I've got enough gazpacho for everyone!
Jun. 17th, 2010 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So I'm playing D&D at a friend's house, and he is courteous enough to cook a meal for everyone coming over--broiled steaks, pasta with pesto, and pizza rolls for appetizers. After dinner, everyone is sitting around preparing their characters, and he asks, "Does anyone want more? Steak? Pasta? ...Salad, perhaps?"
Everyone murmurs that they'd like more pasta and pizza rolls, and I say, "Salad sounds great. Let me do something?" He looks slightly flummoxed, so I decide that I will go ahead and make my own salad, because he has the pizza rolls and pasta covered, and they are fairly simple, but assembling a salad can be labor-intenstive. While he does that, I go rummage around in the vegetable drawer. I find some big fat sugar snap peapods, baby tomatoes, baby bell peppers, and cucumbers, and slice up a few things and arrange them on a plate, like so:
He was impressed. "Very orderly!"
"Do you want me to make you one?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I don't eat vegetables."
"No...vegetables? Ever?" I munched. The peas were delicious, the cucumbers okay. The tomatoes had suffered somewhat from being in the fridge (tomatoes do NOT go in the fridge, they lose flavor), but the peppers were tasty and really cool.
"Here's how I think of it," he explained, as we went back into the living room. "Meat...is good. Vegetables are the opposite of meat. Therefore, vegetables are bad."
I was going to argue that his premise AND reasoning AND conclusion was all wrong, because it would have been one of the few times I would have been able to out-argue this particular friend, but then we started the game and outwitting Daleks was more of a priority than discussing nutrition.
But what the fuck? We are not talking about someone who lives in a food desert and has no access to fresh foods or time to cook; we are talking about an upper-middle-class person who clearly knows how to cook and has been doing so for a while, whose parents had a wide range of ingredients and pre-packaged foods in their fridge and pantry. The sad thing is that this is not the first friend I have had who has utterly despised vegetables and refused to eat them on what appears to be general principle. (And it's usually geeks, and it's usually geek guys, at least in terms of people who've actually announced this as though it's something to be proud of.)
I don't get it. Not all vegetables taste the same, not all of them have the same texture. A bell pepper feels and tastes different from a cucumber from a carrot from romaine lettuce. Why all vegetables? Does anyone have any insight on this phenomenon? Some sort of food-related rebellion or trauma? Unusual sensitivity to fiber? Misguided machismo?
Everyone murmurs that they'd like more pasta and pizza rolls, and I say, "Salad sounds great. Let me do something?" He looks slightly flummoxed, so I decide that I will go ahead and make my own salad, because he has the pizza rolls and pasta covered, and they are fairly simple, but assembling a salad can be labor-intenstive. While he does that, I go rummage around in the vegetable drawer. I find some big fat sugar snap peapods, baby tomatoes, baby bell peppers, and cucumbers, and slice up a few things and arrange them on a plate, like so:

He was impressed. "Very orderly!"
"Do you want me to make you one?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I don't eat vegetables."
"No...vegetables? Ever?" I munched. The peas were delicious, the cucumbers okay. The tomatoes had suffered somewhat from being in the fridge (tomatoes do NOT go in the fridge, they lose flavor), but the peppers were tasty and really cool.
"Here's how I think of it," he explained, as we went back into the living room. "Meat...is good. Vegetables are the opposite of meat. Therefore, vegetables are bad."
I was going to argue that his premise AND reasoning AND conclusion was all wrong, because it would have been one of the few times I would have been able to out-argue this particular friend, but then we started the game and outwitting Daleks was more of a priority than discussing nutrition.
But what the fuck? We are not talking about someone who lives in a food desert and has no access to fresh foods or time to cook; we are talking about an upper-middle-class person who clearly knows how to cook and has been doing so for a while, whose parents had a wide range of ingredients and pre-packaged foods in their fridge and pantry. The sad thing is that this is not the first friend I have had who has utterly despised vegetables and refused to eat them on what appears to be general principle. (And it's usually geeks, and it's usually geek guys, at least in terms of people who've actually announced this as though it's something to be proud of.)
I don't get it. Not all vegetables taste the same, not all of them have the same texture. A bell pepper feels and tastes different from a cucumber from a carrot from romaine lettuce. Why all vegetables? Does anyone have any insight on this phenomenon? Some sort of food-related rebellion or trauma? Unusual sensitivity to fiber? Misguided machismo?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 04:38 am (UTC)Some people have just been brainwashed from a young age by parents, peers, or media (or a combination of those things) to believe, "vegetables = ewwy!" and they never grow out of it because they choose not to.
Saying, "I don't like vegetables" is as ridiculous as saying, "I don't like blondes." It's a sweeping generalization that makes no sense. Like you said, there are so many different vegetables with various textures and tastes that I find it impossible there isn't at least one that everyone would like.
/ramble
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 05:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 04:46 am (UTC)It sounds like misguided machismo to me - he's not saying he doesn't like the taste of vegetables so much as he has a philosophical objection to them (as not standing for whatever it is meat stands for).
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 05:27 am (UTC)I think in a lot of guys it's machismo--vegetables and things like herbs are seen as "chick food" by a certain lowest common cultural denominator (ditto with sweets), and eating meaty or spicy food can be some sort of weird masculine ritual. It's so weird, how in some ways our conception of food hasn't changed since the Victorian era.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 05:14 am (UTC)I know a guy who doesn't eat ANY vegetables (besides tomato sauce and cooked onions, and he'll eat carrots under very specific conditions,) or fruits either (although he will drink juice); in his case it's not machismo, he really can't bear the textures of plants. (I figure it's probably a symptom of Asperger's, but that's just a guess.) I also know a couple who refuse to eat veggies b/c they simply don't like them. No, not any of them. They will get combative if you even suggest they try. But they are quite possibly the pickiest eaters I have ever met. They don't even eat baked potatos, or cheese. (Their idea of a taco is spicy meat on a tortilla. Idek.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 05:21 am (UTC):( at veggies being bitter to you, that sucks. The oversensitivity to textures and tastes certainly might be it. I'm pretty good with most foods, but I do have other friends with Asperger's who are really picky about texture...and I just read this (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/16/salt.taste/index.html) article about supertasters and bitterness.
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Date: 2010-06-17 05:26 am (UTC)Then I know another chick who won't touch many veggies and will turn up her nose at them. In fact, she's not happy unless she's eating meat, potatoes and drinking nothing but Dr. Pepper. (she claims that rice tastes disgusting...I don't get that) I'm still trying to figure out how she hasn't wound up with the biggest kidney stone in the world.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 05:35 am (UTC)I do know people who only have one or two vegetables that they'll eat, but a lot of that is not really being exposed to vegetables (or vegetables cooked well) growing up.
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Date: 2010-06-17 07:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 09:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2010-06-17 09:11 am (UTC)omg, spinach is my vegetable frenemy. I love it and it's so good for you, but it goes bad so fast that I always have to eat a whole bag in two days and then suffer amazing digestion issues. I really need to learn to make good creamed spinach. Oh, and red bell peppers and beets--they're both so sweet. Nature's candy.
I know guys who are very proud of their prowess with steaks or their ability to down a zillion Nuclear Death Chicken Wings, but geek guys are the only dudes I know who actively eschew vegetables. Perhaps it is overcompensation!
It's so weird that our ideas about gendering food basically haven't changed for a hundred years, though. Even Popeye couldn't make vegetables cool for dudes. I would imagine that dark green, strong-tasting vegetables like kale or broccoli or spinach would be gendered masculine, but no.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 03:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 03:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 03:53 pm (UTC)srsly i can't imagine life without vegetables ;__;
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 04:04 pm (UTC)(also, now that I think about it, the digestive issues of veggiephobes must be epic.)
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Date: 2010-06-17 04:23 pm (UTC)I've slowly, over the past four years, been introducing myself to fruits and vegetables. I have reached a point where I can't actually think of any veggies off the top of my head that I hate, though there are a few I dislike and won't eat by themselves.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 06:13 pm (UTC)Good on you for getting yourself to like vegetables! :) That's pretty awesome.
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Date: 2010-06-17 05:17 pm (UTC)I've never met a veggie I didn't like. When I was a kid, I loved things like lima beans and brussel sprouts and spinach, and I couldn't fathom why all my friends hated them.
Also, I kind of think having a healthy appreciation of all food comes from being so poor that anything that winds up on your plate is like pirate treasure. As much as it sucks to be that poor, it sure does round a child's personality out nicely.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 06:20 pm (UTC)I would so not be surprised. Some kids are so stubborn about that for so long...my little brother went through a phase where he wouldn't eat anything that wasn't off-white or beige, but my mom just ended up making a lot of cauliflower, mashed rutabaga, and white grapes. (Then he converted to tacos and now he won't eat anything that isn't doused in hot sauce.)
I swear I read an article on Salon or something with exactly this--some story about how the writer's child refused to eat the skin on fish until their grandfather pointed out that when he was a child, he went hungry for days at a time and would have been ecstatic to find some tasty fish skins to eat.
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Date: 2010-06-17 06:24 pm (UTC)sigh, soggy veggies :( I just want to feed people sugar snap peas and fresh ripe tomatoes with a little bit of salt until they start loving them.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 10:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-18 02:18 am (UTC)Meat has more of a response to failure. People can get meat cooked to their liking ranging from rare to well done. No one wants a well done veggie.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-18 07:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-30 02:13 am (UTC)Anywhere other than America, I would be more inclined to look at the cultural influences first (just because sometimes it's very much the norm to have everything be meats and starches).
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-30 02:45 am (UTC)America definitely has a "veggies are yucky/salad is chick food" cultural narrative going on. I know meats and starches are what you're worried about at subsistence level, but a lot of other cultures have very vegetable-based dishes. Hmm.