Food Neophobia

I was trying to clean up and get rid of some clutter. I'm still shocked by how much stuff was under my bed and can't believe how many forgotten shoes, including tennis shoes that I had decided not to wear because some of the tread was gone.


I had read that after you put a certain number of miles on your shoes, you should replace them. Of course, for all of those shoes that I had put to the side, I felt put in my place when I watched The Lost Boys of Sudan and one of the young men who had been living in a refugee camp for just about his entire childhood, let behind a a pair of blown out shoes for one of his friends. My shoes that I no longer wear are practically new compared to those blown out ones.

I was also looking through magazines -- checking to see if there were articles that had moved me and needed to be saved or if I needed to just recycle the lot of mags.

I came across an article, Michael Pollan's Dilemma, in the June 2007 issue of Cooking Light which is interesting because I'm reading Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and I have my own dilemma which is whether or not to keep reading it. Pollan's book is like the food exposé on 60 minutes or 20/20; I'd just rather not be enlightened about what goes on in a slaughter house etc.

Pollan talks about how his son, Isaac, is such a picky eater. Pollan and his wife learned to cook for their finicky son with some success. The article went on to say that Isaac might have what anthropologists call "neophobia."

I've never heard of neophobia before. Wanna know what they called it in my house? You're not leaving the table until you eat what's on your plate. Really, I don't know how I survived childhood OR the hours I spent at the table with my legs dangling from the chair.