Picky, Picky, Picky

     Did you see the news story about the woman who eats only milk, white bread, and french fries?  http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/adult-picky-eater-will-only-consume-three-kinds-of-food.html   Marla Lopez is an adult picky eater.  The psychologists are saying she might have a real biological component to her problems, and it might not all be in her head.  Let me sound off on this one.  It is all in her head, and there are a variety of ways it got in there.  It seems to me that people can only be fussy about what they eat when food is plentiful.  As a child, I was constantly reminded about the poor, starving children in India when I balked about eating certain foods.  I am certain that those children ate everything on their plates, and they were eating Indian food (something the majority of Americans won't touch with a ten foot pole).
     Another place where kids ate what was put in front of them was the Fiji Islands.  Eating disorders were unheard of until 1995.  Television came to Fiji in 1995, and by 1998 girls began rejecting the previously desirable plump body type.  They wanted to be skinny like the girls they saw on television.  http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/180/6/509.full  Plump was also the ideal in Africa. When Miss Nigeria consistently came home a loser in beauty pageants, someone got the idea, from watching African satellite television, that a lighter skinned girl with thin hips might fare better. Agbani Darego fit the new ideal.  After winning Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria in 2001, she went on to win the 2001 Miss World title.  She became the first native African to win who was not of European descent.  Now Nigerian girls want to be as thin as Miss Darego.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbani_Darego 
     It's easy to blame television and fashion magazines for young people's obsession with body image.  I think picky eating can be also be blamed on the example set at the table at home.  What do you suppose Marla Lopez served her kids?  How do you think they would have reacted if she gave them baked chicken, yams, and broccoli while she chowed down on a bag of french fries? I'm not saying picky eaters always have picky parents.  I'm saying picky parents can't expect much better from their kids if they set a bad example.      
     Ms. Lopez says her narrow food preferences are embarrassing.  Yet, not embarrassing enough to make her eat a salad.  I really think she has never been hungry enough to swallow a brussels sprout.  She doesn't know what she's missing.