I Had A Random Thought...

[Patrick R]

Sure, but the problem there seems to be their social skills, not their palate. Unless it's "Sorry, I'm vegan/gluten-free/whatever" I can't eat there", you should just go with the flow and work it out when you get there. That's just social etiquette. 

[Bjorn]

I think that's where the judgement comes from though.  It's not just a narrow palate, it's the imposition of that palate on others in social settings, breaking the social contract. And yeah, I'm specifically talking about people who have no health, ethical, moral, etc., reasons for their dietary choices.  Just incredibly narrow preferences, almost universally what you would consider things that a kid or maybe young adult would want to eat all the time.

 

The weird thing is that the people I know like this don't lack social skills in other contexts.  They just cannot break out of the rails they are stuck on in terms of food. 

[jennegatron]

This is so bizarre to me, because I'm the pinnacle of picky eaters, but I have never in my adult life vetoed a restaurant due to it. No matter where I go I can find SOMETHING I can eat and will like. I also only talk about how I don't eat vegetables unless someone specifically asks me about it.

 

My parents never made separate meals for me & my younger sister, but they would make sides that we didn't have to eat because they wanted to have it (most often canned vegetables)

 

When I was a little baby child I HATED green peppers because they made everything else taste like green peppers and the taste was so strong to me, so I totally buy that kids taste things more intensely. 

[Patrick R]

I was a picky eater for a long time (broke out of it a couple years ago once I started working as a cook) but I would never have done that. But even when going to places other people would want to go to I would get made fun of and judged for only ordering chicken fried rice or burgers or whatever sushi has fried shrimp in it. I always thought that was incredibly shitty and unnecessary. 

 

I think there is a weird very blurry line where people go from being enthusiastic about health and nutrition to being too aggressive with it, and there is a weird culture of "if you live a healthy life you are a better person than those sheeple who still eat processed foods" that goes with it and it grosses me out. It partly goes into my beliefs about body positivity, and ties into the trope of the "good fatty" who eats healthy and works out and still can't control their size, and that they are "better" than those who eat crap and don't exercise. 

 

A lot of people I have dealt with who are health nuts (read: get mad at people who don't meet their standards for healthy living) are people who were fat growing up and worked really hard to achieve and maintain their ideal size. Which is really great for them, except when they then turn that fear outward and shit-talk every fat person they see. I used to work at Whole Foods and this kind of behavior was an epidemic, and the corporate culture totally supported it (even giving greater employee discounts to those who get health screenings which measured irrelevant shit like BMI) so it's no surprise.

 

To be clear, not accusing anyone here of any of this. Just explaining where I'm coming from and why it feels so weird to me.

[Mangela Lansbury]

My old roommate would flip out if I cooked something she didn't like for myself. If she could smell it and see it, that was just an assault on her because of some long story from when she was young that any normal person would have gotten over.

I couldn't make, like, baked beans from a can, sauerkraut, certain egg dishes... I could keep wheat bread in the apartment, but toasting it would lead to a tantrum.

I don't mind people eating what they eat, but there's a point where it's a bridge too far. I do catch myself making condescending remarks sometimes and that's a problem that I'm working on, but some people just take it to a ridiculous degree and I don't feel too bad for rolling my eyes at them.

[Gormongous]

I was a picky eater for a long time (broke out of it a couple years ago once I started working as a cook) but I would never have done that. But even when going to places other people would want to go to I would get made fun of and judged for only ordering chicken fried rice or burgers or whatever sushi has fried shrimp in it. I always thought that was incredibly shitty and unnecessary. 

 

Yeah, I feel you with this. I don't think of myself as a picky eater, just someone with a strong aversion to spicy and bitter foods, but it's hard to convey the kind of shit that people give me, even now that we're all adults, because I take a little time to figure out the least bitter beer on tap or the least spicy dish at the Indian restaurant. Food is so weird and personal for everyone, but I've definitely noticed a trend among most people where disliking specific dishes is okay (people are allowed to dislike something) and disliking entire categories of food is okay (you can't fault vegetarians, vegans, and dieters for their choices), but disliking anything in between those two extremes is being a shitty baby who needs to grow up and like the foods that the person criticizing you happens to like. I'd never veto anyone's choice for a restaurant, unless there's literally nothing that I could enjoy eating there, and I wouldn't refuse to eat anything that anyone made for me, but I've still come to accept that I'll always get condescending remarks from otherwise nice people, just for ordering a burger at a gastropub or chicken fried rice at a Thai restaurant.

[Badfinger]

I had a roommate whose girlfriend's palate was so narrow it basically boiled down to hamburgers/cheeseburgers, ketchup as the only condiment, and plain and pepperoni pizza. If she ate other things in private at her home I have no idea. We were invited to a Mardi Gras house party with New Orleans style cooking, I remember it being amazing food, and we literally had to stop at a fast food restaurant on the way there so she could get food before we went to dinner. That is what I think of when I think of picky eaters, someone whose view of food was is so narrow that it could potentially not be supported by basic American-style restaurants because they didn't serve the right kind of plain hamburger.

 

I was an incredibly picky eater when I was young. I hated... sauce. Like, all sauce. You know how some kids will get buttered noodles instead of a proper pasta sauce? Nope, dry. Plain cooked pasta on my plate. Chinese food was a nightmare for which I have apologized to my parents profusely. No dressings on salad (I still do not care for a lot of salad dressings and sandwich dressings). And it was such a shame, because my mother was an amazing cook whose food I whined about and squandered on so many occasions. At some point when I was a teenager I decided that hey maybe I should eat food and broke out of it. There's still a bunch of shit I don't like but I'm never somewhere I won't find something interesting.

[Twig]

I used to work at Whole Foods and this kind of behavior was an epidemic, and the corporate culture totally supported it (even giving greater employee discounts to those who get health screenings which measured irrelevant shit like BMI) so it's no surprise.

what the fuck

 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised shit like this happens since I see a new example every day, but fuck.

[Patrick R]

Yep! And employees had to pay (something like 90 bucks) for these screenings too! You can opt out of it (I always did, because gross) but the months leading up to them was like the holiday season of shitty health nut behavior.

[undermind9]

Fortunately my wife and I have similar palate choices - no sea food, similar vegetable aversions, no major diet restrictions on either side.  

 

I have a hard time judging people that are picky eaters since most of my vegetable or food dislikes are irrational and i recognize it, but have no plans of making changes in my life anytime soon.  I am actually more likely to try something new in a public setting to avoid exposure of a particular dislike or asking for an extreme change to a menu item at a restaurant

 

Cooking though at home is no a problem as my partner doesn't like meat on a bone (ribs, bone-in steaks, chicken wings/drum sticks) or any sort of mushrooms - but i can make those for myself if I have a strong desire and either pre-cut them off for her or tell her to eat cereal instead.  And i also found out recently that she does not like chili and i had been making different variations nearly every weekend the last 3-4 winters in the crockpot.

 

 

 

What has been a problem as of late is pregnancy food aversions.  Chicken in any form but shredded gives her instant nausea and other staples of our menu have been sorted out (pork, .  It has been causing a lot of repeats in weekly meal planning which is grating on me, lately it has been grilled hotdogs and tater tots > 2x a week.

 

 

On that topic I am a few years away from a child that can decide their own food, but am hopeful that I will lead him to an open mind and to try things - and no alternate meals for irrational food pouting.  Will check back in May 2018

[Badfinger]

I also have no compunction not to give someone shit for ordering beef well done. It is a personal affront to ruin food like that. (I am mostly joking but I am still gonna tease you)

 

 

Food preferences are weird.

[Zeusthecat]

On that topic I am a few years away from a child that can decide their own food, but am hopeful that I will lead him to an open mind and to try things - and no alternate meals for irrational food pouting.  Will check back in May 2018

 

Good luck! That shit is way way harder than you would think. And just like adults, sometimes they are just not in the mood for a thing they ate and loved the previous day. You would think making macaroni and cheese would be a surefire way to have a nice evening with no complaining. But then you give it to them and they say they don't want it. So you try melting some shredded cheese on top to make it more tasty and gooey and they still refuse. So then you put your foot down and tell them they have no choice and they must eat it. But for some reason, they don't listen to your demands and just sit there staring at their food in disgust for 20 minutes. Then you threaten to take a toy away unless they eat their food and that causes them to start having a meltdown. As things escalate you find out that eating macaroni on this night will be the most painful, traumatizing thing they could imagine and that everything would be fine if they could just have chips and salsa for dinner. You then realize that you have a decision to make that will determine the fate of the rest of your evening. You either double down and force them to eat the macaroni, resulting in the worst night you could imagine. Or you could let them have the chips and salsa and then have a nice evening where everyone is happy and the kids go to bed without issue. Then you remember that salsa is made from tomatoes and tomatoes are good for you. Why not just let them have chips and salsa? IT'S GOOD FOR THEM AFTER ALL RIGHT???

 

So yeah, my daughter had chips and salsa for dinner last night. Don't judge.

[Bjorn]

When I was a little baby child I HATED green peppers because they made everything else taste like green peppers and the taste was so strong to me, so I totally buy that kids taste things more intensely. 

 

On that topic I am a few years away from a child that can decide their own food, but am hopeful that I will lead him to an open mind and to try things - and no alternate meals for irrational food pouting.  Will check back in May 2018

 

My, albeit limited, experience with kids (mine and friends) is that kids' preferences can also suddenly change with almost no clear reason why from an adult perspective.  Part of it may be the taste intensity, or quickly shifting tastes.  Our daughter would basically eat anything up until she was about 4, then the vegetables she would eat suddenly narrowed down to just a few things.  Then around late junior high, early high school, it started opening back up again. 

 

We were never the kind of parents to force her to eat anything though, as I ultimately think that's counter-productive.  Forcing a kid to eat something will not magically make them appreciate it. 

 

One of our daughter's friends literally lived on pop tarts, mac & cheese, corn dogs and cheese pizza.  It was like the same three or four things every day for over a decade of her life.  Pop tarts for breakfast, m&c for lunch, and corn dogs or pizza for dinner.  Every single fucking day.  I try not to be too judgy about other parents, but I could never really get this.

 

 

*snip*

 

And yes, all of this too.

[Dewar]

I had a roommate whose girlfriend's palate was so narrow it basically boiled down to hamburgers/cheeseburgers, ketchup as the only condiment, and plain and pepperoni pizza. If she ate other things in private at her home I have no idea. We were invited to a Mardi Gras house party with New Orleans style cooking, I remember it being amazing food, and we literally had to stop at a fast food restaurant on the way there so she could get food before we went to dinner. That is what I think of when I think of picky eaters, someone whose view of food was is so narrow that it could potentially not be supported by basic American-style restaurants because they didn't serve the right kind of plain hamburger.

 

I was an incredibly picky eater when I was young. I hated... sauce. Like, all sauce. You know how some kids will get buttered noodles instead of a proper pasta sauce? Nope, dry. Plain cooked pasta on my plate. Chinese food was a nightmare for which I have apologized to my parents profusely. No dressings on salad (I still do not care for a lot of salad dressings and sandwich dressings). And it was such a shame, because my mother was an amazing cook whose food I whined about and squandered on so many occasions. At some point when I was a teenager I decided that hey maybe I should eat food and broke out of it. There's still a bunch of shit I don't like but I'm never somewhere I won't find something interesting.

 

At least you ate it cooked. I would eat roughly a one pound package of raw spaghetti a week when I was younger. That and Cheerios, no milk. 

[jennegatron]

My older brother would eat a raw potato before bed each night like it was an apple.

ou cannot rationalize with the irrational.

 

I ate a slice of cheese pizza 4 days a week for lunch for 4 years of high school because I really like cheese pizza.

 

My mother is also a picky eater, just when it comes to meat though. She doesn't like pork so we almost never ate pork of any kind growing up, she doesn't like hamburger if it's in patty/loaf form so we almost never had meatloaf, and if my dad was making hamburgers he'd also make hot dogs/something else for her, especially if we were grilling out.

Every Friday night we would go out as a family to eat, and it might just be fast food, or it might be a sit down place, but every other meal of the week we would eat something homemade. We ate a fairly meat heavy diet because it's the only things that they could coax myself and my sister into eating.

 

As an adult I make an active effort to try new things, and some of these things I feel vindicated in not liking afterward, and others I just silently continue to eat in hopes that no one remembers that I used to hate that thing.  I'm far more open to trying new and different preparations of meat than vegetables, I've found. If you cook something so that the vegetables aren't mushy and cover them in a sauce, I can eat it if I don't think about it too hard.

 

For Gormongous, I highly recommend wheat beers as rarely bitter options. They're my jam, as I hate bitter & spicy things as well. German wheat beers, belgian whites, witbiers, hefeweizens, all make me go all heart eye emoji.

[Ben X]

My old roommate would flip out if I cooked something she didn't like for myself. If she could smell it and see it, that was just an assault on her because of some long story from when she was young that any normal person would have gotten over.

 

I'm very curious what this story is!

[elmuerte]

I eat pretty much everything. Sure there are things I don't like, but it never stops me from trying a similar dish prepared by somebody else a different time. Although, you probably won't see me ordering snails or oysters. I find them boring as fuck. Snails taste like chewed out gum with the flavor of whatever stuff they were put in. And oysters are just like salty snot.

I'm not a big fan of mean you eat of a bone when eating, like drumsticks, chicken wings, spareribs. I'm civilized (sort of), so give me stuff I can eat with knife and fork.

I really hate fish bones, which kind of sucks because I love fish. Finding a fish bone in my mouth can really ruin that dish for me. It's probably because I fear it getting stuck in my throat or something.

[SuperBiasedMan]

In sort of the opposite vein to this... I'm a vegan and find it annoying when people try so hard to accommodate me in restaurant choice. I know it's attempting to be accommodating and inclusive but they don't need to press hard on how a place has vegan options. Almost everywhere does, and even if they don't I'll live with it since it's my decision to have this diet.

I'm more concerned with not going to pay for a €10 burger (vegan) that'll only feel like lunch to me even if they're massive to you because I'm a remorseless eating machine that devours food.

I thought turning vegan might've given me a good excuse to go to dinner without people and not have to buy food but that didn't quite pan out.

(don't take me as a representative for other vegans)

[SuperBiasedMan]

Double post (stupid phone)

[dium]

Don't see the appeal of snails either! First time I had snails I really enjoyed it, but I quickly realized that the reason I enjoyed it was because they were swimming in loads of garlic, butter, and herbs. Replacing the rubbery snails with a bit of bread made the dish even more delicious (if also, perhaps, more transparently artery-clogging).

[Badfinger]

At least you ate it cooked. I would eat roughly a one pound package of raw spaghetti a week when I was younger. That and Cheerios, no milk. 

 

I love the taste/texture of dried pasta and cereals without milk. I'll eat a handful (box) of cheerios or life cereal as a snack. I have cut almost all cereal out of my diet, so the thought of just eating a bowl of kix or something is a strange treat.

[Mangela Lansbury]

I'm very curious what this story is!

For the sauerkraut -- she went to her grandma's house once and she was chopping up all this cabbage, and my old roommate was very interested in what was going on because this was so much cabbage, what would you do with all that! So she helped her prepare everything, and then they put it all in jars to help with this other stuff and then, when they went to put them in the garage, there were already jars there! So she asked what it was and her grandma let her open one and it was rotting and disgusting and had obviously gone bad (after all, I'll have you know, her grandmother was a terrible person who was constantly showing up her parents and trying to buy their love by giving them money when they couldn't afford things, she was the WORST) and because of this experience over 20 years ago, the sight or smell of sauerkraut will make her gag.

And then this one time she was sick -- like really sick, when she was 5 or 6 or maybe it was 7 but young anyway, so sick they didn't know if she would make it! -- and she kept coughing up all this phlegm and it was REALLY gross and wouldn't stop coming up! It was chunky and awful and terrible and there was nothing good about her life ever, but especially not this taste, and the smell when she coughed it up into her nose! But anyway, she got better eventually (there were a lot of doctors, but she never had to go to the hospital for an overnight stay, and one doctor gave her a lollipop but she couldn't even taste it with all the grossness, the doctor was a cruel man with no love in his heart), and when she had a sandwich on wheat bread it tasted EXACTLY like her phlegm had! So she's never eaten wheat bread since because the smell just reminds her of that terrible awful no good taste.

I've tried to capture the rambling, the tangents, and the general woe is me tone in the stories to justify "I don't like it." I hope it comes across.

[Bjorn]

I mostly cut out bread a couple of years ago (not strictly gluten free, but cut down on grains and grain carbs, still willing to cheat when convenient or for something particularly tasty).  And after quite awhile of not eating bread, I find it to often have a really strong, and not very pleasant, smell and taste.  Particularly if it's a doughy or yeasty bread.  I had a similar experience with soda when I cut it out, after months of not drinking one, they mostly taste like a syrupy mess now. 

 

It's funny how if you cut out a food for long enough, it can change how it tastes and smells to you. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

It's funny how if you cut out a food for long enough, it can change how it tastes and smells to you. 

 

I can attest to this. Just 5 years of veganism (after being an omnivore) red meat sometimes smells like dogfood to me when it's cooking.

[Zeusthecat]

I mostly cut out bread a couple of years ago (not strictly gluten free, but cut down on grains and grain carbs, still willing to cheat when convenient or for something particularly tasty).  And after quite awhile of not eating bread, I find it to often have a really strong, and not very pleasant, smell and taste.  Particularly if it's a doughy or yeasty bread.  I had a similar experience with soda when I cut it out, after months of not drinking one, they mostly taste like a syrupy mess now. 

 

It's funny how if you cut out a food for long enough, it can change how it tastes and smells to you. 

 

Lately I've become super sensitive to that vinegar smell that a lot of cheap bread gets when it is nearing its expiration. We were buying only the good fresh bread for awhile and reverted back to getting some of the cheap stuff out of convenience. I opened a bag of Sara Lee bagels the other day and it smelled like a combination of vinegar and moldy cheese. I contemplated for a full minute whether I should put a bagel into the toaster before ultimately deciding to toss them.