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Food phobias

Fuzzy peaches, slippery mushrooms, rubbery eggs, slimy avocados. Certain textures can be a turnoff, but do we really know why?

Peach fuzz – it makes my teeth itch, my tongue recoil. When we were young, my brother would incite terror by chasing me around the house with a raw peach.

That’s just how it is with some foods – while they often possess a fine flavor, we simply can’t tolerate their textures.

And there are more offending foods than you realize. Some folks are repulsed by the slippery – asparagus, lima beans, mushrooms. Some can’t manage its near cousin, anything mushy – scrambled eggs, cottage cheese, tapioca pudding.

Others won’t abide the overly crunchy, such as crusty bread, chips and apples. Or like me, some dread the goose-bump-inducing fuzziness of peaches, apricots, kiwis and, in the extreme, raspberries and strawberries.

Then there’s the flotsam and jetsam of the food world – the kernels left after the heavenly crunch of popcorn is gone; the sand-like substance of ice cream melted and refrozen, the mistake that is jerky of any kind, be it beef, elk or salmon.

What causes us to be revolted by otherwise perfectly tasty foods?

One friend says the smell of mushrooms reminds her of her grandmother’s dark, scary basement. A colleague rejects egg whites because of the clammy sensation they create in his mouth. My peach-wielding younger brother would rather weather a wedgie than eat a vegetable such as an avocado, which he deems slimy.

One local food expert recalls that her daughter didn’t like colorful foods – in other words, vegetables – and could be persuaded to eat only white foods like bread and cereal.

“I must have pushed vegetables too hard,” she confided.

But it’s actually fairly common for children to be averse to certain foods.

“We see kids who have trouble with textures,” said Dr. Cecile Fraley, a local pediatrician. “Some kids will only eat things that are yellow, white and brown like bananas, pasta, bread, cheese and milk. I have one of those.”

She reassures parents that it gets better as children get older. In fact, in the case of babies, she tells parents to be prepared to try a food 13 times before accepting that they don’t like it.

Some children are highly sensitive to all textures, not just food. A zipper can bother them, a shirt tag can cause them discomfort. Fraley’s daughter attended the first day of kindergarten in her bedroom slippers because she didn’t like the feel of regular shoes.

You can, however, get kids to eat healthy foods they may object to. Fraley counsels devious trickery. Put avocados in breakfast smoothies, hide protein-rich eggs in baked goods and sneak greens into homemade juices.

Erin Evans, an occupational therapist specializing in children’s sensory problems, uses a different tactic. She lets her own children play with food they might not like, touching it, smelling it, squishing it, in the hopes that they’ll eventually taste it.

“Maybe they bring it to their lips while they’re playing and they’ll say, ‘That’s not so bad,’” she said.

Evans empathizes with her patients because she’s a terribly picky eater herself. She rejected meat from the time she was in grammar school and still does. She just recently accomplished getting down guacamole, but still can’t stomach an actual avocado.

What is it with avocados anyway? So many people simply can’t bear them. Herald columnist Ann Butler recalls encountering them as a child for the first time in a salad at her mother’s dinner party. She described her disgust to the guests in such authentic detail (a journalist from the start), she was banished from the table.

But really, avocados are good for you, a veritable nutritional star. A cup contains a moderate 234 calories, oodles of healthy fat, a smattering of good fiber and a variety of necessary vitamins like A, B6 and C. And if you’re not preternaturally repelled by them, they have a lovely, subtle, earthy flavor.

They’re still a no-go with Evans. As to why these childhood loathings remain with us, she added, is anybody’s guess.

“I don’t like to try new foods. There’s a sense of anxiety because I’m afraid it will be horrible,” she said.

Speaking of horrible, the single most detested food because of texture in my unofficial survey was … Can you guess? Oysters. Specifically, raw oysters. Octopus was runner up, but distantly so, probably because so few people eat it at all.

Out here in the landlocked West, fresh fish can be hard to come by and fresh shellfish particularly so. That makes oysters a relatively rare item and a comparatively expensive one, too. But none of that accounts for the revulsion so many of us feel about a raw, briny oyster.

“The thought of eating a slimy oyster or rubbery octopus turns my stomach,” Margie Deane Gray, executive director of the Fort Lewis College Foundation, said in an email.

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Gigi Baty, head of continuing education at FLC.

Yet when cooked, oysters are one of the sea’s more sublime creations, both musky and fresh, not chewy at all if grilled or fried properly, and needing only a squeeze of lemon or a shot of hot sauce to accompany them. And, of course, oysters are a nutritional marvel – about 60 calories for a half dozen, 2 grams of fat, 3 of carbohydrates and 6 of protein.

Okra is another roundly reviled food, “slimy and hairy and gross” in the words of Laurie Schammell, a longtime foodie friend. But a vegetable lover must object. Okra is a divine gift from Mother Earth, especially if it’s coated in corn flour and fried or added at the last minute to a stew of tomatoes and onions and served with rice. It has almost no calories at all (giving one leave to fry it or serve with a starch) and is high in calcium, fiber, vitamins A, B6 and C. Really, what’s not to like?

“Both slimy AND hairy – the worst,” she repeated.

Sometimes there’s no getting around it. No matter how tasty a food might be or even how healthy it is, we just can’t stomach it. My mother, at least, always had an answer for such occasions.

“Good,” she would say. “More for me.”

phasterok@durangoherald.com



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