Nightline segment on picky eaters. I can relate. This is traumatic.

Manifestor_of_Light

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Mon Oct-04-10 11:08 PM
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Nightline segment on picky eaters. I can relate. This is traumatic.

They talked about a little girl who eats very few foods and is hungry all the time.

Kids have more sensitive taste buds than adults. This subject is important to me because I am a grown-up picky eater. I have FOOD ALLERGIES too.

My grandmother was very bossy. She was an overachiever, a County Home Demonstration Agent who worked for the Mississippi and Texas A&M Extension Systems, and a horrible cook. She threw everything in a pot and boiled it to death. She would talk about nutrition and we would say "How does it have any vitamins left in it after you boiled it to death?"

Her idea of veggies was "greens". That's the bitter leaves of vegetables. Like turnip greens, collard greens, etc. I would not eat them. They stink. It was that and iceberg lettuce. I was grown before I found out about how good broccoli is!!! I was grown before I found out that black eyed peas didn't have to taste metallic!

She wanted me to eat stringy tough meat. I wouldn't eat that either. My mom tried to get me to eat tomatoes, raw onions, bell peppers of all colors. I wouldn't eat them. Turns out that I am allergic to tomatoes and bell peppers, and raw onions have some volatile oil that gives me an upset stomach. The allergy to the tomatoes and bell peppers is called a nightshade allergy. Those plants are in the same family as deadly nightshade (Belladonna). Dad was allergic to tomatoes too. They are way too acid for me.

I put sugar in my tea and they yelled at me about that(low blood sugar problems). They made me use liquid saccharin (only artificial sweeteners they had back then). They insisted that "it tastes just like sugar!"

It does not, and I kept telling them that. They were insisting that my perceptions were wrong. That does a number on your head. Saccharin is bitter. I can tell the difference.

We had pitched battles at grandma's house three times a day. She ran the place like a prison -- three meals a day with salad, meat, two veggies and a roll. And all the females were expected to march around the kitchen (which isn't big enough for two people) and serve the food, and then scurry around rinsing dishes and loading the dishwasher and putting up leftovers, and all the men went in the den and watched football and were never asked to lift a finger. I complained about them not making the men do their share and mom's response was, "They're all too OLD to help". There were too many women in the kitchen. I would run into the den to escape and my mother would scream at me to come back to the kitchen to "help."

I used to eat pizza with everything on it, except pepperoni, in high school. I figured out that I should not eat it when it started coming back up an hour later. Probably the olives, bell peppers and tomatoes and sharks didn't agree with me. That was a big clue.

The little girl they profiled on the show would not eat a tomato. I can relate. I can't eat spicy food either. This girl's diet was a lot more restricted than mine. I wish they had mentioned allergies or at least tested the kid for them.

My mom cooked good high quality meat and didn't cook greens, so I got along a lot better on her cooking and I still use some of her recipes. I don't understand why everything in restaurants is so spicy nowadays. I had beef 'n' cheese nachos at Chili's once and insisted on NO peppers of any kind. I don't know what kind of spices they used but I was up all night burping and generally uncomfortable. I took three bites of some take out from P.F. Chang's and burped all night, at somebody else's house. I kept getting up at night and drinking milk, because i was still hungry. I don't know what was in that Chinese takeout.

I know too many people who are fat because their parents made them eat too much and "clean their plate" and thereby ignoring their body's signals. My folks, fortunately, did not make me sit at the table all night, or hit me if I didn't eat, or any of that abusive crap. However, I live in the house that was formerly my grandparents', and a lot of times in that same kitchen I can get real depressed remembering all the sexist oppression and the stupid fights over eating.

I never gave an inch because I won't eat something I don't like.

Going to see the grandparents was horrible. I wondered where all those nice, sweet grandmas were that I heard about, that other people had.

A website they mentioned:
www.pickyeatingadults.com