Paging Mangetout.
I have a friend who was a vegetarian since childhood, and who didn’t eat any mixtures or sauces because as a child he was always afraid the adults were sneaking meat into something. He does eat “mixtures” like bread and cake and plain chocolate, because child-him didn’t realize they were mixtures. He has no philosophical objection to beans, but doesn’t like them, and of course, won’t eat them if they’ve been mixed with seasoning or other sauce-like things.
He basically lived on white pasta and milk. He had a serious dietary crisis when he developed lactose intolerance, but fortunately, Lactaid hit the market just around then. (no, he doesn’t eat yogurt or most cheeses.)
We teased him, but he wasn’t annoying, because he was easy to feed. You just assumed he wouldn’t eat anything anyone else was eating, and you boiled some pasta for him, or bought a loaf of bread for him. At a restaurant, he would order plain pasta, with butter, no parsley, which almost every place can accommodate.
Studies on the health impact of diet routinely find very small effects. Statistically significant, but small. That really isn’t what’s wrong with America. Sure, my friend’s diet is SO limited that I’m sure his mysterious aches and pains are related to it, but he’s an extreme outlier.
And if we are going to talk about who is annoying to eat with, the food evangelists are more annoying than the picky eaters. Most adult picky eaters have learned how to fend for themselves and let me eat what I want, after all.
99 % of everyone on the SDMB is a supertaster, a tetrochomat, has an IQ above 150, was walking at 6 months, writing at 12 months, reading Shakespeare at 18 months.
As if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared.
I’m not a supertaster! I read somewhere that supertasters tend to dislike the flavor of fatty or sweet foods, and that ain’t me. I’m a suprataster!
Not to pick on you (I only chose your post as an example of the several defensive responses in this thread…
Nobody really minds what you eat (or they shouldn’t), except in situations where it directly impacts them. If you’re part of a group dining out, and you will only eat chicken fingers, then you have significantly reduced the choice available to others in the group (assuming, that is, chicken fingers aren’t available everywhere).
Everybody does this to some extent or other of course, even if their very name implies they don’t.
LOL I would love to be a tetrachromat!
Actually I understand that some of the synthetic corneas can let the patient see further into the IR or UV, can’t remember which. My roomie had her cataracts repaired last fall and now she has distance vision without glasses, which is a hell of a change from her almost cokebottle glasses previously. She had the option of close or distance vision and opted for distance. If I end up with cataracts I think I would go for distance vision as well and would adore if I could see further into one end of the spectrum =)
And the remaining 1% are the *really *smart ones.
Calvin Trillin once described a vision of hell where he and a group of athletes were at the best Chinese restaurant of all time, but he had to defer to his companions to order for the table. None of them were willing to try any of the fantastic, spicy dishes offered in the menu, but insisted on getting things like fried chicken.
Picky eaters are one thing, but the real joy is being out with people who feel compelled to grill the server about whether the food is non-GMO, MSG-free, free-range etc. etc.
Heh. It’s a little aggravating. I can’t eat seafood. Oh, I try it and cook it for my Wife (salmon on the grill for her, a steak for me), but it all has an underlying flavor that disagrees with me. ALL of it. I’ll eat pretty much anything else, but in some circles, that makes me a ‘picky’ eater.
I wish I liked it, I really do. It would expand my choices.
If I was starving on an island, sure, I’d eat it, but what is the point when there are other choices?
My Wife doesn’t like certain things too. Bacon, Corned beef and cabbage, sauerkraut. And I have to be very carful with any type of gravy that goes with a meal. Stews are very tricky. Can’t be too thick. I have to over cook steaks. No pink. I’ve figured out how to do it and retain flavor, but it’s difficult. (Beef tenderloins last night. Grey inside. Sigh.)
I’m the ‘picky’ eater though because I can’t eat seafood. Uh huh.
I’ll be cooking Egg Foo Yung tonight. Gotta be careful the sauce is not too thick though.
I exaggerate a bit, I do most of our meals because I enjoy cooking. And after 19 years, I’ve been able to adjust it to things we both like. But really, I think she is a heck of a lot picker than I am.
I wonder if there are any instances where a picky eater was successfully converted into “non-picky” eater.
Anyone want to cop to being successfully “shamed” into eating more adventurously?
I am none of those things. In fact, I think my sense of taste is less, perhaps much less, than other people’s.
Bad studies they are, I have no doubt. I’m in markedly better health than I was 16 years ago, and it’s nearly all due to a change in my diet. I can also speak for dozens of other people on this as well. When you really correct your diet all the way, problems disappear that you didn’t even realize were changeable.
Like I already said, people in this country have no idea what a good diet actually is. That extends to the people designing these studies.
Near the end of his life, my dad started eating significantly more spicy/hotter foods.
On the other hand, he had also been smoking multiple packs a day for something like 40 years at that point.
All things considered, I’ll take the health hit of “The guy who orders a burger when the manager decides we need a group lunch” over the health hit of “takes up smoking to kill enough taste buds to make cajun food OK.”
My father went from someone who wouldn’t eat rice unless it had cinnamon and sugar on it and thought spaghetti was too exotic to someone who would try anything. I remember the first time he had sushi, he was planning on having a steak but decided to give sushi a try. He loved it.
Not me, but one of my sisters. She went through college being an extremely picky eater. She will admit now that most of it was in her head. She didn’t like change or variation of any kind as a child/young adult. Food was just part of a larger issue.
For example: she wouldn’t eat any breakfast cereal but Cheerios. She would only eat tomatoes in ketchup or spaghetti/pizza sauce. She would eat mozzarella on pizza, but would refuse to eat any other kind of cheese, ever. The only sandwiches she would eat as a kid were bologna and peanut butter. She would eat foods that my mother made that had onions in them, but if you told her there were onions in something, or if she could see them, she wouldn’t eat it. She would eat patty sausage, but not link. She would eat only eggs fried medium. Pancakes were OK, but not waffles or French toast. She would eat any kind of pasta/tomato sauce Italian food, but not lasagna. When you refuse to eat mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, cheese, and anything spicy, your food choices on menus get pretty limited. She ate peanut butter sandwiches for most meals through college because she couldn’t be sure what lurked in the cafeteria meals (most of which were pretty good).
When she went to medical school, it was the subtle shaming of her peer group that forced her to change. People wanted to go out to restaurants with sophisticated and/or ethnic menus. She went and forced herself to try things because it was not sophisticated to be picky. Also, she decided she wanted to lose weight, and was shamed by her exercise/diet pals for her pathetically narrow diet. She also realized that diets encourage you to eat a lot of vegetables–most of which she had refused to ever try. She had a roommate who I am pretty sure mocked her for her limited and childish grocery list (Cheerios, peanut butter, white bread, bologna).
I have always been an adventurous eater and will try anything, but now my sister is the one who introduces me to new foods because she seeks out new food experiences more actively than I do.
Why would anyone care if someone is picky about what they eat or not? I’m super picky about meats like steaks and most steakhouses don’t get it to my liking. But no one cares so I’ll nitpick as I please.
Yea! I’m a 1%er!
Ditto. I do let people know ahead of time that I cannot eat any tree nuts at all, but I only ask to be told what they are in. I don’t want anyone to change their recipe. Just warn me.
I have on and off difficulties with spicy foods thanks to using steroid inhalers for my asthma. A sub-clinical level of oral thrush can make spicy foods absolute torture. Ditto citrus or vinegar. Mustard. Alcohol. Carbonated drinks.
Peppers give me indigestion and I can taste the minerals in kale/brussels sprouts/other hellish dark green leafies.
So stop making assumptions when I use the bleu cheese or ranch dressing on my salad. That vinergary dressing fucking hurts. I’m not only eating yogurt because it’s “healthy”, but also because it helps kill of yeast and calm down the discomfort.