FOOD « In Which He Was Simply Born a Finicky Eater »
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 10:00AM 
I Have Never Known a Grapefruit
by TYLER COATES
I am twenty-five years old and I have never eaten a banana.
To my knowledge, I've also never had an orange, or a cherry. Once a girl I had a crush on pressured me into eating a strawberry, but I haven't had one since.
I was a freshman in college before I branched out from spaghetti to other forms of pasta, because I was so certain that the different shapes would also somehow affect how the pasta's taste.
Most of my friends have accepted, for the most part, that I am the pickiest eater they've ever met outside of their fussy, four-year-old cousins. I can't really explain what is wrong with me, but in the past year or so I've really tried my best to figure out what my deal is (that is, I tried on my own, as I can't afford therapy).
My friends love to play "What Does Tyler Eat?", which, next to Cranium, is my least-favorite game to play with mixed company. The rules are simple: you only need to list of common foods most people eat, and I respond with a "yes" or a "no." One should expect mostly negative responses.
Foods I don't like include macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, pineapples, nuts, beans (of all varieties), pork chops, ham, peas, eggs, tomatoes, and oatmeal.
I've come to accept my eating foibles, but it is a difficult set of rules to live by. I've come to fear eating dinner at friends' houses, afraid that I'll offend their mothers for turning up my nose at the dinner table. My contributions to pot lucks usually involve alcohol, which is what I normally stick to at such events (and if I'm lucky, I remember to eat before leaving my house). Going out to dinner is a typically safe practice, as long as the cuisine isn't too ethnic (no Chinese food for me, please) and I can always order the old standby, the hamburger with mustard and ketchup, cooked well-done.
A lot of people ask if my parents are as picky as me, and they definitely aren't. The thing about living in a town of 300 in rural Virginia, however, is that you don't really get many exotic options. My mother never strayed from a regular menu which included chicken, beef, and pizza. After a few years of preparing a separate meal for me (usually frozen pizza or a hamburger), my mother stopped enabling me and made sure I ate everything she made for dinner, which included the cooked vegetables I still cannot manage to eat today. While her efforts weren't completely in vain (I like grilled pork tenderloin! and turkey!), I can't say that I'm eating a lot of broccoli these days, which is one of the few cooked vegetables I can manage to swallow without feeling sick.
It's not so much the taste of food that I can't handle, but the texture. I'd love to eat more fruit, as I enjoy the flavors, but it's the squishy, juicy feeling of the seedy little things in my mouth that completely turns me off. I'm the same way with cooked vegetables: outside of corn and the occasional piece of broccoli, I can't stand the idea of a limp piece of food sliding around in my mouth.
I never thought of this as a serious problem, as I have been able to work around it when eating meals with friends. It wasn't until last year, when my first serious boyfriend listed it as one of the reasons for breaking up with me, did I begin to think that there might be something wrong and it was affecting other people more than it was affecting me. So, being the cyberchondriac that I am, I started researching on the Internet. Of course, most sites that focus on picky eaters focus mainly on children, not adults, but I did find a sort of online support group, which finally gave people like me a voice! But, since I enjoy reading about people's psychological problems with great joy, I couldn't help but find the site slightly ridiculous. For example, here are tips for getting out of social situations where one's eating quirks will come into the spotlight:
- Tell the host you're not hungry.
- Pretend you're sick and just threw up.
- At the last minute have someone call you about an emergency.
- Admit you're unable to eat what is served and just sit quietly.
- Complain that you are allergic to the food being served.
- Proclaim you're a Vegetarian.
- Pretend your fasting and have a medical procedure scheduled.
- Decline the food because of Religious Beliefs.
- Avoid getting invited in the first place.
- Tell everyone the truth that you are the world's pickiest eater and you won't be able to enjoy what's being served.
- Show up late around the time everyone is finished eating.
- Just don't show up at all.
- Offer sex to a man who wants to take you to dinner.
If this website did anything for me, it made me feel less like a crazy person and more like someone who would just rather order a pepperoni pizza than rosemary and orange braised lamb shank served with orzo and parsley gremolata.
Tyler Coates is the contributing editor to This Recording. He tumbls right here. Please list a relevant food you refuse to eat in the comments. Thank you for your time.
Nothing is quite as lovely - or simple - as an Arby's roast beef sandwich.
"Blitz Babies" - Bernie Taupin (mp3)
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"Love (The Barren Desert)" - Bernie Taupin (mp3)
eating, tyler coates
Reader Comments (12)
"Foods I don't like include macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, pineapples, nuts, beans (of all varieties), pork chops, ham, peas, eggs, tomatoes, and oatmeal."
I don't like any of these foods, either. Granted, I've only tried mashed potatoes, but in my head I know that I would not like any of these foods if I tried them. My friends play the exact same game with me and it's always weird. Though, I think I might even be pickier than you; I couldn't name a single vegetable I've eaten and I like hamburgers, but not the buns.
Until I was 15, 90% of what I ate consisted of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Seriously, like an average of three of them a day. Then I started eating burgers. That was a huge step for me! But with just the meat, cheese, and the bun (and ketchup if I was feeling adventurous). I had never had a burrito until I was 18. I didn't eat pizza until I was 20. Over the past three years, however, I've gradually expanded what I ate into many exotic and once-unthinkable territories. I eat almost everything now, even octopus.
Part of it had to do with my boyfriend being a really good cook who also loves going out to eat, but also, upon moving to a big city at 18, I decided that I would just use that transition as an imaginary point of demarcation through which I would pursue a new life of indiscriminate eating. I didn't know anyone where I was moving, so I could simply hide my "picky eater" identity from public view and calmly start eating everything, pretending I was the type of person who is adventurous with his food choices. I didn't like everything I tried, but at least half of what I would eat with this deluded new perspective would surprisingly taste GOOD and I'd add it to my arsenal of edible foods.
I think a lot of being a picky eater is a stigma that we place on ourselves. For instance, I definitely relate to friends playing a game about what I won't eat... my pickiness was a constant source of amusement in high school, that I embraced and made part of my self. It built up this whole image that I was strangely embarrassed not to live up to. Once I was able to start fresh, I gave myself licence to be someone else.
Well said, Graham. I was a picky eater until seventh grade when my older brother—who still to this day, at the age of 30, eats only breads, cheeses, and meats—went off to boarding school. I no longer had anything to validate my limited tastes, and so they gradually expanded.
My relationship with bananas, however, remains fraught. At snack time in kindergarten my rug-partner Kelsey vomited after eating a banana. I can eat them sometimes, when I don't dwell on it too much. But if I think of Kelsey I have to spit everything out mid-chomp.
i really cannot deal w/ mangoes for that same texture reason-- too slippery/squishy/weird & the taste's not great enough to me to deal with that.
pork chops are gross, as is any seafood. you know they swim around in their own piss, don't you?
I am such a picky eater that I have created an excel spreadsheet that I give to friends when they want to cook dinner for me. The foods that people are most surprised I don't eat include: avocados, mushrooms, seafood, onions, eggs, and tomatoes. In my opinion my most problematic area of picky-ness is condiments and sauces. I will not eat ketchup, mustard (the worst!), bbq sauce, ranch dressing, blue cheese dressing, gravy, most hot sauces, nacho cheese, or relish. People frequently think this means I don't like flavor, but I actually love lots of spices and spicy foods.
i was a vegetarian for 7 years to avoid eating my mother's roast beef, ham, and turkey. worst experience with food: had to eat an entire peach for some reason, holding back vomit the entire time.
Oh dear goodness. You are definitely not alone. There is a whole TV series in the UK called Freaky Eaters dedicated to this very food phobic phenomenon. It's a formulaic show of cautionary tales that follows people with food aversions, and by the end of it, they're goin to town on those bananas. I thought it was staged, but then in my favourite story of the bunch, this macho DJ guy actually cries at one point.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn2BOW8Iw9A
Moral of the story, not eating fruits and vegetables, can cause testicular shrinkage and breast enlargement in men (they said it, not me).
You still can not get me to put one piece of shellfish or seafood in my mouf. Bugs of the sea! What is wrong with you people who eat these monsters?
i hate ham. the smell, the taste, the texture - I hate everything about it.
however, I love bacon.
when I was five, I looked closely at my peanut butter sandwich and discovered specks of brown and black in the peanut butter. I proclaimed that I would no longer eat peanut butter.
I have gotten over that.
time for the obligatory link to Jeffrey Steingarten's well-known essay on how he overcame his food phobias and dislikes.
"The Man Who Ate Everything"
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/steingarten-everything.html
the short explanation: repeated, frequent exposure to most foods you dislike or find unfamiliar will eventually cure you of dislike. in most cases it's also possible to learn to like the foods in question.
it's the same cognitive "therapy" used on people who have extreme phobias of or aversions to any kind of object, idea, or activity.
my autistic cousin ate only two foods for a long time due to texture aversions, spaghetti-o's and mac&cheese. his mom and dad have used the same technique on him to expand his diet bit by bit to ten or twenty more foods.
i can attest that it works, as it rid me of a lifelong dislike of garlic, cruciferous vegetables, and cheese. i now really enjoy all of those foods. it's tough in the beginning and it takes a while and you have to stick with it. but it's worth it.
Don't put an asparagus spear or a mushroom anywhere near me.
I am 22 years old, i eat no fruits, no vegetables, i only drink milk and water...I only eat plain cheese burgers, only kraft mac and cheese, no pork, only 2 kinds of pasta....the pickiest person of all is who I am