Can you cure picky eating?

0:02This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Perfectly Snug. I am a hot sleeper. I do all the right things and still wake up at 3 a.m., wide awake and sweaty. Perfectly snug is a fix for that. It's a two-inch mattress topper with whisper quiet fans that actively move heat and humidity away from your body. The sensors actually work. You don't have to fiddle with settings in the middle of the night. And if you, like me, need quick relief, burst mode cools things down in about 10 minutes. I recommend their dual-zone setup so that one side of the bed can run cooler than the other side of the bed.

0:37And there's no water to refill and nothing snaking off the bed. It's just a slim topper that sips power. Setup is a few minutes. They offer a 30-night risk-free trial with free shipping and returns. If you, like me, are tired of sweating through the night, try Perfectly Snug.

1:20do you guys want to introduce yourselves absolutely my name is manny i'm noah and this is devin And Surge Engine listeners may remember you. You guys were on the show previously. Usually we answer people's questions. You guys showed up with a question, which you then answered, which was? Yeah, why are there so many chicken bones on the streets? It was an investigation people honestly still email me about. Yeah. People, I think there are just Americans now who walk down the street, see a chicken bone, and think about these three unusual gentlemen from New York. I love to hear that. We got an email last week about it.

1:53Really? Yeah. Someone sent us a picture of a chicken bone. They thought that we were still doing research for the episode, I think.

2:04Since that first story, published a year ago, Manny, Noah, and Devin have started their own podcast. They answer questions, something I was pretty sure we completely invented, but whatever. I think the reason their show is so good is their excellent question choosing. They pick questions that come out of their arguments, these three are always arguing, about stuff like, Do audiobooks count as reading? Do horses hate running? Well, actually, today an episode came out called Is It Okay to Wear Your Outside Clothes on Your Bed? Oh, I've been criticized for this quite a bit. Yeah, so I'll ask you, do you think it's okay?

2:40I mean, there's a lot of things I do that I don't think are okay. But I go to bed like, I don't know the people you're talking about how disgusting they are, but I'm definitely worse than them. Like, I will get in bed, I will sleep in my jeans. from outside. Yeah, we're not at that one. That's an extreme case. That's pretty nasty. It's disgusting. I mean, why? Because I don't like them. You have really comfortable jeans. They're not. These are like jeggings? How are you sleeping? Is there a wrangler? They're not comfy. They're broken in. I'll just put it there. They're very broken. Just like by the end of the day, the exertion of literally, sometimes I just don't have it.

3:25Anyway, the reason the Chicken Bone Squad was back here today was because once again they had a question for our show, which they wanted to find the answer to. A question we here at Search Engine found particularly delightful.

3:39Today we have a problem, and I'm grateful to be able to use this platform again to answer something so stupid. But I'm a member of the picky eating community. Oh, wow, okay. And that's run into a lot of issues in this friend group. It's run into a lot of issues in my relationship, specifically because my version of picky eating is an aversion to seafood. Across the board, no seafood. Yeah, pretty much across the board. Can I ask, are you a lifelong picky eater? Yeah. And has it been the same aversions since you were a kid? Or have you developed, like, as your palate has advanced, has your pickiness also advanced?

4:20Yeah, I think it's been lifelong, especially with seafood. I am, I'll just tell you a layout a little bit about like my background. So I'm Eritrean American. Both my parents are from Eritrea. And in that cuisine, there's really no seafood at all. Unless you are from one of the port towns on the Red Sea, you don't eat seafood. So I didn't grow up with any seafood. The only seafood exposure I had was, like, at elementary school or middle school where they would have, like, fish Fridays or fried shrimp or whatever. But so would you eat the fried shrimp when you were a kid? I did, but I didn't know what it was.

4:57Because it was just some fried thing. Because the fried is always carrying the weight on you. Yeah, which is what struck me about this aversion because it wasn't the taste at the time because knowing what it is is what made me dislike it. I understand. I don't find pickiness in food consumption strange. And like, I like seafood, but there was like, I had a couple years where shrimp all of a sudden was like, I'm not doing this. And then it came back. Because they're like, they are like insects. It's like you're eating this like weird fat worm that has like a visible line of poop in it sometimes.

5:29Yeah. Yes. And my family ends up being a good exam for this because although none of my siblings grew up eating fish, They all love fish. They like it now. They're another group of people who I'm running into this issue with. We cannot go out to eat and get what they want to get because I'm there. And what are the conversations around this like? They're like, stop being, I won't use the words. Basically, I'm like being a child and like preventing them from getting what they want to get. And I'll just say this, like for the picky eaters out there, I don't think you should change who you are. But for me specifically, I'm running into this enough to where I'm curious about whether it's possible to cure your picky eating.

6:13I want to know if like, is there something I can do to make it so that I can tolerate fish enough to be able to be at a restaurant and not cause any issues when I'm ordering in a group or with my girlfriend? And is the idea that you'll actually consume it? Yeah, I think, like, ultimately, like, it'd be great if I was just chowing down on, like, any kind of fish, shrimp, tuna, whatever. But mostly I just want to be able to exist in this restaurant space and, like, not be a hindrance to people who, you know, in New York it's a lot of money to go out to eat. If you're paying that much money and you're not eating what you want to eat, I feel like I don't want to be an obstacle to, you know, someone's desires.

6:58Okay.

7:01So that's the question that we came here to answer. Like, is it possible to cure picky eating? And? And we started with Noah. We had him kind of look into the history of picky eating and some of the stuff people have done to try and cure it. Yeah, so what I found was the kind of idea of even just choosing what you eat is actually a pretty recent historical phenomenon. I mean, you can imagine most people just had to eat whatever was given to them throughout history. So, I mean, like the term picky eating didn't even exist until the 70s or wasn't used until the 70s. But there has been kind of this war between picky children and their parents for probably since like the 1800s.

7:41So, I mean, for the past century or so, parents and doctors have been trying all sorts of ways to cure this modern affliction. There's all sorts of cookbooks designed to help parents sneak healthy foods into recipes that kids might actually try. Things like spinach and brownies. Spinach and brownies? Yeah, which is pretty perverse. I feel like you would know that. Yeah, there's probably some better ways to do it. Hopefully, you know, maybe new technology is helping this, I hope. Hypnotherapy is actually a popular method. That's for both children and adults, so maybe Manny can try that. Yeah, I would love to.

8:14But one of the most common and definitely the one I was most familiar with is what I'd call forced exposure. So, all right, you hate some food, but if we just kind of force you to eat it or be around it, then maybe eventually you'll just kind of give in and accept that this is a decent food to eat. And common because it's successful or common because it's just what every parent defaults to? Yeah, I think it's just kind of an obvious thing to try. It's also very popular on daytime TV. Daytime TV. Yeah, so shows like Maury. I mean, you can find a lot of examples of this. It makes for great TV fodder, you can imagine.

8:44So I want to show you a clip, actually. Okay. This is Mariah. She's 18 years old, and she is deathly afraid of pickles. I mean the whole world eats pickles there's a woman who looks like she just found out she's dying she's shaking of course they called her Pickle Girl and then they're presenting her with trays and trays and trays of pickles this is what the sight of a pickle does to Mariah my name is Mariah and I hate pickles I hate everything about them pickles are destroying my life people make fun of me I feel ashamed that I'm actually... Isn't it crazy how every idea you have has been done by someone in a dumber, meaner way?

9:29We wanted to see firsthand the extent of Mariah's pickle phobia. Oh, no. So we sent her to the Patterson Pickle Factory. Oh, no. Where she would come face to face with thousands upon thousands of pickles. Mariah's a sadist. Listen, if Mariah, the pickle girl, is out there, I would love to hear, you know, where you are now and kind of what your life has been like in the past 20 years. It seems like being on Maury, being humiliated for having a very unusual psychological response to pickles is so much worse than the problem she was trying to solve. Yeah. So, like, needless to say, at the end of the segment, the pickle girl was still very much afraid of pickles.

10:07And, like, the research says forced exposure therapy, like, that just doesn't actually work. Right. Sticking the thing people have a problem with in their face over and over again while they have discussed responses. Like, good daytime TV, but bad therapy. We couldn't just take Manny to some factory and hope it would go away. But we tried to find a scientist who had studied this kind of stuff. So we actually came across a professor at Duke University who was one of the first people to really hone in and look at picky eating in a comprehensive way. We wanted to first just ask if you could say your name and what you do.

10:38My name is Nancy Zucker, and I am a professor of psychiatry at Duke University, and I direct the Duke Center for Eating Disorders. Great. I'll tell you a little bit about my experience with this. My liftinger. Yeah, I've been a picky eater my whole life. I have a specific aversion to seafood and fish. And so what we're kind of planning to do with this episode is cure that as best as we can. And so, you know, you did just mention that you worked at the Center for Eating Disorders. I guess my first question is, do I have an eating disorder? Yeah. So the boundary in which being a picky eater is defined as a disorder is based on impairment.

11:22And so if your aversion to fish, does it include seafood, like shrimp, scallops? Yeah, all of it. All of it. The whole lot of it. Right. So if you were, I suppose, an aspiring New York chef, and it was getting in your way of designing the menu of your dreams, then it might be crossing over into impairment. But if it doesn't get in your way, then it probably wouldn't cross the lines of a disorder. Interesting. So it's kind of the same way we're defining like depression or alcoholism, like whether a behavior rises to the level of disorder has to do with how well you're able to fit in society. Exactly.

11:59And how we draw the line between picky eating and disordered eating is like how much it's impairing your relationship to society. Mm-hmm. Which is funny because it's like, I'm not going to disagree with psychiatry, but like I slightly disagree with that where I'm like, but we kind of do know, like there's a difference between like, oh, I have an aversion and like, oh, it's like a deep psychological pain. Like, it feels like an insufficient way to describe the severity of the problem. But I'll allow it. Yeah. Manny's not so extreme as in like he goes out to eat with us and he can be in a presence of seafood.

12:32Yeah. But some people don't even want to be, you can't smell it, you can't look at it, right? But I do feel disgusted by like fish, just like when they're alive. if they're slippery and squirmy and ugly. Just seeing them out in the world? I'm not going to throw up. An alive fish? Yeah. A beautiful school of fish that disturbs you. There are some... I get it. No, I know what Manny's talking about. I'll defend you against your friends. Manny's talking about you're on the beach on vacation, you're standing, the water's up to your thighs, and something like brushes on your leg. Something grazes you.

13:02Something squirmy and black kind of squirming. It's gross. I'm with you. Thank you. Did you go to aquariums as a kid? Yeah. So you were just like, oh, this is disgusting. Covering his eyes. The giant fish are different. Oh, you don't like small fish. There's the little ones that are like scheming something. I don't know. Scheming something. The famous plots of fish. Yeah. But so you wouldn't, like if you're out for dinner with your girlfriend and like a waiter walks by with a plate full of like shrimp on a kebab, you don't care. But if you're with your friends and they were being jerks and they like picked up a shrimp and dangled in your face, you would feel disgust.

13:39Yeah, I'd be like, get that out of my face. Yeah. So I asked Dr. Zucker to explain to me, like, what's what's going on with this disgust factor? What like why is that happening? so disgust is a really cool emotion in my opinion right so it's designed to protect us from getting contaminated from pathogens right so it has a very protective function and so when you think about how one becomes contaminated we get contaminated when something crosses a body barrier we ingest it we inhale it we absorb it through our skin it crosses some orifice and by the time it does that you're contaminated and it's too late and so there should be these cues that people who are disgust sensitive pick up like you mentioned slimy right these kind of things that just look to us like they're threatening and they could cause us to be contaminated and you know it's interesting that it's restricted to that one area i would guess that you're pretty detail sensitive in other things like that you notice like visual details of things like text.

14:46Oh, yeah, I'm really observant. I'm a video producer. And so that's kind of like part of my whole thing. It's ruined movies for me. Actually, I can't watch movies like a normal person anymore. Oh, isn't that so interesting? Right. So I just I think that that's like a cool adaptive trait that might not be as adaptive to the modern environment. But like if you were a cave dweller, back in the day, perhaps you would have outlasted your peers. it's interesting manny it's like you have a brain that is suited for being a cave dweller where it's like avoid unfamiliar foods at all costs because they could be poison and it's like sending you the right signals but the problem is we're in a world where everything we want to do is just fit in socially and the fact that your poison avoiding brain is telling you not to eat fish is causing you like 3 % social friction, which is the worst thing that could happen in modern society at all.

15:40Yeah. And I think, yeah, I think my ex once described me as someone who had a brain suited to be a cave dweller. That's not the first time I've heard that comment, actually. But I was interested in why Devin and Noah don't have the same problem that I do. So that's interesting in terms of my experience, but Devin and Noah here love fish. Why isn't their body telling them to avoid fish? Well, because it's pretty adaptive to eat fish, right? Like not everything's contaminated. So there needs to be this kind of balance of like people that have kind of a low bar for trying out things and adventuring and testing things out and seeing if it's okay.

16:19So there should be variation in the population about kind of one sensitivity to these different features. So you got some people taking risks, like your friends and you who is kind of holding back and saying like, you guys try it first. So what's interesting is that Dr. Zucker actually did a study a few years ago with 20 ,000 self-described picky eaters. Oh, wow. And part of what they were trying to figure out with the study, especially with her work with kids, it's like, what are the things that your parents did that helped with your picky eating? And what are some of the things that they did that like really fucked you up?

16:54Yeah. But she said the things that are helpful are, like, creating positive experiences with her kids, involving them in prepping the food. Like, one example they had is, like, introducing cultures with food as a way to introduce new foods to kids. Oh, like the culture from which the food comes. Exactly. Like, giving some background on it. Making it feel more like an experience. Yeah. Versus, here's this thing in front of you. Eat it now. So it sounds like basically since we were kids, it's like the picky eating literature has progressed. Like the field of getting kids to eat things that might be unfamiliar or weird.

17:34Because I don't think my parents or most people's parents were reading books that were like, sit your kid at the table with a plate of broccoli until everyone's crying. But that's what their parents had done. That's what they were doing. And it's like people have actually thought about this. And psychiatry has approached this. And we have ideas about what to do. Exactly. Interesting. But honestly, the coolest thing about Dr. Zucker and her team, they take all this data, all this information that they gather, and then they apply it to individual plans for individual people. So we asked her, hey, we're putting together a plan for Manny.

18:05Can you help us sort of shape what that plan looks like?

18:14So this is very simplistic. But like I have a grid where it's like, you know, sweet and salty is, let's say, on the X axis and like chewy and crunchy is on the Y axis. And so like Manny, if you were to like plot the foods that you currently prefer and eat, you know, on this, you can get the picture, right? Like, you know, is there kind of a pattern in terms of the textures and tastes that you prefer?

18:41So basically her advice was like try to introduce fish in a format that Manny might already like. So maybe like a fish dish that's crunchy and salty, you know, that sort of thing. You know, like parents will often start with like fish sticks, for example, you know, like things like that or like really, really crispy shrimp because there's more breading to fish. You know, you guys get the picture. She basically said like start with fried foods or put it in a sandwich. Wait, she said just put it in a sandwich? Just like because I'm already used to eating sandwiches and I like sandwiches, like maybe if you do a fish sandwich.

19:14This is like a very entry-level way to— Yeah, things that can help mask the fishiness. Yeah, exactly. Or fried foods. Could do some fried fish, fish and chips. Yeah, fried fish makes more interesting than fish sandwich. Maybe she didn't say sandwich. Maybe that was my addition. I don't think she said that, but I'll let you go off. But it's an example. The doctor can take that up and you'd like to. And she also said, like, you should be realistic about what you're going to do, right? Like, first step shouldn't be like, I'm going to eat 100 bites of this fish. Yeah. She's like, take it one bite at a time, small bites.

19:49Like, take the cues that your body's giving you as well. You know, like, I would really do this, like, I'd be gentle with yourself. Think about, like, how many bites I want to kind of manage. Do I want to just get over that initial gag and call it a day? She's like, you should have a chaser. I would absolutely have a chaser. Oh, yeah, like a shot of whiskey or something. Yeah, or like another bite of food. Oh, sure. I work with five-year-olds, for gosh sakes. It's like chocolate chips, you know. My fear is that this, like, ends with you guys at, like, an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant, and you're just hammered, like, vomiting and tagging shrimp or something.

20:26Yeah. You can drink your way through a lot of things. Yeah. Not, not, no, no. The purpose of this whiskey is to clear the taste out. Yeah, yeah. Not so much. It's kind of reset. Okay. Yeah. Not to feel good. So she gave us a few tips that were, you know, smart and reasonable. But what I really wanted to know before diving in was, you know, as a doctor, did she think this experiment could work? Do I have a real shot at curing this? I think that the odds are in your favor. And I'll tell you why. One is because it is restricted to this one domain. You're able to tolerate the look and smell of it and be around it, right?

21:07So that's another kind of clue that it's not as severe as it could be. You're highly motivated to work on this, which means that you're going to go into it with your threat kind of perception down and be more kind of just curious about it. And you're doing it for your girlfriend, which is just lovely. And so there's like all the things that would be rooting for you to be able to get through this are on your side.

21:36After a short break, a series of trials and experiments. Will Manning be able to cure his picky eating?

22:10to quickly find the skilled candidates they want. Learn about their specialized talent in finance, accounting, technology, marketing, legal, and administrative support at Robert Half. They know talent. Visit roberthalf.com slash talent today.

22:39you're drowning in software instead of growing your business. That's where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process, so you can focus on what really matters, running your business.