We need a word for "an adult who eats like a picky toddler."

In My Humble Opinion
21

I have selective eating disorder which makes me eat a lot like you describe.

It comes from being autistic and having aversions to certain textures from a young age, as well as a poor uneducated family who had no idea how to deal with me. They NEVER tried to feed me anything other than fast food and things like that so now it’s completely foreign to me.
Imagine eating poop. That’s how it is for someone like me to try new things. It’s kind of hard when it makes me literally throw up every time, though I’m making progress.

:rolleyes: Nobody WANTS to be picky. There’s usually a reason. No need to make fun. Even if they don’t have my exact issue, I’m sure there’s a reason they are so picky. Specifically, if your parents don’t introduce you to a wide variety of flavors as a young child, it’s much more difficult to get a taste for them later.

22

Heh one time my dad who is in his sixties started working at a new place and he said the younger employees dragged him to a west African restaurant. He was like here and handed me a take out container, and said he didn’t want to be rude and said I know you like this kind of nonsense.:smiley:

But to be fair his fav food was sushi. He said he ordered escargot as a prank for me at a restaurant as a toddler, and I ended up loving it!

23

I’ve never eaten witchity grubs, Balut or live scorpions, but I’m going to give them a miss. I’m not a picky eater, but I won’t even try some of the disgusting stuff other people find delicious.

24

the cook?

25

So true, It’s like those who think if you’re not hiking through the freezing pissing down rain, looking like a drowned rat, then you’re some kind of weak kneed couch potato who should get a life.

26

Not exactly the same, but “orthorexia” is the term for people who will only eat organic, non-GMO, locally sourced, cruelty free foods grown by Buddhist monks because these foods are “healthier.”

27

Actual words proposals at bottom of post, if you want to skip down over my responses to other posts.

Finicky can mean a lot of things. My mother is finicky about beer-- she drinks it only when she’s in Eastern Europe or Germany, and will eat only imported Russian caviar (she knows people who send it to her). She thinks (and I concur on this one) that mac and cheese from a box is awful, and only the stuff made from scratch is any good (and when my mother makes it, it’s brilliant). When a little kid is described as finicky, you get one image, but with an adult, you tend to think of someone like my mother, who is a bit of a snob.

I’m a supertaster, and I eat a really big variety of foods. I don’t like things spiced with anything that has capsicum in it, but I like things with lots of mild seasoning, and I like every vegetable on the planet except eggplant, okra and radishes. I’m a vegetarian because I don’t like the taste and texture of meat, but in the whole, I like a variety of textures.

Being a supertaster just means that there are some things you can taste that other people can’t, and most of them are bitter, and other flavors taste really strong to you, so you don’t need a lot of them to season food-- other people might want a tablespoon of something in a sauce, but a 1/2 teaspoon is enough for you.

As far as bitter goes, I love broccoli, for example, but only cooked: it’s too bitter raw, and I must put a little sugar in tea or coffee to balance out the bitterness.
I know adults who declare they don’t eat vegetables, as though it is something to be proud of, they eat meat, but mostly fried, or luncheon meats, they eat bread, and pastries, cookies, etc. The occasionally do eat vegetables as part of certain kinds of sauces, like pasta sauces, or in casseroles, or in soup.

Those are all foods you can usually coax a toddler into eating, and so they are comfort foods.

So essentially what these people eat a lot of are comfort foods, and don’t want to try anything new, because it won’t be a comfort food-- you need to have a history with a food for it to be a comfort food.

If you want to stick with Greek, you could call it “anasirexia,” or in Latin, “consolorexia,” or “solaciorexia.” It seems Classical Latin did use “orexia,” borrowed from Greek, so it’s fair game, I think for Latinate words. If you’re a purist, you could try “consolocupidio.”

28

both the roomie and I are supertasters.

snicker

Not too bad.

I am high functioning autistic - and I have eating issues from some medications I have been or am currently on. Well, and I have some food allergies - mushrooms can kill me, coconut based products give me the multiday shits, clams cause projectile vomiting and oysters&mussels cause projectile vomiting and the shits. After those 3, I stopped trying bivalves.

I am heavy into veggies and fruits. Nothing I like better than trying out something new and interesting. I do note that I detest zucchini and eggplant, no matter how they are made, they have a bitter, machine oil taste. I detest okra - no matter what, the slime and overall texture is offensive to me - and yes I have had them dozens of times made according to old family recipes where they are cooked perfectly. Nope, nope, nope. Ain’t happening any longer. Bell peppers are just nasty as is anything with an anise/liqquorice taste - too many liquid medications as a kid that covered the bitter with the liquorice extract in the syrup to be able to choke anything tasting like liquorice down ever again. I also am not really into capsicum-y foods - I don’t understand why someone wants to ingest chemical warfare agents. And I confess, I just plain don’t like synthetic fruit flavors in general so I don’t tend to do those long freezy pops and stuff like that, simply don’t really have a sweet tooth.

While I will in general try damned near anything as long as it isn’t rotting or an insect, I do have periods where I simply can not eat anything strongly flavored - even the idea of eating something like a simple piece of pizza is met with nausea. Then I recourse to plain rice and steamed chicken with some salt. And it sucks to spend a day cooking something intricate and interesting to suddenly get a whiff of it and have to run for the bathroom, and go sit in the fresh air until after dinner and the house is aired out. And eat plain rice and chicken. Or sometimes not even chicken. I can 90% of the time manage plain rice and chicken, or bread and butter, though sometimes it is plain saltines and water. <shrug> I am certain if you caught me in one of my nausea modes you would figure I am one of the picky eaters.

29

A person can eat a limited menu and still be healthy. A person can eat a wide range of foods and be wildly unhealthy. Do you consider it your business as well if someone is overweight, smokes, drinks, imbibes caffeine, goes to loud concerts frequently (those hearing aids won’t buy themselves!), works around radiation, has too many children, has too few children, enjoys outdoor pursuits, needs narcotic medication to function, wears high heels regularly, parties, I could go on. All of those things could end up in with negative health consequences. Some of them are much more likely to than being a limited eater. You must be a blast to be around.

30

Hey. I like to eat what I like to eat. Get off my case.

31

Fine, but there are thousands of foods in the territory between those things, and chicken-fingers-and-fries. Millions of Americans eat these foods. The thread asks about people who don’t and won’t.

32

I’ve known a few picky eaters over the years and the only one that really annoyed me was the one that thought no one should eat things she didn’t like.

33

The discussion was originally about people who eat nothing but the type of food on the kids’ menu lik chicken strips, fries, etc., and avoid veggies and anything else that is potentially healthy. And yes, I openly complain about that. Now I have to pay a penalty if I don’t buy insurance. It cost me almost $400 this past year, and if I hadn’t gotten insurance this year, it would have doubled.

Now I have insurance I can’t afford to use, because the deductible is too high. I never go to the doctor anyway, because I eat very healthily and take good care of my health in general.

So pay my insurance premiums or the cost of the no-insurance penalty, or just deal with my complaints. Those are your options. Pick one.

34

These people may have intense gastrointestinal problems they keep quiet about in polite company. In my own case, I still try to experiment, but I am incredibly shortsighted as anyone within howling distance of my bathroom afterwards can attest ;).

35

I doubt if there are millions of Americans eating witchity grubs.

And I’m saying I don’t and I won’t

36

The original OP wasn’t terribly judgmental, albeit, it’s hard not to be perceived that way when comparing an adult diet to a toddlers-- but there are people who eat that way, and the OP just wanted a term for it, and knew “picky” was overly broad.

There are terms for other kinds of diets, usually made up by the adherents to the diets themselves, like “vegetarian,” and no one considers it pejorative in and of itself (there will always be people who don’t like vegetarians, but it’s not a judgment to call someone a vegetarian). There are “raw foods” people, “gluten-free” people, “paleos,” people “doing Atkins,” etc. So there’s also a comfort food diet. Some people who follow it may not be aware that they are doling so, but I’ve observed it, just like the OP has. I have no idea what these people BMIs, cholesterol levels, blood sugar levels, etc., are so I make no judgments about their health.

37

I don’t mind if people are super picky about what they eat, and it doesn’t matter to me if it’s a texture or health or fear thing. Eat what you want, I don’t care.

What I DO care about is that person not giving a heads-up about those limitations BEFORE we’ve made reservations, driven over, paid for parking, got seated, and gotten our drinks.

Picky is fine. Picky and obnoxiously clueless is another kettle of stinking fish.

38

Most do not, though, IME. They just have never grown up in their relationship to food.

39

I assume you’re the perfect specimen of health, and that you will never find yourself in the hospital due to a bad habit or risky activity. My god, you could injure yourself exercising, but if you don’t, you could end up with heart disease! Whatever will you do!

If you want to get angry about abuse of health and the cost of premiums, save your ire for mothers who drink while pregnant, freebase heroin smokers, and people who fake seizures to use the hospital to avoid court. Malnutrition due to veggie avoidance isn’t costing you much at all.

40

Are you sure?