Food & Drink 41

One of the worst struggles that goes under the radar is being a picky eater. Off the top of my head, I can probably only list about ten foods that I eat on a rotary basis.

It sucks. Since I was a kid, I’ve had such awful sensory issues when it comes to textures and how things feel that a lot of foods have always just been off-limits to me. Some foods make me feel ill just by looking at them.

I’ve avoided canteens in schools like the plague – there were always too many smells, sounds (chewing, the scratching of cutlery on plates, gulping), and people around to even attempt to comprehend consuming anything. A few years into my trouble eating at school, my mum had a call from my primary school about how I wasn’t spending my lunch money or eating any packed lunch.

For example, my go-to icebreaker fact about myself is that I suffer from leguminophobia. To save you the google search, I have a crippling fear of baked beans. Laugh all you like – but being unable to go out for breakfast (or in a supermarket aisle) is actually really limiting. People just LOVE to send me photos of the critters.

Not so much of a fear, but cheese also has to be just right for me to eat it – my Domino’s orders are always made with special instructions (‘only a sprinkle of cheese, please!’). Instead of being made fun of for this one, though, it causes pure anarchy. Do you realise how many cheese connoisseurs walk among us? Truthfully, the hardest task when starting university has been to figure out what to feed myself. When you eat like a three-year-old, you hardly believe you should be studying at an academic level. Oh well, I’ll forever wait for the day that my taste buds ‘renew’, the same way people reckon they do with coffee. Gross.

Words by: Tegan Davies

choose a vegan or vegetarian diet for personal or health reasons, whereas other people eat whatever they feel like. A range of influences can help us determine our taste palette including appearance, what’s trending on TikTok, or even just the smell of certain foods. Even so, these same influences help us decide which foods we hate (even if we’re just a little bit too scared to try them).

For me, one food I will never ever eat is baked beans. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but for me baked beans are the worst food to ever exist. Despite growing up in England, where baked beans are considered a holy grail, I have never been able to enjoy the simple pleasure of beans on toast when you’re feeling hungover. The smell, look, and taste of them all repulse me and even being in the same room as someone eating them makes me gag.

Although my own food choices may seem weird, uni has taught me I’m not the only one with strange food preferences. Living with friends for three years has opened my eyes to strange food combinations like gravy on pizza and potatoes in a spaghetti Bolognese. Although these meals put me off spag bol for months, food preferences are unique to everyone, and those meals were just part of the fun of living with housemates!

Words by: Katie Brosnan Illustration by: Soyal Khedkar