How to deal with comments about my likes and dislikes [closed]

Question

Let me try to explain. I have certain food items that I really dislike. I am not allergic to them, but their taste I just can not bear at all. They include some foods that people tend to have in too many meals, and the best example is onions (in any way, green onions, leek, cooked onions, etc.). Overall I am not a very picky eater, but even a tiny bit of onion will spoil any dish for me. I know I am not alone in this, I have several friends also totally disliking onions, but in general people like them, obviously.

So whenever I am at a restaurant and I have to mention food should be cooked without onions, they sometimes forget it, then I remind them I asked, and the waiter either says something like: "But it compliments the dish!" or "But there's not much of it!", or they pick the most obvious pieces out, but it remains there.

Whenever I am with friends or I meet new people in a friendly gathering and someone cooks for everyone, every time I am being mocked - in a friendly way, but - about it. I have, unfortunately, zero sense of humor, even though I try to cultivate it and am a good-natured person, so I can never think of a witty or a proper answer.

Whenever I am visiting my granny, she loves to cook for me (as grannies are) and at every single meal there will be a talk how I should try onions and how food is not eatable without them and so on and so forth.

I know this is my own problem, but I get really frustrated from all these comments and situations. I know I can not change everyone around me. I can definitely not change granny or any new people I meet, and I can not force my friends not to joke about it since it's their way of expressing friendliness towards me, light jokes. But it seriously angers me and makes me feel like an idiot. I can not control my food dislike, that's a given.

Any advice of how I can behave in such situations? Maybe how to answer properly to stop the conversations at the very start, not being too rude, but effective? I hope I have made it clear enough.

Answer 1

When it comes to strangers, or servers at restaurants (people you are never going to meet again), I would stick to telling them it's an allergy (or better, express that you'll have a 'bad reaction' to consuming them) if they ask. There's no reason for them to care whether it's a preference or an allergy, they should take your food preparation request seriously regardless. This way when the food preparation does go amiss (onions in your food), you can tell them that you can't eat it (which is true, because for you the dish tastes awful and is ruined), without being grilled for your preferences.

Example encounter:

You order your food with no onion

You receive your food WITH onion

You: "Excuse me, I can't eat this, could I please get a new dish without onion?"

Waiter: "Why not? There's not that many, you can pick them out."

At this point, the waiter is putting you on the spot and being argumentative of your own personal preferences.

You: "I'm unable to digest onion/I have an allergic reaction to eating onion/I'm intolerant to onion."

If the waiter presses any further, tell them it's not their business (this is a polite thing to do at this point, honestly)

The above is something a friend of mine with gastroparesis (which eliminates a wide variety of foods from a diet) frequently did at restaurants. She found that it ended up being more tiresome to explain why she was making a request to someone than to just tell them she was allergic. Your experience at a venue is your business alone, and telling a white lie to ensure you continue to enjoy your experience without arguing with a server is acceptable.

However, the people in your life who know that you simply don't like onions are a harder subject to address. It might be best to find a short sentence you can respond with whenever it comes up. I was giving my friend who dislikes eggs a hard time once, to which he replied:

Never going to eat them - they taste like feet.

I certainly don't agree that eggs taste like feet, but I could agree that if something reminded me of feet while I was eating it, I'd stop eating it too!

Just find a short, somewhat comical (tastes like feet/butts/etc.), statement that you can say quickly and passively to move the conversation along. I'd aim for something universally unappetizing, so that the interest to continue talking about food is lessened.

This also has the effect to make people think "WOW, I am not going to bring up onions around Alice anymore because every time I do, she talks about feet!"

Answer 2

I have certain food items that I really dislike.

Same for me when it comes to carrots or mint-flavoured chocolates.

Tasted them once, and threw up.

Ew.

When people ask me (or mock me), I simply state it:

Tasted them once, and threw up. Aaaaaaand I'm not enthusiast about throwing up here in front of you. I suppose you too are not enthusiast about that, are you? [smile, maybe wink also]

It literally grosses them away, and makes them change subject on the spot.

What I told you so far applies to friends or anyway close people.

When it comes to service people (e.g. waiters), you can put it in a "less gross" way:

I have stomach disturbs with [food you hate], so please please please, really make sure no trace of it is in the dish. Thank you [smile]

If they want you to come back eating at them... all the more reason to comply with you.