From McDonald's to Monkey Brains
Twenty-year-old college student Paulina Minnebo orders the exact same meal every time she dines at a restaurant she’s visited before. The meal differs from place to place, but each restaurant has its own specific “meal of choice.” Every time she goes to Buffalo Wild Wings, she orders the boneless honey-barbeque wings. When she stops by Jimmy Johns, she orders an “Italian Night Club” sub. Any time she orders a pizza, it has to be pepperoni only or she can’t even eat it. The list goes on, but the heart of the matter is—does Minnebo realize she’s doing this? Is it a game she plays, to pick one meal and order it again and again? The answer is: not really. It’s something she does subconsciously. Minnebo isn’t necessarily a picky eater; she’ll try all sorts of different foods. But once she likes a certain dish, she wants to keep enjoying it any chance she can. Minnebo picks her meals and establishes her eating habits based partly on how food tastes, but above all, because of the familiarity of the food.
As a child, Minnebo was a picky eater in unusual ways, and it all tied back to that familiarity. Some of her first favorite snacks were strange for a toddler, like frozen green beans and peas, but she’d grown up eating them, gotten used to the taste, and liked them that way. She enjoyed all sorts of drinks (like water, juice, and milk) but could only drink them from their appropriate containers (glass, sippy cup, and bottle). If offered a glass of milk, for example, she would spit it out and refuse to drink the rest. This sort of pickiness was not appreciated by Minnebo’s parents. Her mother often complained about how, in the past, Minnebo was fine with eating any sort of burger. But one day, her aunt took her to McDonald’s and (for some unknown reason) ordered her a plain burger with only ketchup on it. After this one experience, this single burger, Minnebo would not return to eating regular burgers, insisting her future orders be “ketchup only.” Her mother would say, “You used to eat any burger I put in front of you. You used to like cheese, lettuce, pickles, anything. What happened?” Minnebo herself wasn’t even sure what had happened. She’d liked the ketchup burger and had become stuck in her ways.
As a child, Minnebo was a picky eater in unusual ways, and it all tied back to that familiarity. Some of her first favorite snacks were strange for a toddler, like frozen green beans and peas, but she’d grown up eating them, gotten used to the taste, and liked them that way. She enjoyed all sorts of drinks (like water, juice, and milk) but could only drink them from their appropriate containers (glass, sippy cup, and bottle). If offered a glass of milk, for example, she would spit it out and refuse to drink the rest. This sort of pickiness was not appreciated by Minnebo’s parents. Her mother often complained about how, in the past, Minnebo was fine with eating any sort of burger. But one day, her aunt took her to McDonald’s and (for some unknown reason) ordered her a plain burger with only ketchup on it. After this one experience, this single burger, Minnebo would not return to eating regular burgers, insisting her future orders be “ketchup only.” Her mother would say, “You used to eat any burger I put in front of you. You used to like cheese, lettuce, pickles, anything. What happened?” Minnebo herself wasn’t even sure what had happened. She’d liked the ketchup burger and had become stuck in her ways.
Present day, Minnebo still makes strange eating decisions based on the familiar, but other factors have started to contribute to her diet. Now that she understands the concept of foods being healthy or unhealthy, she tries to eat healthier when she can. If faced with a decision between a bag of chips or an apple, she picks the apple. However, that doesn’t stop her from ordering fast food or melting cheese over fries—it’s an imperfect logic, but she follows it nonetheless. Her eating habits have also changed based on her newfound system of morals. At age sixteen, she viewed the documentary Food Inc. for the first time. The movie covers the horrifying truths of the United States’ food industry, including a closer look at certain companies’ practices, like McDonald’s and Tyson. One scene depicts how Tyson chickens are raised on growth hormones in darkened, windowless coops and picked up for transport at two in the morning so that they are less likely to fight (Kenner). Seeing this caused Minnebo to distrust processed food companies, especially the ones shown in the film, and she stopped eating both McDonald’s and Tyson products. She wishes she could stop supporting all processed food companies, but it’s an unrealistic goal for someone stuck eating cafeteria food every day.
Despite cutting whole companies out of her diet, Minnebo does eat a wider variety of food than she did as a child. She can once again order different toppings on her burgers and is eager to try new foods, as long as they look or sound appealing. In her freshman year of college she even became interested in entomophagy (the term for eating insects) and tried a few different insect recipes with one of her professors. However, there was a major factor holding her back from a truly open-minded outlook on food, and that was her lack of travel experience. Until age nineteen, Minnebo had never left the country, leading her to have an extremely Americanized view of food. Luckily, she was able to participate in a summer study abroad trip to Ireland, England, and Wales, which opened the doors to what will hopefully be a life of eating internationally.
Now, the United Kingdom isn’t exactly a place for daring or unusual cuisine, but these were Minnebo’s first steps and she still managed to find herself out of her comfort zone. So much of the food seemed somehow denser, and hardly anything was as salty as the dishes in America. Even the so-called junk food was bland to Minnebo’s American taste buds; all the potato chips were baked and the donuts simply didn’t have enough glaze on them. But after about a week of eating that type of food, she grew used to it and began to explore and enjoy all sorts of new flavors. To her surprise, she even grew used to drinking water right out of the tap—certainly a choice she never made at home, where water jugs and bottles were abundant. In fact, when she returned to the United States and bought herself an overpriced bag of Lay’s potato chips in JFK airport, she felt sick and threw half of it away. She still hasn’t enjoyed Lay’s products since.
If visiting countries with food only slightly different from the United States’ could change her tastes this much, what could a trip to more adventurous countries do to Minnebo’s eating habits? In psychologist Rachel Herz’s book, That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, Herz discusses different types of international foods that seem unusual (or even downright sickening) to foreigners, but are completely accepted by those who grew up with them. In one passage she describes the Korean practice of sitting down in a restaurant and ordering a whole, live octopus; in another, the Chinese act of eating the brains right out of a live monkey. Trying these meals is more intense than just adjusting to drinking tap water. Minnebo still has a long way to go in ditching her Americanized diet, but the idea of traveling to countries with “weird” foods interests her more than it repulses her—well, she could do without a live octopus on her plate for now, but maybe one day.
Minnebo is excited to try new food and broaden her palette, especially foods from other countries. She has already come a long way from her “ketchup only” days, allowing more factors than taste and familiarity to influence her diet, like health or morals. It is clear, however, that she still has trouble escaping her subconscious one-meal-per-restaurant game. Perhaps one day Minnebo will be brave enough to eat a monkey brain, but chances are, if she does so and finds she enjoys the taste…she’s going to keep ordering that same monkey brain every time she revisits the restaurant. That’s just how she eats.
Now, the United Kingdom isn’t exactly a place for daring or unusual cuisine, but these were Minnebo’s first steps and she still managed to find herself out of her comfort zone. So much of the food seemed somehow denser, and hardly anything was as salty as the dishes in America. Even the so-called junk food was bland to Minnebo’s American taste buds; all the potato chips were baked and the donuts simply didn’t have enough glaze on them. But after about a week of eating that type of food, she grew used to it and began to explore and enjoy all sorts of new flavors. To her surprise, she even grew used to drinking water right out of the tap—certainly a choice she never made at home, where water jugs and bottles were abundant. In fact, when she returned to the United States and bought herself an overpriced bag of Lay’s potato chips in JFK airport, she felt sick and threw half of it away. She still hasn’t enjoyed Lay’s products since.
If visiting countries with food only slightly different from the United States’ could change her tastes this much, what could a trip to more adventurous countries do to Minnebo’s eating habits? In psychologist Rachel Herz’s book, That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, Herz discusses different types of international foods that seem unusual (or even downright sickening) to foreigners, but are completely accepted by those who grew up with them. In one passage she describes the Korean practice of sitting down in a restaurant and ordering a whole, live octopus; in another, the Chinese act of eating the brains right out of a live monkey. Trying these meals is more intense than just adjusting to drinking tap water. Minnebo still has a long way to go in ditching her Americanized diet, but the idea of traveling to countries with “weird” foods interests her more than it repulses her—well, she could do without a live octopus on her plate for now, but maybe one day.
Minnebo is excited to try new food and broaden her palette, especially foods from other countries. She has already come a long way from her “ketchup only” days, allowing more factors than taste and familiarity to influence her diet, like health or morals. It is clear, however, that she still has trouble escaping her subconscious one-meal-per-restaurant game. Perhaps one day Minnebo will be brave enough to eat a monkey brain, but chances are, if she does so and finds she enjoys the taste…she’s going to keep ordering that same monkey brain every time she revisits the restaurant. That’s just how she eats.
* * *
Upon revisiting Minnebo, it seems that in the course of about four months something has changed her diet more drastically than in the previous twenty years of her life. Apparently abandoning (or at least distancing from) her attachment to familiarity, Minnebo's health and moral driven dietary influences have grown more prominent. Instead of toying around with the idea of avoiding processed foods, inconsistently choosing food based on health reasons, and applying her morals to a few types of food or certain companies, she has committed to more serious dietary changes that she hopes will make her a healthier individual and reduce her carbon footprint and moral burden. The best part is, she doesn't have to sacrifice her enjoyment of food or quest for taste while doing it.
Before, it was clear that Minnebo believed avoiding processed food was a good idea, but an ultimately unrealistic one. Four short months later, her outlook has changed. Through her exploration of alternative grocery options and whole food recipes she has realized that it's much easier to create a diet based on real, unprocessed food than she believed. Not only are these real foods easy to find and relatively inexpensive, they also taste amazing. Horrible cook that she is, Minnebo still manages to put together surprisingly delicious meals with little struggle. She's quickly finding herself preferring real food that she's cooked to the processed food she used to buy at fast food restaurants or conventional supermarkets. She can't wait to move out of the dorms and into her own apartment where she has a whole kitchen at her fingertips to test all sorts of new recipes in.
Processed food isn't the only part of Minnebo's past diet that she's leaving behind--she's also moving on from eating so much meat. First, Minnebo learned about how eating meat negatively impacts her personal health. Then she learned about how the focus on meat in Americans' diets is unsustainable and contributing the destruction of the environment. These were compelling reasons to cut back on meat eating, and Minnebo began to only eat meat once a day instead of twice. If she had a BLT for lunch, she'd opt for a salad or pasta for dinner. After reading Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals, a heartbreaking exposé on the American meat industry, Minnebo felt that cutting back on meat once a day wasn't enough. She considered whether eating meat had any real benefits in the first place; it wasn't good for her body, wasn't good for the planet, and now she had learned from Jonathan Foer about the horrifying conditions of the average American meat factory and the appalling treatment of workers and animals. One quote from Foer's book especially stuck out to her: "Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? ... Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals." Reading this helped Minnebo realize that the only concrete reason she had for eating meat was taste. In the long run, she decided that there were other foods that tasted just as good as meat and didn't come attached with the baggage that meat does. Now she only eats meat about once a week, and hopes that one day she can cut it out of her diet completely.
Four months is a short time to turn a diet, a way of life, upside down. But Paulina Minnebo has done just that. She's set her attachment to the familiar aside and is now opened up to a world of more interesting, tasty food that is better for her body, the environment, and the way she feels about what she's eating. For now, she's not ruling out trying any kind of food in the future, but she's definitely going to try to keep her food choices smart, though-provoking, and delicious.