I think my excuse was growing up all my siblings had moved out (there was a sizeable age gap) so I was kind of raised like an only child as a result. When it was food time, I just wanted to eat and be done since I had other stuff to do - and I just never really grew out of it.
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There definitely seems like a toxic masculinity aspect to this phenomenon as well. Eating healthy is associated with wanting to be physically thin and thus a feminine endeavor and something that “real men” shouldn’t be doing. “Real men” eat dead animals that because it shows their mastery over other living animals. “Real men” eat “real food” as opposed to “what real food eats” because “real men” are predators rather than herbivores etc.
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My friend is always first to finish food. Different reasons though; he had a really shitty upbringing (like, Dickensian bad). He eats like a dog. Fast as he can, everything on the plate, no matter what it is, and constantly checking his six between bites. He also weighs maybe ten stone soaked through whereas I become more rotund by the hour. Dude has hollow legs.
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And a parent who feeds sweetened chocolate milk to their kid at every meal is a major component of the problem.
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Sadly, some men would consider that a compliment.
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Same here - no choice. But leaving it was not an option - food waste was tantamount to a crime against humanity. (Parents from the WWII era.)
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Sounds familiar! Dinner was when my grandparents suddenly cared about starving children in China.
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My family’s starving children were in Africa.
Also re the several people above talking about how fast they/their friends eat…
Eat slower, chew more and you will get the ‘I’m full’ message from your innards sooner and will eat less. It’s a chemical signal that takes a little time to get through and if you eat too fast, you’ve eaten too much already, by the time you get it. It’s why so many people feel utterly stuffed after finishing their meals, rather than just pleasantly full. I suspect faster eating can often be accompanied by over-eating and its unfortunate effects.
(I speak as one whose medical status demands I chew everything to a pulp before it gets near my stomach. I am a notoriously slow eater.)
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That’s how it was in my household when I was growing up as well; you ate what you were given, or you just didn’t eat.
Samsies, except it was “the starving kids in Africa” 'round our way.
Now, I tell my own kid not to waste food because “kids are starving down the street,” and it’s literally true - there’s a tent city less than a mile from us.
O_o
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125 comments in and I’m the first to mention this?
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Anecdotally, my brother-in-law is one of these men. He gets separate meals at family events (which he barely touches anyway) and is generally averse to new food.
He was a premature baby 33 years ago, but my MIL treats him like a virtual infant to this day. Upon observation I would say that this hasn’t really helped him in life, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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one could … excuse a lot of bad eating on the basis of what’s cheap and convenient
but behavior like this is a real red flag
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Where? It doesn’t do that in my reading of it. Instead, it talks about various men who still eat like boys, and provides some likely explanations for why they do so. It’s not specifically about any sort of mental illness. Many such men are not at all mentally ill. They just have some bad habits, and many learn to change their dietary habits.
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What adult man regularly drinks chocolate milk with his meals?
Well I’m not an adult man but I regularly drink chocolate oat milk with my dinner because I’m an adult and I’m the boss of me. I also eat a pretty wide variety of foods (mushrooms, fish and olives can get in the sea though) and cook regularly. I just like that I get to make the rules now. I will eat cereal for dinner and pizza for breakfast but I will go to town on a plate of asparagus if given half a chance.
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We always heard “Eat for the starving Armenians”…which by 1980s standards, was quite the dated reference.
That and “Eat for the hunger to come”…which is just, odd…
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Yup. I do 80% of our household cooking and as much as I enjoy it, it’s a bloody chore just working out what we’re going to eat - the cooking’s fine, but the standing in the supermarket with a deep ennui thinking, “fuck it, what about a curry” is dispiriting. At one stage we had one of those “ingredients in a box” service just so I wouldn’t have to decide.
It’s definitely a first world problem.
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Wherever did you get that reading? As @gracchus notes above, they specifically talk about neurobiology as it pertains to picky eating. Also, from the article:
Picky eating starts early, explains Wiss, who says highly-processed foods — e.g., Lunchables, Goldfish, Twinkies, Fruit Loops, Pop-Tarts and Go-Gurt — make it clear to a child’s growing brain which food is the most dopaminergic(i.e., rewarding). As the child ages, Wiss says they’ll eat even fewer nutritious things, like vegetables, that mom used to make them eat, thus becoming even more intolerant of “healthy” food.
Not shaming, not blaming. Explaining.
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I think the key problem here is that you’ve failed to consider banana milk.
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Aren’t you now breaking the rules by suggesting that people with (pejoratively described) ‘infantile’ dietary preferences are actually suffering from mental illness? The rule here is not to ascribe mental illness to others’ actions, I was given to understand.
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And society gets to pay for these people when they get diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity-related diseases.
Sorry, you can eat what you want, but society gets to tell you it’s bad for you.
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