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

In My Humble Opinion
121

“Midwesterner” I think is the proper term.

OK, that’s an unfair generalization, but it does have some truth to it. I remember living in Ohio for a bit, and would often have problems trying to get people to try new kinds of foods. An Indian place opened up, and almost no one wanted to accompany me. I found two people who would come, only to find out later that both of them were transplanted northeasterners.

I also remember bringing Dim Sum into the office for everyone to try. I’d even explain what was in each dish. The most unusual ingredient in one of the dishes was taro, which tastes almost exaclty like potato. There was a wide variety of dishes with shrimp and chicken, and so on. Two people (a religious couple) told me that they would not even try it because ‘it looked too chinese’, whatever that means.

We also had a pot-luck where everyone was supposed to bring in dishes that were representative of our heritage. I brought in potato pancakes (aka latkes) with sour cream, and bagels and cream cheese, and lox with onion and tomato. I ended up bringing almost all of it home with me.

BTW, my middle-schooler nephew is a very picky eater, but he has several severe food allergies, so at least he has a good excuse.

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NM

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THAT, I would notice.

Nah, there’s a difference between noticing and caring. I noticed what everyone ordered for dinner last night because it was quiet for a minute and I sat nearest the server. I didn’t, and don’t care, but I noticed it and remembered long enough to help the server when she was holding 5 hot plates and nobody else would tell her who ordered what. Honestly, I wish this didn’t happen. It gets in the way of things I actually need to know, like where the hell is my left shoe?!?!

:frowning: I don’t want to generalize, but when the shoe (which I still can’t find) fits…

We tried to do that in my very multi-culti midwestern office a few years ago. I was looking forward to food from India, Taiwan, and Germany. We ended up with spaghetti, green salad, and tortilla chips with salsa. probably mild. :smack:

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p.s. “Nanovore?” “vanillatarian?”

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PITA-eater?

126

Eeew. Pita? Isn’t that ethnic food??? :eek:

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These are actually cute, though ice cream is definitely not one of the things I’m picky about.

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Slight Hijack:

I had this exact same experience with just the potato latkes, sour cream and applesauce. Not in the Midwest but in Maryland. However it was with a group of people who were almost entirely from the South. (Missouri, Northern Florida and Alabama.) Several people in the group refused to eat “Jewish” food. One even “JOKED” saying “This is probably what ‘THEY’ were eating when they crucified our Lord.”
It was not a pleasant working environment. And before the total hijack begins there was an eventual lawsuit.

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“I do not like it Sam-I-am.
I do not like green eggs and ham!”:rolleyes:

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:rolleyes:

I have no problems finding a wide variety of cuisines in my backwards, Cursed-Earth wasteland area of the midwest.

131

Back in the 1980s before Guinness Stout was popular in the US they ran a whole series of TV ads trying to generate some buzz and interest in the stuff. In those Olden Dayes you could only find it in specialty pubs, and it never sold well even there. The brewer wanted to change that, and make Guinness the Next Big Thing in beer.

The premise & tag line of these ads was “Guiness: I’ve never tried it and I don’t like it!”

With vignettes of folks being cajoled into tasting it, screwing up their face as if expecting cough syrup, then being overjoyed at the rapturous wonder of the sublime [del]flavor[/del] flavour of Guiness.

Anybody who grew up recently will only know they were wildly successful. Guinness Stout is definitely mainstream beer in the US now.

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I’m fairly lucky in this respect; the only spice I’m noticably allergic to is limited to a few Thai dishes and easy to detect by smell or taste. And it’s not like anaphylaxis allergic where it could kill me, just nausea, indigestion, and the trots where I feel like dying. :o

I will try almost anything, and the foods I would avoid from “squick” factor are pretty much unknown outside their home areas. I’ve had whale (Meh. Tastes like a cheap cut of beef cooked in sardine oil.), sea cucumber (tough and not much taste), jellyfish (not bad, as it was prepared), and a bunch of other oddities.

My aunt was one of the instigators in this. She loved to cook, and would turn out reasonable copies of the native food for whatever area I was studying in Geography. This led to an incident with a neighbor. She was soaking kidneys for Steak and Kidney Pie, and this neighbor came over. He then said that “You’d never get me to eat that!” I would have thought he knew better. :smack: A few weeks later he was invited over for “English Beef Pie”, and commented on really liking the mushrooms on it. “Mushrooms” Yeah, right. :wink: We told him a week later.

As a kid, the only thing I can recall putting me into open rebellion was this thing my dad liked and made on (thankfully rare) occasions. He called it “Breaded Tomatoes” - and don’t confuse it with fried green tomatoes, which I love. This involved canned tomatoes, white bread, and sugar (and probably other things) stewed together. He grew up in the Depression, so it may have been a “cook what you have” kind of thing. To me, it looked like, tasted like, and made me want to, puke. :frowning:

133

Good lord. I was taught that you ate and drank whatever was offered if you were a guest (barring ACTUAL allergic reactions like anaphylaxis). Even if your host offered wormwood and gall, you’d say, “My word, I’ve never had wormwood and gall like this before!”

What the hell is wrong with people?

134

I think ‘picky’ is the wrong word here. I eat many different types of foods, love spice, have few allergies, but I am picky as shit about my food. If I go to dinner at someone’s house and I don’t like what they’re serving, I’m still going to eat it. That’s just good manners. But if I fail to bring my lunch to work and I go to the cafeteria and all they have is cold cut sandwiches that are 90% roll and 10% suspicious-looking ham? I’m skipping lunch. If my kids want to go to the Science Museum and eat lunch there, where everything is overpriced and under-tasty? I’m skipping lunch or making sure I bring something with me. If I’m at a conference and the chicken is covered in some creamy sauce and the vegetables are drenched in butter? I’ll probably unearth some unsauced chicken and make a go of it, but leave what I don’t like. Besides, there’s always bread at those things, much as I try to avoid too many carbs.

Being hungry won’t kill me and I’d rather be hungry than eat something I don’t enjoy, with the social graces situation (dinner at someone’s house) excepted. So, I am super picky but can almost always find something on a menu when I go out with friends.

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Allergies and specific aversions to certain smells or tastes aside, I don’t see it as a huge deal that people ask you to try something different. The stories people have posted here about pickiness mostly fall under people refusing to try different things on principle, fear of the unknown, or dislike of going outside their comfort zone. In those cases, they’ve created annoyance, wasted people’s times, and generally ruined outings. Its perfectly fine to say to someone who you know that’s a friend or an acquaintance that they are being childish. I think its 100% incumbent on the person with the problem to mention it beforehand so they don’t decide for the whole dinner party at the last second that they all need to go somewhere else. That’s being not only childish, but a selfish prick.

Personally, I don’t drink any alcohol, and there’s a couple common things I don’t eat because I’ve never liked the taste. Fortunately, that usually doesn’t preclude my attendance at gatherings and I can always find something else. As for drinking, all my friends and coworkers I eat with know I don’t drink and it doesn’t impact them at all. If they try to push me to drink, that annoys me and they’re wrong, but if I try to get them to eat pig brains, I would be at fault.

Yenta?

How about “gastrodick”?

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Both my brother and my sister are like that. With my sister if you offer her something she asks “what’s in it?” While looking at the dish with fear and revulsion; a salad is lettuce and mayo, nothing else. My brother is not much better. Like I said, I’m sure I know picky eaters who have learned to be picky without being socially inept, but if your diet hasn’t changed since grade school and you make sure everyone else has to bend to meet your needs, you have a problem.

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What if she simply smiles politely and says “no thanks, I’m good” ? Is that acceptable or do you then push the issue? Well, I don’t suspect * you* do, but I wonder how many people don’t stop at that and keep trying to get a person to “just try it”.

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Of course I’d be okay with that, but that’s not what she does. Every time at every gathering. “what’s in it?” then (pointedly) “no thanks.” Mostly she doesn’t get invited to stuff.

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Let me preference this post with a disclaimer: I’m about to go full-on Judgey McJudgerson, and I don’t care. This is my humble opinion. Feel free to disagree, but don’t expect me to care.

I have so many good friends who are picky, and they really do eat basically chicken fingers and fries. And sweets. Any sort of sweets are fine, as long as they don’t contain fruit. Fruit is icky.

Picky eaters, by my definition, are not people who have a legitimate reasons for avoiding foods (medical, physiological, religious, etc). Picky eaters are just people who won’t try new things. For me eating is the ultimate simple pleasure in life (well, sex is, but most people don’t have sex as often as they eat), and these gastrodicks (that’s the word I’m going with, thanks YogSosoth) choose to take no joy in food and go a step further by draining the joy out of it for other people. Yes they do.

IME, they usually fall into two groups: (1) those who “can’t tolerate” certain textures and (2) those who have ridiculous excuses to avoid trying any new food.

For the people who use the texture excuse, I find it funny that the only tolerable textures are inevitably those foods with a lot of starch, salt and/or sugar. Veggies and fruits need not apply. Grown people will eat three helpings of mashed potatoes then–with a straight face–insist that they can’t eat tomatoes because of the graininess. Oh, of course, it’s because it’s grainy AND sweet, and they can’t handle the mix. But what about that bag of sour gummies they ate for supper? They’re grainy and sweet, right? OH, those are fine because it’s big grains of sugar, not small grains. It’s an endless rabbit hole of excuses to not have to eat anything fresh and healthy.

The excuse people believe that all Chinese is made of cats and dogs, all condiments contain jizz, any restaurant except the one they eat at (the one that serves the greasy, entirely too salty, cheap, low quality, frozen fried chicken fingers) is unsanitary. Veggies are bad because of pesticides and GMO, and fruits are always too ripe or not ripe enough. Somehow they always have a handy excuse to only eat the one or two things they always eat.

After many years of observing these crybabies, I don’t buy their excuses anymore. It’s cowardice, plain and simple. Gastrodicks are scared of new things, they delight in being hard to please. It’s bad and they should feel bad.

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Agreed. I have a problem with certain textures, such as half-gel, half-mush, so I don’t eat flan. Know how I know that? I tried it! I don’t like gritty paste, so I don’t eat hummus. I’ll bet you can guess how I know that. :smiley: Admit it, gastrobabies, you are AFRAID of something that will stick with you a whole 5 damn seconds.

I love “gastrodick” but that sounds like the opposite. A gastrodick to me is the guy who only eats cheese from yak milk produced in the 3rd week of December under a full moon, because anything else is inferior.