Posted on 03/19/2018 11:29:57 AM PDT by Simon Green
Bruce is a 56-year-old man who’s never eaten a vegetable in his life. His mom claims she fed him pureed peas when he was a baby, but he’s not buying it. “I’ll straight up gag if I try to swallow vegetables,” he says. “Every single time.”
So now the Scranton, PA father of two subsists primarily on chicken. “Lots and lots of chicken,” he explains — typically oven-roasted with a generous side of mashed potatoes, rice or noodles. When Bruce isn’t biting into one of the 8 billion chickens consumed in the U.S. every year (and washing it down with “oodles and oodles of Diet Coke”), he nukes a box of mac ’n’ cheese, preferably Velveeta Shells. Meanwhile, breakfast includes a bagel or “something straightforward” like Cheerios or Rice Chex. Pizza’s good for lunch provided it’s plain cheese or pepperoni. Otherwise, twice a week, he’ll drive thru McDonald’s for a 10-piece Chicken McNugget with fries.
Yes, Bruce is a man who eats like a boy.
Nor is Bruce alone according to Nancy Zucker, director of the Duke Center for Eating Disorders. As she told the New York Times in 2015, in a sample of 2,600 adults who identified themselves as picky eaters, 75 percent reported that the pattern started in childhood. As it did for Bruce, who says his middle-aged diet is virtually indistinguishable from the one he kept throughout adolescence.
“Most of what I make for dinner are things my mother made,” he explains, as is his usual restaurant order of spaghetti and meatballs. Thankfully, he says he’s less OCD about it now. Vegetables hidden in spaghetti sauce used to freak him out — he feared they’d infect the entire plate — but now, he explains, “I just kinda nudge them aside and work my way around the meal.” He does admit, though, that it’s “peculiar to be 56-years-old with all that stuff piling up along the edge of your plate.”
(excerpt)
Still can not abide Lima beans!
We’re kindred spirits on that. Can’t stand them, don’t want to look at them, and will not eat them.
_______________
is there anyone who can eat lima beans. Succotash was my enemy. I used to flick the lima beans into the radiator next to the table. Fortunately my mother was a lousy housekeeper.
The Oldman demanded Ham and Lima bean soup weekly.
I would eat the Ham, sop up all the soup with bread and then Cry! LOL
Wretched things...
Dear old Dad would eat C Rat Lima beans and Ham
Maybe true for younger people.
Every 15 years or so, I say to myself, chickensoup, they cannot be as bad as you remember.
So I pick a package out of the frozen food section, cook them up and try them.
One bite.
YUCK! and I toss them all out.
Your a Brave man!
Your a Brave man!
______________________
In this day and age I could be...
I know plenty of old people who live on pre-prepared food because they have no idea how to cook.
I had a roommate who's mother, a child of the depression, simply could not cook. Everything was bought from the deli or it was boiled until it was gray.
My roommate was a bit uncertain about the first meal with me as I had sprinkled bits of the house plants into the food. She had never seen someone use fresh herbs before.
Her mother was not interested in cooking and her father would not do "woman's work". And they raised 5 kids.
People can get very strange about cooking.
I have to disagree. It’s much cheaper to eat poorly. That’s why welfare recipients are usually 300 lbs rolling around in a Rascal. You could feed a family of 4 on boxes meals and frozen dinners for under $200 a month easy.
True
Oh, now you’re speaking of desserts!
Well no, of course not. That would be sexist. You can only make fun of men's poor dietary choices and it better be a white one, don't want to be racist or anything. /s
There is an interesting tendency to infantilize men.
The old southern way of doing limas is to cook them to a pulp with a chunk of pork fat, well-seasoned up to sometimes spicy, with a fair amount of dairy butter. Ends up more like a thick soup. Probably not the healthiest thing but I’ve always loved it.
My vegetable aversion is Brussels sprouts. Taste bitter to me, it’s like little turbo cabbages, that vague cabbage funk times ten, not so vague anymore, it’s concentrated. I’ve since encountered roasted Brussels sprouts in olive oil and seasoning that are actually edible, but childhood memory puts me off of actually admitting that I like them in any form.
Could be, if one likes fake boobs, skunky beer and pepperoni.
I am a friend of Brussels sprouts, boiled soft and doused in butter and EV olive oil.
However I do have the gene that makes walnuts taste bitter to me, when they taste sweet to most others.
I’m beginning to think that a lot of food aversions have a genetic component. For instance, kimchee. I have no idea how anyone can even stand to be in the same room with it, let alone put it in their mouths and actually swallow it, lol. They can’t possibly be smelling the same thing I’m smelling.
As my children grow older and spend more time outside, I understand why young adults rarely cook; it makes little sense preparing real meals unless a whole family is eating them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.