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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Were you a picky eater?
I was super picky - like no vegetables kinda of kid (unless it was cooked carrots or broccoli or raw celery) until I was about 14 or 15... when all my friends started ordering salads at restaurants and I was pretty much peer pressured into eating veg.
Now, of course, I love the stuff. But I'm super worried that my own kids will be picky eaters. Is it something you can train them out of being (or into being)?
Is there anything you refuse to eat now? I personally can't stand shishamo (or anything where I have to eat the head) and natto.
Re: Were you a picky eater?
I don't eat fish or seafood of any kind. (Don't hate me! I know is is a board with a lot of people living on island or coastal regions, and most of you love the stuff. But I just can't do it!)
For me, though, it's less of a "picky" thing, and more of a phobia. I have only tried fish about 3-4 times in my life, and have never had shrimp or lobster. But don't even try the...."just try it, you might like it" thing. Just typing these words, my palms are sweating and my stomach is churning. To me, those things are not "food." As far as I'm concerned, they are no more edible than this chair I am sitting on.
Those things just don't belong in my mouth!
Otherwise, I'm a pretty good eater. Even as a kid I loved vegetables and fruit. The only other thing I can't handle is really spicy hot foods. I love SPICE, just not spicy HOT.
MH is not a veggie eater, though....I sure hope he doesn't pass that onto our kids!
I think for the most part I was never really that picky of eater, though there was just a couple of things, like frozen mushy mixed veggies (peas, carrotts, corn). Could tell you a story about that one . Pretty much my mom had me try just about everythng and now as an adult, I do like to try anything once!
Veggies now have to be fresh from the market! My mom is European born and we had some great dishes, like Rouladen (meat roll up with cabbage), As for my dad who is Jewish, we never really had pork growing up and now, though I have tried making it for my DH and have sampled it, I just can't handle the taste,
but with the exception of bacon. I also have a tough time with Cinnamon, the smell turns me off, but have a new found love of black olives. It's funny how your tastes change.
hahaha lol at this
i was really good about eating salads, fruits, vegetables, even sushi as a kid-but i will admit i was super picky and had very definitive points of views on things even as a young being. stopped eating meat when i was about 8 years old and still to this day cannot stand the smell of hamburgers cooking-would not drink milk still do not. not really wild about peanut butter unless it was the chunky kind made fresh through the grinder-would not eat sandwiches as i could not and still cannot stomach packaged bread. hate creamed spinach-yuck-and have never had nor will i try those orange cheese snack things-cheetos i think could not cope with the colour-i am sure there are more things that i refused to eat as a tyke however i was also really happy to eat things that most kids would not eat
I still am a picky eater...mostly against vegetables. It's funny because I'm pretty adventurous otherwise -- I love all cuisines, raw fish, beef tongue (yum!), foie gras (double yum!), etc. But give me a raw onion or celery and I will gag.
OMG....I LOVE Rouladen! It's one of my favorite dishes. If you have a good recipe and are willing to share, I'd love it. I have one that's only okay, so I rarely eat it unless I'm out at a good German restaurant. Hmmmmm.....maybe I'll request a German restaurant this weekend for my bd!
if you had asked my grandmother, she would have said yes, but I ate veggies (I remember liking broccoli even when I was much younger) - but we also never had non-mainstream veggies like squash or zuccini when I was younger. I am probably much pickier now just b/c I try to eat healthier, fresher, less processed foods. One thing that has stuck around in the "no way jose" category is hot dogs....never liked them!
As for the non-seafood eaters, I truly don't know what you eat!!
Though I will say I know a few people from here that don't eat seafood & I really don't get that - I just don't know how you get away from the seafood here!
No, I was never a picky eater. I am firm believer that if you feed your kids veggies from the start, they'll eat them. Seriously, if they have no choice, they will eat it.
I wouldn't consider myself a picky eater now, but there are, of course, things I don't like. I won't eat Thai or Indian food - the smell, the flavors....BLECH.
My pediatrician used to call me Tomato Girl because that was my favorite vegetable and one of the very few that I would eat. I only ate carrots, tomatoes, and corn when I was little. My mom would have to sneak other veggies into my diet by chopping them up really small and cooking them together with other foods.
I'm still kind of picky. I absolutely cannot stand broccoli, cauliflower, and asparagus. Natto, okra, and other 'sticky' foods are also on my don't eat list. Any sort of organ meat also makes me gag. I'm also not a huge fan of anything with vinegar in it.
After spending two years in Japan, I've gotten to like some sushi and sashimi. Before that, I had convinced myself that there was no way I'd ever eat raw fish, EVER. I tried green bean casserole for the first time this past December and was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was yummy.
You know, I thought I was a picky eater until I met a girl who was in college who had never had a strawberry in her entire life. Watermelon was something else she had never tried before. I was shocked!
LOL you obviously didn't know me as a child. The stories about me are legendary. When I was about 4, my mom would always give us oatmeal for breakfast. I HATED it. One day, after I refused to eat it, she said, "Fine, but this is all you get for your meals today. If you don't want to eat it now, you can eat it at lunch." So I skipped breakfast, and at lunch she served up the same bowl of oatmeal. I refused to eat it again, so we had round 3 at dinner time. And I refused to even look at it. The next morning, there was that same damn bowl of oatmeal and I still said no. (By this point, she wouldn't have actually made me eat it - I think she just wanted to make me willing to eat it by forcing me to admit it was better than going hungry.) After that, my mom gave up on me vs oatmeal. I guess she figured that if a 4 year old was willing to go for a day and a half without eating, it wasn't worth the fight.
That kind of thing continued into my early teens - when I was 13, she and I got into a big ole fight about me refusing to eat a dinner she'd cooked (ratatouille, which I loathe to this day), and she screamed at me, "FINE! You think you can do better? Then YOU cook for the family!" And I screamed back, "FINE! I WILL!" I think we both thought the other person would back down after a week or so, but we were both stubborn and that's exactly what ended up happening: from that point on, I was the cook in the family. And ironically, I ended up discovering that I loooooved cooking and was actually pretty good at it!
I also became much less picky when I could choose how things were prepared...when I think about it, it wasn't so much that I was ultra picky and wouldn't eat anything as a kid - it's just that I was (and am) often selective about how they're prepared. For example, I looooooove raw sliced tomato, but I strongly dislike large pieces of cooked tomato (with the exception of Romas roasted with salt and thyme), so if it's in my meal I'll often eat around it or try to pulverize it into tiny pieces. Same thing with onion - I like raw sliced onion, but that shiznit had better be finely diced if it's going to be cooked (with the exception of onion rings).
To be honest, I think a lot of my pickiness as a child had to do with my mother's cooking skills, which are not exactly great, as she herself will admit. For example, she was (and is) oddly anti-milk, so that oatmeal I repeatedly refused was made with water, which meant it was basically like eating lumpy glue. Or eggplant, which she would stew or saute into a slimy, bitter mush, so for years I thought I didn't like it - then when I was about 22, I had a divine piece of grilled eggplant and realized that I actually DID like it...it was just that it was awful the way my mom prepared it. I don't recall ever flat out refusing to try something new as a kid, so maybe I wasn't truly picky...maybe it was just my mom's cooking lol.
Now that's funny, because I think it's probably true. My cousin only just realized he likes veg when they're cooked properly - as opposed to turned into mush.
Is it horrible that I think picky eating is a stupid first world problem? I mean, where else do you get to turn down food? Keep in mind I'm saying this as I pull some raw onion out of my pita. I embrace my inner hypocrite.
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
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I LOVE natto!
I wasn't a super picky eater as a kid. The only thing that I refused was seafood. Now, I eat it on occasion, but I'm still not a huge fan.
I'm also worried about our kids being picky, but I really think parents can do a lot to curb that. When I taught preschool in the Bay Area, my kids would bring the most amazing, "non-kid" things for lunch -- salmon, broccoli, tofu, quinoa, nuts and berries, and on and on. They just brought leftovers from dinner, so whatever mom and dad ate, they ate!
I've been trying to eat a wide range of ethnic foods and lots of unusual veggies, like radishes, during the pregnancy so baby starts to develop a taste for them. If I continue when I breastfeed and later feed him/her the same things DH and I eat, I'm crossing my fingers they won't be *TOO* picky when they're little. I don't plan to be a short-order cook!
I think parents certainly can have a lot to do with whether or not their children are picky eaters. For example, I have an aunt and uncle who refuse to eat anything they deem "weird." This means they only eat bland, mostly pre-prepared foods, like McDonalds burgers or Kraft mac & cheese (and I'm not knocking mac & cheese because I have a serious weakness for it lol, but when that's the ONLY kind of thing you eat...you get what I'm saying). And guess what? Their kids - who are now adults - are the EXACT same way. They will never try anything new, won't eat most veggies, etc.
Even though my mom was/is a pretty bad cook, she was always willing to experiment and try new things, so I had a good example set for me that way if nothing else. In my family, we were introduced to a wide range of foods from tons of cultures as kids, so I never got into a mindset where I simply wouldn't try anything new, and I think that really helped me as I got older.
I only discovered I liked spinach after trying some that wasn't boiled, which is the only way my mom ever cooked it. Seeing her squeeze out the wilted spinach before cutting it up and having to smell the green-tinged water it boiled in scared me off until my teen years.
The pickiest child I ever met was a little boy who would only eat pasta sauteed in butter or potato chips. Yeah, that's it. Pasta or chips. His parents warned us that he was picky but omg, I had no idea it was that bad. I couldn't believe that he was actually allowed to eat like that regularly at home. He was rail-thin and didn't even like to eat 'typical' kid foods like hamburgers or pizza. His sisters ate normally so it was odd to see just him have such strong feelings about food.
This was me (well, except for the boy part).
I wouldn't eat any tomato based sauce on pasta until I was like 12...but again (and I know I probably sound super ungrateful lol) I blame my mom's cooking. She would make a sauce with these massive chunks of cooked tomato and onion in it, both of which I hate, as I mentioned before (if it had been pureed it would have been fine, but those chunks...ugh!). And because she was anti-milk, we didn't have cream based sauces - which I'd have liked - so I would just eat my pasta with a little butter and literally nothing else. Weirdly, to this day it's a comfort food for me, and if I'm feeling ill or something I'll make a bowl of spaghetti with just butter. Ben thinks I'm weird.
Ohhhh, but you have not tried my Butter Chicken!!! I have testimonials from converted non lovers of curry
This totally made be burst out laughing! I did something along the same lines at around the same age. This reverted back to the canned/frozen vegetables. But instead, we were told to eat what was on our plate. Well when it got the those horrid packaged veggies, I would not swallow, I looked like a blow fish. So I sat there with my mouth full and sat there and sat there, until I was the only one left at the table.....finally my mom told me to go stand in the corner and once I swallowed what was in my mouth then I could with my siblings. Hours passed, with my mom checking on me frequently, still my mouth full..., eventually I was able to spit it out, but man those were those were days, where we were not allowed to waste anything!
I love natto, too! I think you have to eat it as a kid to like it, though. And the smell is pretty bad. I think I like it more because it's super healthy. I usually eat it with lots of shoyu and furikake.
I'm still pretty picky but mostly against dairy stuff. I can't stand a lot of white creamy things - cottage cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, cow milk...yuck. I'm not a fan of cheese either, unless it's really mild and melted (like pizza). The weird thing is that I LOVE cheese flavored stuff like goldfish, cheetos, and doritos. I think it's the texture of all those things that I can't stand.
I also can't eat bell peppers or celery. And raw broccoli makes me gag.
I ate a lot of vegetables as a child because my parents would praise the crap out of me. Then I grew up and realized I actually liked the taste. I also ate natto because again, they'd be all happy about it (maybe I had issues). I used to hate avocados but now I love them
Now, I can't stand natto, okra, yamaimo or anything slimy.
This isn't a taste thing, but I pretty much refuse to eat sea farmed salmon. If it doesn't say wild, I won't order/buy it. If someone served it to me though, I'd eat it out of politeness but would feel gross about it.
Cerclage placed @ 21w6d due to CI (IC)
I didn't like liver and I couldn't take spicy foods (not because I don't like the flavor but because it hurts too much to eat it), but that's about it.
Now, as an adult, I don't like pork or beef or potatoes (still can't stand spicy foods and still don't like liver in general but I love my foie gras) but I will eat it, whereas I don't eat spicy foods.
I always liked vegetables though. My mom made them pretty good so I personally think that might be the key to training kids to like/dislike certain foods--to just make the food tasty. On the other hand, she used to get chuck roast beef (to save money b/c it was cheap) and make this one dish where the pieces of beef were literally like cardboard (even after minutes of chewing, it still wouldn't break down and was too dry and tough to swallow) but my dad would force us to eat at least 5 pieces of it before we can leave the dinner table. So that might explain why I dislike red meat now as an adult?
Am I sheltered?? WTF is natto and why have I never heard of this?
I wasn't super picky...mainly because that wasn't an option in my household. My folks were on a very fixed budget and were also committed to healthy eating...my step-father was a competitive body builder and my parents had a fitness training consulting business. When it was competition season we basically ate the same stuff as my step-father with added carbs (baked potatos, brown rice, etc.). So we had lots of broiled fish, baked chicken (skinless, of course), etc. Wasn't always our favorite fare but it's what was for dinner and it's what we ate.
I think that's why when I went off to college I totally rebelled and basically ate everything I had always wanted (and gained 20 lbs. doing so)...had my first twinkie and ho-hos (and didn't like them at all), started drinking soda on a regular basis (it was always a once-in-a-while treat like Root Beer floats at A&W), bacon cheese burgers (we had always had turkey burgers growing up....with swiss cheese and NO bacon...), etc.
It's taken 10+ years for me to find some balance...and now I am truly grateful that my parents were so strict with our food choices...it was for our own good. And I am basically getting back to what we ate when I was younger...after years of "rebelling" and having a party in my mouth!
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It's a Japanese food - fermented soy beans with the consistency of melted marshmallows and the smell of windex.
It is incredibly good for you though.
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
Dates & Quinces Blog
I don't think I was a picky eater. But I never have liked mayonaise spread on a sandwhich....I can eat in a tuna or potatoe salad but that's it.
As far as training your kids...I'm not sure, however, they say that babies develope a taste for food inutero. They tend to eat/like the stuff you ate while pregnant.
It's definitely an acquired taste, and like Christine said, it helps to be raised with it.
The beans are small, brown, and ooey-gooey. And they do smell!
We mix it with soy sauce, furikake (crushed up salted seaweed and sesame seeds) and green onions, then eat it with hot rice or in a sushi roll. I've also had it with spaghetti noodles and topped with seaweed at a local restaurant... strange, but not bad either.