Stephanie Lucianovic at Books Inc., Palo Alto; Calendar.
A picky eater — as in no veggies — transforms her palate and mind-set, but she’s no foodie
For many of us, membership in the clean plate club has always been just out of reach: There are foods we can’t abide, foods that make us retch, foods whose mere existence offends our sensibilities.
Writer Stephanie Lucianovic gets this better than most — in “Suffering Succotash: A Picky Eater’s Quest to Understand Why We Hate the Foods We Hate,” the former self-described vegetable-phobe delves into our food prejudices.
“Some picky eaters feel like there is no way they can overcome their food issues, and others don’t even really want to,” she says. “I’m not arguing with them because I’ve been there. I know how awful it can be.”
For the Menlo Park author, being a picky eater meant avoiding almost all vegetables.
“I think the biggest problem was that I was only eating frozen, bland, out-of-season vegetables,” she says, adding, “I think that exposure to such poor renditions of beans, peas and tomatoes prejudiced me against the entire vegetal race.”
Unlike a lot of her fellow food writers, Lucianovic didn’t grow up embracing exotic flavors; learning to try new things was an uphill battle. Her journey gives her a perspective that lifelong gourmets might not have.
“I didn’t grow up a precocious mini-foodie, eating everything my parents put in front of me and more,” Lucianovic says. “If I had grown up that way, I wouldn’t have had the transformative experience of discovering a love for food all on my own. Becoming a food lover, that’s all me.”
And anyone can make the switch, if they’re willing to put in the effort, she says. In “Suffering Succotash,” Lucianovic advises readers on pushing past those food aversions.
Of course, it helps to have something — or someone — for motivation.
“In order to start down the path of depickification, you have to have a strong wind at your back pushing you along,” Lucianovic says. “I was in love with my then-boyfriend (now husband), and I was ashamed of revealing my picky side to him. As it turned out, love and shame are more powerful than my gag reflex.”
But as far as she’s come, there are still some foods Lucianovic eschews: bananas, raisins, black licorice. She can deal with them, though, and they don’t interfere with her health or social life, which she says is the most important concern for a picky eater.
And as she continues on her journey of food discovery — you can follow her at www.grubreport.com — Lucianovic says she will continue to open picky-eater minds. Just don’t call her a foodie.
“I hate it — it’s annoying and twee,” she says. “I personally prefer ‘glutton,’ because it’s all encompassing: I’m not just into the ‘right’ foods but also the ‘wrong.’ ”