Culinary Proclivities

Yesterday’s episode of Anderson Cooper’s talk show featured people with strange eating habits, including Cooper himself. For example, he eats very few food items and when he finds a meal he likes, he’ll eat that same meal, day after day, month after month. Right now, it’s roast turkey and two sides of corn from Boston Market.


The program also featured two women who’ve only eaten potatoes for over fifty years. Can you imagine that? Nothing but French fries and hash browns for 50 years.

I thought, “My gosh, these people are messed up!” That is, until I took a look at my own eating habits and even had some pointed out to me.

I don't eat breakfast or dessert. The idea of piling in food the first thing in the morning or after a meal just doesn't appeal to me.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always eaten one thing at a time; never taking a bite of this and a bite of that. I just don’t like mixing things up. Big deal.

But, at home, I realized that I only eat one food item for every meal. Pasta and marinara sauce is one food item. Pizza. A sandwich. Lentil curry and rice. I would never make, say, roast chicken with potatoes, a vegetable and a salad for a meal. I don’t think I’d even enjoy it. However, I could put veggies in the tomato sauce that is served over pasta.

Another proclivity of mine that Miss Healthypants pointed out to me is that I never eat the last bite of anything. “Well, yeah. That last bite is just . . . nasty,” I replied. I never really thought about it, but the last bite of anything just seems, well, nasty or contaminated. I don’t know why.

The strangest food aversion I have is that I won’t use my fingers to eat anything oily. French fries, pizza, chicken all get the knife-and-fork treatment. Popcorn is eaten with a spoon or, better yet, with latex gloves. Seeing people eat honey barbecue wings on a commercial? It sends shivers down my spine. I have to look away.

As I’m typing this, I have a little bowl of roasted peanuts with a plastic spoon beside me.

So, I can’t rail at anyone on TV about their food habits. I have them. I suppose we all do to some extent.

And if I’m ever in New York and take Anderson Cooper out for lunch, I’ll know to head for Boston Market. 

He'll appreciate that.