Some foods just get to us. Whether it’s texture, color or smell, everyone has their reasons — however silly — for their picky eating.
For example, I refuse to eat “chunks.” This includes blue cheese, feta cheese, Thousand Island dressing, etc. Chunks. I don’t even care what it tastes like — I’m just not eating it. And, according to Psychology Today, I’m not alone…
In the first comprehensive survey of food pickiness among adults, anthropologist Jane Kauer interviewed nearly 500 adult Americans about their attitudes toward foods, food variety and eating habits. Kauer, found that mild pickiness is quite widespread — about one-third of her volunteers described themselves as “unusually picky eaters.”
It may not be surprising to learn that 60 percent of us like to leave our plates clean or that close to half of us eat just about the same thing for breakfast nearly every day. But stranger habits are also common. Many people refuse to drink while they eat. Others won’t eat food that is lumpy or has a filling, like raviolis or egg rolls. Nearly 20 percent of us are repelled by raw tomatoes (something about the gooeyness inside the firmness), and about the same fraction of us simply don’t like trying new foods.
In the course of her survey, Kauer found a few extremely picky people. (One woman she interviewed, for example, ate little more than canned brains, undercooked French fries and fried eggs. Kauer thinks this intensely fastidious eating is probably related to obsessive-compulsive behavior.) Questioning the pickiest third further, Kauer identified a master list of foods that are almost universally accepted: fried chicken, French fries, chocolate chip cookies, and above all else, Kraft macaroni and cheese. (”People seem to respond to the orange color,” she says. “Maybe it’s a signal that it’s really fake and therefore really safe.”) Obviously, these are all classic comfort foods, but more important for the picky person, they are unlikely to have weird or surprising ingredients. “We all know what’s in fried chicken, for example, even if we get it from some place we’ve never been before,” she says.
Why is it that all the universally accepted foods are bad for you?!?!
Read the rest of the Psychology Today article here and feel free to share your “safe” and “icky” foods below!
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