Picky eaters - quirk or mental disorder?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This article raised some interesting points about adults who are picky eaters.

Personally, I’m a picky eater. I don’t seem to be as limited as some of the ones mentioned in the article, but yeah, try to give me leafy greens and you might as well be asking me to puke. It’s not stubbornness, it’s that I genuinely feel like there are lots of things that are called “food” that just don’t qualify for me.

So, is it a mental disorder? My take on it over the years is that it’s more of a physical thing - maybe my digestive system is the problem. But I have some odd ones, as well, like the fact that I really don’t like anything served cold (excepting stuff like ice cream, of course).

So what do you think?

2

That’s a really tough one. So, you say you have an actual physical reaction to eating greens? You’ll barf? What happens if the greens are mixed into what you’re eating and you can’t see them? Do you still get sick? What happens if you don’t know they’re in there but someone tells you after? If you get physically ill even if you don’t know they’re in there, I’d say that it’s definitely a physical reaction. If you get sick only when you know they’re in there, it seems like a combination physchological and physical problem.

I’m not a psychologist, however, the primary focus of the article, Ms. Hill, seems to have some serious anxiety issues. Toward the end, it says that she starts sweating and getting anxious if her daughter doesn’t eat a lot at breakfast, then she starts bargaining with her to eat more. I think that’s more likely to cause an eating problem than prevent one. The other individuals who claim to be picky eaters also seem to have some potentially related psychological issues, like the woman who’s “terrified” she’ll be asked to dinner.

Personally, I can kind of understand pickiness with eating. I hate certain textures. However, eating them doesn’t make me barf (maybe cringe or shudder a little) and it doesn’t affect whether I can have a meal with friends or family. I can’t imagine how so many food restrictions might impact my social life. Since so much of socialization seems to revolve around food, it’d be very difficult to have strong relationships with people I couldn’t eat with. And I’d hate not to eat with my kids - it’s one of the few times during the day we have to connect.

So, yeah, it does seems to be largely psychological, but so strong that it causes actual physical symptoms. I have trouble thinking of it as a disorder because a part of me thinks, “Oh, just grow up and eat the damn food,” but if it were that simple, these people wouldn’t be afraid of eating with other people.

3

There are a couple of food items that I can’t eat for psychological reasons. I can’t eat mint because as a child I had The Mintcident where I, with my friend Shawnee, ate a whole box of Girl Scout Thin Mints and became intensely ill. On a recent trip to LA, I had guacamole and also ended up ill, so guacamole is out for now. I think when certain items cause that sort of “I can’t eat that or I’ll barf!” reaction, that’s all mental.

Then there are other foods that I can’t eat because they cause digestive issues. For the most part, these are foods I love, like onions, or spaghetti sauce. There doesn’t seem to be a psychological component to this issue–just a physical one. Though my psychological state can have an impact, since if I’m stressed my reactions can get worse.

4

I’ve always likened my intense food issues to a sort of phobia. In the same way people dread the anticipated pain of a prick from a needle, I get a visceral reaction at the thought of eating something I find unpalatable. I would, in fact, choose pain before the sensation of ingesting many foods.

I’ve gone hungry many times rather than eat something I don’t like, including a thirty day stint in county jail(youthful indiscretion) whereby I ended up on the medical ward with malnutrition.

It’s an interesting question. A quirk to me suggests it’s entirely within a person’s control and I’m not sure I could ever change mine.

5

I can taste one tiny shred of iceberg lettuce in a pile of mexican food. That’s not enough to make me spit it out (usually), but I will spend more time looking for the greeny stuff.

The bitter leafy greens, like spinach and collard greens, will send me fleeing from the house. The smell alone induces nausea. Now, I did have a Spinach Incident as a child, but I couldn’t stand spinach even before that. Anything that has a strong vinegar smell also has the gorge rising.

Cauliflower, broccoli, I can taste at 10 paces and I can’t stand it. However, I love onions and celery (cooked only, though). Garlic is godly. Bell peppers are fab. Mushrooms, I dislike, but I think it’s the texture there. Green beans good, asparagus bad. And so on.

There might be something to the white food thing - I love pasta and potatoes. And yes, chicken strips, though I really kind of prefer baked chicken now.

I’ve gotten a bit more adventurous in my old age, and while I don’t mind going out to eat with people, I am not all that enthusiastic about eating at someone’s home. I don’t lie about it if I don’t like something, I’ll just state calmly that I don’t care for it. It has caused some problems in the past, but it’s not something I’m able to control, really.

6

In the vast majority of cases, it’s mental, not physical. Some folks do have “GI anaphylaxis” which causes a lot of gastric distress, but that’s clearly a physical, IgE-mediated allergy.

Picky eating is a quirk if it doesn’t significantly impair/disrupt their life. If it does cause sufficient dysfunction, then it’s a mental disorder.

Note that it has to cause the dysfunction in their lives, not merely upset the folks around them.

7

As someone who dated an extremely picky eater, I think it is acquired and often a sign of something larger going on. I dated two extremes, and their eating habits definitely reflected their personalities:

-The first, in addition to being picky and generally unwilling to try new foods, was also unwilling to challenge herself in life. She wasn’t a trainwreck, but she was definitely one of those folks who floated on the bare minimum. She had a priveleged childhood, and overly rewarded for mediocrity. She did not know how to cook anything. She was also rude to my family about it, in my opinion (“I don’t like home made ribs, well, I don’t think I’d like them, I’ve never tried them…could you just microwave me a hot pocket instead?”)

-The second, in contrast, was not picky, loved lots of different foods. There were a few she didn’t like, but she was always willing to try something new. She is a great cook, and teaching me a great deal about food. She grew up in a poor immigrant family, knew how to cook since she was eight, and was constantly striving to better herself.

It made me wonder if some of it has to do with either the personality of the individual or their upbringing, because in the cases I experienced it definitely did. The one I’m dating definitely made me realize how much pickier I thought I am :stuck_out_tongue: but that is changing because I love to try new foods.

I’ll gag on many flavors/textures of vegetables but there’s often permutations that make them easier to handle. I used to think iceberg lettuce tasted ‘gross’ now I enjoy what little taste it has, in addition to the crunchy texture, that I’ve moved up to more flavorful variants like spinach.

8

I was a picky eater, and my older daughter is even more so. In my experience, it is related to anxiety and control, as well as sensory issues. For me, it is all about texture. As an adult, I eat fairly normally, but for instance I can’t stand pears because they have a gritty texture. When I was a kid, uniform texture in my food was vital. Once my dad tried to sneak finely minced onion into some homemade macaroni and cheese, but I could detect it. A big question before I could try something was, “Does it have *things *in it?” I.e., strawberry jelly was fine, but jam, with bits of fruit and seeds was out of the question.

I notice the uniformity issue with my daughter. Food must have uniform texture, and she greatly prefers known textures to new ones. When she was two, she got a terrible, terrible stomach virus, for which she had to have Phenergan suppositories so she could keep water down. It launched (heh) with the regurgitation of her dinner of chicken and grapes. I think it was the turning point in her eating - ever since she has had a lot of anxiety about food.

Note this is different from just having something you don’t like. I don’t really care for blueberries or green peppers, but I can eat them just fine if that seems necessary. I just don’t enjoy it. But (especially as a child), asking me to eat something that I had issues with was like asking an average American to sit down to a plate of jellied eels or weaver ant eggs. They are perfectly healthy to eat, and considered good food by many people, but they would probably make you gag and have a lot of fear if you were told you had to eat them.

9

I have texture issues with food and some flavor issues. My parents gave me crap about being such a picky eater. They told me I would need to learn to eat different things or I’d never be able to go out to dinner with friends and it would be difficult for me to find a boyfriend because my diet was so limited.

I have always thought of myself as a picky eater because of this but, as it seems to be turning out, I just had a mom who couldn’t cook. I never, ever, ever liked broccoli. Ever. It was disgusting and I didn’t understand why people ate it and my mom used to boil it or steam it and put it in front of me all the time and try to force it down my throat. Several months ago my fiance and I went to his mom’s house and she made broccoli but she made it with garlic and soy sauce and cooked it differently (sauteed? fried? something with oil in a pan anyway) and it turns out I like broccoli just fine. Similar thing with mushrooms, it turns out I like mushrooms but I hate their texture so I eat them if they are diced up and cooked in other things. I spent my life believing I was a picky eater but now I’m starting to believe my parents were just picky cooks.

10

Ohhhh man does this raise some questions. Almost everyone who knows me knows I am something of a picky eater. For the most part, I had a lot of specific childhood food preferences which have totally disappeared as I got older, but one remained. I don’t eat fruit. I don’t like the taste, I don’t like the texture, and I don’t like the smell. If I touch fruit, or even a container that holds fruit juice, I feel like my hands are dirty and I need to wash them. At age 10 I was in a summer camp where (to avoid kids getting constipated) everyone had to eat fruit or veggies at every meal. I was fine for lunch and dinner with a nice salad, but at breakfast I held my nose and swallowed pieces of pear whole, gagging each time one went down, for ten days straight.

My brothers are worse. Each one has, basically, a food schedule. He eats the same thing for each meal every day, with maybe some slight variation (eg, a change in yogurt flavor or brand of cereal). With my youngest brother, we can’t even go to any non-American-style restaurants because his dinner must be french fries. If there is absolutely no chance of fries, he’ll eat a dinner roll or three and declare himself full. Other foods are clearly repulsive to him, and he gets extremely upset and anxious about even the thought of trying something else.

For all three of us, like WOOKINPANUB, if you provide us with no other option, we won’t eat. Youngest Bro is medically underweight.

I’m in college and my brothers are in high school, so we’re still ‘kids’ in that sense, but we’re not little children. We have a problem. I think the obvious, big question here is, are we just spoiled, are we just being stubborn about this, are we just afraid to be adventurous and try things, or is it…you know… ‘okay’ to feel the way we do? I mean, it totally sucks, especially for YB, where it really does control his life - and yes, for me, when my peers decide it is appropriate for them to criticize my eating preferences and tell me how unhealthy and ‘crazy’ I am for not liking strawberries :rolleyes: - but is this just the way things are for us and the way things are going to be? In any case I’m glad we’re not the only people who are thinking about this sort of thing.

11

My husband is quite picky and for him it’s a phobia. Spending any time eating a meal with his mother and father it becomes totally obvious how he developed it.

The reason I say this is that since he and I have been together, the number of foods he’ll eat has increased exponentially, and his willingness to try new things has increased as well - except when he’s around his parents. They’re such total twits about food that I can understand why he’s not interested in experimenting with them around.

12

I’m also interested to know if culture plays into this. I noticed picky eaters tend to gravitate toward American/bland food. I could be off, but I’m guessing they’re probably hypersensitive to anything particularly spicy or savory. I’m wondering because based on the preferences, I can’t really imagine, say, an Indian or Mexican kid being a picky eater when their food traditionally tastes much stronger (well, to me, though I like it :smiley: ) than ‘American’ food.

13

I know one picky eater and it is pretty strange. He will eat:

French Fries
Bread
Cheese
Beer
Milk
Cheese Pizza

We had him down for a weekend and I didn’t know what to make at all. All we ate was pizza pretty much all weekend.

At my wedding reception, he ate only bread. (Well, and beer, of course.)

Honestly, if it is not one of the above items, he just can’t bring himself to eat it.

He takes vitamin C to avoid scurvy.

To me, this is something that is way beyond picky. It is definitly an anxiety thing for him.

14

In what way?

15

Picky eating is mental weakness. Unless you have an allergic reaction to certain foods it is all mental. Put yourself on an island or in the middle Africa without access to a grocery store or a restuarant, and you will be surprised at what you will eat when you get hungry.

I used to be a picky eater. After I started traveling around the world for business and eating dinners hosted by locals, and having been taught by my mother that politeness to your host is a big deal, I overcame my pickiness and have come to enjoy a large variety of foods, I would have never touched in my teens and early twenties. As a result, I eat much more diverse foods all of the time, not just when traveling.

It is a mental block, that you just have to teach yourself to overcome. Try something 9 times before you decide you don’t like it. And when I say try, eat a full serving of the dish 9 times, not just a bite. You would be amazed at all the wonderful flavors that are out there if you just try them.

16

I know a few picky eaters, and they each are very different. Particularly my nephew (16-yo) and my Sister in law.

With my nephew it is clearly a control thing. when it’s just me and him, he’ll order what he wants, and often try something new. If his Dad’s in the room, he’ll only order certain things, and check out of the corner of his eye to see if he’s “supposed” to like this. it’s a carryover from childhood control showdowns with his parents. He’s locked into insisting he doesn’t like certain foods because he dug his heels in refusing to eat them when he was four.

With my SIL it’s more like an anxiety disorder. Or like she’s afraid you’re going to hold her down and choke her with it. If you suggest she try something she’s unaccustomed to eating she begins to shake, and her eyes roll like a scared horse. An example, she’ll eat canned green beans, but if you put fresh steamed ones on her plate she practially has a panic attack. Even if you point out that she doesn’t have to eat them if she doesn’t want to, she will be unable to function until they are removed from her plate, and at this point, the table. Anyone who doesn’t support her and express sympathy obviously doesn’t love her. She also gets nervous if her children eat anything she wouldn’t. You’d seriously think you were poisoning them or something.

Frustrating. My sense is that in both cases their parents tried to force them to eat things when they were very young, and these are the extremes they went to in order to gain control.

My ex’s Mother was aprticularly interesting, in that anything she didn’t like, or want to eat, she’d insist she was “allergic” to. She couldn’t just say “I don’t like coconut.” It’s like it never occurred to her that people might respect her right to decide what she did/didn’t want to eat. She also seemed to feel that it made her “special.”

It takes all kinds!

17

Hmm, this thread is certainly fighting my ignorance.

I’ve always looked down on picky eaters.
The way I was raised, if you didn’t eat what was put in front of you, you didn’t eat. And as a result (I’ve always thought), I can eat just about anything within reason.
I’ve always had the suspicion that picky eaters were spoiled as children, and they’ve just carried that part of it through to adulthood.

OTOH A range of food fussiness does make evolutionary sense, and I would also expect variation in how well people can digest certain foods.
Furthermore, the main reason I had to put “within reason” after my earlier statement is primarily because of anything perceived to be dirty rather than inedible. If that same disgust instinct fires in certain people for foodstuffs, I’m not surprised that they are unable (and unwilling) to eat those foods.

18

Possibly relevant previous thread.

19

There are certainly picky eaters in spicy food regions. I live in Sichuan Province, China, where the food is almost universally extremely spicy. But I know lots of people who have long lists of things that they do or do not eat. There are even people out here who do not like spicy food, which must be a huge problem because pretty much everything is spicy.

It’s also very common for Chinese people travelling to the West (or even other parts of China) to eat very little or prepare most of their own food because they cannot tolerate Western food. A common complaint is that it is bland, heavy, oddly textured, too monotonous, too sweet, not fresh enough, contains cheese (which they perceive as simply rotten milk) or just plain odd. In fact, I only know one Chinese person who will voluntarily choose to eat Western food and genuinely enjoy it. For most Chinese people visiting the West, the food is the hardest part for them to deal with and I’ve had friends tell me they were pretty much hungry all the time because they found the food disgusting and inedible.

Also, some of the pickiest people I’ve known were real-life malnourished African villagers. I could get my Cameroonian neighbors to like Mexican food and some of my Indian food, but few would take more than a couple polite bits of my pizza or famous pasta salad.

20

I find it fascinating that so many people can have such deep emotional issues around eating. Other than that and sex, does anything else generate so many anxieties? Family relationships maybe. And I have to wonder how often the three things are tied together.