The Texture Problem: Excerpt 3
AKA The Chapter in Which I Discuss How Everything is Food Based
Hello everyone, I am back once again with an excerpt from a book I may never have in its entirety, but felt worth putting out anyway.
I highly encourage you to read the first texture problem excerpt if you haven’t. You don’t necessarily need to, but there’s a lot of additional context that is provided in that initial post that I probably won’t be retreading here. If you’d like to check it out, the link is here:
As the subheading suggests, today I’m going to talk about how so much more of social society is based around food than you realize — but that it’s very obvious when you have any kind of issue regarding food the way I do.
Just About Every Social Interaction Has a Potential Food Component
Food and communal eating are so incredibly engrained into human society, and I don’t know if most people even realize it. The more you think about it though, the more you realize that just about every situation where you want to hang out / get to know someone better has a very high likelihood of involving food.
Hanging out with friends? Whether you’re going to the mall, over to someone’s house/apartment, or specifically getting breakfast/lunch/dinner with someone, food has a high likelihood of being a component of the interaction.
Going on a date? There’s lots of options that don’t involve food, but a dinner date or a lunch date are both very popular for a reason. Talking over a well-cooked meal is a staple of every romance movie and I can only imagine that’s for a good reason.
Meeting up with your family? Almost certainly involves food, especially if the meet up is for a holiday.
Take a second to think about how many types of social encounters there are that revolve around going somewhere and eating while you socialize. Even excluding food-specific events, there’s a plethora to choose from. Baby showers, birthdays, company get-togethers, the vast majority of holidays, housewarming parties, weddings, wakes, watching the game — the list goes on.
Think about how much love has been historically linked to baking cookies for someone, or gifting them a meal because they’re too sick or busy to cook for themselves and you want them to be healthy and well fed.
Everywhere you look, you will find that socialization is tied very heavily into food.
And I want to stress something before we get into the rest of this chapter: There is nothing wrong with that.
Food being linked to socialization does not bother me at all, and I don’t want to give the impression that it does. I don’t want to give the impression that I think people shouldn’t socialize over food, because that’s so missing the point of what I’m trying to convey here.
What I’m trying to convey is that when you have issues with food, it makes it difficult to socialize in the same way that everyone else does.
Anxiety and Stress
Alright. For the sake of examples, let’s say my friends have invited me to go out for lunch. I really want to spend time with them, but there’s one major snag. The place they want to meet up is a chain I’ve never been to before, or maybe never even heard of.
Now I have to start asking questions — either to google or to the ones that have eaten there before. What sort of food do they serve there? Is there a menu available that I can look at beforehand? Can certain sides be swapped and toppings be withheld?
Before you know it, I’m dreading the encounter because I just don’t know if I’ll be able to enjoy my food in a way that’s normal for everyone else. Will they let me order off the kids’ menu if that’s the only section that has food I eat? (Embarrassing!) Am I going to have to give a horribly complicated order to the poor waiter to make sure I can eat what’s served? What if it comes out with something wrong? Do I send it back or just not eat it? What if even after everything, I just can’t bring myself to eat it because of a taste or texture issue?
Something that was supposed to be fun with friends has now become stressful and something I’d rather just cancel on, despite genuinely wanting to catch up! I get completely lost in the details of how embarrassing it is to order, how awfully awkward it would be to send something back, and worse how awkward it would be to sit there with a full plate of food that I literally cannot force myself to eat.
Even in familiar situations, there’s all kinds of variables that I worry myself sick over. Being horribly sensitive to changes in taste, texture, and consistency means that any number of differences in preparation or serving can cause problems. Some of these problems I can deal with, or at the very least I can deal with better now that I’m older. I have ideal conditions for foods, but falling short of this isn’t always grounds for immediate refusal. Depending on the food, at least.
Still, the point stands.
If I want to eat and am anywhere other than home, suddenly there’s a whole process to figuring out what I can eat, where I can get that, and whether or not it’s socially acceptable to get it (ie, eating before the event, leaving the event midway to eat and come back, etc).
Guilt and Judgement
Being a burden on other people is just the worst feeling.
I hate feeling like people have to make accommodations for my issues with food, because I really wish I didn’t have these issues in the first place. I want to have a normal relationship with food.
I always feel terrible when someone had to go out of their way to make sure I was able to eat, especially if no one else needed to be. I always appreciate the hell out of efforts taken to make sure I can eat, but I still feel incredibly guilty for it too.
Some of the guilt is personal, self-imposed guilt like this. It’s the guilt of having inconvenienced other people and the shame of knowing that something is Different about you and people are aware of it.
Some of the guilt involved is in regard to other parties. Nobody likes to see one of their friends starving because they can’t eat what’s on the table.
Sometimes, this guilt is reflected back on themselves. They feel bad/would feel bad for not accommodating you and try to find ways to make up for it by working with you to figure out what you can eat. This is very appreciated, but again returns us to the part about me feeling guilty for needing that kind of treatment. Now both of us feel weird and awkward about the food situation, and it’s only going to get worse for both of us if there really isn’t anything for you to do about it.
Other times, the guilt is put back on the refusal. It’s very difficult sometimes to explain that my dislike of food is universal. I do not have anything against anyone’s cooking in particular, and my refusal of someone’s pie or diligently cooked Thanksgiving stuffing is not meant as a slight or as a slap in the face to the one who prepared it.
The problem is framed like I’m not trying hard enough, or that I don’t care enough about the person cooking and their hard work. My refusal of what is recognizably good food to everyone else comes off like me saying “this looks disgusting, and I’m not going to even try it”, when it couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m sure it’s amazing, and I’m sure that a lot of hard work was put into it. I completely understand why someone would be offended, but it’s really not what I’m trying to do at all.
Unfortunately, that is not going to magically make me able to stomach it any better. The best cooked asparagus in the world is not going to change the fact that I cannot eat asparagus. Soggy bread could be a multinational staple professionally prepared in every restaurant. It would not change the fact that I cannot stomach soggy bread. Honestly, as upsetting as I know the refusal is, I do genuinely think it’s better than the alternative — which all too often ranges between (I was fine to eat it once, but wouldn’t do it again) to (I gagged the entire time and had to spit it out in the trash in front of everyone).
And once again, we both walk away from the interaction feeling worse for it. I feel like a jerk for refusing, or a drama queen for having such a big reaction. No matter what, you feel like your cooking has been insulted.
Even if there are some things I can eat, there always seems to be some amount of judgment over what they are and why I’m not eating one thing or another. Once again, I understand. It doesn’t look good when my plate is half empty at a table full of food. All I can implore in this case is patience and understanding.
It has taken me a long time to even get comfortable with the selection of foods I do eat, and being chastised for that only adds to the amount of stress I have regarding food in general. I am eating when I am hungry, and I am full when I’m done. That alone is massive progress.
Having issues with food doesn’t mean that any food-based activity is off-limits or inaccessible, but it does cause many problems and bring a lot of stress and guilt to all involved parties.
Above all else, it just makes things weird for everyone. Difficulties with food mean difficulties with social interaction — You have to jump through hoops and fight an uphill battle with your own brain just to have a semi-normal experience like everyone else’s.
Anyone that wants to hang out with you knows that it comes with a hassle cost. It comes with stipulations and wonky compromises, stress, anxiety, and guilt, none of which I want to put on them, and (I hope) none of which they want to put on me.
Again, I want to stress that there is nothing wrong with how intrinsic food is to human social interactions. The point isn’t that I wish it wasn’t, but that I wish I was able to participate in it more readily. When I know what food will be available, I have a blast hanging out over food with people!
Like so many things in this (theoretical) book, this issue is one I must leave open-ended, as it’s currently unresolved. I get by with bringing my own food, eating afterwards, or the like, but it still doesn’t change that there are so many additional layers involved any time I want to engage with other people.
It doesn’t change the stress, anxiety, guilt, and shame inbuilt in feeling Different and not knowing how to be anything other than what you are. Really, the only fix for that would be suddenly being normal about food, and I don’t have a snap-my-fingers way to do that.
It will take time, and I don’t know if I’m confident that I’ll ever be there. Still, I can hope and I can work towards it at my own pace so long as I’m still healthy, and that’s what I intend to do.
For now, though, thank you all for reading. The link between socializing and food is something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while and I may delve into more later — I’m not convinced I’ve said everything I want to say on the topic, and I have several anecdotes I’d love to offer that didn’t quite make the cut of this excerpt.
Have a lovely day and I hope to see you all in a future post!