Freaky Eaters

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So I was browsing YouTube for something completely different and came across these clips from a series called "Freaky Eaters". I started watching one where there was this woman who would only eat cheesy potatoes for every meal. Personally I love vegetables and fruits and a huge variety of different cuisines - This woman was absolutely horrifying to watch. Her husband cooked her a vegetable and tried to get her to eat it and she just gagged and ran away crying.

I realize it's a psychological problem but it really upsets me that people can be like that. What do you guys think about this problem?

I considered posting this in the alleys but I didn't know if it was controversial enough.

 

I find it appalling that we as a society support such individuals, basically giving natural selection the finger.

But hey, most of us will be dead in a few decades anyway, so who gives a crap.

 

@Dice
Got to wonder what set her up that way. It must have been something real bad to send her so far off the deep end. Lucky for her you can live on potatoes and cheese for quite awhile. Ask the 19th century Irish. That also is one of my main meals but I'm a person who eats almost everything sold around here.

 

Well living on a food because it is your only choice is different than choosing to eat only one kind of food. I agree it is a psychological condition but I imagine she got that way because of enablers. People in the course of her life who never took the measures to teach her how to eat normally.

 

Of all the vegetables he could have chosen to break her of her "habit", he had to pick a brussel sprout?!?

 

I eat a variety of food and agree that her situation is definitely a serious psychological problem. I'm not sure that "enabling" is the problem, nor that it's society's responsibility to force people to eat with more variety. I have certain food aversions that cause me to gag, so I have some sympathy for her, and I certainly wouldn't want "the society" to decide that I need to eat eggs all the time. At least three of my aversions (eggs, hot dogs, melted cheddar cheese) are actually a result of having to eat those things too often when I was little because we couldn't afford much else, rather than being allowed to eat whatever I wanted.

As for parents forcing children to eat: the rule in my house was that if a new food was presented, we were required to at least try it. If we didn't like it after that, we didn't have to eat it. While this may have led to "enabling" me to eat only things I liked, it did make me an adventurous eater in the sense that I'm pretty much willing to try anything. I've often been surprised by things I do like that I might not have discovered if I hadn't been willing to at least try it (escargots, calamari, and anchovies come to mind). I also often "re-try" foods I have, in the past, disliked, and I've come to like things (mustard, fish) that I used to hate.

 

I use that same technique with my kids. I've always told them that they have to have at least one taste of a new food. As a result my kids enjoy a wide variety of foods. My oldest had a couple of foods he was picky about when he was younger but he got over it as he aged with my non-pressured but encouraging approach.

 

I think instilling a desire to try foods is probably the best thing you can do for your kid. Anything more than that is just as likely to backfire.

 

When you go on TV, you want to guarantee a full-on reaction. A half-hearted refusal is less entertaining.