Not a Wasted Word

On my last an earlier post (yes, it took me 1.5 weeks to finish this) Annie asked,

I was wondering, in what way are you a selective eater? In my understanding selective eaters have very limited diets (like 10-15 items). You’ve mentioned burritos a few times (which my picky eater and selective eater would never ever eat) and also going to a restaurant so I never thought you were a selective eater. Or were you describing something else?

Ah Annie, what a can of worms you have asked me to open. At least it feels like a can of worms. A giant, disgusting can of wriggly, jiggly worms.

When I was a kid, my “picky eater” bone fides were unmatched. I was the pickiest of picky eaters. I only ate plain rice. And plain noodles with salt (I LOVED them cold, straight out of the fridge). Also mac n cheese and a very specific kind of chicken (white chicken breast meat). I liked cheese and peanut butter and jelly. I remember my dad used to order me a “burrito” at this one place that was basically just a giant tortilla filled with melted cheese. It was a cheese log. It must have weighed a full pound and contained 2,000 calories. I wonder now how much they charged my dad for it. Surely not enough.

I got endless shit for my picky eating. My extended family will STILL give me a hard time about it, even today. It was absolutely a point of extreme shame, and probably contributed to my decade of disordered eating. I was forced to eat a small selection of vegetables, and I had to finish them when they were on my plate, no matter how many times I gagged trying to get them down. My dad would get SO MAD when I gagged. It was horrible. To this day I don’t want to participate in family dinners, and we largely do not eat together in part because of how much I hate it.

I’m better now, but I’m still selective. I don’t like most fruits. I’ll eat apples and oranges and blueberries but that is about it. There are a fair number of vegetables I will eat, but there are none I ever really WANT to eat (except maybe arugula). Veggies I like include: broccoli, green beans, peas, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, onions, peppers (any color), squash, lettuce, cabbage, zucchini, arugula, leeks, and kale (only very grudgingly). I really do not like mushrooms (I have retried them many times lately and I just can’t get into them), eggplant, bok choi, fennel and probably anything else I didn’t mention in the first list (I probably can’t even think to mention that I don’t like them, because I forget they even exist). I also don’t really like shell fish, but I do like scallops and I LOVE sushi (but can’t really afford it).

When I go out to eat there are usually only a few things I am not interested in trying (because of mushrooms probably), and there are always PLENTY of things I want to eat. I am also fine eating around stuff when possible, but I don’t usually have to do this because like I said, there are always plenty of dishes I am interested in. I have NEVER been to a restaurant that did not have a dish I was excited to try, and I’ve been to a lot of restaurants all over the world.

I “like” all of those veggies in that I will eat them. I even enjoy them in many meals. But I’m not the kind of person who is just really in the mood for a salad and then puts a bunch of veggies in a bowl to eat one. The only kind of salad I would ever order is a Thai peanut salad. And while I’m totally fine with most of the food my husband makes with the CSA box veggies (because he has learned how to make things that I like), there are some things I bristle at (like how kale ends up in EVERYTHING this time of year. Yuck.) So yeah, I’m not picky like the PE teacher at my school who will not eat anything green (she is literally the only person I can think of who is openly pickier than I am). But there are TONS of food I’m not going to eat (please see the three items on my “fruit” list).

My kids are following in my footsteps. And I am not forcing them to eat things they don’t like because they will gag (sometimes until they vomit) and I obviously cannot participate in that (see my traumatic gagging history above). I also feel confident that they will eventually learn to like more things because the world is hard to live in when you are only willing to eat ten items.

The only way we “push” them is that we say they have to have ten things on their “list” but again, a “thing” can be cereal with milk (and right now granola with yogurt is a SEPARATE item for my son so we can approach 10 items). So when they start “not really liking that anymore” and refusing it would bring them under the 10 item limit, they just aren’t allowed to refuse it. Right now my daughter does not want to eat grilled cheese but she has to because she can’t add anything to her list in its place. Ditto for hamburgers for my son (which he only has to eat if we go to In-n-Out which is one of only two restaurants we ever take them to).

So that is where we’re all at in our selective eating journeys. It sucks to be a selective eater. I wish VERY MUCH that my kids were following in their dad’s footsteps instead of my own. But it is what it is and I honestly just can’t lose sleep over it because I worked WAY TOO HARD resolving my disordered eating to spend another decade mired in this shit with my kids. My kids already don’t want to finish the food we put in front of them, and I’ve spent the last ten years saying, “Can you please take another bite?” to them for 2-3 meals a day EVERY DAY. It’s exhausting. Sometimes when my husband and I go out to eat he’ll admonish me for starting at some kid who is just eating their dinner because they are hungry and they are being offered food. If my kids would just do that, I would be so, so happy. (I was a picky eater but I gobbled down the foods I like and asked for seconds. Getting me to just eat was not hard.)

So there it is. I am a great parent in many ways but healthy eating is not one of them. Luckily I’m okay with it, because at least they aren’t experiencing my disordered eating. For that I am forever grateful.