Almost all picky eaters love french fries. No one knows why. (Image by Treimann.)

I’ve been a picky eater since birth. It must have been very tough on my parents, because I was always really skinny as a child no matter how hard they tried to get me to expand my menu. The idea of eating a messy bowl of spaghetti with sauce sickens me. And you will not get me near a cup of soup. I gravitate toward neater foods that have consistent textures and a distinct geometrical shapes, like sandwiches (squares), hamburgers (circles) and pizza slices (triangles). Luckily, I love almost all fruits and vegetables, so the pickiness with other foods doesn’t affect my health.

I’m pretty sure it’s some type of OCD kind of thing, and some scientists agree. The Wall Street Journal has a really interesting article by Shirley S. Wang on the topic called “No Age Limit on Picky Eating.” (Thanks to the great Marginal Revolution for pointing me toward the article.) An excerpt:

“Picky eaters tend to gravitate to certain foods, including blander products that are often white or pale colored, like plain pasta or cheese pizza. For reasons that aren’t clear, almost all adult picky eaters like French fries and often chicken fingers, health experts say.

Amber Scott, of Enon, Ohio, has eaten only about 10 different foods since she was 3 years old. She describes foods that don’t appeal to her as if they are inedible objects. ‘You wouldn’t put a handful of grass in your mouth and chew it up,’ says the 29-year-old. ‘I feel the same way about spaghetti.’ It isn’t as much the flavor as it is the texture and the way her body reacts to a new food, she says. When she tried eating an apricot last fall, her stomach churned. ‘I really wanted to like it, but my body wouldn’t let me,’ she says.

Ms. Scott, a writer, is planning to move to Los Angeles and is ‘terrified’ of having to sit through networking dinners. Like many picky eaters, she says most of her friends don’t know about her tendencies because she tries to avoid social situations that involve eating. She has looked for help in the past but says she couldn’t find a therapist who appeared to understand her condition, and has stopped searching.”