My family tradition: never "yucking" on food.

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bburned

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since this is a foodie forum.
my family managed to teach me a few things as a kid. one was to NEVER "ewwww" someones food. my situation was reinforced by real-life. i am an American born Chinese dude. i grew up in a smaller Texas town were there were hardly any Asian people. coming up thru school, it was only me and Charles. Charles was Japanese. we were not rich, and my mom would pack me leftovers for lunch. it never failed. everytime i would open up my lunch, everyone would (in unision) "EWWWWWW, YUCK" my lunch. it would be a ball of rice, and some leftover stirfry. chopsticks were a real crowd-pleaser. the irony of watching my classmate eat a day-glow colored hotdog was not lost on me. i wouldnt call it bullying, but it was uncomfortable, and it always generated some racial slurs. my stirfry was always some dog meat. :) i would sometime dump my lunch and simply go play outside.

now as an adult, i realize some foods are not for everyone. i have some foods that will never pass my lips. i wont make a big deal of it, and even sit at the same table while friends and family enjoy what they enjoy. i see pro-chefs on TV gross out on foods..and they are making money being "a foodie".

i will now TRY anything (cooked). i reserve the right to not like the food quietly. i just dont find it polite to make a fuss about something i dont like. someone likes it.
 
Yeah, unfortunately this will never come to an end. I'm positive if I were to go to certain populations there will be foods that I will have a hard time consuming. It's all in the head of course, but drinking blood from cattle where a small knife slit is made to drain some blood and then patched with some dirt so the cattle can mend and then mixed with milk will be a tough one for me, lol but not for the Maasai tribe living in Tanzania and this is a staple in their diet. Personally I don't worry about other people aversions too much. Cheers
 
My ex wife and I both had a "try it before judging it" approach to food, within reason. There were some foods we just couldn't do. But we made our best effort. I don't imagine I will ever be able to willingly eat things like insects. As a "foodie," I'm okay with that. We all have our limits.

Yes, with a lot of these foods, it is all "in the head." But, we are people, not robots, so eating food is not something we do purely to consume nutrients.

CD
 
caseydog said:
My ex wife and I both had a "try it before judging it" approach to food, within reason. There were some foods we just couldn't do. But we made our best effort. I don't imagine I will ever be able to willingly eat things like insects. As a "foodie," I'm okay with that. We all have our limits.

Yes, with a lot of these foods, it is all "in the head." But, we are people, not robots, so eating food is not something we do purely to consume nutrients.

CD
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in Cambodia, i met up with some locals and they tried to test my limits. granted i was kinda drunk, but i ate various insects. highlights were a tarantula, and a wasp nest. NOT good, but i was polite. i only tasted things, and didnt dig in. i did notice they didnt eat any. haha..i think they were jacking with the tourist guy.
 
bburned I remember being teased in grade school because I was practicing how to use chopsticks. My uncle had taught me that summer and I felt that, as someone of mixed Chinese heritage, I just had to know how to use them. I'd practice with pencils and not actual chopsticks at school, but yeah the racial slurs were unavoidable. Your post reminded me of that experience.

As to the actual display of disgust for unfamiliar food, I was fortunate to be surrounded by some pretty open minded family members, so I think we tried many things from an early age. I try everything and, like you, try not to show it if I dislike something. I just chalk it up to a learning experience and note (in my head) "Well, I won't be eating/ordering that in the future!"
 
I brought up both my brother and sister. I was vegetarian then and pretty open to most foods. I had a policy that they couldn't ever tell me they didn't like it until I had seen then actually try it. I also had the policy of never answering what anything was until they had actually tried it. My brother in particular would try the "I don't like this" routine before he'd even tried it (especially if he knew what it was called) and I point blank refused to cook what he wanted (same thing every night, day in, day out). He learnt very quickly that I wouldn't surrender unlike his parents and I had no issues in allowing him to go hungry. (It would probably be called child cruelty now, but when I was growing up there literally wasn't the food on the table.) The result was 2 children that ate 99% of what was put in front of them and who happily ate pretty much anything anyone cooked for them (they did have a few exceptions mostly around seafood which is something they never ate with me (being vegetarian then and vegan plus eggs from my own chooks only now)). My brother went on to become a chef as a result. He also managed to change his restaurant's policy on vegetarian and vegan food and how they dealt with food allergies (actually accommodating them which was a totally new concept for that company).
 
bburned said:
in Cambodia, i met up with some locals and they tried to test my limits. granted i was kinda drunk, but i ate various insects. highlights were a tarantula, and a wasp nest.
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Ditto in Cambodia, except I never got drunk and so there was no push towards the tarantula venders. 😆 I think the locals expect not to try, but are amused if you do (and maybe give you some bonus 'cool' points). Did you go to any of the "bug restaurants" for tourists? Me? Nope, nope, nope.

In Taiwan I became a fan of the so called 'stinky tofu'. It rocks! I generally don't turn down food and am willing to try most anything animal or vegetable. 😁
 
bburned said:
since this is a foodie forum.
my family managed to teach me a few things as a kid. one was to NEVER "ewwww" someones food. my situation was reinforced by real-life. i am an American born Chinese dude. i grew up in a smaller Texas town were there were hardly any Asian people. coming up thru school, it was only me and Charles. Charles was Japanese. we were not rich, and my mom would pack me leftovers for lunch. it never failed. everytime i would open up my lunch, everyone would (in unision) "EWWWWWW, YUCK" my lunch. it would be a ball of rice, and some leftover stirfry. chopsticks were a real crowd-pleaser. the irony of watching my classmate eat a day-glow colored hotdog was not lost on me. i wouldnt call it bullying, but it was uncomfortable, and it always generated some racial slurs. my stirfry was always some dog meat. :) i would sometime dump my lunch and simply go play outside.

now as an adult, i realize some foods are not for everyone. i have some foods that will never pass my lips. i wont make a big deal of it, and even sit at the same table while friends and family enjoy what they enjoy. i see pro-chefs on TV gross out on foods..and they are making money being "a foodie".

i will now TRY anything (cooked). i reserve the right to not like the food quietly. i just dont find it polite to make a fuss about something i dont like. someone likes it.
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This really made me think about the way I might come off to others when I express my dislikes for certain foods. I hope no one thinks I am rude, that's not my intention. I personally am fascinated by what others like and dislike and I always want to know what others in the forum think about different kinds of foods (both negative and positive), and I openly share what I do and don't like without reservation.

So yes, I do "yuck" on food, but to me it's like expressing to family members my food preferences, I don't think the forum has that school lunchroom feel to it. Additionally, I would be thrilled with leftover rice and stir fry for lunch, even as a kid. Where I grew up in Florida next to a large AF base, there was a rather large Asian American presence and I absolutely love much of Asian cuisine. Your lunch wouldn't have raised an eyebrow at my school, chopsticks or no, and some kids may have come over and asked you to show them how to properly use them.

Also just because I don't like something doesn't mean I think that everyone or anyone else should have to conform to my highly opinionated pickiness. I quite well realize that my tastes are vastly different and my pickiness is generally not the norm. I also don't think you were singling me out with this thread or even had me on mind when you wrote it, but it still made me think, because I don't like the feeling that I might have offended anyone. So I apologize to anyone who may be offended when I say that I don't like sweet potatoes, cooked carrots, liver and other offal, Spam, etc. I fully realize that I am usually in the minority. Hoping you all know that I am just being open in my sharing and not yucking on you!

Additionally, I don't like hot dogs. The last time I ate one was at a baseball game in 2011, and it was a nearly burnt chili dog (hot dogs have to be really well-cooked for me to eat one) with cheese, onions, and mustard piled on it. That and the draft beer gave me heartburn all day, but if I go to another baseball game in the future, I will likely eat one...not exactly sure why it seems appropriate to eat one there and nowhere else, LOL!
 
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JAS_OH1 said:
I apologize to anyone who may be offended when I say that I don't like sweet potatoes, cooked carrots, liver and other offal, Spam, etc. I fully realize that I am usually in the minority. Hoping you all know that I am just being open in my sharing and not yucking on you!
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I don't think anyone here is offended by your particular tastes. We all have like and dislikes. bburned has made an important point though: that sometimes a word as simple as 'yuk' can be a form of disguised racial prejudice; not always, but sometimes. I'd hope that things have changed in that respect in schools. But I suspect that it still happens.

Personally bburned, if you had turned up at my school with Asian food I'd have been all over it and asking you for tastes. But then I wasn't a 'normal' UK working class kid when it came to food.
 
Morning Glory said:
I don't think anyone here is offended by your particular tastes. We all have like and dislikes. bburned has made an important point though: that sometimes a word as simple as 'yuk' can be a form of disguised racial prejudice; not always, but sometimes. I'd hope that things have changed in that respect in schools. But I suspect that it still happens.

Personally bburned, if you had turned up at my school with Asian food I'd have been all over it and asking you for tastes. But then I wasn't a 'normal' UK working class kid when it came to food.
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Like I wrote in my post, I didn't think it was aimed directly at me, but it did make me think about the subject a bit. And since bburned is fairly new and doesn't know me, my post in the Spam thread may have come off as slightly arrogant and condescending, which it wasn't meant to be. Just joking around a bit here and there could come off in the wrong way, so just setting the record straight. I certainly don't want anyone to think that my finickiness means that I think what they eat is not good and they shouldn't be eating it. I am quite certain that I am in the minority in a lot of the things I don't like.
 
CraigC said:
I used to get a kick out of peoples reactions to some of the food I took for lunch when I was in school. Steamed shrimp was a big reaction getter. Most kids had never seen peel & eat shrimp.
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I don’t think I ever saw it until I met my wife.

I married her anyway. Ba-dump! :laugh:
 
CraigC said:
I used to get a kick out of peoples reactions to some of the food I took for lunch when I was in school. Steamed shrimp was a big reaction getter. Most kids had never seen peel & eat shrimp.
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I remember the first time my oldest stepdaughter brought one of her boyfriends home for dinner (she is now married to someone else, thankfully). Anyway, we had jumbo peel-and-eat shrimp in a bowl on the counter and he was the first to dive in. He stuck an entire shrimp in his mouth, peel and all. We all laughed our butts off at the expression on his face as he crunched into the shell. I said, "Dude, you have to peel it first." He said he had only ever had shrimp cocktail at restaurants and it was always peeled first (apparently he didn't notice the little legs and shell on it beforehand, LOL). I explained to him that I generally didn't do that work for everyone and they had to peel their own (though I will peel Mr. OH's shrimp for him when it's just the two of us). And then I had to show him how to peel it. Even stepdaughter rolled her eyes at him!

So glad she didn't marry him!
 
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