When Picky Eaters Grow Up
By raincoaster
As you can imagine, it’s nothing good. People who were picky eaters as children and who maintain those habits to adulthood become just exactly the precious, undersocialized, Cathy/Dilbert-comic-hoarding loners their parents always feared they would. Let’s go to the transcript, courtesy of the Globe and Mail.
For as long as he can remember, he has been able to tolerate only a few foods, including dry chicken or well-done steak and plain, sauce-free vegetables. None of the components can touch each other on the plate.
On evenings when his wife makes herself pasta, Mr. Haselden eats his own chicken dinner at the far end of the table to distance himself from the aroma of her dish…
“Weddings are the worst,” Mr. Haselden said, noting that at a recent wedding he was the only adult eating a children’s meal of chicken fingers and fries, while everyone else dined on fish.
We shall leave the metaphor unspoken. Actually, having a full-grown adult sitting at the kid’s table eating out of a Pirate Pack (TM) because of his terror of cream sauces might just be the best deterrent example you could possibly show your children.
September 26th, 2008 at 9:16 am
There is some hope for a picky eater. My husband had a long list of things he couldn’t eat – including tomatoes, nearly all cheese, mushrooms. After almost 5 years of marriage, he now can eat chunks of tomatoes in sauce, ricotta cheese and parmesan when part of food and sauces made with mushrooms in it (he just doesn’t eat the mushrooms). His palate has expanded significantly since we’ve been married – mostly because he’s more open to trying new things (and re-trying things he thought he didn’t like).
September 26th, 2008 at 9:45 am
My uncle (by marriage) is like that. During the full turkey Christmas dinner, he will sit down with a plate of mashed potatoes. That’s it.
I have to say that I really don’t think I could be in a relationship with someone as picky as Mr. Haselden. It just seems like it represents other things — narrow-mindedness, a lack of willingness to try new things, no sense of adventure, and even a lack of sensuality. How in the heck would you ever travel with someone who only eats dry chicken and plain vegetables, and won’t let his foods touch each other? Going out to a restaurant with someone like that would be mortifying. Dinner invitations, equally so.
My folks raised me to always try new foods (and then to try them again even if I didn’t like them the first time), with the result that there are very few foods that I will not try. I’m glad that Mr. Haselden found someone who can live with his foolishness, because I certainly could not.
September 26th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Amen, Petite. I had enough trouble dating a wonderful vegetarian. It wasn’t a political or moral choice – his mother had belonged to some wierd cult (redundant, I know) and had raised him as a vegetarian. Even so, it made cooking a pain in the neck. Eating-out? Mexican. There are not many vegetarian restaurants in Memphis. Nor are there many Mexican restaurants.
I love my vegetarian friends, but I hate to cook for them. Just eat meat already!
September 26th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I wouldn’t ask someone to go against their moral principles, but I did have a heck of a time keeping the words “man up” out of this piece. Being a grownup does mean being okay with not having things your own way some of the time.
And I used to babysit a kid who, according to his parents, ate nothing but canned pork and beans and weiners. When they went away for a month, leaving him in my care, they brought over two cases of pork and beans and a half a mixed-luncheonmeat animal of weiners. And as they drove off I turned to him and said, “If that’s what you want, you’re going to have to cook it. But you can have what We’re having” and after the first day he didn’t really kick up a fuss.
The article linked to goes on to say that parents can help kids grow out of the arbitrary boundary-setting phase by just not making that big a fuss out of it. Beans and Weiners boy did grow out of his phase, and in fact became a natural bodybuilding champ and nutritionist, so he did improve his eating habits along the way.