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Being A Picky Eater

So far we have discussed eating on a schedule, eating a variety of foods and eating in moderation. Now I would like to address one of the key reasons that, I think, people have a hard time following those three rules for good eating; you just aren’t picky enough.

Picky? Yeah, picky. A strong aesthetic sense when it comes to food is probably the single easiest way to get your eating, and therefore your weight, under control. Not only am I giving you permission, I am positively demanding that you become a food snob. No more fast-food lunches or bland, characterless chain restaurant visits. No more delivery pizza or all-you-can-eat anything. Americans eat one in three meals outside the home, and fast-food and delis account for 90% of those meals. No wonder America is full of grossly obese, stressed out malcontents.

Eating a steady diet of fast food and sub-par restuarant fare is, in my opinion, the main reason people consume so much of their food so unthinkingly. Eliminating this type of food from your diet will cause you to prepare more of your food at home, which requires that you actually think about what you want to eat, instead of ordering “the usual” or “a number one combo, supersize.”

Limit your dining out to only the best available to you, enjoy it with a special friend (or ten), and indulge only sparingly. If you are honestly following my advice to only eat the absolute best when dining out, and you do not earn more than $150,000 per year, you really cannot afford to dine out more than once a week. I personally think you should be doing so far less; more like once a month, at a restuarant that will blow you away. Trust me, once you know a little something about food, you will get awfully picky about restaurants.

So how do you go about becoming a food snob? That is something of an involved process, and it takes time. As a matter of fact, it is something that you will always be refining and adding to, unless you are willing to jump to the head of the line, so to speak, and enroll in a serious culinary school. The next few articles in this series will deal with some specific steps you can take to become more picky and demanding about your food, but for now, here are the basics of food snobbery.

First and foremost, you must never confuse good food with expensive food. Good food is a matter of a chef who is emotionally involved with the construction of the menu, selection of the ingredients and preperation and presentation of the dish. While it may be true in broad terms that you are more likely to encounter this in a more expensive restaurant, there are more than enough places to find outstanding food in all types of restaurants, from the most expensive French dining rooms to hole-in-the-wall shops in “bad” parts of town.

To begin your journey towards food snobbery, or a developed sense of culinary aesthetics if the term snobbery is throwing you off, every time you eat at a restaurant, ask yourself these questions:

Is this the best (whatever your entree is) I have ever been served? Could I (or my wife/husband/friend/etc) cook this as well, or better? What other ways could I have spent this amount of money, and would they be more satisfying to me?

As your aesthetic sense develops, and you learn more about what you are eating and how it was prepared, it will become increasingly hard for any entree to pass this sort of judgement. Eventually, you will reach a place where most “fine dining” experiences do not live up to your exacting standards. Far from being a bad thing, this is exactly what you want.

Now you can begin slowly but surely guiding your friends and family towards a more developed food aesthetic. It isn’t necessary to explain any of this to them, and you should never complain about their choice of restaurant to them. Instead, as you learn more and become more proficient, you can begin to cook for them or introduce them to truly good restaurants.

One of my favorite things to do is to take one of my friends who believes himself to be a good judge of restaurants, a gourmand even, and take him to a restaurant that he has never heard of, that costs far less than excellent food ought to, in his mind, and watch his face as he is served course after course of food so good he didn’t know it was even possible to make. Once you do this a couple of times, none of your friends will ever question your choice of restaurant again, and they may even ask you to order for them…

Enjoying your food, being truly involved in it is absolutely necessary for having a good, healthy relationship with food.

Next Week: Food Snobbery At Home

Read the rest of this series:

• Part 1 - Scheduling
• Part 2 - Variety
• Part 3 - Moderation
• Part 4 - Being Picky
• Part 5 - Can The Canned Goods
• Part 6 - Get Your Kitchen In Order
• Part 7 - Think Like A Chef
• Part 8 - Technique
• Part 9 - Mise en Place