Yesterday, bookofjoe had a link to this WebMD article which says British researchers now believe that picky eating habits are genetically inherited as well as learned; in fact, the genetic tendency to be a picky eater outweighs the learned behavior by a 3-1 margin.
That actually makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, if you think about it. Early humans would have benefitted from being wary of trying new foods, and children (especially very young ones) would have even greater survival benefit by sticking with known and safe foods. Of course, sometimes circumstances would compel the adults to try new food items, and thus people would eventually learn to eat things that on first glance would not have seemed safely edible and expanded their diets.
The common wisdom is that people naturally grow out of their picky eating habits as they grow older, but my experience over the last couple of years cooking for different groups of people as a personal chef has been that people hang onto their childhood likes and dislikes of foods with every last ounce of strength. Some people DO grow out of their fussy eating; I myself was an extremely picky eater as a small child and did not really begin to have an appreciation for lots of foods until I went off to college and started cooking for myself. But over and over again, I’ve encountered picky eating habits in people that obviously come from childhood aversions that were never overcome — mushrooms are probably the most disliked ingredient, but also onions, tomatoes (especially raw tomatoes), cheese, spinach (or anything else leafy), olives, lamb, and dark-meat chicken. In fact, I even had to walk away from one client because there were so many things they WOULDN’T eat, I couldn’t adjust my recipes to come up with something they would.
There’s really nothing wrong with having legitimate likes and dislikes in your food choices. I genuinely do not like Brussels sprouts or cauliflower. But I know that because I ate them as an adult with a more informed palate. If you don’t like mushrooms because you thought they were gross when you were seven years old and have never eaten them since, then you’re being what I consider a fussy eater.
Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been working on getting Charlotte to try new foods. Having seen other parents fight bloody battles with their babies and toddlers over food, we never pushed food issues with her when she was that age, but now that she’s a full-fledged kid it seemed like the time was right. It was slow going at first, and we were hindered a bit through the summer by not cooking a lot at home, but recently Charlotte has pushed the envelope quite a lot. As a baby she would never eat pasta, but now gladly eats buttered pasta and even homemade macaroni and cheese. On the vegetable side, she loves broccoli, likes green beans, peas and carrots, eats corn (especially corn on the cob) and will even eat a little lettuce with ranch salad dressing. Peppers, onions and garlic are not on her list, nor are the dreaded mushrooms (will someone please tell me why this dislike of mushrooms is so widespread?), but I am willing to give her time on those.
The biggest change has been her developing taste for meat. She wouldn’t eat meat of any kind until she was about four, and then only on the rare occasion. She decided she liked cold hot dogs around that time (one my my staple foods as a small child) and once in a while some baloney. And that’s about where she stayed until our 2007 Food Initiative. Things have taken off since then. The other night she ate an entire mini-meatloaf (sans onions). Last night she ate two slices of pork tenderloin; in fact, she especially likes pork and will eat it in whatever form I cook it except for sausage. She even shocked me when she ordered a hamburger at Friendly’s recently instead of her customary grilled cheese sandwich.
The real kicker came last weekend. Last Saturday was brutally hot in our area, and it was also Charlotte’s first day of fall soccer, so we were all outside in the hot sun for a good part of the afternoon. Neither Bridget nor I had any intention of making the kitchen any hotter by cooking, so after we got home, we were considering our dining possibilities when we saw a commercial for a nearby Brazilian churrascaria restaurant. There are a lot of Brazilian barbecue restaurants around our area due to the number of Brazilian immigrants, but we’ve never tried them — Bridget is not a big meat-eater, and it’s not the sort of place we’d take the kid. To my amazement, Bridget herself said “Wanna go there?” and so we did.
If you’ve never been, the shtick is that waiters come around to your table with skewers of a number of different kinds of grilled meats and slice off whatever you want. It’s an “all-you-can-eat” dinner, and the choices actually get a little overwhelming. We were offered top sirloin, chicken wrapped in bacon, pork spareribs, roast beef, pork sausage, pork tenderloin, lamb, chicken drummettes and even grilled pineapple before we had to simply give up. Charlotte ate a little of at least four different kinds of meat, along with some plain rice and some salad.
My real goal with her is to get her to not be afraid to try new foods. I don’t care if she decides that she doesn’t like something, as long as she gives it an honest try. And by an honest try, I don’t mean one bite now and then never again. I mean I’ll keep trying to get her to open up to foods that she rejects right now as well as the broader range of possibilities. I would love to be able to share my love for food and cooking with her now instead of having to wait for her to grow up.
I seriously don’t get the mushroom thing and, even more, the onion aversion. I mean, the people who ARE NOT allergic, but claim they can TASTE onion in anything it’s in? I call bullsh*t. I get that you might not like raw onions because of the taste, and I can even get that you may not love the TEXTURE of cooked onions, but I refuse to believe that someone can taste (or find offensive) that little bit of onion that was cooked down to nothing at the start of some concoction. Or caramelized onions — the BEST.
And mushrooms! People! These things are little buttons of joy — not to mention the much more exotic ones.
Feh. More for us, I guess. Oh, and I’ll take your cauli and brussels sprouts, too, thanks. You can have my zucchini and summer squash instead.
I am a mushroom hater. I’m sorry, I’ll go and shoot myself now. I’ll never be cultured enough for you all… *bang*
We didn’t have mushrooms often, if at all, when I was a kid, as far as I can recall, but I’ve tried them as an adult – several times, in different forms – and I can’t stand them. I think it’s a combination of texture and taste, but mostly it’s the smell. The smell of cooking mushrooms is very bad indeed.
Eggs I can eat, but only if not at all runny. I’m abivalent about the smell of them cooking, though I have learned to work through that.
Very fishy fish I’m not keen on (never have been). Oysters (it’s a texture thing mostly) and shellfish are no go too. I tried, honestly…
I have an extremely strong aversion to bitter things. I have trained myself to eat broccoli but I don’t like it. Same for lettuce. Coffee, beer, olives… these are too much, I just avoid them. Malaria tablets (quinine), they’re just SO much fun.
Just count me picky. My sister is fine for most foods. My mother adores tripe, and at least one of my parents loves liver and kidney. Go figure.
I found that I could handle certain foods more as I got older — the mushrooms, the raw onions, etc. A few I learned to endure if I was caught by surprise — e.g. raw tomatoes in a sandwich. But I cannot abide the smell, texture, or flavor of eggs especially when they are hard-boiled or fried. (I can handle omelettes just fine.)
Actually, I always liked mushrooms.
Flerdle’s list of dislikes has much in common with my favorites! Coffee, beer, olives, oysters, mushrooms… yum.
My personal dislike list is down to gnocchi, which have a nasty mealy texture. I like potatoes, I like pasta… just keep ‘em separate.
I agree with you, Brian, about fussiness being an unattractive trait — and I don’t do it for a living. Whenever we’re talking about going out to eat and someone says “Oh, I don’t like