To get a bit impatient with really fussy eaters (adults)

[atthewelles]

I'm not talking about people with medical conditions which preclude certain foods from their diet or people who have anxiety issues re certain types of food/ different foods touching each other on the plate etc

But adults who just turn their noses up at anything other than plain meat and potatoes and act as if vegetables, pasta, fish, anything containing spices or garlic or cooked in a sauces is on a par with serving up roasted worms are a bit irritating - difficult to cook for and impossible to please when trying to meet up in a restaurant.

AIBU to think grown ups should at least try a few different foodstuffs and be a little bit open minded about what they're prepared to eat?

SeniorWrangler, I read those links.

So if Brussels sprouts taste bitter... So what? Can you not enjoy something for being bitter?

The whole point of having sophisticated, educated palate is that you can feel the taste in its fullest- whether it is sour, bitter, sweet or spicy. And learn to enjoy and relish it for what it is.

If you think wine tastes like vinegar, you have an unrefined palate. It is like a child who has been exposed to very limited things. So if someone has the limited taste- buds of a child, they are suddenly 'super-tasters'?

And like I said before, a lot of these fussy eaters seem to be perfectly comfortable with processed meats, sausages and fries. Food that an educated palate will baulk at because you can taste the preservatives and unhealthy fried/processed flavours. But somehow their 'super-taste buds' are perfectly comfortable with junk food.

Oh just feck off OP. I can't bear garlic. The smell is boke inducing.... and that applies to people who have eaten it as well. I'm not going to sit in your house and eat some stinking offering to make you happy. I am an adult, who doesn't wish to eat anything that smells like a stale armpit or wake up the next day with myself and my bedroom smelling that way as well. It isn't fussy, it is a perfectly understandable preference.Quote

Eh, maybe you should feck off and read my post properly. Where did I say that people who dislike garlic are irritating? I-was-talking-about-people-who-for-no-medical-or-phobic-reasons-just-turn-their-noses-up-at-food-that-they-are-not-used-to.

Would you like me to draw a diagram?

ProusAs because I'm not talking about random people I've seen in restaurants. I'm talking about people I know and therefore know that they don't have medical conditions or phobias.

Higgledy obviously your friends do pander to you if you think every restaurant serves a steak or plain chicken.

Yes, but not every restaurant has plain food on the menu and a lot of fussy eaters then refuse to go there. My father couldn't eat certain food stuffs due to allergies but he didn't drag everybody into boring hotel carvery type places all the time. Like your father, he spoke to the staff and asked for things to be cooked a certain way. I have no problem with people like that; it's the people who insist everyone goes to McDonalds that drive me mad.

Flatbread, how come your marvellous palate can enjoy and relish all sorts of foods except cheap ones? It seems to me that your palate is simply a snob.

Well Noble probably its because cheap foods are full of artificial flavourings and cheap additives that taste horrible to someone who eats mainly home cooked food. That's not being snobby, its having a palate that hasn't been destroyed by processed foods.

Oh, so these foods taste horrible and you don't want to eat them? How fussy of you

I have some sympathy with fussy eaters, purely because when you can't eat certain things (for reasons real or perceived) there are people who treat you like a pariah as a result.

I have a very serious allergy, but because it's (unusually) specific people either don't believe me or try and pressure me into trying things that are slightly outside that specific parameter. I know that cheese derived from cows milk could kill me, why are people so surprised that I will not have goats cheese for example? I may be fine, but I don't consider the risk worth it! There are few things more distressing in social situation than food related peer pressure, something I've experienced only too often.

With many years of odd looks/comments/inability to attend certain functions/having to check almost everything in restaurants behind me, I'm not going to say much about people who are fussy. I do have a great deal of respect for those who are fussy, yet still work to broaden their palettes - it can't be easy to try a break established patterns/habits/limits.

To me, there's a difference between not liking something and being fussy. Everyone has food they don't like. I don't like beetroot for example, it's texture and taste is horrible. But I've tried it several times.

What annoys me are the 'I don't like it, but I've never tried it group'. How do you know? I have a friend who doesn't like vegetables. I fail to see how you can hate all vegetables.

I met a 20 something who had never tried mushrooms! I wonder if it's to do with what you were fed as a child and parent's attitudes towards food.

I also don't get the a meal isn't a meal without meat thing. And no I'm not a veggie.

YANBU; everyone has one or two things they don't like, but some people are just ridiculous. I have a friend whose children have now become fussy eaters because of her. They were coming for a meal, so I thought snack food would please everyone. A table laden with ham, cheese, sausage rolls, cucumber, tomatoes, tuna mayo, crisps, bread rolls etc awaited them. She went to the shop virtually straight away and bought Pepperamis as the children only eat (quote) "Pepperami, chicken nuggets and pizza". Not even bread or cheese.

It was summer so I'd also got lots of fresh strawberries and ice cream for pudding. They didn't eat strawberries and only ate white ice cream (not Mackies yellow ice cream). FFS.

No, Noble. I prefer the taste of home cooked food but I don't refuse to eat processed foods, I can just taste the difference, that's all. Nothing fussy about that. You really are pulling at straws here.

lol all this 'supertasters' stuff

I know GrowSome I feel a fashionable 'condition' coming on.

"Eh, maybe you should feck off and read my post properly. Where did I say that people who dislike garlic are irritating? I-was-talking-about-people-who-for-no-medical-or-phobic-reasons-just-turn-their-noses-up-at-food-that-they-are-not-used-to.

Would you like me to draw a diagram? "

Ermmm... you said (and I quote) 'anything containing spices or garlic......' hence my response . If you served up 'anything containing garlic' I wouldn't eat it. I wouldn't require anything else though, I'd be fine with nothing. People who do not like something but insist on a separate meal/changing restaurant are a complete pain, and I'll let you get away with hating them

Have just read that supertasters often avoid fatty and sugary foods... doesn't quite explain all the fussy eaters who eat only convenience foods does it atthewelles

Maybe not relevent, but I was raised to 'not like lots of different ie costly foods'.

When I was young I was often told what foods I didn't like. Anything that wasn't crap basically. Luckily I was able to escape my home life and realised that Greek/Italian/Indian etc foods weren't crap. I remember going to a greek restaurant with my then girlfriend and my uncle and saying I didn't like kebabs! Only because I had been told they were bad and I hadn't ever tasted them. I didn't know what butter tasted like until I was 18! Wouldn't eat margerine now if you paid me!

Now I love all variations of food(maybe why I need to lose some weight ), and will try anything. But if I hadn't been lucky enough to escape the clutches of my tight-arsed pisshead parents I too could be a fussy/irritating eater.

Why would you eat something that tasted horrible? Not seeing that as a virtue here.

So that you could be seen as having a very posh palate noble.

Senior thank you for those links perhaps they will help enlighten Flatbread who seems insistent that a group of people I tested for using PROP for a number of years don't actually exist & therefore my research was pointless .

Please may I make the distinction one last time between rude people who impose their food views on others & make dinner parties difficult and those who have a heightened sense of taste (which I feel the OP is describing regarding sauces/spices etc) who prefer plain food.

I feel I must 'come out' as a supertaster as that is what got me interested in the research when I was at uni. Fascinating to watch a lecture theatre of people taking bits of paper (impregnated with PROP) react as differently as some asking for new pieces of paper as theirs didn't seem to have anything on it (it did they just weren't sensitive to it) to people pulling odd faces saying 'that's not very nice' to others ripping the piece of paper out of their mouths going 'urgh' & needing a glass of water to rinse their mouths out to get rid of the taste.

Supertasters are actually employed by food and drink manufacturers to provide an objective sensory profile of foods/drinks (Google sensory profiling). Again Flatbread if supertasters didn't exist then someone should close the food & drink research industry down. It's clearly built on the Emperor's New Clothes principle! Sensory profilers do not give their own opinion of the foods/drinks they taste but articulate how strong a characteristic is e.g. bitter, sweet or it could be burnt notes in chocolate, acid notes in jelly sweets etc.

Supertasters would not want to eat cheap processed foods as they would be able to taste the fat and salt in say a cheap sausage. That is why I'm trying (and failing with Flatbread certainly) to differentiate between people who have a heightened sense of taste (to help explain why some people don't like sauces/spices etc) and people who have a heightened sense of entitlement/rudeness and want everyone to eat what they eat.

But some people, like my brother, cannot taste PROP at all and are still fussy.

ILikebirds yep so he falls into the second category of what may be perceived as 'fussy' but with different reasons for being so.