by CarrieVS » Mon Jun 04, 2018 11:23 am
When I was a very young child I was a classic picky eater. I would eat:
- Cheese and pickle sandwiches
- Crisps (potato chips)
- Bananas
- Spaghetti bolognaise
- Fish fingers, chips and peas
My parents consulted a doctor who advised them to just give me what I'd eat and not let me fill up on sweets or cake, until I grew out of it.
As long as I can actually remember, I've had a list of foods I'll refuse, because they make me gag and, if I keep eating, vomit. I also have plenty of foods I find unpleasant but can eat, and will if they're put in front of me. A few things are borderline - they make me want to gag but if I concentrate on not doing so I can get them down. Then there's foods that hurt to eat: I'll give them a go if they're put in front of me, but can only take so much.
Reasons I can't tolerate a food could be taste, texture, appearence, or "idea". But generally if I try and put any kind of category on what kinds of tastes, textures, etc I can't stomach, there'll be exceptions. It's not exactly rational.
For instance, I can't stand liquid or runny/creamy things with "bits." Larger "pieces" - things like soup or sauces with chunks in, are fine, but small bits make me gag. Things like fruit yoghurt - unless it's the completely smooth kind they make for kids, or smoothies - they might be called smooth but I've never had one that wasn't a slurry of little lumps and bits. Yet orange juice with pulp is fine - less pleasant than smooth juice, but ok. It didn't use to be though, when I was a child. Sharp "bits" are a problem in any surrounding texture: bones in fish, bits of peel or core in cooked apple, bits of stalk on raisins.
Other bad textures include fruit that's in any way mushy or pulpy - whether it's overripe, bruised, or (except apple and pear) cooked. Certain kinds of thick sauces that I would describe as "mushy" though I can't quite explain what gives it that quality. Breakfast cereals that have absorbed the milk (except shredded wheat and, up to a certain limit, weetabix.) Anything slimy - but mushrooms are not slimy. I used to refuse courgettes (zucchini) because they were too mushy, especially the seeds. As an adult I can eat them without difficulty, though if I'm cooking for myself I slice them lengthwise and cut the majority of the seeds out.
Tastes I can't stomach include bananas, blueberries, pumpkin, celeriac, peanuts, and alcohol. I can almost always guarantee, if it's in the food, and you say "but you can't taste it," I won't be able to taste much else. When I was a child I used to be unable to stay in the room with an opened banana; now I ususally can unless it's right under my nose, mashed (makes the smell spread), or I'm having a hypersensitive episode. I had to ask a guy at my D&D group to put his banana peels in the bin once, because I was having an episode and I couldn't stand it, and they won't stop teasing me about it. I have no memory of ever being able to stomach bananas, but they're on the list ofthings I'd eat as a toddler. I can only assume I ate them and was ill once, and formed an association.
My mum used to make a vegetable soup with celeriac in, and I have a vivid memory of sitting at the table with a bowl of soup in front of me, eating one mouthful at a time and then fighting to control my retching, which got worse each time, so I could eat another. My mum's always told us how she never makes us eat anything we really don't want to because she used to be forced to eat stuff and forbidden to leave the table until she'd finished it. But I guess she forgot about that that day. She didn't make me finish it, I guess, but she did insist I ate more of it before she'd let me stop, even though I was clearly on the verge of vomiting.
Passion fruit flavoured things are delicious. But passion fruit itself is unacceptable in appearence if there's a lot of it (it's yellow. And aside from the colour it looks like frogspawn. With the colour it looks like diseased frogspawn.) A few individual seeds sprinkled on something don't provoke that reaction but they're borderline for texture: it's kind of slimy around the seed and I can't swallow the seed without gagging so I crunch it and then it has sharp little bits. But I can take a bit of it, because it tastes so good.
I won't eat sauces or thick liquids that are yellow - except custard which is fine.
I can't eat any kind of animal whole, like sardines, or molluscs. Except prawns. Which I usually don't eat these days because I'm mostly vegetarian. The idea of eating something's insides just causes so much revulsion. Other "idea" issues include apples where the bottom bit is open - I can't avoid thinking that something unpleasant might have gotten in.
My list of objections has changed and generally got shorter as I've grown up - there are only one or two things I won't eat that I used to, but a fair few I will eat that I didn't use to, although many of those I still dislike or at least don't enjoy.
I'm also more tolerant of hot spices than I used to be. The limit of my tolerance for the pain is still set at what most people would consider very mild, but in certain circumstances I can eat extremely mild spices without losing all enjoyment in the food. This is generally the case with things like nachos and fajitas/burritos: I think it's the bread and cheese combination that takes a lot of the fire out. Things like chilli are still an ordeal. Pineapple, unless cooked or dried, is not so painful as hot spices, but still uncomfortable, because of the enzymes. I find fizzy drinks easier than when I was a child but I still have to take small sips or else it hurts. Ice cream and other frozen foods are also fine, so long as I take them slowly, but painful to eat quickly: this isn't brain-freeze or tooth sensitivity, but just the sensation of extreme cold on my mouth. Similarly, everyone can find excessively hot (temperature not spice) food painful, but I seem to have a lower threshold than most.
I'm also very afraid of unfamiliar or unidentifiable foods. If I'm not sure what something is I have to get someone else to find out first. If there's an ingredient I've never had before like a new fruit or vegetable, or an unfamiliar flavouring/seasoning, I will usually try it but very cautiously, and I'll have to touch it or poke it and try and find out the texture before I put it in my mouth. If it's something with multiple components, like a sauce with different vegetable, and they're hard to identify separately, I have to pick through and try and make sense of each bit. Things that are an unknown mixture and not separable, are really hard to bring myself to try.
A Combustible Lemon wrote:Death is an archaic concept for simpleminded commonfolk, not Victorian scientist whales.