OK, I am of course only assuming that Marla Lopez is one of the world’s pickiest eaters but, given she eats only three types of foods, I don’t think it’s that far a stretch.
The 54-year-old mother recently told ABC News that her diet – which consists of milk (including ice cream), white breads (including crackers, tortillas, and pancakes), and potatoes (including potatoes and French fries) has been a picky eater since she was an infant. She would gag and spit up her baby food and, these days, can’t even touch spaghetti.
Oh, and you know how important it is for us to “shop the perimeter”? Grab as much of that healthy, brightly colored produce as our buggies and budgets allow? By her own words, Lopez doesn’t “see food” when she looks at the fruits and vegetables.
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I am a somewhat extreme picky eater, which does drastically limit my food choices in the school cafeteria (I’m in college). For example, I don’t like sauces or condiments, I hate cheese, and don’t even get me started on any soup besides chicken noodle or chicken flavored ramen…What limits me more though is that despite there occasionally being things that I really do want to eat, I struggle socially, so I end up with the exact same meal every day for both lunch and dinner (a hamburger, banana and milk) because I don’t need to say a word to anyone because the cafeteria people know exactly what I want and the cashiers know exactly what I have…and I eat cheerios for breakfast every day, but that is more of a convenience thing than pickiness or anxiety. I am in my second year of school, and so far anyway the way I’ve been eating hasn’t really caused any noticeable problems.
~VA~: I’m glad to hear it hasn’t caused any problems for you. So, do you think at least some of your food choices stem from social anxiety of sorts? Just going with the flow of what you normally get so you can avoid any extra interaction with the cafeteria workers? Thanks so much for sharing your story with us
Social anxiety definitely is the deciding factor in what I eat. At the beginning of my first year the cafeteria was a terrifying place, and I learned to deal with it by getting the same thing every day, so by a week or so into the semester I didn’t need to say anything to the cafeteria people anymore, so while it is still a bit scary, it isn’t so bad anymore.
I haven’t been officially diagnosed with social anxiety, but I think that has more to do with the fact that the counselors at my school are students and not able to do diagnosis than anything else…
FYI, ABC News has her as Marla, not Maria.
Thanks for the heads up, Rachel!
I don’t really understand long term picky eating, probably because I’ve never experienced it, other than the fact that I will never eat liver.
But I have had short term extreme picky eating, beck in my early CFS days, when for about 3 months I could only eat 3 things: bananas, green jello, and sunny delight. I don;t know why I could only eat those things, in fact, green jello has always been my least favorite, but those were the only things that I could bring myself to eat. In hind sight, it probably did very little to help my health
Snapping myself out of this kind of thinking was an ordeal. I remember crying through family meals, when people were loudly encouraging me to eat properly. As for the Sunny Delight habit (nasty stuff) someone got me to switch to fruit juice mixed with ginger ale, and then we kept reducing the ginger ale, until I was able to drink a glass of juice without any carbonation (and extra sugar). But that took almost a year.
@ Laura – Liver is the pits.
You mentioned how you got off the Sunny D, but how did you “snap” yourself out of the green jello and bananas?
What “help” along the way has Marla received? I have a son who is an extreme picky eater. The dietician we took him to was/is well respected in the community. She put him on a starvation diet, failing to look at the whole child, but insisting that it was ME, I was a “bad mother.” Yes, my husband was there as a witness, that she was saying that it was all my fault, I was a bad Mother. Turns out my son is on the high functioning end of the Autism Spectrum. NOW, flash forward many many years, this same dietician goes around giving lectures on how to feed children with sensory eating issues, and children “on the spectrum.” Unfortunately, the damage was done, I don’t know that I would ever return to a dietician, but I DO have a number of other children who eat a healthy variety of foods. Perhaps Marla was also the victim of the day when it was all about blaming the victim and the victim’s parents.
@ goingtothedogs: VERY interesting perspective. Unless I missed it in my reading, I don’t think any of the articles mentioned what kind of “help,” if any, Marla has received in her life. I’d be interested in finding out; I encourage anyone who runs across any more information about it to share here at Your Body, Your Mind. I’m sorry your son’s dietitian wasn’t helpful (actually, it sounds as if she was more hurtful – to your family as a whole – than helpful). You mentioned that he’s still an extreme picky eater – I wonder if it’s improved at all over the years, or what kinds of steps your family has to take to make sure he gets essential vitamins, nutrients, etc.? Thanks so much for sharing your story.
Oh, my doctor put me on the BRAT + tea diet (and so I ate bananas, rice, applesauce, toast) for about 3 weeks, and then we slowly started introducing real food. It seemed to work. That said, anything that caused a huge problem, in the past – is very hard for me to accept that its ok to eat now.
I also find myself in weird food ruts now – like eating rice and peas for dinner several nights a week, but that might be more of a “I dont have the energy to cook” kind of thing, rather than, being picky.
AH! I’ve heard of the BRAT diet. I completely understand the food ruts. For me, it’s usually having no time or energy to get to the grocery store :/
I’m kind of a picky eater. For me it’s a combination of sensitivity to bitterness, smell, and texture. For example, green peppers to me are very bitter and the only way to reduce it is to fry them in direct heat, like a frying pan (baking won’t work but boiling kind of helps). Another thing is that I find foods like broccoli smell very bad when cooked but the texture of them raw also turns me off. I don’t like steak because the more raw center is cold and slimy but cooking it well-done makes it tough. I could go on but i’m very particular with how food is cooked.
@ Kitty – I absolutely can understand that. Texture can play a huge role, and more so for some foods than others!
As I sit here thinking back on my lifetime of picky eating, what strikes me most isn’t the small number of foods I will eat but the rationale behind of of the foods I won’t eat.
Hi Lynn!
What led you to avoid some of the foods you won’t eat?