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

[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).

[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.)

[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.

[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!

[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.

[ejecthefloppy.livejournal.com]

I DON'T GET THIS EITHER

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

[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.

[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.

[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).