Criticised over my eating style

Just a thought, but table manners and familial mealtime rules are the sort of things that are drummed into us as children. Might it be that he berated you in the way his parents might have done for a mealtime faux-pas? Does he see the way he spoke to you as problematic in this instance - would have been as offended if it had been his mother talking to him or would he have accepted it as a correction? It's the use of the word disgusting that stands out to me as being used out of habit rather than an observation of something that (in my mind) could never be disgusting. It's not as if you had mushed it all together and had made a mess.
I know it doesn't make it right but I'd be inclined to dig further just to rule it out.

It sounds like he’s a controlling, abusive dickhead to be honest.

Criticising your eating. Criticising your clothes. What else does he criticise and try to control?

Run like the wind. It doesn’t get better.

Typical Mumsnet - nothing to do with the OP's question.

My friends Italian husband eats like this everything in separate dishes. I admit I just thought ail that washing up 😂

he got really cross, said why I am mixing hot and cold food together stating “that’s disgusting”

Telling anyone else that the way they arrange their food on their plate is "disgusting" is, well, disgusting.

Disgusting = eating from a communal bowl with your own fork (him), chewing with your mouth open, eating noisily, wolfing your food.

Yanbu, it’s your choice how you eat.

I think OP meant they only eat one meal a day together.

To me, the salad-with-lasagne and the communal salad bowl are no big deal either way. BF may never has come across someone eating salad with hot food before, or been taught "Nobody ever does that" as part of his upbringing, when what is actually meant is "Nobody in our culture ever does that". All part of a cross-cultural relationship.

But I am wondering why OP only eats when BF eats, when they don't live together.

Can’t believe you only eat once a day!!
He sounds wierd.

He's controlling, which doesn't bode well for a future together. I would think seriously about moving on.

'If I had left he would ignore me and not get in touch.'

and you refer to him as a partner

I would refer to him as not much of a boyfriend

and I have just seen your age, I thought you were about 19 !

I grew up in an Arab country with an Arab parent and we happily put salad on the same plate as our hot food :/

I always have my salad as a separate course,either before or after my main course. My dp has his at the same time. Neither is a better way of doing it-just different! Is your dp from a Mediterranean country, @Fernandez54? Or possibly French?

I used to work with a lot of Italians and they're very uptight about rules when it comes to food.

Indeed. The internet is awash with Italians being disgusted and horrified by others' perfectly inoffensive culinary habits. They need to get over themselves and realise that 'not how I prefer it' is not synonymous with 'disgusting'.

If he ate something during the day he probably wouldn't be so flipping ratty in the evening!

It’s actually healthier to eat the salad (or greens) first as it reduces the blood sugar spike you’d get from the carby meal.

But that’s not the issue, he can’t force the way he eats onto you.

He sounds like an 'I can't cope with anyone doing anything differently to the way I do it!' sort. Okay in small doses but an absolute pain to try to live with. Surely he knows that, as a grown woman, you are perfectly capable of judging how you want to eat your meals and what you want to wear and when? Or does he think you're like a child who needs 'correcting' when they get things wrong? Because that would give me the heebie jeebies.

And I only eat once a day too, for what it's worth. Nothing wrong with it.

I can’t see what’s wrong with sharing a communal bowl of salad. You’d share a packet of crisps, or a pizza from a communal plate. What’s the difference?

The human body is capable of adjusting to fast for most of the day, or even for a couple days at a time. There are even some benefits to doing this, such as increased autophagy of dead cells in the body. It’s only recently in our evolutionary history that we started eating 3x a day plus teas/snacks, with the advent of plant and animal agriculture and supermarkets.

If you only have one meal a day, then that meal needs to be pretty heavy in order to meet your caloric requirements. Then you have a whole 24 hours or so to digest it, and your body will take its time to extract all the nutrients it can from it.

Though, I would imagine it to be difficult to get much variety into your diet and to meet all your RDAs for all the essential nutrients in just one meal.

I am from a culture where multiple dishes are shared even in restaurants but it’s not common for everyone to eat from a communal dish at home or anywhere. Food is served in serving bowls and eaten from separate dishes.

I’m Mediterranean and for last 50ish years I ve had my salad next to main meal !

Why don’t ask? Why is it relevant to the OPs post?

OP, I’m a salad on the plate voter!

Me too - that's the whole point! I know my American friends always put the salad on their side plate...but that's just not going to cut it with me.