The Men Who Eat Like Boys

How do you define a “picky eater?” We all develop dietary habits in childhood that persist through our lives, and what’s “picky” depends on who is using the term. Many men who habitually eat the same processed foods they were fed in childhood don’t think of themselves as picky eaters until they have a girlfriend who is horrified by their diet.  

The proclivity to eat like a boy is only magnified when there’s a partner around to bear witness. For example, when Ally met her boyfriend Brad, he didn’t eat vegetables at all, only steak, pasta, burgers, nuggets and pizza bagels. “He’s 28 now, and he still eats like a 7-year-old,” Ally tells me. “He works at Family Guy, so he’s surrounded by other adult children and a kitchen fully stocked with gummy bears and Capri Sun. What adult man regularly drinks chocolate milk with his meals?”

Ally chalks it up to Brad’s mom babying him and bowing to his every dietary whim when he was a child. “She’d cook three different meals if he and his brothers demanded it,” she explains. “So Brad was an incredibly picky eater after 20-some-odd years of being nutritionally catered to by his (very lovely) mother.”

The reasons men fall into the nutritional abyss vary, but they mostly boil down to the fact that continuing on a pleasant path is much easier than changing it. Read what’s behind the diets of men who eat like boys at Mel magazine. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Fritz Saalfeld)


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I'm 59 and I'm still a picky eater. I know a lot of it is stuff I didn't like when I was young, but part of it really is texture based. A few months ago I tried eating a piece of orange, and I almost gagged because it felt like I was chewing on rubber bands.
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You can drift along for years and years, then: Surprise! Kidney Stones! Diabetes! Heart Disease! Maybe this is Nature's way of thinning the herd.
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