Wednesday, January 18, 2023— 6
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
S T A T E M E N T

Going public with picky eating

Content 
Warning: 
Mentions 
Disordered Eating 
It shocked my parents when 
their little girl, the kid who frowned 
at “Spongebob” boxed macaroni 
and cheese and lied about having 
a peanut allergy to avoid peanut 
butter and jelly sandwiches, tore 
apart a small filet of smoked fish, 
leaving behind only a plate of bones. 
Where did their picky eater go? 
As a toddler and young child, I 
was picky in ways other children I 
knew were not. I flat-out refused 
ketchup, milk, blueberries, nuts 
and tomatoes. I’d eat watermelon 
when it was firm, raw carrots but 
never cooked, cucumbers with no 
skin and the heads of asparagus 
(which eventually joined the fray 
of untouchable foods). Pasta itself 
wasn’t an issue, but the heavy, acidic 
red sauce flooded over it made 
me feel sick. Cream cheese spread 
thinly on a bagel was the only form 
of cheese I’d accept.
My parents were a bit worried 
at first; many of my dislikes were 
favorites among other children, 
so why didn’t I go for them? My 
pediatrician assured them that 

picky eating is a common behavior 
in in children. There isn’t one 
accepted definition of picky eating, 
nor is there one specific cause. 
Nonetheless, he was confident that 
over time, I would adopt more foods 
into my diet. 
My parents accommodated my 
preferences. They would make me 
one dinner while they and my sister 
ate another, or section me a portion 
void of all my dislikes. They did not 
force me to eat anything I didn’t 
want, besides vegetables, which 
I tolerated. For school lunches, 
my mom would pack me the only 
lunch I accepted: ham roll-ups, 
strawberries and “Scooby Doo” 
fruit snacks. Every. Single. Day.
But outside the comfort of 
my home, I grew to be insecure 
about my eating habits. With my 
picky tendencies, I felt like an 
inconvenience to others. At school 
functions and birthday parties, I 
would sit there nibbling on plain 
chips while the other children 
gorged on pizza and spaghetti. 
When I went over to other people’s 
houses, I’d often just eat the dry 
cereal my friends’ parents hesitantly 
placed in front of me. I squirmed 
under the scrutiny of others when 
they asked me what I wanted, 
what I didn’t want and why. It was 

even more humiliating when some 
questions were directed over my 
head to my parents. I did not want to 
be the subject of conversation; I just 
wanted to be left alone. 
As I grew older, my pediatrician 
was proved right. While I began to 
get tested for lactose intolerance, 
cutting out even more basic dairy 
products 
from 
my 
plate, 
my 
diet grew in meat, seafood and 
vegetables. My first love was steak: 
tender, medium rare, prime rib-eye 
prepared by my dad on the grill. It 
was the food of birthdays, holidays 
and special Sunday nights. Salmon 
stole my heart soon after, rivaling 
steak as my favorite. 
Even more foods joined the roster: 
Seafood — a world beyond the soft, 
mushy foods I avoided growing up. 
Not only did I enjoy mussels, shrimp 
and bacon-wrapped scallops, but 
I loved the unexpected versatility 
of the food group. I finally escaped 
the plainness of buttered noodles by 
tossing clams or even little squids in 
the mix. I eventually discovered a 
similar flexibility with vegetables, 
learning to love them in stir fry, 
fajitas and even burgers. 
I 
distinctly 
remember 
the 
happiness and excitement I felt 
when I first tried each of these 
foods. Like unlocking a new level of 

power in a game, I had gained access 
to another world that was less 
dull than the one before it. Meals 
both at home and away were more 
interesting, and I felt emboldened 
to try more while still staying 
within the limits of my childhood 
preferences.
This is not to say that my learned 
habits were easy to break — as I 
transitioned into my teen years 
and into adulthood, my picky 
tendencies reared their heads in 
more dangerous ways. 
As a child, I rooted myself in 
a complex that the way I ate was 
wrong and shameful. I grew up 
living in that thought. The scrutiny 
I faced made me distrustful of my 
own intuition, and I questioned 
whether I was able to make good 
decisions for myself.
Picky eating can correlate to 
disordered eating, which is defined 
as “a wide range of irregular 
eating 
behaviors 
that 
do 
not 
warrant a diagnosis of a specific 
eating disorder.” The distinction 
between the two can be difficult 
to pinpoint, but “ 
most picky eating 
among children falls under mild 
to moderate disordered eating, 
and will resolve over time, at times 
with the support of an outpatient 
dietitian, therapist or pediatrician.” 

While I did work with pediatricians 
and gastroenterologists, the term 
disordered 
eating 
never 
came 
up in my presence. Perhaps that 
was because the language was 
too sophisticated for a tween, but 
nonetheless I don’t fully engage 
with that label for fear of watering 
down its actual severity. Instead, 
I stick with the descriptor “picky 
eating” or, at worst, “my unhealthy 
relationship with food.”
In 
my 
case, 
my 
unhealthy 
relationship with food was the climax 
of years of body insecurity, depression 
and shame towards my food choices. 
If someone made even an innocent 
comment about my choice of food, I 
would shut down immediately. Even 
healthy foods were “bad” because 
of how much I liked them; I’d sneak 
snacks into my room, darting past 
my parents with the contents in my 
pockets. Food the noun and eating the 
verb developed as two different areas 
of opinion: I wanted to love eating the 
way I loved food. Tracking seemed 
like the perfect solution — I could lose 
weight, limit the “bad” intake and, the 
biggest lie of all: have a healthier body.
Using 
a 
meal-tracking 
app, 
I carefully recorded each food 
and the times at which I ate. My 
supposed picky eating made it easy 
to justify my dangerous eating 

habits. Of course I’ll get a salad 
with practically nothing on it, I 
don’t like any of the other toppings. 
I won’t eat much here, the menu 
isn’t for me. 
This was a lie. I missed food. I 
would go to bed and wake up hungry, 
ready to sleep again to avoid the 
torture of the day. I knew it was 
wrong when I refused to say the 
actual amount I was consuming. My 
weight loss goals were too extreme, 
and when I saw no results, the reality 
of my situation only hurt more. 
This moment was the peak of my 
unhealthy relationship with food, 
but for others, their relationship 
with food can spiral into a more 
serious situation. Disordered eating 
can spiral into an eating disorder, 
which is a “serious mental illness 
characterized by disturbances to 
thought, behaviors and attitudes 
towards food and eating.” Similar 
to the transition from picky eating 
to disordered eating, disordered 
eating to an eating disorder is not 
a clear path that looks the same in 
everyone. There are signs people 
can look for, such as the progression 
of dieting and amount of physical 
activity, which should always be 
diagnosed by a professional.

ELIZABETH WOLF
Statement Columnist 

Design by Francie Ahrens

I think the very first thing I 
can remember wanting to do for 
a living was be a dinosaur. I was 
about 4 years old with a very limited 
conception of what “work” and 
“money” and “healthcare” were, but 
nevertheless I needed an answer to 
the ever-present question of “What 
do you want to be when you grow 
up?” I knew exactly what a dinosaur 
was, and that seemed — and still 
seems — pretty damn fun, so I 
picked that.
I knew that this act — picking 
something 
both 
familiar 
and 
exciting, and deciding that that 
is what you want to be — is a 
remarkably typical response for 
young children. But I wanted to 
see what that had looked like for 
my classmates. So, I walked around 

the Diag, and interviewed anyone 
who’d talk to me, asking: “When 
you were very young, what did you 
want to be when you grew up?”
“I wanted to be a Jedi,” LSA 
sophomore Andrew Reno said 
when asked about his childhood 
aspirations. 
“Yeah, 
that 
was 
number one.”
Rob 
Rassey, 
University 
of 
Michigan assistant hockey coach, 
shared a similar sentiment while 
sitting comfortably on a blue couch 
in his office.
“I would say from the ages of 
like four to eight, I wanted to be 
a Ghostbuster,” Rassey told me, 
chuckling. “But then, I quickly 
realized that that wasn’t a great 
career path.”
Two others had wanted to 
be astronauts, one had wanted 
to play in the Premier League, 
another felt destined to be a 
garbage truck driver and one 

had even rejected the prospect of 
work in general.
“My first thing was I wanted 
to retire,” Engineering graduate 
student Hessa Al-Thani said quietly. 
“I was four. I was starting school, 
and I wanted to retire.”
Alas, maturation works wonders 
for killing dreams. 
I shifted slowly from “dinosaur” 
to “president” to “astronaut” to 
“hockey player” to “lawyer” and 
finally rested somewhere in the “I 
really don’t know” category around 
high school. Of course, that’s about 
the time when everyone else started 
to sound confident in their answers. 
Tommy and Michael wanted to 
be doctors, Jada and Geetanjali 
wanted to be software engineers, 
and Kevin was already doing 
business. So with each passing year, 
my answer of “I don’t really know 
what I want to be yet,” became less 
and less satisfactory. 
By the time we reach college, the 
expectation is that we’ve somewhat 
figured out an answer to that 
question. To an extent, I think it’s a 
fair expectation, because many of us 
pay thousands of dollars to be here.
But the pressure doesn’t make 
the question any easier to answer. 
“What do you want to be when 
you grow up?” isn’t just a question 
of profession, it’s a question 
of identity. The question itself 
dictates that what you do is who 
you are, and it isn’t necessarily 
wrong 
to 
do 
so. 
Because 
truthfully, careers often define 
us in the eyes of others, whether 
we like it or not, and for many, 
that muddy mixture of identity, 
career, image and the confusion 
that surrounds it all causes stress 
and makes it exceptionally hard 
to answer the question. 

CHARLIE PAPPALARDO
Statement Columnist 

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

So, what do you want to be? 
A reflection on career choice 
among college students

Design by Francie Ahrens

Writer’s note: I intentionally 
wrote this piece as a celebration 
of Armenian identity — or at the 
very least, an exploration of it — as 
I rarely see Armenians or Armenia 
covered in American media without 
a strong attachment to the Genocide, 
the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War 
in 2020 or more generally to the 
hardships endured by the Armenian 
people. In American media, positive 
coverage of Armenia is rare, and I 
wanted this piece to speak to parts 
of being Armenian that are often 
left unheard. However, I’d like to 
acknowledge that connecting with 
Armenian culture in a full and 
sincere way cannot happen without 
also feeling the unhealed wounds of 
the Genocide, recognizing a degree 
of bitterness toward American 
media’s apathy to issues outside of 
the global West and carrying the 
continuous fear for our homeland’s 
future. As I write this, more than 
120,000 ethnic Armenians in the 
Nagorno-Karabakh region have 
been left without essential supplies 
for five weeks due to Azerbaijan’s 
blockade of the Lachin Corridor. 
Being a part of the diaspora comes 
with a certain level of separation 
from these events and their fallout 
— which can be a privilege to exploit 
or a dissonance to mourn. As I am 
distinctly 
Armenian-American, 
my experiences in Armenia do 
not fully represent what it means 
to be Armenian — I do not have 
the bandwidth in this article nor 
the experience necessary to do 
so — but rather point to tensions 
and questions regarding my own 
Armenian identity.
Somewhere along an uneven 
road in Charentsavan, a small 
town about 30 minutes outside of 
Armenia’s capital city, Yerevan, I 

walked with one of the students 
I had spent the last year working 
with, Ala, and Arsen, her 8-year-
old nephew. Only having met 
me formally about 30 seconds 
prior, Arsen asked his aunt if 
I 
understood 
Armenian. 
She 
had to translate this for me and 
subsequently told Arsen I didn’t 
speak Armenian. He looked up 
at me, his gaze a reprimand that 
signaled an almost grandfatherly 
air of disapproval. He averted his 
large eyes and responded to his 
aunt in Armenian. Ala then told 
me that Arsen thought I should 
know Armenian, with that special 
sort of unrestricted, blunt honesty 
that only a child can deliver. 
Simultaneously 
amused 
and 
ashamed, I laughed and told Ala 
that he was right — I should know 
Armenian.
This sense of responsibility is 
rooted mostly in the fact that I’m 
half-Armenian. Because my dad 
did not speak the language with 
me throughout my childhood, and 
because I chose not to continue 
with Armenian school when I 
was younger, learning Armenian 
became a distant, lofty goal that 
I’ve never consistently stepped 
up to the plate for; while I’ve 
lamented both of these decisions 
before, I have seldom felt the 
consequences of them as strongly 
as I did during this first trip of 
mine to Armenia.
By the time I was walking with 
Ala and Arsen, I had already grown 
accustomed to not understanding 
most of what was being said 
around me. I had frequently 
been silenced by my own lack of 
understanding, and had no choice 
but to be okay with that — there’s 
no way to learn a language in two 
weeks. But, as an Armenian, I felt 
intense shame for not being able to 
communicate with these people in 
Armenian. It was surreal to finally 

make it to my family’s homeland, 
but this trip also came with a deep 
sense of inadequacy and regret.
Through an organization called 
EducationUSA, I had spent the 
past year working remotely with 
a cohort of about 25 Armenian 
high school students who were 
interested in applying to American 
universities. Throughout the year, 
I met with many of them in group 
sessions and individual meetings 
to brainstorm and edit their college 
admissions essays. Toward the 
end of the school year, the cohort 
hosted a graduation ceremony to 
celebrate their work, and I decided 
to make the trip to Armenia to join 
them. Of course, on top of this 
graduation ceremony, there was 
also a personal incentive for me to 
make a trip to a country I had only 
ever heard about from my family. 
On my second night in Yerevan, 
as I came back to the guest house 
I was staying in after about eight 
hours of sightseeing with the 
students, I felt deflated and out 
of my element. The guilt I felt 
over not knowing Armenian was 
nothing new to me, but it was 
more potent than it had been in 
many years, and brought many 
of the insecurities I had tried to 
bury back to the surface. All at 
once, I was 11 years old at Camp 
Haiastan again — my face flushed 
because I didn’t know the Lord’s 
Prayer in Armenian; I was 19 and 
being asked why I pronounced 
my Armenian last name wrong; I 
was 12 or 14 or 15 or 18 or 21 years 
old being told that I don’t look 
Armenian. In the background of 
all these excursions and day trips, 
my inability to comprehend most 
of the interactions around me ate 
away at me and generated a new 
iteration of shame that I could not 
blame anyone for but myself. 

OLIVIA MOURADIAN
Statement Columnist 

In Armenia’s eyes: returning 
home as a foreigner

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

