Were you picky?

[Alice Levitt]

I feel like I've been hearing more and more about picky adult eaters lately. Of course, most kids outgrow that phase, and clearly, no one on this board is particularly picky now.

My own history between the ages of five and oh... 20, involved only eating vegetables prepared by five-star chefs. I was just very sensitive to beans being perfectly al dente, peas being ideally in season, etc... Seriously, at home or even at most casual restaurants, I ate carrots, peas, cucumbers, corn and that was it.

Now, I'll pretty much eat any veggie that didn't come out of a can. Were you ever difficult, too?

[Morganna]

Nope, never was.   We couldn't afford for me to be. 

We were poor through much of my young childhood and we (my older brother and I) ate what was put in front of us.  We weren't forced to clean our plate, but we at least had to eat a bite or two of everything.  Usually we were hungry enough we ate whatever it was anyway.  We didn't eat a lot of weird things, just cheap things.  Although, no matter how poor we got, my parents always made sure there was whole milk in the fridge for us to drink with our meals (we weren't allowed to drink anything but milk with our meals, though we could sometimes have orange juice with breakfast, that was pretty rare), and Daddy could not stomach margarine, so we always had real butter.

I can't even imagine what my parents' reaction would have been had I refused to eat anything but properly prepared vegetables.  Probably they'd just say "you'll eat this when you get hungry then" and let it go.  We didn't have fights over food, you just didn't get a lot of choices, was all.

Later, when Daddy got a way better paying job and was a corporate executive, I learned more about "the finer things" and they would often have treats around.  Like special meats or something like that.  But by then (I was in my tweens) I was pretty flexible about foods and trying new things and being willing to eat what was in front of me.