I’d ever be able to choke down in another setting. There are a lot of things I’ll only eat readily if I made them.
Onions and tomatoes are two of my weirdest foods. I’m like you in that I like them in almost all forms, but have severe reservations about others. Potatoes are like that for me too. Love cheesecake, won’t touch cream cheese on a bagel. Even as far as pasta goes, I’d rather eat just about any kind but spaghetti and similar. Its mouth-feel just is ick to me.
I’ve also relatively recently realized that basically, I like simple foods. Even things I like separately (pizza, meatballs) I don’t like together (meatball pizza). I love lettuce. Put lettuce on a sandwich and I gag. I gag when I don’t even see it, so it’s not even just psyching myself out. I love watching cooking shows, but I wouldn’t eat half of what I see because it’s too complicated. Too many flavors, too many textures.
I will try new foods, mostly when something looks and smells good AND when no one is pressuring me.
In my experience, this is the mindset I seem to encounter when it comes to food preferences:
[ul]
[li]Foodies who shun chains, food that isn’t artisanal, etc: not picky.[/li][li]Hardcore organicvores, locavores, etc: not picky.[/li][li]Vegetarians, vegans: not picky.[/li][li]Those who don’t eat seafood or mutton: not picky.[/li][*]Those whose gag reflex kicks in on slimy and/or pungent vegetables: OMG SO PICKY YOU’RE SO RUDE AND INSENSITIVE TO OTHER CULTURES TOO HERE HAVE SOME CHICKEN FINGERS YOU BIGOTED IMMATURE CHILD[/ul]
But clearly there is a degree of it being “voluntary”. Many people in this thread are describing trying foods and finding that they like them, or eventually get used to them. They decided to voluntarily change their behaviour. To not even be open to trying to change can in many cases be rude (and it is often immature).
Your own experience is perhaps somewhat different, as you described quite some trauma related to food. But many people are simply picky about what they want to eat due to an unwillingness to try new things or accustom themselves to a food. Many of them start out like that having not been exposed to many options from a young age, decide they want to change and do so.
As for my own pickiness: as I mentioned in the other thread, my only problem is with Ribena. I have a pretty good palate and sense of smell, and I pick up a chemical that is also found in cat pee. So Ribena tastes of cat pee to me.
If there were a good reason to learn to appreciate it (like someone offering home-made Ribena) I would try to get used to it. I’m pretty sure that would work, I got over my vomit-fuelled dislike of Tequila that way (which was actually for an experiment, to see if I could get over it).
You don’t understand. The aversion is involuntary. Yes, that aversion can sometimes be overcome by act of will - but that’s not a trivial matter, and many of us don’t find it worth the effort.
It’s like asking your significant other with a crippling fear of heights to go skydiving with you. He or she might be able to do it, on the right day, under the right particular circumstances that help ameliorate the anxiety. But more often than not, they won’t be able to. Thinking of them as ‘childish’ for it says more about you than them.
And that’s what the picky eating boils down to for me - a deep-seated anxiety that is triggered by certain smells, tastes, textures. It probably relates to my deep-seated aversion to vomiting. I still manage to try certain foods occasionally, but I’m careful and damn slow to do it.
The foods I added to my approved list this past year include sausage links and red velvet cake. And I was pleased to do it, but it took some effort. (Particularly the sausage links - I don’t like most pork, and I don’t like foods that feel like I’m biting into a finger, but if the links are properly prepared, they’re good. The cake was easy, especially once someone told me that it tastes like chocolate.)
I thought I was a picky eater until I started reading these threads and I realized, I’m not really all that picky. But I do get the texture thing.
My shining example is this: I love peanuts. I love peanut butter. I love peanuts just about any way you can get 'em.
Except for boiled peanuts. I grew up Up North and had never been exposed to boiled peanuts until well into adulthood. The first time I tried one, I was cool with sucking the salt out. And then I bit down on the peanuts. W.T.F? Peanuts are supposed to be crunchy! They are not supposed to be soft. Even though the flavor is essentially the same, I can’t handle boiled peanuts. It’s the only form of peanut I’ll decline.
Note: My dogsitter has reported that my (now dearly departed) dog loved boiled peanuts. I always shared my roasted ones with her, the smell is the same, so clearly, dogs do not care much about texture. This tells me its a mind-over-matter thing. If I was starving to death and the only food available was boiled peanuts, I’m sure I’d find a way to get over it.
