Some notes on understanding September 30, 2008

I’ve just revisited an old discussion on another website, which was a post by a non-picky eater about the concept of picky eating.  In the discussion I made a valiant effort to try to explain.  I do not think I was successful.  But I really don’t know what it is that is so hard for people to understand about picky eating.

If people know what trauma is, and I say “This traumatises me”, what is so hard to understand about that? What about it is so difficult for people to just accept?  Does it really undermine their own unquestioned beliefs about themselves and the world so much that they really can’t go there?

In a way, I don’t really mind if people don’t understand it – I don’t really understand it myself.  What bothers me is people’s refusal to accept it, just because they don’t understand it.  That strikes me as blinkered, narrow-minded, arrogant and self-centred in the extreme, not to mention a massive failure of empathy and meta-representation.

If I was blind, people wouldn’t go around saying “why don’t you just open your eyes?”, would they?  They wouldn’t go around complaining about my inability to see, as if I were doing it just to annoy or inconvenience them.  They wouldn’t for a moment betray the belief that just because they can’t understand the mechanism or cause of my blindness, that it must be in some way self-inflicted or attention-seeking or childish.  And they certainly wouldn’t keep harping on about how much I’m missing out on.

If I say to a pianist ”I can’t play the piano”, he probably won’t say “you non-pianists are so annoying, what’s your problem, why don’t you just try?”  So why is “I can’t eat fruit or vegetables” so difficult for people to take on board?  It’s very simple.  I genuinely don’t get it.

People must be able to understand the concept of not being able to bring yourself to do something.  For instance, I would find it very difficult to betray a friend.  I would find it very difficult also to walk over hot coals, or throw myself off a cliff, even with a rope attached.  Other people don’t, but I personally would.  And it seems to me that the people who would have no problems doing such things don’t tend to interrogate and judge the people who’d prefer not to. 

To me, it is equally difficult to put a non-food in my mouth.  What’s not to understand?

Catering for Fussy Eaters July 10, 2008

I notice quite a few people are coming to this site by means of searching to find what foods to offer when catering for a fussy eater.  Which got me thinking as to whether there are any fail-safe universals on this score.

It seems to me we are a fairly diverse bunch, but I think there seem to be some basic rules of thumb.  For example, it seems to be that plain food is best.  The plainer the better, in fact.  This means plain and simple textures as well as plain and simple flavours. So that rules out strong flavours, and all things hot and spicy.  It also rules out things with bits in, or sauces on.  Especially bad is a dish where it isn’t visually obvious what’s in it.

For me personally, something bread- or pastry-based is good, as is most meat (though preferred if it’s plain, rather than sauce- or vegetable-mixed).  The main thing is to be able to avoid any vegetables and fruits, and any other unacceptable foods, and still leave something left on the plate.  So non-mixed things, or things which are easily separable are good.

I usually say to people that as long as there is bread or potatoes, I’ll be fine.  And then beyond that, I may or not be able to venture.  I would say the main most important rule is to not be having attention drawn to my eating (or avoiding), and to know that no-one is offended or surprised by whether and what I do or don’t eat.

What do other people think?  Are there any universally safe menu items we can all agree on?  Or any universally dangerous ones?

Fast Food, Anyone? May 23, 2008

There was a message last week from someone who is researching a documentary for Channel 4 about people who love fast food.  She hopes that some of the people who use this site will be happy to talk to her about what their favourite fast food means to them.  The link is here, if you’re interested (scroll to the bottom).

I don’t know whether I’d say I love fast food – though I must confess I have been known to eat a certain amount of the stuff.  But I certainly do have a relationship to it, which this recent enquiry has made me consider.

I am old enough to be a fast-food immigrant.  That is to say I remember the days before fast food reached these shores in earnest.  I remember when Wimpy’s opened on Chiswick High Road (where the Burger King is now).  Picky eater that I am, I was scared.  A hamburger with heaven knows what bits on it would have been way beyond the pale, so my mother ordered me their Chicken Pieces (a far superior fore-runner to McDonalds’ Chicken Nuggets).  I was upset about there not being any plates or cutlery, and I was wary of the food, but being assured it was just chicken, I gave it a go.   It was good.

Around the same time (circa age 6), I remember a conversation my mother had with the mother of a friend of mine, while they were arranging for me to go and play at his house.  “Does she eat junk food?” was the question, to which my mother replied in the affirmative.  I was horrified.  I didn’t know what junk food was, but I knew I hadn’t heard of it, and that it sounded horrible, and that therefore I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.  How could my mother condemn me to such a fate so readily?  Of course, when it was explained to me that it’s a name for lovely things like beefburgers and chips and crisps and chocolate, I changed my tune.  In the event, I think that was the afternoon I first ate KP Skips.  In pretty flower shapes. 

I soon progressed to hamburgers (with no nothing on them of course).  It was an easy transition to McDonalds when they opened their emporium up the High Road, and though I was sad to see Wimpys go, I took the Burger King that replaced it in my stride (sesame seeds notwithstanding).  Before these three, fast food in West London consisted of, on weekends only, Spud-U-Like in Shepherd’s Bush, and sometimes chips from the chip-shop in Richmond.  But these didn’t have a Mr Wimpy or a Ronald McDonald standing around outside handing out balloons and paper hats and so on.  Spud-U-Like had a potato-face on the fork-handle which I liked, but the old-skool rather lacked the party atmosphere of the new arrivals, so no competition really, for a 6-year-old.  (Interestingly, while I would eat a Wimpy or McDonald’s hamburger, I found home-made ones horrid.)

I think there was a KFC, but that was not for People Like Us.  Still isn’t, as far as I can tell.  The few times I have eaten there, I am overwhelmingly struck by the lack of respect held by that institution for its customers.  Poor quality design, poor quality environment, poor quality clientele, plus they try and palm you off with poor quality merchandise that you wouldn’t feed to a dog.  Even one that does like chicken. 

Which brings me on to my next point.  I have elected to eat in a KFC on occasion, as opposed to somewhere more…salubrious, but the reason for this is not because I love the food.  It’s because I know I can bear to eat some of it.  Bearing to eat it is not the same as loving it, although when you end up being so grateful for things you can bear to eat, the boundary can get blurred there a little bit.  Even if KFC (or fast food in general) were all I ate, it still wouldn’t mean that I loved it necessarily, only that it was the lesser (to me) of a range of evils. 

The fact is that I feel a better feeling, of a greater more satisfying wholesomeness, when I eat fresh proper food that’s made from scratch.  If could really choose freely, that would be all that I ate.  Of course, there are questions of time constraints and convenience, but for me there is also the rather major restriction in terms of the variety of foodstuffs I can deal with.  So I appreciate fast food as a reliable option for a limited palate.  It’s well within my comfort zone, shall we say, and beggars can’t be choosers.  But I think it’s fair to say I love fresh food more.  More variety, more taste, more goodness.  I don’t really see how anyone with a free range of eating and a normal IQ could ever possibly say they loved fast food.

I once saw Billy Connolly in stand-up, doing a joke about McDonalds.  He said he reckoned they put something in their food to make it addictive.  Little did he know.  Turns out all their food is artificially flavoured and scented.  To make your brain think it’s something that it isn’t.  To make your brain think it’s more delicious than it is.  They have whole vast laboratories dedicated to this task.  The body doesn’t lie though.

Another thing I have fast food to thank for is a large part of the extension of my eating repertoire.  I have blogged previously about how McDonalds taught me to cope with ketchup, which led to pizza, which led to all things tomato-based.  They also taught me to love mayonnaise, and to cope with finely chopped onions, and with the odd stray piece of lettuce.  It is precisely because it is fast food that it carries an incentive to take it as it comes.

I would also like to take this opportunity to raise a few points on the BK-McD’s dichotomy.  Burger King (obviously) is not as good as McDonalds – it seems greasier and less uniform, and also the bun has sesame seeds – though they don’t bother with onions which is good, and their mustard is far superior (speaking as one who doesn’t actually like mustard, or eat it in any othe context).  Prior to 1999, both their french fries were good, until silly old BK decided to “invent” a new kind of stay-hotter-longer french fry, which is edible, but minging, compared to the gold standard of McDonalds.  I don’t know whether others share this view…

But it can’t be denied also that fast food carries a certain stigma in these modern times.  High fat, high salt, low fibre.  The environment.  Oppressive business practices.  Supersize Me.  Which is why going on television to tell the word I’m Lovin’ It would not be something that I personally would relish.  Especially because most of the rest of the world don’t realise that as selective eaters, our food choices are often more pragmatic than indulgent.  I enjoy some fast food, yes, but in context. 

I can conceive of people out there who never eat any fast food.  They don’t have to.  They can get by without it.  Good for them, I say.  But can they conceive of people like me? 

Your mileage of course may vary.  So tell us: What’s your stance on fast food?  Necessary evil, or beloved staple?

Pomodoro April 3, 2008

A dreadful thing happened to me today.  Let me tell it to you.

I was fancying some fresh tomatoey pasta, so I popped out to a very nice local restaurant that I know, with a penne pomodoro in mind. Why did I not just buy some tomatoes from the market and skin and blend and cook them?  Because a) I couldn’t be bothered, and b) it’s not as nice as when you get it in a restaurant.

So.  The waiter comes to take my order, and I notice there isn’t a pomodoro on the menu.  So I ask him, is it possible to have just a pasta pomodoro.  He says yes.  Something about cherry tomatoes.  Fair enough, I thought.  I don’t personally care what tomatoes it is, as long as it’s a pomodoro pasta sauce.

So.  Some little while later, he returns to the table and puts down a plate of pasta.  I looked at it in horror.  My little heart didn’t know what to do.  Because there wasn’t any sauce on it to speak of, only loads of cherry tomatoes all over the shop.  As Colin would say, it might as well have been pasta a la dog shit as far as I’m concerned.

I tried to think what to do.  I tried to wonder if I could force myself.  But if I’m paying for food, I want to at least enjoy it, and that would have been totally out of the question.  My next thought was to pay him to take it away, and leave, asap.  I actually felt quite upset.  I wanted to cry.

But d’you know what I did?  I don’t know where my courage came from, but I said to him, “um, the thing is, what I was wanting was a pomodoro, a sauce, you know?”  Well, he wasn’t especially happy, let me tell you.  But he took it away, and to my great relief and eternal gratitude, came back with a proper penne pomodoro.  ‘Twas delish. 

Therapy For Picky Eaters March 27, 2008

Today I had an email from someone who offers online and telephone counselling worldwide, and face-to-face in Glasgow, and guess what?  She works with adult picky eaters!

She’s a member of the BPS, which means her psychology degree is top-notch (like mine!), and she’s BACP-registered which means she’s a “proper” counsellor.  She’s trained in person-centred counselling, and uses solution-focussed brief therapy, which I’ve incidentally been reading about, thanks to Colin.  It looks to be quite effective. More on that later.

In the meantime, see her details below:

Diana Armstrong-Wotherspoon
Professional and confidential counselling from the comfort of your own home – by live chat, email or telephone. Secure card payments, evening and weekend appointments available.
www.ArmstrongCounselling.co.uk
0141 9469096 or
07799765100

Freaky Eaters Series 2 March 20, 2008

For anyone who’s missed this, and for anyone not in the UK, Freaky Eaters Series 2 is on YouTube!  This is the first episode, in 5 parts, and I would just like to say, hats off to Nat, the star of this episode.  You’re a braver woman than me.

When I saw the first series, it made me cry to see the poor people trying not to vomit.  This one made me laugh with recognition and admiration. Totally inspiring stuff.

Chocolate I March 18, 2008

Chocolate is one of my very most favourite and stalwart foodstuffs.  I can’t be exactly sure, but I don’t think I have lived a single day of my adult life without eating chocolate.  That is chocolate as in the substance, not the flavouring, though I’ve been known to appreciate that too   It is so central to me, I can’t believe I haven’t posted on it before.  And it is so dear to me, I think it warrants more than one post.  So here is Part I:

When I was born, the first thing my mother did was eat a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, thereby entering chocolate into the equation of my very first feed.  Whether this is relevant or not is anybody’s guess, but so goes the folklore of my story.

When I began refusing food, there was one thing I would eat.  Heinz Chocolate Pudding.  In difficult times, I have tried eating this as an adult, and let me tell you, it is rank.  But it was the only baby food I could be persuaded to eat at the time.  As a result of this, I think I might have been fed rather a lot of the stuff over my first three or four years. 

But the thing is, as portion sizes increased with my age, I came up against what I call the Excessive Texture Problem.  I cannot eat large amounts of one soft texture without other stuff to go with it.  I cannot swallow it after a certain point, it makes me gag.  And so, kindly well-meaning people would present me with an adult chocolate mouse, thinking they were doing me a great kindness, but actually filling me with dread. 

Because it’s one thing to refuse foods that people know you don’t eat, but how to turn down something that they’ve made for you especially, and that they’ve been told is the one thing you will eat?  Even a four-year-old knows that’ll look inconsistent, illogical and petulant.  At that point, I stopped eating it entirely, ditto for chocolate Angel Delight.  It is only in the last few years that I have been able to broach an adult chocolate mousse, and only then by pretending it is cake.

Around the age of three, I one day walked into the kitchen where my mother was eating something I’d never seen before.  I asked her what it was, and she said it was Chocolate Spread on Ryvita, and did I want some?  Well, that was totally yummy.  In those days (1977), Cadbury made the most wonderful chocolate spread.  It came in a round white margarine-type pot, with orange swirls on it, and the stuff itself was shiny, black and treacly. In sandwiches, on thin white sproingy bread, it was fucking delicious.  I’m sorry for the f-word, but that’s the only way to describe my nostalgia for it, and my sense of loss that they do not make the stuff anymore.

The world can seem like a treacherous place if you have an SED.  Around the age of 7, I was playing at a friend’s house, and her mum asked me if I like chocolate spread.  Assuming she was referring to the Cadbury’s stuff, I said yes.  I can only say I was horrified when we sat down to the results of my affirmative response.  It was sheets and sheets of brown bread, spread with some sort of pale simulacrum of what I would have called chocolate spread.  Yes, it was that devil’s food, Nutella.  I had to eat it, but it made me want to vom.  It was a miserable struggle to get through an acceptable amount of it. 

What the fuck is wrong with plain old chocolate spread?  To the point where you can’t buy it anymore?  Cadbury stopped making chocolate spread at all for most of the eighties (I know, because I made enquiries), and then they introduced a pale, Nutella-esque version, for which I am supposed to be grateful, I guess, but it simply is not the same stuff at all.  I try to pretend to myself that it is, but the only thing it’s good for really is on pancakes.

Around the same time, I one day was looked after for some hours by a lady across the road whose children were older than me.  When I came in from playing in their wicked garden, the mother told me that her eldest daughter (aged 13, but seeming to me like a very sophisticated giant) had made some brownies, and did I want one.  Well, in the same way that you can tell by looking, that Nutella’s gonna make you want to hurl, you know straight away that anything called “brownies” can not be good.  When I saw them, however, they looked like they could be a sort of cake, and when she mentioned the word chocolate, I figured I’d give one a go.  Again:  it was fucking delicious, and remains one of my very most favourite things to this day – if done correctly of course: some people and places put nuts in them and all sorts.  And some places call it a brownie, when actually it’s a cake, and a rubbish one at that.

As a result of my liking for many things chocolate, an outside observer might be forgiven for assuming that I will like all things chocolate.  Not so.  Some chocolate cake is good, and some bad.  Every bit as bad as a non-food.  Which is unusual for me.  Mostly, I am prepared to overlook quality as long as the food in question is in my “edible” category.  I will not complain on the whole if things are cooked or made badly.  I will just be grateful that they are not in one of my Forbidden Food categories.  But not chocolate things.  If you go to France, you will know that some crepes au chocolate are fantastic, but some are totally revolting, and make you wish you’d never been born. 

It’s tough out there, you know?  You can’t just order something chocolate and know it will be nice.  There’s always that chance that it will not only be not nice, but will be actively revolting instead.

Similarly, I will never eat a cheesecake, even if it does have chocolate in the name.  Chocolate mousse, I’ll avoid if at all possible.  And a black-forest gateau doesn’t usually work for me either.  For chocolate cake, I’d say you want a middle price-bracket.  Anything too up-market, or from a fancy patisserie will tend to be trying too hard, and will consequently be yuck.

For me, the domain of chocolate is like a microcosm of the broader food world.  Seemingly without rhyme or reason, certain subsets of it are acceptable to me, while others are totally verboten.  I can’t explain it to someone, or tell them the rules.  I don’t know how I know by looking or thinking what is going to be disgusting to me, but I certainly do know it, that much is certain.  On top of this complexity is a certain degree of fluidity in my tastes over time.  Chocolate things can go in and out of favour at the drop of a hat.  Like I say, it’s tricky.

This post is inspired by Dan over at ChocEat.  If you haven’t checked his blog already, you should do.

Fighting The Haters January 20, 2008

Did you know there’s a Facebook group called Anti-Picky Eaters?  Whaddya think of that, huh?  I don’t know about you, but I’m not impressed.  Here are some delightful snippets of the type of sentiment they endorse:

• JUST EAT IT YOU FRIGGIN BABIES!
• I absolutely friggen hate it when people say they hate a food when they’ve never even tried it before…Eat up you pussies!
• Picky eating is morally suspect behavior.
• If one is a picky eater, chances are better that one is, for lack of a better term, a jerk.

Firstly, I object to the prurience of even caring what somebody else does or doesn’t want to eat.  I really don’t get why it bothers them, or why they feel entitled to object to other people’s personal preferences and verbally abuse us on these grounds.  I have asked why it bothers them, but no-one on the group has been able to offer an answer.  They don’t even want to engage with the question.

But secondly, and more importantly, I object because these people obviously don’t get it.  Either it hasn’t occurred to them that we can’t help it (and actually, why should we, if we’re happy like this?), and they genuinely think we do it to piss them off, or, they know fine well that we can’t help it, and they are bullies that just enjoy abusing people, and they see what they think is an opportunity here.  I’ve tried to explain it to them, but to no avail.

It strikes me that this group is actually in contravention of the Facebook Terms of Use.  Attacking an individual or group.  Abusive or objectionable content.  I’ve reported them.  If you object to being dissed for being picky, feel free to do the same.

A Juicy Biscuit? January 16, 2008

One factor that seems to be important in the domain of picky eating is texture.  Texture has a lot to do with whether or not I’ll be ok with a particular food item.  Of course it’s not the only factor.  Things like structure complexity, cost-benefit balance, mood and meaning also play a role for me (in descending order), with actual taste or flavour, or quality of cooking being fairly far down the list of priorities.

But it strikes me that one of the upsetting things about accidentally getting a piece of a vegetable in your mouth is the particular kind of crunchiness.  Now, I know it isn’t crunchiness per se that’s the problem.  I can eat other things that are crunchy – CornFlakes I can eat no probs, and crisps too, and crackers and biscuits, and crunchy toast (though I like it less that way).  But I notice two things about these kinds of crunchy foods:

1. They are thin
2. They are dry

I think the thinness is incidental to things.  I think this because a) I like Crunchies and b) even if you sliced an apple wafer thin, I still would gag on it.  So what this boils down to is a dry crunch is ok, but a wet crunch is not.  These are different kinds of crunchiness, aren’t they?

Now, what do I know about other picky eaters?  I know that some of them only eat dry stuff (nothing mushy), and others only eat wet stuff (nothing crunchy).  Whichever one of these groups you fall into, fruit and veg are likely to be excluded, because of their combination of texture features from both categories.  Neat, huh?  Even if you can do both of these categories, if this is the dimension along which you categorise and understand your edible foods, then a wet-crunch will still be excluded, because it falls between two stools, so to speak.

Something like this sort of a theory would also be consistent with the link with autistic-spectrum disorders.  I understand there is some evidence that high-functioning autistic people process or attend to similarities and differences among stimuli in a way that is different to the rest of the population.  Relevant?  I don’t know.

But this makes me think of a new idea.  If fruit and vegetables are excluded because they are borderline members of one’s existing food categories, could it be possible to make a conceptual leap and focus on their similarities to one’s existing food categories rather than their differences?

So, if I did slice an apple very thin, couldn’t I just pretend to myself it was a juicy biscuit?  Of course, there’d be the taste to get used to as well, and a juicy biscuit does seem like an oxymoron, but I wonder if it would work…

Ok, I Want To Talk About Christmas December 30, 2007

Specifically, I’d like to talk about peas.  And onion.

In a bold move this Christmas, I served some peas onto my Christmas dinner plate.  Just a few, maybe nine or ten.  It made me feel nice to have them there.  I know some picky eaters couldn’t even bear to have them on the plate.  I guess for those people, that would have to be the starting point.  My family, they offered me carrots, when they saw what I’d done, but that would have been a bridge too far.  Thinking back, I probably should have done it, just to see how it felt, but my instinct was against it, and the peas were quite bold enough for my liking.

I think when you’ve been brought up with people who lived through the War and/or rationing, the wasting of food is a factor one can’t help considering when going through the trying of new things.  If I buy, say, an apple to try, I have to accept the likelihood that 99% of it (if not 100%) will go in the bin.  Which does seem a fearful waste, and puts me off doing it.  I think it makes me less gung-ho about trying things off my own bat, so to speak, as opposed to dealing with a pre-dished-up dish as in a full-on social situation.  So it didn’t seem right to take any carrots when I knew full well I wouldn’t eat them, whereas with the peas, I knew I’d manage to at least try.  It might be lazy or self-indulgent, but I didn’t want to blight my Christmas dinner with too much novel-food-trauma all at once.

But back to the peas.  I ate three of them.  I’ll tell you what it’s like.  You know how it is with Smarties, that there are different ways you can eat them?  And sometimes, even though you might have a whole tube of Smarties, sometimes it can be difficult to decide which way to eat them each time.  Well, for me it was like that with the peas.  The first one, I just hid him inside mashed potato.  Now on the one hand, I was tempted just to swallow it down and focus my mind on the mashed potato, and try not to notice the fact that there was a pea in there.  But I know that is not the way to learn new foods.  Or at least, if that’s all you do, then you won’t progress terribly much. 

You have to pay attention and notice its presence in your mouth as much as you can.  Of course, the danger then is that you will notice it too much, and the spirit of you will feel upset about it.  Then you are edging into gagging territory.  Which is the level I got to with the third pea, so there I had to stop.  It seems to be a very fine balance that one has to strike.

Now, the Christmas dinner was in amongst the bosom of my family, and so, for me, benign in terms of eating pressure.  But on Christmas Eve, we went for dinner at some friends’ house.  When we went to sit down to eat, it smelled delicious, but I did feel anxious, so I went up to the hostess as she was dishing up, and I asked her “What is the name of this?”.  Came the reply “Shepherd’s Pie”, and I knew I could fundamentally relax, that I’d be able to eat a fair 50% at least.

On the plate, there seemed to be no vegetables in it, which I think you sometimes get?  So that was fine.  But the lighting was dim, and I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I realised too late that there were large pieces of onion in it, of a centimetre or even more.  At first in my mouth I thought maybe it was potato that wasn’t cooked well.  But it was not.  I realised I would have to concentrate.  I realised I would have to shout down the urge to gag or spit it out.  It’s dreadful when one’s instinct and comfort is socially unacceptable.  For me, I think this fact has confused me somewhat as to my place and value in the world.  But that’s by-the-by.

Now with big pieces of onion, you’ve got a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, they are big enough to avoid if you are careful, and if you don’t mind being seen to pick through things.  But on the other hand, they are not small enough to eat without gargantuan effort.  Teensy pieces of onion (I like to cut them to a couple of millimetres), are too small to avoid, but then they are small enough to wash down without too much upset.  Me, I do not like the stripes on big onion pieces, or the translucent shininess, or the way I know they will feel if you accidentally bite them.  Sort of slide and skid and crunch. But my adulthood forces me to try and be less squeamish about this in such a situation.  So I avoided what I could, but triumphantly I report that where my avoidance inadvertently failed, I was able to reassure myself enough to get through. 

These things I know are just not a big deal for a normal person.  But I don’t seem to have to pretend anymore that it’s not a big deal for me.  And I know that unpleasant and dangerous as the stealth onion onslaught was to me, it is experiences like these that take me a step further along on my journey.

Merry Christmas one and all.  Got any Christmas food stories to share?