Other people's cooking makes me feel sick

[TheLuckyMoose]

Okay, so I already know I am BU in some ways. I’m just not sure how others cope?

Other people’s food hygiene standards make me feel sick. Whether it’s my brother cooking with a sweaty forehead, whether it’s people touching the food when I know they haven’t washed their hands. Or it could be someone talking over the food they are making and I’m sure saliva is getting into the food.

Recently I have been at a friends house and she doesn’t rinse the debris off the plates before washing them. So the basin water ends up full of stuff and that water is subsequently used to clean more dishes.

I also have a friend who literally licks her fingers whilst cooking.

I wondered if I have OCD, but my fear is not of getting ill, it’s more that I feel sick eating the food given to me when people just aren’t hygienic enough in my opinion.

I know this post sounds awful, please be gentle with me. I have had issues with this since I was little, but I’m just noticing more and more people doing unhygienic things whilst preparing meals and it’s making my life difficult.

Grim

I definitely don’t have OCD, am not a germaphobe at all, but I feel exactly the same (also hate it when people wash dishes in a sink full of water that way).

For me it’s totally around a fear of getting sick, I am someone who seems to unfortunately be particularly prone to catching norovirus, despite good hand hygiene etc, working in healthcare doesn’t help, but I found out recently that some people are simply much more or less genetically predisposed to catching norovirus and get more sick from it. I read a thread on mumsnet once where people said how often they’d had norovirus and some people were saying like once or twice in their life ever! I was shocked as I get it at least once a year without fail (with a brief respite in the early pandemic!) and very often more.

i don’t think this is at all normal, sounds OCD like to me

if someone was cooking me dinner and talking (the horror!) I’d be thinking about the conversation and maybe pouring them a drink. Not worrying that they could be spitting in my food and scrutinising their hygiene.

Genuine question OP - do you only eat UPF factory food then?

No takeaways, no coffees from coffee shops (or cakes for that matter), no bread from the bakers, never bought anything from a farm-shop, nothing from a butchers, no eggs ever because invariably a human has gone to retrieve them,

wild fish! - caught at sea and handled on a boat in rough conditions where the fishermen are not sanitising their hands every five seconds , and still breathing, shouting, coughing....

That wild fish then used to make sushi - meticulously prepared by humans

artisan cheese - prepared by humans

Even with UPF factory food, a human has touched it somewhere in the production line. And how do you know that human didn't cough at that moment? Or sneeze, or itch their ear... Even if it has been processed and sealed before it has left the factory....

This seems like a miserable way to live and I imagine you'd be so much happier if you sought help for it. Even if so you could enjoy delicious artisan cheeses. It's worth it for that alone 😁

In my experience, MN threads attract likeminded people like moths to a flame, and the responses aren’t representative at all.

For instance, if there’s a thread about people earning six figures, you’d be mistaken for thinking the average UK salary is around £200k based on the posts… when clearly it’s not, and the thread is obviously acting as a magnet for people similar to the OP.

The sad thing here is that those with these life-limiting neuroses just get their behaviours validated by others who are similar, and they continue thinking they are more normal than they were…. but no less miserable and still imprisoned by their neuroses.

I write this as someone who has had neuroses in the past but managed to let them go and feel liberated at a result…

I feel exactly the same way. I have a friend who insists on baking me things. When you talk to her, she spits when she talks and fingers are constantly going in and out of ears and, I’m sure, worse 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢 sometimes I have no choice than to eat some of it in front of her and I’m so scared I’ll actually throw up. Otherwise it all goes straight in the bin as soon as she leaves!

You probably get norovirius as often as you do because you work in healthcare…and norovirus is frequently passed between people, not directly from food (though that is another route).

The thing is, your post is going to attract lots of people who have the same issues you do, which will make it seem normal, but obviously it's not normal at all.

Your examples range from things which would make me think 'Why on earth would that be a problem ?!' to 'Ok that's not ideal, but it wouldn't actually bother me'. I would be bothered by something I genuinely thought might make me ill. I've been ill from food three times in my life - all three from seafood served by restaurants. I will happily eat cakes and biscuits from a school bake sale (including things made by children!).

I'm clean in the kitchen and wash my hands but firmly believe in the seconds rule if something goes on the clean floor.

I have never given this a second thought and work on the basis that if something is cooked the temperature will have killed off anything.

The exception is carverys. We have seen people dipping their fingers in graves and sauces to taste. Yuk! We have only been once.

None of us are ever sick unless it's a full on gastro bug. DH never. DS 18 mo, DD once aged 4 and once aged 14. Me winter 24, when ds was 18 mo, 1979.

I can’t eat other people’s cooking either unless they’re family or very close, trustworthy friends.

For me it’s not a hygiene thing as such, I’m autistic and it’s fear of unknown textures or flavours and it not tasting or feeling “right” in my mouth.

I'm the same as @Sunblocker . As a child, I could eat food cooked by my mum but I really struggled to eat a crumb at anyone else's house. Now I will eat my own cooking or my partner's cooking, but I can't eat out, or touch takeaways or pre-packed sandwiches etc. We prepare/cook everything from scratch.

I also hate cooking for others because I'm very conscious that my house is messy and I have a lot of pets, so I am far from being hygiene obsessed, although I'm very fussy about food preparation and we're vegetarian.

We live in a terrace, and even smelling my neighbours food or someone's barbecue makes me feel sick.
It's definitely a psychological issue.

If I think about others' food hygiene, I probably wouldn't be able to eat the food. I've sort of trained myself not to think about it and tell myself I've managed to survive so far and that most people don't get ill after eating out or getting a takeaway. (Having said that, knowing the state of my brother's fingernails, I avoid eating his homemade bread.)

I refused to have a cup of tea at my mums house or eat because their kitchen was disgusting. They didn't rinse washing up and my stepdad never washed his hands. I got a kids cup out their cupboard once which was stored with the lid firmly on so I took a sniff and it fucking reeked of mould!! From then on I took my kids fruit shoots if we visited

I completely understand but trying to get better.

I don't know why I am like this as my house is cluttered and not the cleanest so it isn't that.

I would never buy anything from the homemade cake stall at school fairs. Would never buy a factory prepared sandwich from a shop.

I am bit obsessive about washing my hands so maybe it's this. Seeing people on kebab vans etc handle food and then handle money makes me 🤮. I hate handling coins and other people's keys!

It is a very restrictive way to live and I don't know anyone like this so I definitely agree that this thread is not representative of most people.

How do you go on holiday or visit friends and family if you can't eat food that you haven't prepared yourself? Everyone I know enjoys a communal bbq or shared lunch, food from market stalls, home made cakes.

I'll eat virtually anything and am never sick. I probably last threw up in about 2013 when my DD was bringing bugs home from nursery.

If you have children please be careful not to pass on your psychological issues to them.

I totally understand this but I do have a history of arfid and OCD.
I never eat at anyone else's home and hardly ever eat out and if I do I always check the Scores on the Doors website first.
I can think of only two people I know who's cooking I would be being happy to eat, the others (including my own parents) is a definite no.

I have massive issues with this kind of thing and I have since I was a child.

I wouldn’t eat anyone’s food only a very select few people. That’s basically my mum, dhs mum and my sister. Even with them I’d only eat certain things.

If I went to someone’s house for dinner I’d gag I just couldn’t eat food that someone had made.

I hardly eat out because if I go in a restaurant and something puts me off I can’t eat anything.

It’s quite restrictive I’m not sure what it is. Is it OCD?

Agreed. I don't think I have ever even noticed any of these things. It suggests to me that people are on high alert when they eat at other people's homes, watching them closely to see if they do anything they deem unhygienic. I'm relaxing and enjoying the company.

I’m not sure if it’s that with me as well as a hygiene thing.

I know logically that I’m very unlikely to get unwell from someone’s food.

I like most foods, like the barbecue example. I love burgers/sausages. But if I bit into a brand I wasn’t familiar with or they were cooked differently to how I do it. I’d start gagging. That would be massively embarrassing so I just avoid.

Ot is shit and very restrictive but I’ve always been this way. I’m waiting for an autism assessment.

I can kind of see where you are coming from. But someone upthread suggested they would talk to a friend as a “teaching moment”. I suspect that may be the end of the friendship if you try to teach them about kitchen hygiene

@Emmaemma13 I’m the same as you in that I’d start gagging - I’ve even thrown up when food has been the wrong texture. It’s mortifying and it means when I go out I’m really limited to a certain amount of safe foods that I know I’ll be able to tolerate.

Sensory issues are a big part of my autism - I’m similarly fussy with clothes and room temperatures!

I do not eat from people who do not wash their meat. I only eat with people that I have observed with my own eyes, that they are hygienic people.
and a dirty house is one I would never eat at.

Who washes meat? Now that's odd.

I don’t know what the solution is, OP, but I know you’re not alone. I’m the same, and remember being like this as a child and going round to other people’s houses. One parent joked with my mum that “I clearly thought they were trying to poison me” because I wouldn’t eat anything at their house. My mum was furious that I’d be so impolite - but I didn’t know how to explain it to her. I still don’t!

It’s particularly bad in houses with dogs. It makes me feel physically sick if I have to eat there. I had to go to a book club session recently in a house with two black labs who were constantly under the table and begging for food, and I’d see the host petting them and feeding them stuff and then using her hands to prep food for us 🤮🤮
Couldn't eat a thing. Even drinking from a glass felt like a huge effort.

I don’t actually think I’ve ever said any of this out loud (as it were) before! My mum had OCD, but nothing to do with food, so I wonder whether it’s an inherited or learned anxiety thing.

I tend to just excuse myself by saying, “Ooh, this looks lovely but I’m not hungry”.

If you find something that works to help, let me know! The irony is that I’m a total feeder for others - I love cooking for people and hosting etc and I’m far from obsessive about my own hygiene standards. I’m prob pretty ‘normal’ in my own house. So weird.

Yes, I’ve never taken notice of this kind of thing at all really. It’s just not any kind of thought process or that occupies any space in my brain.

Once you accept there’s faecal matter on basically everything you touch then you just have to let it go or drive yourself mad. I’ve never had food poisoning and only started to get Norovirus occasionally when I had kids and they brought it home from nursery.