However, if all fairness, “What are you having?” does come across as a bit rude. It sounds like you’re unappreciative of the invitation, rather than informing them of dietary restricitons
With our not-so-easy-to-accommodate diets, my fiancee and I usually quip, in a very appreciative tone (and genuinely appreciative too, especially if they are regularly omnivores) about how brave or ambitious they are to invite us to dinner given our food restrictions. That provides them with the opportunity to reconsider and also opens the door for dialog if they have questions. It’s important to be grateful and gracious about the invitation while providing yourself with the chance to inform them and offer to help out.
See, this is what I don’t get. If you don’t have allergies or other actual physical issues, why on earth would you throw it up after you managed to get it down in the first place?
And yet, you have absolutely no way of knowing whether your guest’s objection is allergic, moral, religious, or otherwise. All you’re going to know is that you’ve made your guest uncomfortable.
Which is rather what good manners is supposed to prevent.
Someone should not be placed in the position of having to ask what you’re serving. Gracious hosts should ask “Would you like to come over for dinner? I’m thinking of making lemon-herb chicken.” Thus allowing the guest to graciously decline with “Oh, dear, I’m a strict vegan; perhaps some other time?” And no one has to be uncomfortable or rude about it.
People who are going to get in a huff because I might ask what is for dinner, or who are going to pass judgement on what excuses are acceptable for me to offer for not eating something, are not people I’ll be spending any more time eating with, thank you very much. They can take their non-discerning palates and go strap on their feedbags without me.
“I’d love to come, but I’m actually really hard to feed - I keep kosher. Would anyone be offended if I came for the company but just had salad.” (replace kosher with “have food allergies,” “am incredibly picky,” or whatever - replace salad with “show up after dinner” or “bring my own food” or whatever accomodation YOU can provide. This may result in a hostess that says “well, what can you eat and I’ll try and cook around you.” Or it may not.)
“What are you having?”
“Yes, but I’ll need to have grilled chicken. I don’t eat vegetables of any sort, but I do like strawberries - however, do not put them on or near the chicken. Dessert cannot contain coconut - I can’t abide the stuff. And for god’s sake don’t even cook onions in the kitchen, the very smell makes me ill.”
“Sure” Show up and then say, loudly “there isn’t anything here I like” (replace like with “can eat.”)
The last two are just downright rude. The second one is clueless.
I’ve been doing a gluten free diet for since Christmas - not an easy one to pull off. Now, I’m not strict - its “pick around the croutons” not “avoid a salad that has croutons.” (And I’m still in the “oh, gluten” state where sometimes it surprises me - after I’ve eaten it and visited the bathroom.) We went to Brainiac4’s Christmas party this weekend - a buffet. The salad had croutons (picked around them). The chicken was breaded, but they had fish (I’d rather have had the chicken). They had ravioli (a favorite of mine that I naturally skipped - for someone who loves bread, pasta and bakery desserts as much as I do, gluten intolerance is a cruel mistress), limp buffet vegtables, and a varieity of desserts - including cheesecake (once again, I’d rather have had any of the other desserts). I had salad, limp veggies, fish, and ate around the crust on a cheesecake - and no one at my table - other than my husband who felt for me - noticed my weird diet. It wasn’t the most satifying meal of my life, but I didn’t starve. I can’t expect gluten free chocolate cake to show up on a buffet - much as I’d like it to be there.
Special dietary requirements often cause inconvenience for those people that don’t share them - for example, if we have to cook an additional dish (or revise the whole menu), or if when dining as a group, we have to choose a specific restaurant that will cater for the dietary restrictions of just one person in the group. When these restrictions are health related (lactose intolerance, coeliac sprue, nut allergies), they tend to be accepted as necessary. When they’re the result of religion or ideology (kosher, vegetarianism), they tend to be accepted as important, although not perhaps as readily accepted as the previous category.
When the restrictions are the result of what appears to be nothing more than picky eating, they tend to be viewed as unreasonable, because the perception is that it doesn’t really need to be that way, you’re just being bloody awkward.
I should at this point note that I’m not endorsing the above reactions, just describing how I think they work.
So, what omnivores want you to do is to stop being so damn fussy and just eat what’s on your plate or on the menu. That probably isn’t going to happen and in the majority of cases, it’s probably quite unfair and unreasonable, but you asked, and that’s what they want.
I don’t really see how there’s any resolution in extreme cases; if you can find restaurants that everybody is happy with, then you might just want to answer “look, I don’t mind if you DO eat it, as long as you don’t mind if I don’t” when challenged to try something you’re sure you don’t like.
If you’re invited to someone’s house for dinner, they should always ask if you have any special dietary requirements, but if these are sufficiently complex that they can’t be summarised in a single breath, then it may not be reasonable to expect them to cope, and it might be better to suggest getting together over a coffee instead.
But that’s the problem- a lot of picky eaters do have extreme physical reactions to foods that most people eat without a problem. They’re not allergies, but they’re real.
It’s kind of like the aversion you can get to certain foods if you get sick around the time you eat them. Food aversions like that can come from one experience where you eat a certain food and feel sick- after that, the experience of eating that food and being sick are linked. It’s a defense mechanism against poisoning that most animals have. It can be really hard to get over a food aversion once you get one.
I suspect that some picky eaters- probably not the ones who eat only five or six dishes, but the ones who gag on certain foods- have developed aversions to those foods at some point in their lives.
I think we’re talking past each other here. I’m saying that a non-deliberate physical gag reaction-- whatever the cause-- is a different beast than “just not my favorite taste.” I can’t think of a context in which refusing food that will make you physically ill would be seen as unjustified. When it’s only a matter of simple preference is when rudeness and self-centeredness come into play. (I can’t recall a single post in either thread criticizing people for refusing food that will harm their health, so I don’t know why this objection keeps coming up.)
I’m sorry, what? You ate the food, you were able to masticate and swallow, and get all the way home, then you threw it up? This is an eating disorder, IMO, not an instance of taste or texture preference, nor a food allergy. IANA shrink, but I think you have issues beyond the purview of simply being a “picky eater.”
Ruby, I have to respectfully disagree - there have been some times when at work I’ve had something for lunch that “just wasn’t sitting right” for whatever reasons - and the feeling is so awful that while it isn’t enough to make you throw up on your own, you know you’ll be more comfortable getting it out of your system. I don’t presume to speak for Neptuniann, but in a situation where I’m miserable because of something I ate earlier, I’m going to get rid of it.
Oh, of course, if something is making you sick, you could be sick for hours…but that could be something you like. What Rubystreak was talking about was making yourself eat something that you don’t like, and then throwing up hours later because you didn’t like it. (This is what Neptunian Slug seemed to be saying). That DOES seem a little odd to me, too. I have forced down stuff I hate lots of times, but once it’s down, it’s down.
I am not a picky eater, but one thing I don’t like is mushrooms. I’ll eat them, but I really don’t like them at all. In fact, no one in my family particularly likes them.
But my mother seems deliberately to put them in things and then conversations go like this:
Mom: Look, I made such-n-such and I put mushrooms in it. Oh no! You don’t like mushrooms.
Me: No, I don’t. But that’s no big deal.
Mom: Well, I made such-n-such other dish and I put mushrooms in that, too! Gee, sorry about that!
She’ll order pizza and seem to make it a point to ask for mushrooms even if no one would miss them.
But some people seem to assume that, if they can eat a certain food without having a gag reaction, everyone can. That’s not true. If you get sick after eating a certain food, you might not be able to eat something that most people eat with no problems.
And I might just tell someone I don’t like a certain food, when what I really mean is that it will make me gag, because I think they might want to be spared that level of detail.
Food aversions, by the way, can even mean you can’t sit at a table with someone who is eating something you’re averse to. I had an aversion like that to cheesesteak subs for a while, after eating one and being violently sick. For several months after that the smell of one was enough to make me nauseous. Fortunately, the aversion subsided, so I can sit at a table with someone eating a cheesesteak (I have since started keeping kosher, so I don’t know if eating one would make me nauseous now).
So true. I’m a pretty picky eater but I generally can choke down just about anything. Except onions. I used to love onions but had a food poisoning incident involving some onion rings. (I’m sure it was the batter and not the onions that made me sick but my stomach doesn’t know the difference.) Now I absolutely cannot eat onions, no matter how hard I try. If you’re eating with me you’ll know it when I get one. My eyes will start to water and I’ll reach for my water to wash it down with as I’m trying not to gag. It’s terrible. For the rest of the day my stomach will be queasy. I really wish I could go back in time and take back the onion ring incident, but I can’t. Instead, I have tastebuds that can sense if there is an onion anywhere on a pizza and it ruins the whole thing for me.
I think you need to develop good diplomacy and other skills so you can enjoy people’s company and accept invitations without making food an issue. Good suggestions here already. I think the worst outcome would be to start to limit your social life simply because you’re worried about what’s being served. One of my Doper friends is a pretty selective eater, and I am so grateful that he comes over for potlucks and goes out to restaurants anyway. I think that most people don’t mind picky eaters–what they mind are picky eaters who grouse about the menu. Practice some good reassuring responses for people who will fret over what you aren’t eating. If you’re comfortable with yourself and your eating, most of them will get that way as well.
My only additional advice is to keep occasionally trying new things. I’m a pretty picky eater and I’m surprised at what I am starting to like in adulthood (well, middle age might be more appropriate). I will never appreciate being 'tricked" into eating something I don’t care for, but I will, on my own terms, come back to foods that didn’t appeal to me as a kid. Some of them are now okay.
It’s not CS, but what the heck. And now, I’ve just discovered my recipies are all a mess, and it’s been quite a while since I’ve made this:
1/2 stick butter
2 large Vidalia onions, chopped
1 tsp dried dill weed
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1 can (10.5 oz) cream of celery soup
8-oz sour cream
3 cups cooked (white) rice
8-oz (2 cups) shredded colby-jack cheese (divided)
Sautee onions, dill, salt and pepper in butter over medium-high heat, until onions are soft and translucent (~ 6 min.) Cool slightly. Add soup, sour cream, rice, and half of the cheese; mix well and pour into 9" x 13" greased baking dish. Bake at 350°F for 25 minutes. Top with remaining cheese, return to oven until cheese melts.
I’ve a little note that says “gruyere?” next to the cheese, tho’ I’m not sure if I tried that or wanted to try that… I’m not sure where this recipie came from, but its passed muster with quite a few picky eaters (… so long as they like onions, obviously).
Why are people continually conflating real, physical problems with psychological ones (gagging on something stuck in your throat v. gagging on perfectly good food b/c you don’t like the “texture”; being sick when you eat something that actually hurts your GI tract v. eating food you don’t like and then hours later, barfing it for no good reason)? Seems like people don’t WANT to understand the distinction. Or are trying to create straw men to argue against to justify their own weird problems.
But yeah, Sarahfeena, I’m glad you understood what I meant. Though I have to say, if I eat something that’s bad, that makes me physiologically ill, I tend to have to barf it within the hour. By the time I’d get home, um, it’d have to be dealt with in other ways. So eating, then holding onto it for several hours, then barfing, seems to be something other than “I ate some bad fish at Fred’s house.” Something I’d look into if I had that problem.
I agree that all kinds of issues have been brought up, here. Several people have mentioned food aversions that come from having been sick on a particular kind of food. This is a perfectly normal physiological response to a food that has made someone ill…but is relatively rare (how often do foods make us violently ill?) and should only affect maybe a couple of foods per person! Then there are foods we just plain don’t like, for reasons unknown. I have a couple…I think everyone probably does, and some people have more than others. What I can’t figure out is if the picky eater types…people who don’t like a lot of different foods…typically have as severe a reaction to these foods as someone with a genuine food aversion, such as what I describe above (having a physiological reaction caused by having been sick on a particular food). And can it extend so far that a person could literally be sick hours later from having to eat a food they didn’t like the taste or texture of (as opposed to a food that made them physically sick for another reason, like it gave them indigestion for some reason)?
Yes, I think I would, too. In all seriousness, that’s no way to live.
It doesn’t matter whether the problem is “real” or “imaginary” - to the person who has the problem, the result is the same. Why someone pukes isn’t important, the puddle on the floor is there no matter what the reason. What someone else does or doesn’t put into their mouths is nobody’s business but their own, and nobody should have to “justify their own weird problems.” You don’t have to understand WHY - you just have to be polite and accept that this is not your problem.
I have seen allergy sufferers being urged to “just try one,” vegetarians being questioned at length about their dietary choices, diabetics being pressed to eat sweets, and jerks who literally try to trick people with food-related issues into eating things they have plainly said they can’t or won’t eat. That goes beyond rude into cruelty, and potentially into danger.
If everyone was as concerned as they claim they are about being polite, this would not even be an issue. The second the conversation veers from “no, thank you (plus simple reason if absolutely required)” - whoever made it veer is guilty of being rude. If I pursue that with “ew no, it’ll make me PUKE!” then I am the rude one, if you pursue it with “oh, come one, just one won’t hurt you” then YOU are the rude one.
(“You” is a general you, not a specific person who has posted here.)
