Most people haven't heard of adult picky eating. Many don't have much patience with it. For adults who are picky, it can seem like you're the only person in the world who is like this. It can be very isolating, and the responses of others can be very painful.

Some picky eaters have been punished, teased, ridiculed, or judged badly for their picky eating, which is painful because it is not something we can help, it's just the way we are. Many feel ashamed of their pickiness, and go to great lengths to hide it, often limiting their social lives, contact with family, and romantic relationships for fear of being found out, and not understood or accepted. Picky eaters often dread social or work-related eating situations - Will there be anything I can eat? What if there isn't? Will the host be offended? It can be embarrassing to not be able to eat what others eat, enjoy what others enjoy, like what others like. People know about pickiness in children, but in adults it is much rarer - for adults suffering something typically associated with children, this can be difficult and embarrassing.

It can often feel as if there is a stigma around our food habits. There's no shame attached to saying "I love mussels", or "I love Thai food", whereas "I love McDonald's french fries" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? For many picky eaters, the few foods that they can eat tend to be "unhealthy" things, like junk food, or else very plain things - the sophisticated, the exotic and the decidedly-middle-class are not for the most part things we can eat.

I worry that people think I eat what I eat because that's what I prefer out of all the vast range of things I "could" be eating, and that it reflects badly on me. But the reality is that the majority of foods available are things I can't eat, much as I would like to. I eat what I eat not out of choice, but because that's all I've can eat. I'd quite like to be a vegan on ethical grounds, but I can't because I would probably starve. "Man cannot live by bread alone". Quite literally.

Eating is also a very social thing in our culture. People like to cook for others and share meals. So many social encounters revolve around food in one way or another. It seems other people can feel rejected, or distanced from us by our inability to eat with them, or to eat what they eat. And that doesn't make me feel good.

If you'd like to share what picky eating has been like for you, and how it's made you feel, do post a comment on the blog.