Picky eaters - quirk or mental disorder?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Food whose taste I don’t like is no problem for me. I won’t choose those foods, but if I’m faced with having to eat them, I can do it.

However, it’s foods that are surrounded by some kind of psychological image that give me real problems. For example, my mind makes an association between fruit and insects/dirt/garbage. It’s largely this connection that prevents me from eating fruits, even those whose flavor I actually like. (And the smell of things like cantaloupe and honeydew melons is exactly the smell of garbage to me.)

When I am served such fruits at a restaurant, where I don’t have to see the fruits in their pre-service form (dirt and inedible portions removed) and I don’t have to see the aftermath (uneaten portions along with peels, etc., rotting in the garbage, attracting fruit flies, and so on), and they appear on my plate pristine, clean, and good-tasting (and never having to see overripe or rotten pieces), I have far less problem with them.

So just from personal experience, I’d say food aversions have a huge psychological component. Simply not liking the taste of certain foods can be handled.

62

This, for me, is the issue.

I was much pickier as a kid because my dad subscribed to the “eat it or wear it” school of parenting. This caused much trauma and tears at meal times.

Once my mom asked me if I wanted rice or potatoes with dinner. I loved Rice a Roni and thought it was the only kind of rice in existence because that’s what she always made. This particular day, she didn’t have Rice a Roni; she made plain old white Minute Rice. I rebelled. Would not touch it because it had no flavor. (Note: It’s not that I preferred bland flavors; in fact, I found bland to be revolting.) So my dad poured my little bowl of rice over my head. I have very thick, easily tangled hair. My mom spent hours trying to comb all the little bits of rice out of my hair, pulling and tugging the whole time while I screamed and cried. All because she didn’t specify “plain old white rice” vs. “Rice a Roni.” Tiny little miscommunication and I didn’t eat white rice until I was in high school and discovered Chinese food. (La Choy’s Chop Suey does not count – that was another one of Mom’s famous “recipes.” Mom is famous for cooking out of boxes and cans. Bleargh.) f

What has been a bigger deal is the amount I ate. I was always a skinny kid, so parents and caretakers were always hammering at me to eat more more more. As a form of control, as an adult, I like to leave at least one bite behind on my plate. If anyone I’m dining with is rude enough to make comments about how much I have or have not eaten, my throat closes up and I stop eating immediately and will not be able to choke down another bite. I think the Clean Plate Club is bullshit and encourages obesity and overeating. I think my parents being so anxious about me getting enough to eat – had it been overblown just a little bit more – could have caused an eating disorder. I am like one meal trauma away from that anyway. My sister is morbidly obese and we both believe it is precisely because of this same pressure to eat, eat, eat, more, more, more. I will not dine again with anyone who feels compelled to comment on how much or what I ate. It triggers that pressure to keep eating after I’m full (which is uncomfortable at best) and fires up all manner of anxiety for me.

63

Sorry to hear about that.

Maybe you should do what I do. I pretty much make it a point of taking home enough from nearly every eat out meal to at least make for another light meal later on. If its one of the bigger eat out meals, my take home portion often becomes another full sized meal.

Reduces wastes, reduces chance of overeating, and in your case probably reduces the social anxiety you feel about people and/or cleaned plates.

64

That’s way out of proportion, and I’m not surprised if it had an enduring effect on you.
Any outbursts or loss of control by a parent regardless the cause has a huge effect on the child.

65

Oh yes, I do that.

If someone is being rude and making comments “Wow, you just couldn’t finish all that, huh?” then I start crowing and bragging about the 30 pounds I lost by stopping eating when I am full. I wax poetic about the abusive nature of pressuring kids to be part of the Clean Plate Club and don’t I look svelte and healthy and awesome now that I leave some of my overly large restaurant portions on the plate?

Generally, the people who comment that I didn’t eat enough are projecting their own guilt for overeating on to me, so as soon as I start up with “This is why I look this good” (and I am neither underweight nor overweight at all) then those people tend to STFU. :cool: 9 times out of 10 it’s someone who is overweight and struggling with their own issues, so they have to give me the skinny bitch look or make comments that imply I’m an asshole because I’m in good shape… so they can feel better about their obesity and compulsion to overeat.

66

My pediatrician has said this before. When my son was much younger - still being spoon fed, so about 8-9 months old - it drove my husband nuts when my son wouldn’t eat. I think it scared him because he’d been eating a lot for a while, then stopped suddenly, probably thanks to the end of a growth spurt or something. Anyway, my husband would try everything he could to make him eat. He’d distract him, then stuff the spoon in his mouth, only to have the food spat out or he’d try the old airplane trick. I kept asking him not to do it because everything I’d read said that kids know when to stop eating and that force-feeding them could lead to problems. It got so bad that our son refused to eat anything at all if it came from my husband. But my husband still needed to hear it from a professional.

So, I made an appointment with our pediatrician so our husband could voice his concerns over our son’s eating. Her comment was that the fastest way to an eating disorder was to force feed a kid and that most children she saw for eating problems were locked in a battle of wills with their parents trying to feed them more than they wanted to eat. She also said that more than half the kids she saw for eating disorders were toddlers, which I found profoundly disturbing. Their parents were all well-meaning, but didn’t really know what they were doing. So my husband stopped. For maybe two months after that appointment, our son would only eat if I was the one with the spoon, and even when he started self-feeding, he’d sometimes only eat if my husband’s back was turned.

67

I’m a picky eater. On the scale of pickiness, I’m way picky compared to non-picky people, but pretty open-minded compared to picky people.

I will go hungry rather than eat something I don’t want.

Sometimes if it’s not something too appalling and the circumstances warrant it, I will eat enough to be polite, but a lot of things needs to line up for that.

My senses seem to be more heightened than most people’s, so why should food smells, tastes, and textures bothering me be much different than bright lights or loud noises?

I won’t go out to eat with people if I can’t find out what’s for dinner first. Like usually I’ll ask where they’re going and sneak off to find the menu online and if there is one thing I can choke down, I’ll go. Otherwise I make polite excuses.

My mother was horrible about food sometimes when I was little. I remember her refusing to let me leave the table until I ate corned beef and cabbage. Most adults I know won’t touch it, so god knows why she thought a child would. The rest of my family would eat the food off my plate when she wasn’t looking. Although i don’t think I’d ever have liked it anyway, the smell of it now makes me want to vomit and if it’s made, I have to leave the house. Normally she wasn’t that bad most of the time. I did get humored with a lot of mac & cheese and chicken fingers.

And you know what? I don’t find chicken fingers to be bland at all. There are so many different kinds. Different seasonings, manner of preparation, sauces, quality of chicken. I could eat chicken every day for every meal and I could eat it a different way each time for weeks.

My family tends to cook things incorrectly, so as an adult and learning to cook myself or going out to dinner places, there are a lot of foods I do like now that I didn’t before. And if my family cooks them? Nope. Still don’t like them.

And almost always, my food cannot touch.

I know I’m missing out on some good food. I wish I could stomach different food because I’d love to be able to eat nothing but fruit and veggies. But if something doesn’t repulse me, I will try it. It’s just that a lot of things repulse me.

My kid looks like she’s going to be picky too. It makes me sad. I get very happy when she eats stuff I won’t touch. I put lots of variety on her plate for each meal, but I don’t make her eat stuff. The only time I make her eat is when she asks for something, I make it, then she doesn’t touch it. If I go through the effort, she has to take “one tiny bite.”

When she gets older (she’s only 3), I’m not going to enjoy making special meals for her. So I’ll teach her to make the stuff she likes so if she doesn’t like what I make, she can fend for herself.

68

I notice some kids go through a juice only phase, so what? As long as they’re still energetic it’s all good. A few months of lots of broccoli, bananas, whatever. My friends kid was “picky” but I watched the mother giving her large helpings of food she’d only take a few mouthfuls as the mother fussed constantly over her. I suggested she give her a much smaller portion that she could finish, stop making an issue over it and the kid started asking for more. This kid was allowed to say “ew, yuk”. Frankly that friend - an excellent cook - has a whole show of odd food behaviour with her kids. She switched back to the oversized portion and the fussing after a while. Both her kids became unpicky when they stayed with friends.

My kid didn’t like onions - the texture - so I’d drop a whole onion in the soup and get to eat it myself - yum yum. Soup is your friend, I think, you can chop and blend all kinds of things in there to make sure they’re getting different things.

69

Well there is a point at which it can become an actual health concern. There was a thread here a while ago about a kid who was diagnosed as suffering from malnutrition because he refused to eat anything but oatmeal.

70

True acsenray my take is it would most likely be a quirk which then becomes a mental hurdle. I still have to fight the clean plate thing, by telling myself that it’s equally a waste if I eat too much.

71

My youngest brother has pretty bad allergies that we didn’t discover until he was 6 or so, and then had him tested for food allergies when he was 11. The kid eats a healthy diet, but he would out and out refuse green beans. We’re a green bean family, so this didn’t sit well with my parents at all. My mother still feels guilty years after we learned he was allergic to green beans. It’s like the year the youngest brother complained about a teacher, and he never complains. He complained daily about his gym teacher - and 9 months later, the guy was arrested and jailed for beating up another parent at a soccer match. Sometimes you gotta trust the kids!

Seconding what pbbth said, sometimes parents are just awful cooks, or aren’t adventurous in preparation. I’ve been tutoring my SO’s little sister (she’s jumping from regular to honors math next year, and has some catching up to do) this summer for a few hours each day. The kid is notorious for being a picky eater, and because I eat more whole grains and veggies than they do, I bring my own lunch to their house. I’ve slowly learned that my SO’s mom simply isn’t a very good or adventuous cook. Little sister actually does like eggs, but made in a non-stick pan. She does like vegetables - just slightly steamed, not boiled to hell. She doesn’t like bottled salad dressing, but a little Penzey’s chip n dip mixed with light sour cream makes her happy. If she asks for chips and you offer a salad, she says “sure!” without the slightest hesitation. The slight misdirections (how about this? how about you have this after this?) or opportunity to try a food prepared in a different manner have made her much happier - and healthier.