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

[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.

[wolf-heart9.livejournal.com]

Malnutrition to go along with their horrible hygiene. Don't get me wrong. I know a few geek boys and girls who aren't bad about hygiene, but it seems to be a greater chance that there will be less bathing. :(

I know people who haven't liked certain veggies until I've cooked them and it's turned out that they just didn't like the way their moms fixed them. And I'll admit that there are veggies that I've tried that I don't care for and some I just don't like. But otherwise, I eat a lot of them so that I have a variety.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Oh man, the hygiene. I do know one or two people who actively dislike taking showers because of the water coming at you, the drying process...which I sympathize with. But I have stood next to a great many geeks who don't seem to understand deodorant or washing your clothes...or that when your favorite wolf shirt is more hole than fabric, it's time to stop wearing it to the LARP.

And, you know, I know pretty well that basic maintenance on a body and home is not as intuitive as most people seem to think--there are a lot of tasks, and some of them really are necessary and some are just cosmetic, and they all need to be done at different intervals for different conditions. If you've got a touch of the 'sperg, or you're busy coding or writing or playing WoW, it can be hard to remember everything or to tear yourself away from what you're doing. BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. DEODORANT. TAKES TWO SECONDS. THEY EVEN MAKE BRANDS THAT DON'T ITCH, IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE.

augh, geeks.

[wolf-heart9.livejournal.com]

Well, even if they don't like showers, there are baths. And yes, deodorant is a must. A MUST. And washing clothes...also a must.

I don't know. Maybe it's not intuitive, but I can't believe that these folks weren't taught better hygiene by their parents. I've known several that make me just go WTF???? And many of them are now in their 20s, so I don't see how they just keep at it.

[itcomesinphases.livejournal.com]

Cleanliness, in the American cultural sense, is most definitely learned behavior.

[insert childhood horror stories about bathing] Which is why I still dislike the whole process and I put it off for as long as I think I can get away with it. When I was unemployed I could go for a couple of weeks with nothing more than a damp washcloth on the visibly dirty parts. I work with food now so I've got to be on top of things.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Definitely learned behavior. I get itchy if I go for a day without showering, but I know there are cultures and times where people bathed once a year, never washed their hair, and it was totally normal to them...

I'm good with bathing, but housecleaning is a mystery to me--my parents sort of did it and then expected me to catch on intuitively, which I did not (and then yelled at me when I didn't, which gave me Issues). It's taken me several years to figure out when my floors need to be vacuumed, and will take me longer to start caring.

[itcomesinphases.livejournal.com]

You had half a chance of picking it up through osmosis, though. My parents are certified hoarders. [insert childhood horror story about messy house and what happened when mother decided it was time to clean up]. And it is, unfortunately, genetic. It's a war between me and my NEED FOR STUFF. But I feel like I'm winning more of the battles than I'm loosing.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

oh my god, your childhood :( I'm really glad that you're getting over the dysfunctional habits and non-habits. A lot of people can't or aren't willing to. *hugs*

I'm not sure if my family has a hoarding gene (my dad had the most enormous collection of records for YEARS, and now he has over 1,000 CDs and is building up a massive DVD collection, and my mom used to have an entire room in the basement full of fabric samples--now I collect books almost compulsively), or if we just like having stuff.

[itcomesinphases.livejournal.com]

I think the difference is "I must keep this stuff because I may need it for something in the future/I plan to use it for something in the future" with anxiety attached to not having it on the off chance that you do need it in the future. Whereas collecting something happens because you like that particular kind of thing and would like to have more of it.

[wolf-heart9.livejournal.com]

It may be learned, but I have to say that I'm glad I learned it. I'm just OCD enough (not about germs but about cleanliness) and my nose is sensitive to odors. I have a roommate who's done the "washcloth" thing and it's not enough and besides that, the washcloth then holds onto the funk because she doesn't wash them fast enough. Or at least, she did. She's had to learn to adapt that behavior to live with me. I can't stand B.O. at all and I tend to refuse to be around people with even an inkling of it anymore because of the people in my past who insist on not bathing. It tends to put me off of any meal or being able to be comfortable around people.

[benprime.livejournal.com]

I don't use deodorant or antiperspirant: aluminium, and carbon dioxide or hydrocarbon propellant, and big chemical conglomerate profits. And I live alone so *shrug* the cats are cool with whatever. I will apply eau de toilette (sp?) for special occasions. But I also like to smell a bit of the animal in people I know and like, and I loathe "air fresheners". Demographics: geekboi/34.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I don't mind a little healthy daily sweat in people who clean themselves regularly; I do gag when I'm next to someone who reeks of stale body odor. At that point, I figure the person's scent receptors have shut down out of self-defense. (I think most geeks just don't notice; most of the crusties I know have ethical and environmental concerns about deodorant, like you.)

I've tried using the organic deodorant that's unscented and comes without antiperspirant, but I sweat so much that it's impractical for me. Stupid genetics.

[drworm.livejournal.com]

Crusty punks in your house were such a wonderful argument for the value of bathing.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

the crusties, oh my god

You don't find punks panhandling for a stick of Right Guard.

[drworm.livejournal.com]

I've heard tell that one can use a hydrogen peroxide (I think?) in place of deodorant, just to kill the bacteria (and of course you rinse it off, unlike deodorant). I've never tried it, though I keep meaning to.