I’ve been a professional cook for years, and so I’ve had a lot of opportunity to observe people’s eating habits. And frankly, it’s senior citizens who seen to do the strangest things with regard to their food.
Part of this seems to be for health reasons of course, “the doctor’s orders”. But some of the things I’ve seen just don’t make sense to me.
One thing in particular I blame the doctors for. There are a good number of seniors whose doctors have told them that their intake of fat and cholesterol is too high. And so the doctor tells them to cut back on eggs and butter. But the doctors apparently don’t explain that the eggs and butter are merely examples of high-cholesterol and high-fat foods. And so these old folks will come in and order egg substitute (Egg Beaters), hashbrown potatoes fried with no oil, and unbuttered toast… and ask us to pour country sausage gravy over everything. Country sausage gravy is absolutely loaded with fat and cholesterol!!
Second thing: What about older people who go to the same restaurant seven days a week, and order exactly the same meal every single day. I read once (sorry, don’t have a cite - is was in a newspaper years ago) that when you eat the same foods all the time, your body eventually stops deriving much nutritional benefit from those foods. Apparently, your body becomes saturated with the particular group of nutrients present in those foods, and doesn’t need any more of those, so your system just passes those nutrients on through. Meanwhile, your’re not getting the nutrients that aren’t in those foods either, because you’re not eating different foods that contain the other nutrients. I believe that many geriatric health problems can be traced to simple malnutrition caused by a grossly unvaried diet.
Now I understand that some of these people are diabetic, and by eating a homogenous diet they can maintain their blood sugar levels - because the sugar content of the specific foods isn’t going to vary a great deal from one day to the next. But I can’t think of a good explanation for those people who aren’t diabetic, other than pure force of habit.
Third thing: What is the deal with older men (mostly men, anyway) and their use of salt and pepper? I’ve noticed this mostly amongst people of my parent’s generation (Baby Boomers) and older: dousing their entire meal with salt and pepper, without even bothering to taste the food first. I have served spicy Mexican food to older men, and still, the first thing they do is start shaking pepper all over it. When I make soups from scratch, I don’t spare the spices. I don’t make insanely piquant soups, but they have a good robust flavor. An older man will order a bowl of soup, and proceed to empty the pepper shaker into his bowl before he even tastes the soup. One of the key flavor ingredients in country gravy is pepper. And yet these men will again cover the gravy with still more pepper.
The only thing I’ve been able to guess, aside from long-dead taste buds, is that these men’s wives and mothers were very bland cooks, and grabbing the pepper shaker is purely a reflexive habit.
Fourth observation: Why don’t senior citizens understand, even after they’re told, that most restaurants no longer fry food in butter? I’ve been a cook for twenty years, and I’ve never worked in a restaurant that fries in butter. Every restaurant I’ve cooked in uses a low-cholesterol, low fat, butter-flavored vegetable oil for frying things on the grill or in pans. And vegetable shortening in deep fryers. But occasionally, a senior citizen will insist that he doesn’t want his food fried in butter, so he wants me to fry his food dry, with nothing at all. Any attempts to explain that we don’t use butter are rebuffed, and sometimes these guys will become almost belligerent about it. Of course, they also expect a perfect over-easy egg to be cooked without any lubrication in the pan. Sorry, can’t flip an egg perfectly when it’s stuck to the pan, sir.
Thoughts?
