If it’s a psychological issue, that doesn’t make it a choice.
My step-father could eat chicken if he had a gun to his head, but he would not eat it at home. It was because he grew up in rural Alabama, and whenever the family had chicken, he was sent out to kill it and pluck it. Saying he hated chicken would not come close to encompassing what went on for him when he was served chicken.
Texture issues are also not a choice. Some people don’t have those issues, but that does not mean that those who do can just ignore them. A person who is disgusted by a texture is no different from a person who is disgusted by a taste. If their palate is extremely limited, I might wonder if they’ve tried working on it, but I wouldn’t expect someone to just choose to eat something they are truly disgusted by. I certainly wouldn’t think much of someone who wanted me to just choose to eat something that tasted disgusting to me.
With my kids, we ask them to taste anything that’s new on a few occasions before passing judgment, and we ask them to re-try things they don’t like from time to time. They have pretty varied palates, but I know part of that is luck, too. But it’s nice to have kids who are happier going out for sushi than to McDonald’s.
I can understand not eating/liking chicken at all - but eating only chicken fingers, and not breaded/fried chicken cutlets or fried chicken seems to be a different thing that can’t really be explained by taste/texture. Maybe the fried chicken could be explained by a dislike of eating off the bone- but I don’t see the difference between a breaded/fried chicken finger and a breaded/fried chicken cutlet except size and shape.
That’s a pretty brilliant way of putting it, actually. It succinctly describes a real phenomenon.
For example, my ex likes nuts, but can’t stand them in brownies because he says they “get in the way.” I’m cool with nuts in brownies, but I can’t understand how people eat chocolate chip ice cream, because the chocolate bits are hard and nasty in the smoothness of the ice cream - although I’m a big fan of ice cream and chocolate chips consumed separately. It’s texture conflict!
I have a 40-something year old friend who is a very picky eater. She practically lives on chicken fingers, doesn’t like any meat on the bone. She doesn’t like spicy. Mayo and milk gross her out.
She knows she is probably missing out on a lot of good stuff, but isn’t willing to try to get used to different things. She says it is her parents’ fault, and I can see her point. They said “This is what we are having, if you don’t want it, you can just go hungry.” As a result, she never tried anything she thought she didn’t like.
When we have her over for dinner, I plan around her to a point, but mostly I plan for her to stop and get fast food on the way over so she doesn’t have to risk eating something horrible like home made potato salad.
I’m not sure this is fair. Of course I have no idea what causes the issues that the OP in particular faces with food. But to dismiss all food aversions as a “choice” overlooks the fact that sensory processing disorders (or at least, variations) really do exist.
When I was young, sudden sharp noises caused a completely involuntary, intense, almost electrical sensation to pass through my muscles, and I’d involuntarily jerk. My dad thought it was hilarious. He assumed it was just me physically expressing surprise or discomfort, and believed I could control it. He got quite a kick out of calling me in when he needed to hammer some nails, just to see my spasmodic reaction. (That sounds sadistic, and on some level I guess it was, but he didn’t mean it that way - he just thought it was amusing.)
Luckily I outgrew the spasms. My son was the same way as a little kid though, and I had to convince his father that he wasn’t faking/exaggerating his discomfort. Obviously, there was something genetic going on.
Anyway, that personal experience gives me a bit more sympathy toward people who don’t have the same physiological response I do to various inputs. We can’t know what their nervous systems are telling them, or how much control they have over how they are responding.
I’ve very slowly come to understand that I have a lot stronger physiological responses to stimuli than the average person does. That’s why spicy food feels like my mouth is burning, why slimy textures make my gorge rise, why a lot of things. It’s not just food, it’s kind of across the board – noises, pressures, scratchiness, etc. I was ridiculed and shamed for it as a child, tried to make it into a Sensitive Artist thing as a young adult, but really it is just plain physical. And there isn’t anything I can do about it, any more than someone can learn to like eating slugs, burning themselves with matches, rubbing sandpaper on their eyelids, or having someone scream into their ears. Endure it, maybe. Like it, no. Trouble only comes when others feel I would be much improved if I enjoyed the things they enjoy, and that I could if I only tried hard enough.
I have a friend just like you. Even the talk of mayonnaise makes him physically twitch. It’s the darnest thing, because he’ll go out with me and eat brain tacos and menudo (beef tripe), steak tartare with raw egg, head cheese, and so on, but mayo? Makes him wanna wretch.
It seems to be a psychological thing. One time we were at the bar and he ordered the Senoran or Tijuana style hot dogs, which came with mayonnaise on them. I had recommended them and had totally forgotten about the mayo. He got it, and the mayo was somehow buried and otherwise inconspicuous. I didn’t dare say anything, but he did end up eating the dog and not noticing. I didn’t say anything afterwards, either, just kept quiet about it.
I’m moderately picky, but I’ve only had this issue once. My director decided to order lunch from this trendy vegetarian place and the person placing the order let them know I’m allergic to basil (it causes hives, not a tummy ache). They only had one thing that didn’t contain basil. And it was gross, so I only ate about 1/3rd of it. sigh.
True, but probably the waitress (and the dad) were trying to avoid the disappointment of devoting a restaurant excursion to a menu selection that he wouldn’t enjoy eating.
Most people going to the expense of an evening out at a restaurant prefer to order something that already tastes good to them, rather than something that they won’t learn to like until the fifth or sixth time they order it.
In Rozin’s research, he’s found that people are particularly repulsed by food that reminds them of bodies. For that reason, meat products have the power to elicit powerful disgust—especially if the meat product is strange or too similar to us in some way. Even with the best quality meat, we employ magical thinking to forget that it’s an animal we’re eating—cows become beef, for instance. Feelings about mayo also seem to touch on post-structuralist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva’s ideas about abjection, the horror one experiences when facing a breakdown between the self and Other—the classic example of which is staring at a dead human body and realizing that, even as you’re alive, you’re also dying. “Anything that reminds us that we are animals elicits disgust,” Rozin once wrote. “Disgust functions like a defense mechanism, to keep human animalness out of awareness.” If humans remember they’re animals, they’ll remember they’re also mortal. And there is nothing more threatening or disgusting than confronting mortality.
OP, this is an excellent explanation. The woman who said you could learn to get over the textural aversions simply doesn’t know better.
By the way, people who have a heightened sense of smell and taste are called “super smellers” and “super tasters.” Super smellers are sometimes employed by the perfume industry and certain corporations. If you’re eating enough vegetables (sometimes a problem for super tasters), you have no reason to change your habits. Think of them as the suiper powers they are.
I am just plain afraid of food that I’m not familiar with.
Some people are just plain afraid of public speaking. They’ll do anything to avoid it. Do they get sneered at for it?
I have added more foods to my repertoire, little by little. At this rate, though, I’m never going to be an omnivore. But what I don’t do is complain. Or demand that everyone eat where I want to eat. Or criticize other peoples’ cooking. Or ask anyone at all to change anything at all about what they do. I just don’t eat what I don’t recognize. Or what I have tried and still didn’t like. And I would never razz someone who’s afraid of public speaking/performing. “Oh, come on! Just one karaoke song! Just one verse, then! Whatsamatter with you?”
Ah, see, fruit is one thing I never have a problem with! But I have a friend who used to avoid it at all costs. He hated the mouthfeel (which is part of what I like about fruit). How he got to a grudging acceptance was his wife, who eased him into trying one grape, then one slice of apple…She was a fruit fanatic, you see, and he wanted to share her interest.
Mr. Rilch has worked on me much the same way, getting me to try meat dishes that used to scare me. What he’d do was have me watch him make whatever it was, so I’d know what I was in for. His peach-smothered pork chops are something I wouldn’t have tried on a bet, if I’d gone into it cold. As it was, they were a party in my mouth.
(And the funny thing is, I like my steak medium rare. But Mr. Rilch thinks that’s an abomination.)
You and i have similar texture aversions. Except raw squid tastes delicious. Until it gets all mucus-y and i gag.
I consider myself a picky eater, because i have a lot of strong food preferences. But the only one that ever interferes with dining with others is my strong aversion to capsaicin. I don’t eat spicy, and I don’t eat sweet peppers, either. nasty!
I have never heard anyone discuss super-smellers before, but that’s what i am. Or was, until i got old and my sense of smell weakened. It means i can taste stuff much better than most people. I bought a bag of pepperidge farm cookies and spat them out because they had replaced the delicious palm kernel oil with nasty canola oil, for instance. (I even wrote to them to complain. They didn’t bring back the tropical oils, but they stopped using canola.)
It’s probably related to my being a picky eater, but I definitely consider it a super power. I enjoy lots of food more than most people, too, because the flavors are intense and exciting to me.
I’m the same way with spaghetti. When I was growing up, there were some years where mom cooked spaghetti about 2-3 times each week and I grew to despise it. There’s nothing in spaghetti I don’t like, and will in fact eat the same dish with a different pasta in it, but to this day I avoid spaghetti. I also won’t eat hot dogs if I don’t have proper hot dog buns. If you just put a hot dog in a regular slice of bread it makes everything taste like poverty.
When your preferences make it a pain in the ass for others to sit down and have a meal with you. I, uh, of course am using you in the general sense here. I’m certain that FairyChatMom is a pleasure to dine with regardless of what we choose to sup upon. We all have our preferences and aversions and that’s okay. I have an aversion to Italian food. If you told me you didn’t care for Chinese food that wouldn’t be a big deal. If you wouldn’t eat anything you couldn’t find on a Chili’s menu that might be a problem though.