Love to Eat, but don't care what?

[TheFoodTutor]

I was looking at another thread, and this thought occurred to me as a potential for a new thread.

I have had the dubious pleasure of knowing a few people in my lifetime who, admittedly, love to eat, but they also admit that they don't care what foods are placed in front of them. My former in-laws, from my last marriage, were these sorts of people.

A can of beans, microwaved and placed on a plate? Sure. A soup made of canned chicken stock with a few diced carrots and celery? Gimme some. Sandwiches made of American cheese slices with winter tomatoes? I'll take three, thanks. Some "chocolate-flavored" candies, made with imitation chocolate and waxy, hydrogenated fats? Heck, yeah! Dessert!

Oh, and would you like a beer? I've got Milwaukee's Best Light? Yup, gimme one of them, too.

It's not like these people were low-income, starving, or in any way didn't have access to better foods. And they're retired, so they have time to cook, but they didn't see any reason to do so, and actually felt bitter about occasions where they were required to cook and serve food to guests. It's kind of like they felt the whole science of good food preparation was too difficult a topic to handle, in a practical sense.

And they're smart. Really smart people who are intellectual nerds. But they would be unhappy about the fact that they were overweight.

And I just couldn't help but think, "How can that be?" I mean, I eat. I love to eat. But if I'm served something that's not especially tasty, I'll eat until the point that I'm satisfied and stop eating. Then maybe I'll box the leftovers, or let everyone else eat it, and it's only the occasion that I'm served something so deliciously good that I can't stop when I'll stuff myself past a point that I find comfortable.

To their credit, I noticed that they like to occasionally splurge on Godiva chocolates, and I asked them why, if they don't care what food is placed in front of them, would they spend a considerable amount of extra money on that higher grade of food. Their response was, "Food? We're not talking about food in this case. We're talking about drugs." That was a rather charming answer.

So, is this a uniquely American phenomenon? I picture people in other countries eating sub-standard food at times, but just to the point of satiety, and not to the point of gaining weight.

Am I the only person who has seen this sort of thing? Actually, there is another corrollary to this topic, concerning people who go out to restaurants when they are in a bad mood, which is something I'd never do, as I really like to enjoy my food.

But I'd really love to see your responses. Do you know people who don't care a whit about food, and yet they eat more than they obviously need to fulfill their daily caloric requirements? And if so, why do they do this?

[andiesenji]

I've known quite a few people such as your describe. I have even worked for a couple. These were people who would eat cereal for all three meals since it mean't they didn't have to put out any effort at all for themselves.

However they did believe in serving guests fine foods, which is where I came in.

Many times I would offer them a taste of something I had prepred but they invariably said no. And often they barely touched their serving, mostly moved it around the plate to make it appear they were eating.

They certainly weren't health conscious. In fact, both were rather pudgy and never exercised that I saw.

These were two unrelated people, not a couple. And I didn't work for them at the same time but it always seemed odd to me that they had no interest at all in food. To them it was just fuel.

They went out to eat quite often for business but never remembered what they had been served.

One was a screenwriter and the other was a set director and both were quite busy most of the time. Both had been married at least once but were single at the time I worked for them.

I tried to fix things that would tempt them but they never seemed to notice. It was frustrating to me but at least their guests were happy with the meals I prepared.

Edited November 6, 2004 by andiesenji (log)

[adegiulio]

Well, I, out of good manners, will eat mostly anything put in front of me. I just won't enjoy it..

I recall one time I was flying back from Chicago to Newark. I was sitting in my tiny seat when I look up and see every single young man's dream...a beautiful woman was about to sit next to me for the next few hours. We struck up a conversation. She was laughing at all of my jokes, it was terrific. I was just about to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming when the helpful flight attendant served us a "meal". It was some kind of beige-ish gray-ish brown-ish meat. Even after I was told it was chicken I still had a difficult time figuring it out. Ugh, this was not looking promising at all, and I have eaten some pretty lousy food in my day. Well, just as I was pushing this poor chicken away, I look over and see this gorgeous woman, the highlight of my trip, devouring her chicken like a starving dog on a meatloaf. Oh man!!! I immediately divorced her in my mind. How could she be eating that with such gusto, such relish??

She sure was pretty though

Amy, you're not reading this are you??

[munchymom]

I hate to admit it, especially here, but I've fallen into this category from time to time. Since starting Weight Watchers I've been more mindful about trying to eat only what's really good, but it's easy to default to eating whatever's there. In my own home I can just not bring in the junk food, but if I'm in someone else's house, say, my in-laws' for instance, and they have big bowls out of chocolate-covered peanuts, even if the peanuts are slightly stale, and the chocolate is actually "chocolate flavored coating", well--I'm still eating them. For me it's really easy to do it, and really hard to not do it - even if the food is something I never would have bought for myself in a million years.

[TheFoodTutor]

adegiulio, your post made me laugh out loud. Especially the "divorced her in my mind" bit.

But that and the comment from munchymom made me remember that there are certain situations, where food is scarce and likely to be crap, and people are likely to be hungry, so munching on what's there is hard not to do. Airplane trips are exceptional for this, since there's so little entertainment outside of the nasty little bit of food served on plastic trays. What are you supposed to do on a long flight, unless there's a good movie, good reading material, or the lucky event of a cool peson sitting next to you?

But then, obviously she had you and chose to devour the food anyway. Good idea to cut your losses and move on. A resourceful woman would have brought something yummy and shared it over a delightful conversation with you.

And I do want to add that I don't like to waste food, even if it's bad food. On the occasions that I buy something bad, I try to feed it to animals or suffer through eating it or use it to fertilize plants or something. And I'd never think of offending a host by not eating the food they prepared. I usually just take a small portion and explain that I'm really not that hungry.

[CityCook]

oh man...

I grew up in this category. I think I was mayor of this category from ages 14-15. After a couple years spent cooking, though, I just can't eat that way anymore. Food really needs to connect with me on some level, even if it's just my favorite brand of tasty potato chips or gummy bears.

[ladyyoung98]

i guess i never thought about that one in my conscious mind about do i eat whats put in front of me or not...but the question gave me pause and i thought about it...no im not going to sit there and eat something that looks truly disgusting....and i do like my food to be flavorful... i like for my tastebuds to feel like they have died and gone to heaven..however there have been times when in a restaurant..i have been guilty of not saying anything about the food when its not quite up to par...i wait til after we have left and then my finace and i discuss it...on the other hand well also discuss those places that r excpetionally good as well.....if the food was not up to par...we simply dont go back

as to the god awful airline food.....i can remember atime when it used to be so much better than it is now....way back in the sixties when my father used to work for one of the catei=ring services that catered to braniff...he would bring home these wonderful things and it was like heaven when he did..parfait ice creams...chicken that was real and not mush..u name it..he got to bring it home and i never knew my father wasnt a first class chef.....lol

[NulloModo]

I might partially be in this category. I certainly care what I am eating, but I enjoy many things that I have a feeling many eG people would not find attractive.

I haven't endulged in this in quite a while, but I really remember loving Olive Garden pasta entrees, and I dine out at TGI Friday's a bit, and find their menu items generally good. I loved Chi-Chi's mexican, and I have no qualms about a cheeseburger from Wendy's. That is not saying that I don't appreciate better versions of all of these dishes, but the basic chain variety can hit the spot as well. If something tastes good, I will enjoy eating it. If something tastes bad, well, I will most likely not eat it. If something tastes like more or less nothing, I have to actively force myself away from it, or somehow I end up continually munching, just hoping it will start to taste better somehow...

[Smithy]

Funny, I was just thinking along these lines this afternoon when a 3-1/2 hour road trip was foisted on me on the way out the door. I did NOT want to do that trip. I DID want to go home. On the way, on the trip, I devoured a small bag of vinegar-and-salt potato chips. They were vile. I should add that I love real vinegar on real chips (what we true Americans would call French Fries), but somehow it doesn't translate onto packaged potato chips. At least, not onto these packaged potato chips.

They really were vile, but in a perversely pleasurable sort of way.

Did I stop before the bag was finished? No.

Did I dig into the next bag I'd brought along? Again, no. I think I'll leave them back at the office next Monday, for the other vultures.

I spent a good deal more of my resentful road trip thinking about the fact that I've successfully lost weight merely by eating only what I really, really like...but then, there are these perverse pleasure moments. Why? I ask myself, why? I can almost feel my thighs swelling lovingly into a tighter grip with my pant legs this evening. Wouldn't it have been better to wait until I could get home to my leftover potato gratin and steak with mushrooms? Or even the leftover Hallowe'en candy?

Then again, there's the counterpoint, that may go nearer the mark of the original question, and has a certain Zen quality to it: if you can't get the good stuff, shouldn't you enjoy what you get? I think that was the whole point of the Steven Stills song...

Nancy "love the one you're with" Smith

[StudentChefEclipse]

oh man...

I grew up in this category. I think I was mayor of this category from ages 14-15. After a couple years spent cooking, though, I just can't eat that way anymore. Food really needs to connect with me on some level, even if it's just my favorite brand of tasty potato chips or gummy bears.

←

I suspect teenage boys are the Presidents of this category; by and large because they are eating machines. Any sort of whatever to fuel the growth spurts.

I have never been in this category, though not for lack of trying on my grandparent's part. Not that they were totally indiscriminate in their taste in food, but they had not had much opportunity to develop a palate. After all, for a certain segment of America, during a certain period of history, canned goods represented a sort of wealth. What you canned or cooked from scratch at home was considered "lesser". *tsk*

[NulloModo]

I think many of us are also apt to eating random not so good things when they are just laying around. I have thankfully mostly stopped this behaviour, but when I was younger anytime I visited my grandmothers I would totally decimate her cookie jar, as well as any candy she had conveniently laying around in bulk stacks.

I find that there are certain foods that I find it very diffuclt to control myself around. If I buy sunflower seeds, nuts, or pork rinds (all legal foods for the 'diet' I am on) I will eat the whole bag instead of just a serving or two, thus I make sure I buy them only occasionally and in small portions when I do.

[jetsie]

I know people who fall into this category. Whether it's institutional cafeteria food, 7-11 microwave sludge, or the cooking of a good chef, they fall on it with the same gusto and raves. I don't get it, but at least they're easy to please.

[soupsister]

I have found, at my advanced age (ha) that there are a lot of edible things that are NWTC- not worth the calories. My workplace is situated in a small town with lackluster choices for lunch- two fast food chains, a coffee shop, a diner, a gas station pizza joint, and a truck stop. We're hungry at lunch, so we rotate amongst them. Is any of it worth eating? Only to a very hungry person, so I eat so I don't get any crabbier than I already am. The kicker? We are all chefs/cooks in a food service business. Why don't we bring lunch? Time, or lack there of. If it's there, we eat it, simply to go on with the day's work with some kind of fuel. None of it is worth the calories, but it's there.

On the flip side, we treat ourselves to eating at client restaurants when we can and I've had some incredible meals. Makes up for a lot of soggy taco pizzas.

[TheFoodTutor]

I think the "not worth the calories" response is the way I tend to think, because I have restricted my caloric intake in my lifetime. If you've ever been on a diet of any kind, you tend to look at your daily caloric allotment as a budget which you must stay within. Free food is never really "free," and many times it's not worth eating. All You Can Eat doesn't mean you should eat all you can.

So that's where my weirdness comes in: Since I eat like a person who's been on a diet, and being on a diet seems such a normal part of American culture, how is it that there are people who've never, ever been on a diet in their whole lives? Sure, if you have a high metabolism and you've never needed to, that's understandable, but the people I've known like this actually do discriminate a bit, so I still don't get it.

[FL Heat]

My boyfriend's mom is definitely in this category. She shared with me some of her German mother's recipes for slaw, cake, potatoes, raving about how great a cook her mother was, how much she'd like that her grandson is dating a girl who likes to cook. Then she took us to a restaurant that was, quite honestly, awful. She raved about the burger, the fries (it was a Mexican restaurant. . .), and I was just like. . .wtf? How can she go on and on about her mother's cooking and then say that pile of meat sludge on a mass market bun is WONDERFUL???

She smokes. A lot. I can't help but wonder if that has something to do with it.

I grew up with a mom who grew up on a farm and grandparents who still tended to it. And another set of grandparents who were qualified food snobs. Mom & Dad would make easy foods, but weren't the least bit afraid of telling the grocery store manager that the corn wasn't good, the tomatoes were crap. . .so I got to grow up kinda picky :)

Diana

[rosebud]

I think this is all in how food was viewed and/or prepared in your parents' home. I remember an interview with Sally Ride's mother, before her first trip into space, where her mother stated that she never cooked--just left everyone to his/her own devices food-wise. Sally actually thought the "space" food wasn't too bad!

Then there's the classic restaurant review: "The food wasn't very good and there wasn't enough of it."

I, too, try to watch my weight by not eating food that NWTC.

[chile_peppa]

I think that people who eat like this may account for the popularity of all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants that serve large quantities of "college dorm" food on steam tables. My dad and stepmom like to go to one near their home in rural Indiana, and it's always packed, whether we go for dinner or breakfast. The offerings tend to be sweet, heavy, starchy, and covered in sauces, but people seem to enjoy them a lot.

edited for typo

Edited November 6, 2004 by chile_peppa (log)

[Chufi]

My parents are like that. When I think of the food I ate for the first 18 years of my life: boiled vegetables, boiled potatoes and a piece of fried meat every single night.. it's a miracle I ever found my way to cooking a good meal. My father used to mash everything on his plate together, cover it in gravy and then eat with gusto.

Sometimes they go out to a 'fancy' restaurant and eat the upscale version of their everyday meals: boiled vegetables, fries and a pice of meat or fish covered in some glue-ish sauce. They think it's a treat as long as it's salty, fatty and there's lots of it. Ugh!

[Pan]

The kicker?  We are all chefs/cooks in a food service business.  Why don't we bring lunch?  Time, or lack there of.  If it's there, we eat it, simply to go on with the day's work with some kind of fuel.  None of it is worth the calories, but it's there. 

←

I don't get it. Would it take more time for you to cook meals for one another than to go to someplace and get stuff you don't like?

[momlovestocook]

Well, my dh loves to eat. He'll eat anything as long as it's food. While he appreciates good meals, he eats with the same gusto, good or bad it seems. His mother is not the best of cooks(each "holiday" meal at her place consists of dry turkey, boiled potatoes, boxed stuffing, cole slaw with sliced pickled eggs on top and a pea and lettuce salad-can of peas, chopped iceburg and mayo-YUM). It's not a hard act to follow LOL. He always eats till he can barely move when we're at her place because it makes his mother happy(she's also a food pusher).

I used to eat whatever and lots of it. Since coming to my senses and losing 100 pounds, I only eat food that I love or really like. I no longer eat just because the food is there.

If you ever just sit back and watch people eat, you will notice that a lot of people fall into the eat just because it's there category. Since I have stopped mindless eating, I have noticed that as long as food is out, it will be eaten. After christmas supper last year where everyone ate lots of food and dessert, my SIL put a box of cookies on the table. Now, no one could have been the least bit hungry but the box of cookies disappeared-not because they were the best cookies around but because we eat without thinking.

Sandra

[ghostrider]

I spent a good deal more of my resentful road trip thinking about the fact that I've successfully lost weight merely by eating only what I really, really like...

Nancy "love the one you're with" Smith

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I've always liked that theory. My problem has been that I really, really, REALLY like ice cream.

After 30 years of following this notion, I've recently had to give it up, on doctor's orders, as my blood sugar is spiraling near out of control.

The obvious counterpart is moderation in everything. Easier said.

[soupsister]

The kicker?  We are all chefs/cooks in a food service business.  Why don't we bring lunch?  Time, or lack there of.  If it's there, we eat it, simply to go on with the day's work with some kind of fuel.  None of it is worth the calories, but it's there. 

←

I don't get it. Would it take more time for you to cook meals for one another than to go to someplace and get stuff you don't like?

←

The time factor takes over. One of us is working a second job in a kitchen, one of us has a new baby, and one of us is a divorced mom taking care of a house, a yard, a daughter, and a business. We make dinner for our families, but lunch falls through the cracks. It's not that we don't appreciate great food, we just don't put a priority on lunch.

[bloviatrix]

Well, my dh loves to eat.  He'll eat anything as long as it's food.  While he appreciates good meals, he eats with the same gusto, good or bad it seems. Sandra

←

You've just described my darling spouse to a T.

I know something is really really bad if he won't eat it.

[Moopheus]

I've always liked  that theory.  My problem has been that I really, really, REALLY like ice cream.

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This is my problem too. I have an insatiable sweet tooth. I'm a committed dessertetarian, and admit that when desserts are on offer my standards will tend to drop a bit and will eat way more than I should, borderline compulsively, really.