New Eating Disorder: French Fries and Plain Spaghetti

Scott Hardie | July 7, 2010
Even though 90% of what I eat these days comes out of a Lean Cuisine or Nutrisystem box, I still feel pity for adult picky eaters whose diets are limited to maybe a dozen plain items. Talk about indulging a childhood habit way too long into life. (Thanks for the link, Anna.)

I believe that these people sincerely can't eat anything new, but I wonder what effect it actually has on them. They describe it as a "shock to their system," but did they give themselves time to get over the shock and keep eating until their body got used to it? I guess I'm just curious for more detail about what solutions they've tried and whether they were successful.

And I understand the skepticism that they face, but it seems inevitable. One says that "you wouldn't eat a handful of grass" – but it seems to me that if everybody ate grass and it was perfectly normal, that I'd at least try grass once or twice; same for eating any other weird thing they suggested. That doesn't mean that my sense of what's healthy to put in my body is based on what other people think (clearly I gained weight and am now losing it in very unhealthy ways), but it does mean that my sense of what constitutes normal eating habits is based on other people's, and I'm curious how much these picky eaters see it that way. Clearly they've had a lifetime to think about it.

Denise Sawicki | July 7, 2010
My old bf "Milwaukee Guy" was a bit like this and he was a very large gentleman. He didn't try a lot of different normal meats like pepperoni until his late 20's and still wouldn't touch anything that had been near an onion or mushroom. I think he said he only ate stuff like pasta and bread when he was younger.

Steve West | July 7, 2010
My kids are like that with foods that have a different texture. Once, I tried to get one to try a plum. It has a different feel than most fruits but that didn't occur to me until after a small bite made her gag. I, myself, have a difficult time getting past some mental images of animals. I'm a dedicated carnivore but I've been to a hog farm. Disgusting. And I continue to struggle with the notion of eating anything from the ocean that's a bottom feeder or utilizes a filter for feeding.

Dave Stoppenhagen | July 7, 2010
My sister-in-law indulges one of my nieces that way, if someone makes dinner for the whole family my sister-in-law will make something completely different so that she doesn't have to try it. She is one of the pickiest eaters I have ever met.

Scott Hardie | July 7, 2010
I'm no expert, but I wonder if pickiness comes in the same stages for most people. When you're very little, you'll eat whatever comes into your hands – bugs, grass, dirt, it doesn't matter. After a few years, your evolutionary instincts kick in and you refuse to put anything in your mouth that doesn't fit into a very narrow range of your trusted favorites. As you age into your teen years, this gradually eases, and there's a time when you're very open to experimenting with new foods around high school and college age; maybe you seek out the most ethnic restaurant you can find with your friends just so you can say you tried it. That's the way it was for me anyway, and I remember being that age and thinking that the adventurousness would last, but it didn't. I still try new things all the time, but I almost never like anything new that I haven't tried before, as if it's just too alien to my experience. Just last week I tried longans and found them unpleasant; they looked like jellied eyeballs when peeled and they tasted like vinegar-soaked grapes. If I had tried the same food before my mind started rejecting everything new, would I have enjoyed it? Is there a way to untrain my mind so that I can like new foods again?

Samir Mehta | July 7, 2010
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 8, 2010
I'm a little in awe of people who seem to happily eat anything, such as folks like Tony who have been stationed overseas and have been exposed to a lot of exotic food and developed a taste for it. I kind of think we're all picky eaters of a sort. The extreme cases profiled in the article are on one end of the spectrum, and adventurous types to try anything are at the other end, and the rest of us merely fall somewhere in between.

Aaron Shurtleff | July 9, 2010
I sometimes wish I were more of a picky eater. Even things I don't actually enjoy eating, I will eat from time to time, just to not cause a fuss or problem.

Maybe that is more of a personality problem than an eating problem though...

And I have never understood the texture problem with foods. I hear that pretty often from people, but I can never wrap my head around disliking something for the texture! Maybe that's part of the key to non-pickiness?

Jackie Mason | July 10, 2010
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 11, 2010
Agreed, Jackie. It sounds childish. The objection to "squishy" guacamole seems to illustrate to the texture issue. I don't quite understand that either, Aaron, but maybe it has to do with our ability to imagine bad things about the texture of something without eating it, while taste is harder to presume.

Two kinds of food that I would like to get into more are sushi and Indian food. I've had so many bad examples of both (bad even by the standards of my companions, who normally love it) that I gave up trying for a while. I'm slowly coming around on sushi due to a number of good restaurants in this area, but Indian food is not so favorably represented around here and may take a while.

Jackie Mason | July 12, 2010
[hidden by request]

Amy Austin | July 12, 2010
Like Jackie, I tend to find it both childish and off-putting when someone is a picky eater... and I don't often succeed in not rolling my eyes, either. This really hit home with me when I was eating a lot of meals at Sally's Cafe (the cute name they've given the Salvation Army chow hall) -- I was really quite stunned by some of the eating behaviors I saw there. At least one might be chalked up to mental issues... probably more than one, but this was the only one I witnessed that seemed blatantly apparent. That was the guy I mentioned previously when discussing the need to eat at Sally's.

Not finished with my comment, but have to get out the door to work... more later.