Why are so many people in their 20s and 30s such picky eaters these days?

@JimboSaturn It is really sad because they are missing out on all the wonderful tastes of good foor for junk oil and grease.

@WillaKissing Totally! why waste your life eating the same thing all the time. Their world and experiences just get smaller and less rich. It goes for other things as well, all thanks to the internet.

@JimboSaturn Internet, I phones, and video games that they park on for endless hours at a time.

@ArishMell
I think it is so fun to cook a nutritious meal. And to search out great ingredients at the market or a farmers' market.

Like you said, it only takes half hour or so to cook most meals. But nuts, bananas, berries, yogurt, avocadoes, etc. are fast easy alternatives for those who don't have time to cook.

I cook my dinner around 1 pm. It's the funniest part of the day. I work late and don't want a big meal late in the day. when my kids were small I made the dinner at 6 am so we had it ready to heat when we got home. It is doable!

Make sure you feed yourself some nutritious foods today even if it's only you 😊

@Carazaa Thankyou for the encouragement!

I do prefer my main meal around mid-day. It's not really very good to eat a large meal in the evening but apart from the rare special occasions it can be necessary do that to fit around things like work.

It was admittedly a made-up, shop-bought fish-cake today, but I ate it with a boiled potato and a good helping of salad, after a Kiwi-fruit starter.

I've some recipe books that do give very simple, quick and nutritious dishes, and one is even written with people living alone in mind.

@ArishMell Potatoes, salad and fish cakes yum! 🙂

@meggie How odd!

@meggie Some rich ppl in the US get big expensive kitchens for show / looks...never understood it.

@meggie That is so sad. Did she realise how she had spoiled the evening?

Or realised she had wasted her money by buying a costly kitchen but refusing to use it properly?

@WillaKissing @FreddieUK Peer pressure? The malign influence of the Mactuckycostalotta industry? No proper food served in school?

Many people are not naturally wary of anything unfamiliar, so children not given a wide range of food when young are not likely to want to sample "new" ones. They may do in later life as their interests and tastes broaden, perhaps by peer influence.

The youngsters who won't eat meat may have been unduly influenced by vegan propaganda as well their own tastes; but try finding liver, etc. now. The supermarkets will not stock more than three or four species of fresh meat, and that only as various muscle fillets packaged in many different ways to give a false impression of choice. Nor will they support any local or independent producers. They might stock some fish - also in multiple packet types to appear a wide range - but that is not cheap.

@ArishMell I am sorry but the last paragraph of your reply to our replies sounds like you live in a third world country. None of what you wrote about is true about where I live in a rural of Southern, Ohio USA. Whenever I go toe the supermarket/store the meat selections fruit and vegetables is very vast. Also being I live on a farm I produce my own fruits vegetables and meats as well as wild game and fish.

So, your last paragraph does not compute to where I live and how my kids were raised.

@WillaKissing I did not try to accuse your shops of being that sparse - sorry, I should have been clearer.

What I stated is certainly not Third World but is trued of many of supermarkets in Britain.

The more expensive ones are better but many offer a wide ranges of produce types with very limited choices in each produce. You might find two strains each of apples and lettuces, say, or three of potatoes.

There are farmers here struggling to sell other, rarer strains and some do via their own shops but it is not cheap, and the supermarkets here are not interested in anything not fitting their databases. Even the franchise chains of "convenience shops", which could be more flexible and allow their individual managers more initiative, do not like variety, either.

I am not a farmer so have to rely on buying all my own food- but that goes for many people anywhere..

@jehova the omnivores dillema

@jehova Can you explain this for us? I assume you were told the information I ask:

Were you told, what is Glucose?

"~Ose" is "~sugar", a hydrocarbon so "organic" chemical.

Of the several vegetable "oses" Glucose is a sugar made within most plants as the base for their main structural material, Cellulose.


Were you told what is "corn-syrup"? Commonly but not only made from maize, hence "corn", it is a mix of plant sugars: glucose, fructose, maltose and saccharides. It can be processed to turn some of the glucose to fructose, making it taste sweeter. Presumably the lecture covered this?


What is "organic mercury"? Did the lecturer define that?

An organic compound is one based on the element Carbon, plus usually hydrogen and oxygen, so most biological compounds are organic.

Mercury is a metallic element locked up in Nature mainly in its ore mineral, Cinnabar, chemically Mercury Sulphide, which of course is not organic.


Plants can absorb some non-organic compounds including metallic ones. Indeed they need certain metallic elements, and so do animals including us (bones and teeth, for example, are made of calcium phosphate). Not mercury compounds though, except perhaps accidentally in some way.

So were you taught how corn-syup might contain mercury? From spraying the source plants with mercuric pesticides? Or, from some study of crops in some specific area whose soil is naturally rich in cinnabar by regional geology? *


What is "everything"? I take this really meaning corn-syrup being a near-universal sweetener for manufactured foods and some home cooking. I.e. foods from fairly complicated recipes including sweeteners, rather than simply "processed" such as canned fruit, cut meat, table-sugar or basic bread. Plain white sugar is nearly-pure sucrose.


So what is the real link between corn-syrup and diabetes? If any?


Were you told what is Diabetes, and the significance and source of glucose in our bodies?

Glusoce is a sugar carried by the blood for use as fuel by the cells. Diabetes is the body's failure to produce the insulin necessary to regulate that blood sugar level. So how does eating something containing no glucose, such as a plant syrup modified to turn its glucose to fructose, "cause" diabetes?

Where does our glucose come from?

We eat much of it, and what we don't ingest, we make internally!

We know plants make glucose to turn into their cellulose - a polymer of glucose, and the main compound of the bits of plants we eat. These are our "carbohydrates" in dietary terms, directly or via products like grain and flour.

We eat many carbohydrates including cellulose; the liver breaks them down to produce among many other chemicals, a sugar called Glycogen. It stores that and when necessary, turns it to Glucose, the our cells' fuel-sugar.

Insulin is produced by the pancreas to regulate the level of glucose in the blood within fine limits. Diabetics need carefully control what sugars they eat but although that would include corn-syrup, the syrup or lack of it cannot "cause" diabetes.

So corn-syrup could indeed affect diabetes already in progress simply by being sugars; though a poor diet excessively rich in sugar will encourage the disease to start by long-term over-doses of "oses".


The message seems we should rely more on the cellulose (glucose polymer), less on sucrose and raw glucose; and let the liver and pancreas decide on the glucose!


I Iearnt the above by a few minutes of simple but careful research on top of basic general knowledge. I wonder what the lecture was supposed to be about, and its educational quality.

+++++

*naturally...

Back in the 1980s, I think it was, well-meaning officials strongly advised the residents of the village of Shipham, near Briston in SW England, not to eat vegetables grown in their own gardens. The soil was rich in zinc and other metallic compounds by both natural processes and local, former mining waste. The locals showed the visitors the local grave-yard: plenty of octagenarians and nonegenarians who had all existed on their home-grown foods. The embarrassed officials discreetly left... The truth was the plants were not absorbing the zinc, arsenic, lead, etc., or at least not concentrating them in the edible parts.

@ViciDraco I don't understand not liking something without ever having tried it, either. I don't expect anyone to like every food, but it doesn't make sense to decide you don't like it if you haven't tried it. I even re-try foods I haven't had in several years since tastes can change with age, and I've found that certain things I didn't like as a kid, I do like now, and vice versa.

I also find that many people think they don't like a certain food even as an ingredient because they don't like it by itself, or don't like it prepared a certain way. I mean, I wouldn't eat a raw onion like an apple, but it's an essential ingredient for flavor in many dishes. Same with vegetables; I'm not a fan of them boiled with no seasoning, but roasting or grilling and adding seasoning/herbs/lemon juice/etc. makes a huge difference!

@BnBSpringer09 Much the same! Hah, it is funny you bring up onions as they were a thing I didn't like on my youth that I do now.

@peterlee We do and we are, but is it also important to be obtain dietary advice from credible sources, not "celebrity" health-fads created to sell books.

@ArishMell Well , I’m diabetic two. I have a low gi diet and a low cholesterol one too. Paying back the sins of my youth. I don’t take tablets. Yet , it’s wake-up call when you see that most of the food which people consume will simply kill you.

@peterlee They could if part of a poor diet overall diet or if hazardous due to an existing illness. I know diabetes can be very dangerous if not controlled properly.