I've got enough gazpacho for everyone!

[kleenexwoman]

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?

Comments

[kayori.livejournal.com]

He sounds young and naïve. I've always loved vegetables (brussels sprouts were one of my favourite foods as a kid). One day when he's suffering from a heart attack because he doesn't eat vegetables which naturally cleanse the arteries, maybe he'll reconsider (if he survives). :P

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

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

My mom exposed us to a lot of different vegetables and fruits growing up, and while there are a few plant-type foods I eschew (the texture of oranges throws me off, and I've had to give up asparagus, even though I love it, because the aftermath isn't worth it), I can appreciate most veggies. And the ones that I didn't like as a kid, I'm making a point to try now that I can cook them the way I want to. For a while, I had to force myself, because I associated fat and starch with feeling easily full, and vegetables with feeling sort of...not...but now I've learned to associate the feeling I get after eating vegetables with the feeling of being healthy and not weighed down.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Pesto's made from vegetables. And what does he put on his pizza rolls? Steak?

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).

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I guess basil and garlic don't count...nor does the smidgen of tomato sauce in the pizza rolls (which are gross fried frozen things stuffed with pepperoni and cheese, in this context. I can't stand them). Funny how people compartmentalize foods like that; when I'm cooking, I mainly think of onions as condiments, and I don't think of potatoes as veggies so much as I do a starch like pasta.

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.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

I have issues eating veggies (not all of them, but even the ones I kind of like I can only manage to eat under certain conditions). I try to eat them b/c the body needs them, but I don't eat nearly enough. Many of them taste unbearably bitter to me, for some odd reason.

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.)

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

wtf, how can a person refuse to eat baked potato? It's one of the most inoffensive foods possible. I know people have deeply varying tastes, but this is so hard for me to imagine.

:( 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.

[wolf-heart9.livejournal.com]

It's not just geek boys, like I told you. My roommate doesn't like a lot of veggies. Or didn't before she met me. She doesn't have much of a choice now, though there are some veggies I'll respectfully not harp at her about so long as she eats some veggie while I eat the ones I like that she doesn't.

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.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Geek boys seem to be the ones to make a really big deal out of it...although yeah, I've known some geek girls who've bragged about living on nothing but bacon and Doritos. I think wholesale rejection of veggies is a machismo thing for a lot of geeks, male and female. I really don't get how they don't end up with malnutrition. Maybe some of them do.

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.

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

We live in a world where even food choices are heavily politicised. My flatmate gives me a really hard time for eating meat. I do eat vegetables however!

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Food is very politicized! There are so many choices to make, and every time I go to the supermarket I get a little nervous that I am supporting some horrible conglomerate in its plans to take over the world--I know I am, actually, but you really can't not do that these days in one way or another.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Cherry tomatoes are so adorable. They're one of the few things that are almost too flavorful for me, but I want to try these purplish-brown ones I've seen at some of the high-end supermarkets. I've started playing around with plating and food arrangement every so often--raw veggies are really easy to do because they're easy to cut, manipulate, and stack. I can do amazing things with red and green peppers!

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.

[vicfitz82.livejournal.com]

maybe they were the kids who secretly fed all their veggies to the family pets under the dinner table, and thus never developed a taste for plants? Maybe their parents fed them particularly bad vegetables when they were growing up, like canned carrots or something. I really hated those.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Except for tomatoes and occasionally mushrooms (I have a soft spot for the canned 'shrooms they put on pizza), canned veggies are the worst. I would imagine a lot of kids get fed canned veggies and thus get turned off plants as food forever.

[ejecthefloppy.livejournal.com]

I DON'T GET THIS EITHER

srsly i can't imagine life without vegetables ;__;

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I can't either! D: Growing up, I was just taught that vegetables are pretty much a part of every meal (besides breakfast, maybe, and then you eat fruit). Just having a big chunk of meat and some starch feels unbalanced.

(also, now that I think about it, the digestive issues of veggiephobes must be epic.)

[itcomesinphases.livejournal.com]

My mother's idea of a meal was a slab of overcooked, often pan-fried but never bread-coated, meat with instant mashed potatoes and a can of corn, greenbeans or peas. She regularly used verbal and physical means to make me eat. so I can see how someone can be sufficiently traumatized into disliking vegetables.

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.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

DDDD: I feel so sorry for your childhood culinary experience. My mom was not a great cook, but she at least tried new things.

Good on you for getting yourself to like vegetables! :) That's pretty awesome.

[hmfeelyat.livejournal.com]

It's gotta stem from him refusing to eat his vegetables as a kid and his parents giving in without a fight, trading in "Alright, well, then you don't eat tonight" for "Well, what would you like to eat? Hamburgers? Okay!"

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.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

trading in "Alright, well, then you don't eat tonight" for "Well, what would you like to eat? Hamburgers? Okay!"
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.)

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.
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.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I know my palate has changed a lot since high school; I can't tolerate a lot of sweetness even in my desserts any more, and go for stronger foods like dark chocolate, kale, or sharp cheddar. I made a conscious effort to expose myself to that stuff, though, and I can definitely see how someone with a childhood sensitivity to bitter vegetables would not make that decision.

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.

[benprime.livejournal.com]

fear and ignorance is usually what leads people to such black-and-white views. So yeah, childhood culinary conditioning trauma leading to aversion, supported by machismo and selective deafness to all media where nutrition is concerned. (Some geeks restrict themselves to a very narrow band of information and thus, despite being connected like never before, and having potential access to so much information on every topic, they remain blissfully ignorant of a great many things. Like vitamins.)

[dmilanflash.livejournal.com]

I agree that peoples' attitudes twoard food come from their youth. Some people may have been turned off to veggies as children because the veggies were poorly cooked. If a little kid is getting veggies that had the life boiled out of them day in and day out, while getting yelled at to eat them, of course they'll protest.

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.

[neverreal.livejournal.com]

I don't get it at all.

[drworm.livejournal.com]

Brattiness. Childishness. Refusal to try new things. A great many people, not just geeks, seem to be stuck in early adolescence.

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).

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

So true. My sample group is biased because, well, I hang around with geeks, and I'm more selective with the people I hang around with who aren't geeks. So many childish people, though, god.

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.