Food Phobias

I know a lot of people with some serious aversions to this food or that, but they are Normal Food Eaters, the kind that don't place any particular value on food, and tend to have narrower fields of food experience. Obviously this group is more adventurous, so I thought it would be interesting to see what sorts of foods/non-food substances, if any, cause a phobic reaction.

I don't mean a simple aversion, such as my hatred of raisins, but a more extreme reaction. For example, years ago I was eating a fancy, loaded salad at a long-defunct California cafe. It was a very enjoyable meal until I turned a spring green and found an ex-cockroach. Ever since then, I have been mildly fearful of eating a salad that I have not constructed myself. I imagine the chances of finding a roach in one's salad are pretty small, but I can't shake the fear that meal instilled in me fifteen-plus years ago.

More generally, I'm afraid of finding a hair in my food. This is obviously much more common. Once a hair turns up in my plate, the meal is not only over, but I'm pretty much done eating for the day, and will never return to that restaurant. It's completely irrational, I know, given that most of the cooks out there have hair and will lose one from time to time, but I can't help it. It fills me with deep revulsion.

Any others?

I'm afraid of skewered meat. Years ago I was enjoying some when suddenly I felt a sharp piercing in the back of my throat. Before I knew it I was coughing up blood and off to the ER, where they used especially long tweezers to remove a nasty splinter.

I'm totally afraid of bones in fish. My wife is always saying, "Oh don't be such a [euphemism: scaredy-cat], you could swallow that bone if you had to or send it down with some water or a piece of bread," but one bone, even a small one, in a piece of fish is sometimes enough to make me stop eating that piece of fish altogether. I guess I like breathing too much.

i agree once a hair is found, meal over. Unless it happens to be my hair LOL.

I can spot a hair in a plate of food or a glass a mile away. I've been known to spot a hair on d/c's plates before the server places them on the table. Maybe it's from learning how to present a clean plate while working in the biz. Doesn't ruin a meal for me.

Bones in fish? No big deal in my book. I remember eating fried fish with bones still in it as far back as I can remember sitting at Mom's kitchen table. If you're scared of choking on a fish bone, that means you are not chewing your food at ALL. If a fish bone is big enough to choke you, and you do not notice it in your mouth, then something's wrong with your mastication skills. Chicken too. As many chicken tacos and burritos as I eat, there have been plenty of times when there's that big bite, and then the unexpected crunch of a chicken bone - no big whoop.

My irrational issues with food are possibly a little more off the beaten path...I dunno.

1. Any cooked fruit outside of the occasional blueberry, raspberry, or strawberry in jam format. I find cooked fruits for the most part, absolutely vile, slimy things, with no business being on a table. Apple pie? If there's nothing else, ok, but my plate will be clean save for the big pile of mushy apple innards. Apple turnover? Same thing. Cherry pie? Cooked cherries honestly make me gag just thinking about them. The perfect slice of pie in my book is the entire bottom crust with all of the fruit scraped off. Love that soggy bottom crust, but the slimy, cooked fruit chunks? <gag> I LOVE raw fruit of most any kind, and my fridge is stocked full all year appropriately changing with the seasons - I'll probably eat three oranges today alone. Once you cook fruit, however, it's just gross. My stance on this mostly applies to SWEET fruits, not the things most would consider vegetables - though they are really fruits.

2. Grilled onions.
Improperly separated grilled onions are a possible meal ender in my book. The Greek places are the biggest offender of my issue: The inedible papery portion. If this portion is mixed in with my grilled o on a burger or patty melt - game over, man. Something about the texture, and not being able to bite through it to chew it - ugghh. <shiver> If you could see the puss on my face right now.

seebee wrote:My irrational issues with food are possibly a little more off the beaten path...I dunno.

1. Any cooked fruit outside of the occasional blueberry, raspberry, or strawberry in jam format. I find cooked fruits for the most part, absolutely vile, slimy things, with no business being on a table. Apple pie? If there's nothing else, ok, but my plate will be clean save for the big pile of mushy apple innards. Apple turnover? Same thing. Cherry pie? Cooked cherries honestly make me gag just thinking about them. The perfect slice of pie in my book is the entire bottom crust with all of the fruit scraped off. Love that soggy bottom crust, but the slimy, cooked fruit chunks? <gag> I LOVE raw fruit of most any kind, and my fridge is stocked full all year appropriately changing with the seasons - I'll probably eat three oranges today alone. Once you cook fruit, however, it's just gross. My stance on this mostly applies to SWEET fruits, not the things most would consider vegetables - though they are really fruits.

2. Grilled onions.
Improperly separated grilled onions are a possible meal ender in my book. The Greek places are the biggest offender of my issue: The inedible papery portion. If this portion is mixed in with my grilled o on a burger or patty melt - game over, man. Something about the texture, and not being able to bite through it to chew it - ugghh. <shiver> If you could see the puss on my face right now.

Seebee, unless I'm reading you wrong, you're talking here about foods that disgust you, rather than foods you're afraid of. We all have foods we hate, but I think the intention of Suzy's original post was to start a thread on foods we have an irrational fear of. (Which I find an interesting topic.)

To that point, I do appreciate, in the other part of your post, your trying to talk me down from my fear of fish bones.

I have bad dreams about cooked fruit, and onion husks. They make me shiver. I love the flavors of grilled onions, and cooked fruit, but there's some kinda textural thing that just freaks me out.

Roasted red peppers, and most green olives disgust me, but they don't give me the heebie jeebies just thinking about them. Well, green olives kinda do, I guess, but certainly not in the way cooked fruit or a grilled onion husk mixed in with my grilled onions do.

And I'm not trying to talk you down from anything, because I know for an absolute fact that cooked fruit is delicious, and it won't kill me. Yet I still get shivers up my spine if I take a bite of apple pie without scraping the apples out first (if I can bring myself to take a bite, that is.) I can't even DO cherry pie. LOVE fresh cherries. Love em to death. Put em in a pie, and I can't even think about chewing on them. Rationality does not come into play here.

riddlemay wrote:bones in fish.

I'm with you. Never have understood why anyone thought naming a restaurant "Bonefish Grill" was a good idea. That's enough to keep me away.

My wife has a paranoia about chicken bones in soup. I generally make soup from necks and backs so I have to hear about it often.

When I was about 10 years old, I lost a tooth - a baby tooth! - biting into a chicken drumstick. It was about six years before I would bite into another one.

Katie wrote:

riddlemay wrote:bones in fish.

I'm with you. Never have understood why anyone thought naming a restaurant "Bonefish Grill" was a good idea. That's enough to keep me away.

Wow. I have the opposite problem. I usually want my fish to have bones, a tail, a head and (if I'm lucky) cheeks.

I'm afraid of those white pucks of fish w/o skin or bone. I wake up thinking I just paid $30 for tilapia (aka Arakansas "grouper").

Making fun of us, eh?

Not really. Just being silly. I don't want bones in my fillets either, though I don't mind them in tiny fish where it's to be expected (lake perch, bluegill, eg).

My dad use to hunt rabbit which usually ended up as dinner. I can't tell you how many times I bit down on buckshot. From the time I could provide for my own food I have never "indulged" in wild game. (My loss I know).

Now as for finding a hair in my food...no problem. It is probably the cleanest human thing that could fall into food. Anyway, how do I know it didn't drop off my own head? On the other hand, I mentally flinch when I think of a server's thumb sticking into my coffee when he handed it to me. He had a bandaid on.

Phobias are a whole 'nother animal to preferences. I get teased all the time for my strong aversion to certain foods, including but not limited to raisins, green peppers (make me burp), fruit paired with meat, sweets of most kinds, sunny side up eggs ... etc, etc, etc.

But I don't fear these things, I simply don't choose them if I can help it.

I think a cleanliness obsession would be hardest of all. You really don't want to see what goes on in most kitchens, no matter how clean they look on the surface.

I don't like any food that isn't the color its supposed to be. I don't care for yellow tomatoes, white eggplant, or purple lettuce. White asparagus was a let down and seems sickly compared to the green. I don't like to eat fish presented with a head on.

My mother does not like blue icing on cakes. If you want to rile her up suggest putting blue frosting on a cake and she will head for the hills. As a child I always wanted to tint my cake icing against the best advice of my mother who found it revolting.

Head-on fish. Goat-foot. Goat head. Goat foot and head. Blood sausage. Balls. Brains. None of these things bother me. The following do:

1) I can't eat near or in a bathroom. If a nefarious villain locked me in a bathroom but with access to rations, I would nonetheless starve.

2) Food that is packaged in brightly coloured plastic. Am I supposed to eat it or can I put batteries in it and play war?

3) Mixing meats. No, I do not want bacon with my lamb, thank you.

All you can eat sushi generally terrifies me. That's pretty much it.

Habibi wrote:1) I can't eat near or in a bathroom. If a nefarious villain locked me in a bathroom but with access to rations, I would nonetheless starve.

In my very youthful youth, I worked at a fast food place, in the drive-thru. Being too poor to afford food, the job was complete torture, and I felt faint from hunger often. Until someone clued me in to a trick: discreetly palm a pre-made sandwich that had expired and make a break for the bathroom. Not very appetizing to be sure, but better than the alternative.

The trick continued to work well until our tight-fisted manager started changing stickers on the expired food to make it magically no longer expired and so not fair game

Katie wrote:

riddlemay wrote:bones in fish.

I'm with you. Never have understood why anyone thought naming a restaurant "Bonefish Grill" was a good idea. That's enough to keep me away.

I like fish, and I'm not freaked out by bones, but I never thought that was a very good name either....

Although there are plenty of other names for a seafood themed restaurant, a bonefish is a very highly sought after gamefish. They are literally stalked on flats around coastal areas, and supposedly, for their smallish size, fight like the dickens.

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:In my very youthful youth, I worked at a fast food place, in the drive-thru. Being too poor to afford food, the job was complete torture, and I felt faint from hunger often. Until someone clued me in to a trick: discreetly palm a pre-made sandwich that had expired and make a break for the bathroom. Not very appetizing to be sure, but better than the alternative.

The trick continued to work well until our tight-fisted manager started changing stickers on the expired food to make it magically no longer expired and so not fair game

That guy grew up to be kennyz's nemesis at Fox and Obel

-Dan

seebee wrote:Although there are plenty of other names for a seafood themed restaurant, a bonefish is a very highly sought after gamefish. They are literally stalked on flats around coastal areas, and supposedly, for their smallish size, fight like the dickens.

Ted Williams' detached head is nodding in approval.

Hi,

A visiting relative asked for a glass of milk. He changed his mind when he saw Costco's square-sided milk carton. For reasons I cannot begin to understand, milk from this carton style he does not like.

I will suggest he is not phobic of milk, just this packaging.

Regards,

Turtles. My first pet was an itty bitty turtle named Terry. I actually didn't learn that people ate turtles until long after Terry was dead and composted, but knowing about turtle soup triggered something. I taught myself "turtle" in as many languages as I could find to avoid it on menus (primarily Asian languages since that's where I perceived the threat). I also generally avoid the seafood sections of any markets that might sell turtles. When I lived in NY, visiting Manhattan's Chinatown was unpleasant because of the prevalence of souvenir shops selling small pet turtles on the sidewalks in a neighborhood that I associated primarily with eating.

Not a food, but I also have a phobia of mandolines. I had a very bloody accident a few years ago, and even though I didn't lose any digits, have no physical scarring and now own a protective glove similar to the ones that I believe Mhays' Sparky cooks with, I haven't used a mandoline since. The other day, I was reorganizing my kitchen and had to move the mandoline to another shelf. That simple act was uncomfortable. I also experience mild discomfort when consuming any food that was probably prepared with a mandoline.

I was about to say that I had no food phobias -- other than what I consider to be an entirely reasonable concern about food-safety issues sparked by some bad bouts of food poisoning -- when I remembered that I used to have some.

The most severe food-poisoning episode, which required two trips to a hospital for intravenous fluids, an interview with the Illinois Department of Health and months of recovery, took place in a local Korean restaurant some years ago. Although I had loved Korean food before that, I had a strong aversion to it for several years afterward, and it took a trip to Korea to get over it. I contracted a brief case of food poisoning in Korea, too, but after that trip I was able to enjoy Korean cuisine again.

I've written about the other one before:

Back in the Pleistocene, I had a disastrous date who took me to an Indian restaurant, one of the very first experiences I'd had with that cuisine -- or with dating, for that matter. I spent the night being violently ill, whether from the food or in reaction to the stress of the evening I've never been quite certain.

The episode didn't quite sour me on men, but it did put me off Indian fare, which I subsequently avoided whenever possible. For years, just the smell of curry nauseated me. When for some reason I did wind up at an Indian restaurant, I typically ordered something safe and recognizable, like tandoori chicken.

Happily, I can report that I have long since recovered from this one, too, and really enjoy Indian food now.

The closest thing I have to a food phobia today is a reluctance to visit a couple of restaurants with which I have bad associations due to unhappy events that have nothing whatever to do with the restaurants' food or service.

I was in Fresh Farms today when I was reminded of a food fear: meat with lines of gristle running through them. You see it a lot in cheap pork roast or ham in the deli. And if it winds up in a sandwich without my knowing and I take a bite, my throat immediately narrows and attempts to expel the item.

Oh, and eyeballs and things with faces.

toria wrote:i agree once a hair is found, meal over. Unless it happens to be my hair LOL.

I can't deal even if it is my own hair. Just this morning I was eating a fine sandwich when a hair found its way into my mouth. For some reason I was unable to dislodge it despite frantic attempts, and the sandwich had to be thrown away. Well, the half that I didn't instantly reexperience, that is

That brings back a nice gross memory of a peanut butter sandwich I ate in my room as a child. The squeamish may want to skip ahead to the next post.

I was happily chewing away when I realized there was something foreign in my mouth. I pulled out a LONG hair with a large chunk of masticated sandwich tangled up in the end...that ended lunch, any future meals in my room, and peanut butter in general for quite a while. I'm back on peanut butter but only in the kitchen.

This probably isn't what you are looking for, but anything that I've eaten and then got "sick" (as in threw up) goes to the bottom of my list of edible foods. After 20 years, I still can't eat Cornish Hen.