You’re a pescatarian, then. Pescetarianism - Wikipedia
Well sure, but:
- most people don’t know what the hell that is
- it sounds even more pretentious than vegetarian
- if you eat fish and seafood, surely a piece of chicken or an entire pork roast are ok too, right?
Regarding 3 - sometimes someone will ask if I have any dietary restrictions. I say vegetarian because I’ve tried saying “I eat fish and seafood” and wound up with bacon wrapped scallops being served.
So - vegetarian is usually the easiest answer.
I still say “veg-aquarian” sounds better. More fun, anyway.
alice, if people question me about the details of my fake vegetarianism, pescatarianism or dammit, VEGAQUARIANISM, I usually just sum-up by saying “nothing warm-blooded.”
Yep. Take ownership, in an adult fashion, for your own food issues. A lot of my girlfriends eat before they arrive if they are pretty sure nothing is going to meet their needs. I think most of us carry something to eat with us - we wouldn’t dream of breaking it out at the dinner table, but we can eat it in the car on the way home.
There is nothing wrong with politely declining food. There is something wrong with whining about not getting fed and expecting food issues to get catered to.
(I cater to my friend’s food issues - I’m happy to - because they are always gracious about it and because it isn’t expected. When it becomes a chore instead of a pleasure to feed you because you are going to dictate the menu for everyone, and then complain about it anyway…I don’t feed you).
Why the hell does everyone in your family put up with this? If you are sure that he is just being a brat, why not call his bluff? Or why doesn’t your sister? It seems like absurdly manipulative, unacceptable behavior that I wouldn’t tolerate in a child, much less an adult.
OK, I’m going to approach this from the point of view of someone who has an extremely picky sister-in-law.
Many social interactions center around food. As a host, you want to please your guests. As a guest, you don’t want to burden your host. Therein the problem lies. When it comes to friends and family, layer on the “food is love” part, and it becomes a minefield.
If it’s a meal with people you don’t know very well (a business meal, for example), choose from the menu what you think will work. If it arrives and you can’t stand it, do your best to move things around the plate so it appears you are eating. If someone says, “You’ve hardly eaten anything!” (and how rude is that, but people do it), respond, “It’s delicious, but i just can’t eat another bite.” If you want to be really convincing, ask for a doggie bag.
For a social get-together with work colleagues or the like, I’d say go ahead and ask about the restaurant. You can always say you’re asking because you have food sensitivities.
At a dinner party at someone’s house, if the host doesn’t ask in advance about any dietary restrictions, you have to go with the “business meal” plan. If the host asks, you can present any restriction you choose, but only in terms of what you can or can’t “have,” not what you will or won’t eat. “I can only have plain, broiled chicken.”
If you’re dining with family or friends who know you well, be up front about your preferences, but do so in a way that either relieves them of the burden of accommodating you or gives them a way to do so gracefully. You: “Oh, you’re having liver and onions? Ha-ha! You know me! I’ll bring my special tuna salad to share.”
Back to the picky SIL…she’s completely passive-aggresive about her food preferences. She won’t say what she wants but expects to be accommodated. If we give it our best guess but fall short, her plate will be untouched.
Rude. Very rude.
You do need to be careful to be consistant in your “food sensitivities.” My mother still points out issues with my former mother in law - who needed broiled chicken and plain rice served to her because her stomach and esophogus couldn’t stand anything harsh - and put down double scotches - straight - after dinner.
Because he’s a fucking hypochondriac and will not eat it unless duped.
How am I supposed to know why my sister puts up with it? I suspect it’s because she hates white people food a little less than us such that his good husbandness outweighs his bratty-ass food eccentricities. I don’t care what they do on their spare time, I only get pissed when I have to deal with it. Like at my graduation party, when I hang out with them, during family gatherings. Lately she’s been talking about moving back to Boston ASAP and I know it’s because she wants to be able to pop in for dinner at my parents’ house more frequently.
IMO people, including him, turn out this way when they’re aided and abetted by their family. I call him my brother but he’s married to my sister (I’ve known him my whole life, we’re very close). HIS family aided and abetted it, not mine. We’ve just married in. There are things you can say to your own son and daughter that you can’t say to your son-in-law. And yeah, I love him like a brother, but he’s married to my sister. If he were my biological brother I could chew him out but you know, he’s married to someone who would get very upset by me taking the liberty of doing that. Someone who also happens to be my best friend.
You also have to keep in mind our culture-my parents will never never never invite him to their house and starve him, or tell him to bring his own food. Because ultimately he’s still not THEIR child, but an honoured guest (my sister’s husband)…they’ll accomodate him based on that.
Like I said-had he been raised by my mom and dad, they would have starved the fuck out of him till he gave up. But he wasn’t raised by my parents.
This is what bugs me when people ask “why do you care so much?” I don’t care about any of my friends or professional acquaintances doing it because I’d go to smaller lengths to accomodate them-but picky eaters take advantage of people’s politeness and when it’s family, you ARE taking advantage of the fact that they love you.
Whether or not you liked it, the fact that you tried sushi (more than once, it seems) sort of knocks you out of the “picky eater” category (IMHO, anyway). Most times I solo sushi since I have only one friend who likes it and no one else will even try it.
We all have stuff we don’t like. I’m lucky that most of the stuff I don’t like usually doesn’t come up in your average restaurant or dinner party (liver, sea urchin, Rocky Mountain oysters, I’m allergic to berries - that sort of stuff). But, if the list of things you refuse to eat (or even to try in many cases) is longer than the list of foods you will allow to pass your lips and you are inconveniencing others because of it - you have problems.
I work with a girl that has a lot of food “issues” (won’t eat onions, won’t eat spices, sauces on the side, yadda yadda) So, she orders around that. Listening to her order is like a scene out of When Harry Met Sally but no one cares and no one hesitates to eat with her because she doesn’t make her issues our problem.
Careful with that. If you get a smartass like me you might just get served snake for dinner 
If that were true, I wouldn’t have started the thread.
But in the referenced threads and other threads, people have said quite the opposite. That my not eating, or eating very small amounts, or getting coffee and just enjoying the conversation actively bothered them. I don’t want to hijack the group and not go the restaurant that people want to try out. On the other hand, I don’t want to eat certain foods or pay good money to eat 3 bites of the food (and let the food go to waste, on top of it). It would seem to me that the perfect balance would be that I got coffee, they get food. I’m happy to enjoy the company and I would think they’d be happy to get the meal they want and the company, too. I see this as win-win. But, according to the threads, they’re not happy if I don’t eat.
But being the dictator of where we eat would also make them unhappy and rightly so. I wouldn’t like it either. It’s unfair and wrong and disappointing to most members of the group.
What would make them happy?
I’m more talking about restaurants than about people’s private homes.
blink blink Hunh. I never gave a thought to whether or not I’d eat non-fish cold-blooded things. Guess it hasn’t really come up!
I came up with the “nothing warm-blooded” thing when a friend with the same diet as mine described HIS as “no mammal.” I pointed out that poultry isn’t mammal, which temporarily stumped us both.
Look, there’s only so much you can do. You can order something and try it, and if you don’t like it but are polite and non-distracting and people STILL pester you, tell them to leave you alone. I’ve done it before. I’ll just straight up tell them, quit worrying about what I eat and enjoy your own food! (Of course I say it good-naturedly with a smile on my face.)
Honestly, just do your best to be gracious. Don’t make a huge scene, but don’t force yourself to eat something you hate just to avoid being noticed, either. As long as you’re not sitting at the table arms crossed with a scowl on your face and your plate 10 feet away from you, you’re doing nothing wrong and you shouldn’t feel bad about it. Eat what you want, don’t eat what you don’t, and don’t make a fuss. Beyond that, if people get offended, they’re the ones being fussy, not you.
Lilbro is somewhat of a picky eater. Much less now than he used to be, anybody who complains about his eating habits now needs a) a cold shower and b) to have a child who will only eat half a dozen things and only if they’ve been prepared “just so”.
That was caused by two factors, IMO: he doesn’t have a large appetite, so to him most food is “just fuel”. And he grew up in a house where his mother couldn’t eat a bunch of things, his father another, his brother another, there are things that he can’t eat and most of the cooking was being done by his teenage sister who, let’s face it, wouldn’t have taken the time to make a Cordon Bleu unless someone’s life was at stake.
When he went to college he became more open to trying new things. Many of the things he finds revolting are things I find revolting as well, so I’m not going to complain about it (those not-completely-cooked potatoes floating in oil that we were served at a friend’s house once, for example…).
Having grown up with a household of “can’t eat that”, if someone only eats six things and they have to be “just so” I’ll avoid cooking for them; but if someone says “no potatoes with the chicken for me”? Noooo problemo.
The best restaurant solution I know for picky eaters is to set the meal, uhm… in a similar way as Americans set Thanksgiving meals. Get several “middle of the table” entrées from which each person takes as much or as little as he wants, then each person gets a main dish. Or, each person gets a main with no sides and the sides go to the middle of the table.
This also means being better able to regulate how much you eat, as opposed to getting a platter with, say, one chicken leg and three “sides” each of which is as big as the leg, all on the same dish.
You know what? You’re right. Let me revise that:
*No remotely considerate, sensitive, understanding or polite person * really cares what you eat or don’t eat. We only care if you start to encroach on our enjoyment of food or if you don’t know how to politely decline something without appearing childish or immature. Really.
Have we met?
I guess there’s a bunch of us with the onions deal. I know at least 5 myself.
I’m not sure about that. The case could be made that anu-la’s parents are being very polite to their son in law by caring and catering to what he eats.
Its not not caring that makes you polite. The thing that makes you polite is being non-invasive. On both sides. If I need to care about your food issues, because you’ve made me care - that’s invasive and impolite. On the other hand, if we go out and you order a salad and mention you are a vegetarian and I launch into one of those oh-so-pleasant pro-meat tirades, that’s invasive as well.
What isn’t invasive - the next time we go out if I say “You’re a vegetarian, aren’t you? Is Don’s House of Meat a good choice or should we pick something different.” Or saying “come over for dinner, is there anything I shouldn’t be cooking?”
Caring about it - in a caring fashion - is actually very polite. Saying, as someone picks over their food “Oh, I’m sorry I picked this place, you aren’t finding much to eat here are you” is ok. Saying “I can’t understand why you are so picky” isn’t.
I think (extremely) picky eating is usually either something somewhere on the spectrum of sensory integration issues or a control issue. Neither one can be helped without a lot of psych work. Most folks don’t want to do that work, hence we have a lot of picky eaters among us. I’m not saying that picky eaters have to go see a shrink to fix their issues, just that the rest of us should probably just recognize it as a borderline kind of issue and leave it alone. Maybe someday when we understand more about the full spectrum of sensory integration problems there will be a more expedient fix and these folks won’t have to suffer social problems due to their issues.
Commonly called “family-style”–your description works, but there is a generally understood name for it.
Food is much more than just fuel for the body, it’s a key part of social interaction. That’s not anything new, either. Gathering around for a meal has been part of part of how humans interact for just about as long as humans have been interacting. Take away your ability to eat with others, and you stunt your ability to interact with others, and their ability to interact with you.
If I have a party, the Mrs. and I will spend a long time going over the menu making sure our guests will be happy. If there’s a Picky Eater in the bunch, we want them to be happy too. Saying we can just ignore P.E., letting him politely starve, doesn’t really help, because we’re not going to do that.
In the other thread I thought it was not a big deal, but I’m sort of changing my tune about it. Being unable to eat with others due to dietary restrictions is like being unable to interact with others in a whole host of social situations.
And that’s the secret to being a socially well-received “picky”, “allergic”, “vegan” eater. Being gracious about it and accommodating your hosts and appreciating their efforts as best you can.