Is it unreasonable to be frustrated by a guest who says they eat anything when they actually don’t?

My mother was very good at trying new foods. My dad - the first time (it was the late 70s and he was a coal miner in a traditional Yorkshire village) she offered him a pizza - asked where the gravy was.

It is common, and it's therefore essential as well as obvious common sense that if somebody says 'Is there anything you can't eat?' that the sufferer tells them!

I totally used to be this person 🫣 when you mostly cook for yourself/eat out or are spending time with people who know you it's very easy to think of yourself (or your kids) as unfussy and your food/meal preferences as normal.

Honestly it's not until I started spending time visiting others that I realised I am/we are actually pretty particular, and through having guests myself I've learned it is actually more helpful to be honest about likes and dislikes rather than saying 'anything is fine' and going back on it later. I am way more open about stuff now.

Perhaps she's just ignorant and trying to be polite? Appreciate this doesn't help you. Hoping she's more flexible/open to change than my parents who seem incapable of any level of self reflection or behavioural adaptation and it improves for the next visit!

I think it’s really easy to think of everything you eat as “normal” and actually forget about all of the things you don’t eat. Plus, if your MIL has been on an allergy testing regime for years and had a restricted diet as a result, she might feel that, now she is eating anything she wants again, she is able to eat anything.
I have had various experiences over the years with relatives and friends of all ages telling me that eat “anything” and then having clear preferences that I now tend to send an outline of what food we’ll be having when and, if it’s something like a chickpea curry, explain what the key ingredients will be. Plus, if someone is coming to stay for a few days, I’ll ask what their preferred condiments are. So I now have salad cream for MIL, some sort of hot sauce for a SIL, decaf coffee for my mum, get blue milk in for my dad, Diet Coke for one friend and lemon squash for another.
Where does your MIL shop? Going back 20yrs or so now and the parents of a boyfriend I had then were completely overwhelmed that most of the food I had bought for a visit from them
was from M&S. For me, it was because there was one by the station so easy to collect bits on the way home from work plus much of it was pre-prepared to an extent at least so less for me to do. They, though, saw it as very posh and expensive and had never been in there to buy food. This also meant that they were less familiar with the foods you could buy in there. I think that, if I had taken them in with me, there’s no way that they would have suggested anything as they would have been worried about the cost. If I’d taken them to Safeway (as it was then), they might have been happier to suggest things.

My MIL is the size of a small whale but apparently doesn't eat, ever. I'm sure she's on MN, too!!!!

Sounds like a generational issue. My grandparents grew up with traditional British food. Pasta was fancy and they didn’t have it until they were in their 50’s. My parents are now in their 60’s and have a varied palate but that’s due to them being on many holidays.
For years my Dad would have salad cream with salads Never that fancy stuff, mayonnaise.

Yes, but the OP asked her MIL about food. That was MIL's opportunity to say 'I always have a boiled egg, toast and marmalade for breakfast' or whatever. If you say 'I'll eat anything' and then balk at granola and yoghourt you only have yourself to blame! To rub salt in the wound, the MIL then went to M&S with the OP and for whatever reason refused to suggest anything she'd like to eat. Cutting off her nose to spite her face.

this. I am in my 70's. The things I don't or can't eat. I know I don't like or can't eat because I have tried them. As I have already said, boomers were in the vanguard of "different" food.

I think I’m very lucky with dad (85) and late MIL (died at 91). They ate what we ate. Curry (mild), spag bog, you name it. MIL only ever wanted cereal (pref crunchy nut cornflakes) and toast for breakfast. And we always had a pud when she stayed…. But otherwise it was business as usual.

OPs MIL isn’t much older than me and I’d find her painful. Good luck!

In which case, were you the OP's MIL, you should have said when asked. I find it hard to understand how anybody can have reached the age to be a MIL and not grasped that not everybody has a cooked breakfast. That was the case when I was growing up, so it's hardly new.

I am in my 70's and the food doesn't sound weird to me either....its just that i don't like it (and know because I have tried it) or couldn't eat it.

😂Had one of SILs staying for a week last year. Nightmare. One day we went to a little seaside place for a wander round the shops and lunch but she couldn't find a single thing she wanted to eat at any of the many restaurants and cafes. Eventually my DH asked her what she wanted to eat - "just normal food". OK but we're in Normandy, so we might struggle to find a Morrisons all day breakfast!!

And she's the easier SIL to please, food wise. The other one once went nuts at me for giving her cream cheese (during that particular visit she'd announced she was dairy intolerant). It was actually hummus and she was with me when I bought it.

I don't mind catering for people with real food intolerances but I do mind having to twist myself into a pretzel to try to satisfy the demands of pensioners with poor manners. Sympathies OP!

Chickpeas for example are something people either love or hate and if that's the only thing for dinner then it's a bit awkward

Glad to hear it's not just me - and it's probably not something that would be on my radar if someone asked me if there was anything I didn't like, but as some of my family are vegan of course it has come to the fore. So they don't cook anything with chickpeas in for me and vice versa. I also have to say I don't like dried fruit with savoury but I'd eat it if presented with it as a guest.
Not chickpeas though.

In some cases it's texture more than taste. I've known people who can't bear chicken, bananas, mushrooms, aubergines and various other things who all say they can't stand the feel of them in the mouth and would struggle to swallow them. The older I get the more I realise what a complicated thing eating can be for some people, for all sorts of psychological reasons as well as allergies, food intolerances and anatomical issues.

Those all sound brilliant. A lot of that would have garlic in if I'd made it and can almost guarantee would have garlic in if ordered in a restaurant.

Would you eat moussaka, lasagne, pasta or chicken and rice dishes when ordering out?

I think chillis are a lot easier to avoid than garlic. You'll even find garlic powder in a lot of supermarket stuff you wouldn't necessarily expect.

It never existed. It's a myth that there was ever a time when British people ate nothing spicy. Ginger, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon have been staples for those who could afford them for hundreds and hundreds of years. All our classic traditional Christmas sweet foods are spiced with them - Christmas pudding, mincemeat for mince pies, Christmas cake. Nutmeg on rice pudding. Cloves in bread sauce. Lots of British people who had lived abroad during the days of Empire brought a taste for the local cuisine back here. Mild, anglicised curries served with rice have been fairly well known in the UK since the 19th century and curry powder has been on grocers' and supermarket shelves for decades. Ketchup, chutney, pickles, kedgeree, mulligatawny soup - all flavoured with spices. The Empire is the reason for large-scale immigration to the UK after WW2 and ultimately the crowning of chicken tikka masala as the nation's favourite dish.

We never eat fajitas or tacos, I wouldn't think it was odd if over 70s hadn't. I love cooking tagine, but my 20 year old doesn't like cous cous or fruit in casserole esque meals like this. It's one of the very few things he's not keen on.

I see a few people suggesting you tell her what you’re planning to cook in advance and ask if it’s ok for her - the problem with that is that she may have no real mental image of whatever you say so doesn’t realise in advance she won’t like it. Also she may feel like it’s rude to say “no I don’t like that!”.

Our extended family has a lot of dietary issues/intolerances etc so I always frame it as “I might cook x….or y…..what do you think?”. Obviously make sure x and y are very different! Hopefully that way you get closer to a meal they actually want.

I'm older than you and love chickpeas, and have been eating them for years.

This isn't a generational thing, not at your age.

I have to say, as someone in their 70s, I’d be very sad to be offered what an awful
lot of you seem to think is ‘normal’ food for someone my age. Ham, plain salad, boiled potatoes, boring cereals, plain chicken… I mean I’d eat it, and wonder quietly why you didn’t eat normal food like veggie chilli and fajitas, spiced salads, and curry.

I bloody loathe chickpeas though.

I do agree with a couple of PP that it’s probably better to ask what people’s favourites are, rather than what they don’t like.

Well said @Stillreadingalot
This thread is pretty ageist. DH is 74 and eats chickpeas, tacos, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Greek, Italian and anything else I can think of except for celery and bananas. I won't see 65 again and eat pretty much anything (except for parsnips).

Even my late MIL, who grew up very poor in a very rural area and ate a very limited diet as a child would try new things. If she was still alive she would be 96 now.

Well this thread has certainly been eye opening! I'd consider that all fairly standard and would never think to check some one likes chickpeas as to me they don't really have a flavour.

If I'm cooking for someone for the first time, I ask for any allergies and dislikes as well as favourite cuisines for a guide

But I've no idea how you can be so clueless as to what your in laws eat. Surely you've been to theirs or out for meals and seen they are very traditional diners.

Older people are set in their ways and eat more traditional foods.

Not this nonsense again. Can we take age out of this? Some people are very fussy about what they eat, and as others have already pointed out, are often unaware that others eat differently. This can apply at any age. I am in my mid 60s and eat almost anything - I always have. My parents were born in the early 30s and often tried new things, within reason - nothing too spicy! My husband is 70 and was a bit picky as a child but his mother was a terrible cook. When we met he started to eat much more widely because I am a reasonably good cook. And so on. I've known young people who had extremely restricted tastes and it's a matter of personality, not a result of their date of birth.

I get the impression it was a bit like going with a recalcitrant teenager and saying “So what DO you want then?”!
MIL is probably terrified of OP after much eye rolling over chickpeas with raisins

Also there’s a big difference between a massive dish of chickpeas and 1950s meat and two veg

I bet MIL might eat Italian/french/other European food and curry etc.
And most of Europe is a variation on the meat and veg combo

This, with bells on.

Also very surprised by how many people classify tacos as some sort of exotic food new to the UK.

Old El Paso was selling taco kits and Fajita sizzle n stir sauces (top pot for spices, bottom for sauce) in the late 1990s in normal supermarkets IIRC.