Can you cure picky eating?

An adult picky eater, ostracized by his friends, castigated by society, asks the most human question of all: can I change? Our friends Manny, Noah, and Devan, the chicken bone squad, return to answer their own question. Check out Manny, Noah, and Devan's new podcast, No Such Thing https://www.nosuchthing.show/ Support Search Engine! https://www.searchengine.show/join

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02PJ Vogt?

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• 0:47PJ Vogt?

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• 1:28PJ Vogt?

  Do you guys want to introduce yourselves?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely. My name is Manny. I'm Noah.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  And this is Devin.

• 1:34PJ Vogt?

  And Search Engine listeners may remember you. You guys were on the show previously. Usually, we answer people's questions. You guys showed up with a question, which you then answered, which was?

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, why are there so many chicken bones on the streets?

• 1:46PJ Vogt?

  It was an investigation people honestly still email me about. People, I think there are just Americans now who walk down the street, see a chicken bone, and think about these three unusual gentlemen from New York.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  I love to hear that.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  We got an email last week about it.

• 2:01PJ Vogt?

  Really?

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Someone sent us a picture of a chicken bone.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  They thought that we were still doing research for that episode, I think.

• 2:12PJ Vogt?

  Since that first story, published a year ago, Manny, Noah and Devin have started their own podcast. They answer questions, something I was pretty sure we completely invented, but whatever. I think the reason their show is so good is their excellent question choosing. They pick questions that come out of their arguments. These three are always arguing about stuff like, "Do audiobooks count as reading? Do horses hate running?"

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Well, actually, today, an episode came out called, "Is it OK to wear your outside clothes on your bed?"

• 2:41PJ Vogt?

  Oh, I've been criticized for this quite a bit.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'll ask you, do you think it's OK?

• 2:47PJ Vogt?

  I mean, there's a lot of things I do that I don't think are OK. But I go to bed like, I don't know the people you're talking about how disgusting they are, but I'm definitely worse than them. Like, I will get in bed, I will sleep in my jeans.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  From outside. That's next. That's an extreme case. That's pretty next level.

• 3:06PJ Vogt?

  It's disgusting.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  I mean, why?

• 3:09PJ Vogt?

  Because I don't like them.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  You have really comfortable jeans.

• 3:14PJ Vogt?

  They're not. They're like...

• 3:16Speaker 01

  These are like jeggings or... How are you sleeping in your jeggings?

• 3:20PJ Vogt?

  Wrangler. Like, they're not comfy. They're broken in. I'll just put it that way. They're very broken. Just like, by the end of the day, the exertion of literally... Sometimes I just don't have it.

• 3:32PJ Vogt?

  Anyway, the reason the Chicken Bone Squad was back here today was because, once again, they had a question for our show, which they wanted to find the answer to. A question we here at Search Engine found particularly delightful.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Today, we have a problem, and I'm grateful to be able to use this platform again to answer something so stupid. But I'm a member of the picky eating community.

• 3:59PJ Vogt?

  Oh, wow, OK.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  And that's run into a lot of issues in this friend group. It's run into a lot of issues in my relationship, specifically because my version of picky eating is an aversion to seafood.

• 4:12PJ Vogt?

  Across the board, no seafood.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much, across the board.

• 4:16PJ Vogt?

  Yeah. Can I ask, like, are you a lifelong picky eater?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:20PJ Vogt?

  And it's just, has it been the same aversions since you were a kid? Or have you developed, like, as your palate has advanced, has your pickiness also advanced?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's been lifelong, especially with seafood. Um, I am, I'll just tell you, I'll lay out a little bit about, like, my background. So I'm Eritrean American. Both of my parents are from Eritrea. And in that cuisine, there's really no seafood at all. Unless you are from one of the port towns on the Red Sea, you don't eat seafood. So I didn't grow up with any seafood. The only seafood exposure I had was like at elementary school or middle school, where they would have like fish Fridays or fried shrimp or whatever.

• 5:01PJ Vogt?

  But so would you eat the fried shrimp when you were a kid?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  I did, but I didn't know what it was.

• 5:04PJ Vogt?

  Cause there's just some fried things.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  It was a fried thing.

• 5:06PJ Vogt?

  Fried is always carrying the weight on.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is what struck me about this aversion. Cause it wasn't the taste at the time, because it's knowing what it is is what made me.

• 5:15PJ Vogt?

  I understand. I don't, like, I don't find pickiness in food consumption strange. And like, I like seafood, but there was like, I had a couple of years where shrimp, all of a sudden, I was like, I'm not doing this. And then it came back. Cause they're like, they are like insects. It's like you're eating this like weird fat worm that has like a visible line of poop in it sometimes.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:36PJ Vogt?

  Yes.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  And my family ends up being a good exam for this because although none of my siblings grew up eating fish, they all love fish.

• 5:45PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  They, they like it now. There are another group of people who I'm running into this issue with. We cannot go out to eat and get what they want to get because I'm there.

• 5:53PJ Vogt?

  And what, what are the conversations around this like?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  They're like, stop being, y'all won't use the words.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Basically, I'm like being a child and like preventing them from getting what they want to get. And I'll just say this, like, For the picky eaters out there, I don't think you should change who you are. But for me specifically, I'm running into this enough to where I'm curious about whether it's possible to cure your picky eating. I want to know if like, is there something I can do to make it so that I can tolerate fish enough to be able to be at a restaurant and not cause any issues when I'm ordering in a group or with my girlfriend?

• 6:34Speaker 03

  And is the idea that you'll like actually consume it?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think like the ultimately like it'd be great if I was just chowing down on like any kind of fish, shrimp, tuna, whatever. But mostly I just want to be able to exist in this restaurant space and like not be a hindrance to people who, you know, in New York, it's a lot of money to go out to eat. If you're paying that much money and you're not eating what you want to eat, I feel like I don't want to be an obstacle to, you know, someone's desires.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  So that's the question that we came here to answer. Like, is it possible to cure picky eating?

• 7:15Speaker 03

  And?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  And we started with Noah. We had him kind of look into the history of picky eating and some of the stuff people have done to try and cure it.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so what I found was the kind of idea of even just choosing what you eat is actually a pretty recent historical phenomenon. I mean, you can imagine, most people just had to eat whatever was given to them throughout history. So I mean, like the term picky eating didn't even exist until the seventies or wasn't used until the seventies. But there has been kind of this war between picky children and their parents for probably since like the 1800s. So I mean, for the past century or so, parents and doctors have been trying all sorts of ways to cure this modern affliction. There's all sorts of cookbooks designed to help parents sneak healthy foods into recipes that kids might actually try, things like spinach in brownies.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Spinach in brownies?

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, which is pretty perverse.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I feel like you would notice.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's probably some better ways to do it. Hopefully, you know, maybe new technology is helping this, I hope. Hypnotherapy is actually a popular method. That's for both children and adults, so maybe Manny can try that.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would love to.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  But one of the most common and definitely the one I was most familiar with is what I'd call forced exposure. So, all right, you hate some food, but if we just kind of force you to eat it or be around it, then maybe eventually you'll just kind of give in and accept that this is a decent food to eat.

• 8:35PJ Vogt?

  And common because it's successful or common because it's just what every parent defaults to?

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's just kind of an obvious thing to try. It's also very popular on daytime TV.

• 8:45PJ Vogt?

  Daytime TV?

• 8:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so shows like Maury. I mean, you could find a lot of examples of this. It makes for great TV fodder, you can imagine. So I want to show you a clip, actually.

• 8:53PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  This is Mariah. She's 18 years old and she is deathly afraid of pickles. I mean, the whole world eats pickles.

• 9:05PJ Vogt?

  There's a woman who looks like she just found out she's dying. She's shaking.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  In school was called the pickle girl.

• 9:12PJ Vogt?

  Of course, they called her pickle girl. And then they're presenting her with trays and trays and trays of pickles.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  This is what the sight of a pickle does to Mariah.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  I miss Mariah. I hate pickles. I hate everything about them. Pickles are destroying my life. People make fun of me. I feel ashamed and I'm actually...

• 9:30PJ Vogt?

  Isn't it crazy how every idea you have has been done by someone in a dumber, meaner way?

• 9:35Speaker 04

  We wanted to see firsthand the extent of Mariah's pickle phobia.

• 9:40PJ Vogt?

  Oh, no.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  So we sent her to the Patterson Pickle Factory.

• 9:43PJ Vogt?

  Oh, no.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  Where she would come face to face with thousands upon thousands of pickles.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Maury just said us. Listen, if Mariah, the pickle girl, is out there, I would love to hear, you know, where you are now and kind of what your life has been like in the past 20 years.

• 9:58PJ Vogt?

  It seems like being on Maury, being humiliated for having a very unusual psychological response to pickles, is so much worse than the problem she was trying to solve.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like, needless to say, at the end of the segment, the pickle girl was still very much afraid of pickles. And like, the research says forced exposure therapy like that just doesn't actually work.

• 10:19PJ Vogt?

  Right. Sticking the thing people have a problem with in their face over and over again. They have a disgust response. It's like, good daytime TV, but bad therapy.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we couldn't just take Manny to some factory and hope it would go away. But we tried to find a scientist who had studied this kind of stuff. So we actually came across a professor at Duke University, who was one of the first people to really hone in and look at picky eating in a comprehensive way.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Um, we wanted to first just ask if you could say your name and what you do.

• 10:45Speaker 06

  My name is Nancy Zucker and I am a professor of psychiatry at Duke University and I direct the Duke Center for Eating Disorders.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Great. Um, I'll tell you a little bit about my experience with this.

• 10:59Speaker 06

  No, I'm not kidding.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been a picky eater my whole life. I have a specific aversion to seafood and fish. And so what we're kind of planning to do with this episode is cure that as best as we can. And so, you know, you did just mention that you worked at the Center for Eating Disorders. Um, I guess my first question is, do I have an eating disorder?

• 11:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, so the boundary in which being a picky eater is defined as a disorder is based on impairment. And so if you're aversion to fish, does it include seafood, like shrimp, scallop?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of it.

• 11:36Speaker 06

  All of it.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  The whole lot of it.

• 11:38Speaker 06

  Right. So like if you were, um, I suppose, an aspiring New York chef and it was getting in your way of kind of designing the menu of your dreams, then it might be, you know, crossing over into impairment. But if it doesn't get in your way, then it probably wouldn't cross the lines of a disorder.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Interesting. So it's kind of the same way we're defining like depression or alcoholism, like whether a behavior rises to the level of disorder has to do with how well you're able to fit in society.

• 12:06PJ Vogt?

  Exactly.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  And, and how we draw the line between picky eating and disordered eating is like how much it's impairing your relationship to society.

• 12:13PJ Vogt?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Which is funny because it's like, I'm not going to disagree with psychiatry, but like I slightly disagree with that where I'm like, but we kind of do know, like, there's a difference between like, oh, I have an aversion and like, oh, it's like a deep psychological pain. Like, it feels like an insufficient way to describe the severity of the problem. But I'll, I'll allow it.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Manny's not so extreme as in like he goes out to eat with us and he can be in a presence of seafood.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  But some people don't even wanna be, you can't smell it, you can't look at it, right? Like.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  But I am, I do feel disgusted by like fish, just like when they're alive. Like they're slippery and squirmy and.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Just seeing them out in the world?

• 12:53Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna throw up, but I'm like.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  An alive fish?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  A beautiful school of fish that disturbs you.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  There are some.

• 12:59PJ Vogt?

  I get it. No, I don't mean to say, I'll defend you against your friends. Manny's talking about you're on the beach on vacation, you're standing, the water's up to like your thighs, and something like brushes on your leg.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Grease.

• 13:10PJ Vogt?

  Something squirmy and black kinda.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  It's gross. Thank you.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  You, like, did you go to aquariums as a kid?

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  So you were just like, oh, this is disgusting.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  I feel like big, giant fish are different.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Oh, you don't like small fish?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  There's the little ones that are like scheming something, I don't know.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  The famous spots of fish.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:30PJ Vogt?

  But so you wouldn't, like, if you're out for dinner with your girlfriend and like, a waiter walks by with a, you know, a plate full of like shrimp on a kebab, you don't care. But if you're with your friends and they're being jerks and they like picked up a shrimp and dangled in your face, you would feel disgusted.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd be like, get, get it, get that out of my face.

• 13:49PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  So I asked Dr. Zucker to explain to me like what's, what's going on with this disgust factor? What, like, why is that happening?

• 14:00Speaker 06

  So disgust is a really cool emotion, in my opinion, right? So it's designed to protect us from getting contaminated from pathogens, right? So it has a very protective function. And so when you think about how one becomes contaminated, we get contaminated when something crosses a body barrier. We ingest it, we inhale it, we absorb it through our skin, it crosses some orifice. And by the time it does that, you're contaminated and it's too late. And so there should be these cues that people who are disgust sensitive pick up. Like you mentioned slimy, right? These kind of things that just look to us like they're threatening and they could cause us to be contaminated. And you know, it's interesting that it's restricted to that one area.

• 14:45Speaker 06

  I would guess that you're pretty detail sensitive in other things. Like that you notice like visual details of things, like text.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I'm really observant. Um, I'm a video producer and so that's kind of like part of my whole thing. It's ruined movies for me. Actually, I can't watch movies like a normal person anymore.

• 15:03Speaker 06

  Oh, isn't that so interesting, right? So I just, I think that that's like a cool adaptive trait that might not be as adaptive to the modern environment. But like if you were a cave dweller back in the day, perhaps you would have outlasted your peers.

• 15:19PJ Vogt?

  It's interesting, Manny. It's like you have a brain that is suited for being a cave dweller where it's like, avoid unfamiliar foods at all costs because they could be poison. And it's like sending you the right signals. But the problem is we're in a world where everything we want to do is just fit in socially. And the fact that your poison avoiding brain is telling you not to eat fish is causing you like 3% social friction, which is the worst thing that could happen in modern society at all.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think, yeah, I think my ex once described me as someone who had a brain suited to be a cave dweller. That's not the first, that's not the first time I've heard that comment, actually. But I was interested in why Devin and Noah don't have the same problem that I do. So that's interesting in terms of my experience, but Devin and Noah here love fish. Why isn't their body telling them to avoid fish?

• 16:13Speaker 06

  Well, because it's pretty adaptive to eat fish, right? Like not everything's contaminated. So there needs to be this kind of balance of like people that have kind of a low bar for trying out things and adventuring and testing things out and seeing if it's okay. So there should be variation in the population about kind of one sensitivity to these different features. So you've got some people taking risks, like your friends and you know, you who is kind of holding back and saying like, you guys try it first.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  So what's interesting is that Dr. Zucker actually did a study a few years ago with 20,000 self-described picky eaters.

• 16:48PJ Vogt?

  Oh, wow.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  And part of what they were trying to figure out with the study, especially with her work with kids, is like, what are the things that your parents did that helped with your picky eating? And what are some of the things that they did that like, really fucked you up?

• 17:01PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  But she said the things that are helpful are like, creating positive experiences with her kids, involving them in prepping the food. Like, one example they had is like, introducing cultures with food as a way to introduce new foods to kids.

• 17:18PJ Vogt?

  Oh, like the culture from which the food comes?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Exactly. Giving some background on it. Making it feel more like an experience.

• 17:24PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Versus, here's this thing in front of you, eat it now.

• 17:28PJ Vogt?

  So it sounds like basically, since we were kids, the, it's like, the picky eating, like, literature has progressed. Like, the field of getting kids to eat things that might be unfamiliar or weird, like, people, because I don't think, like, like, my parents or most of those parents were reading books that were like, "Sit your kid at the table with a plate of broccoli till everyone's crying." But like, that's what their parents did, that's what they were doing. And it's like, people have actually thought about this, and like, psychiatry has approached this, and like, we have ideas about what to do.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 17:59PJ Vogt?

  Interesting.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  But honestly, the coolest thing about Dr. Zucker and her team, they take all this data, all this information that they gather, and then they apply it to individual plans for individual people. So, we asked her, "Hey, we're putting together a plan for Manny, can you help us sort of shape what that plan looks like?"

• 18:22Speaker 06

  So, this is very simplistic, but like, I have a grid, where it's like, you know, sweet and salty is, let's say, on the X-axis, and like, chewy and crunchy is on the Y-axis.

• 18:33PJ Vogt?

  Hmm.

• 18:34Speaker 06

  And so, like, Manny, if you were to like, plot the foods that you currently prefer and eat, you know, on this, you can get the picture, right? Like, you know, is there kind of a pattern in terms of the textures and tastes that you prefer?

• 18:48Speaker 02

  So basically, her advice was like, try to introduce fish in a format that Manny might already like. So maybe like a fish dish that's crunchy and salty, you know, that sort of thing.

• 18:58Speaker 06

  You know, like, parents will often start with, like, fish sticks, for example, you know, like, things like that, or like, really, really crispy shrimp. Because there's more breading to fish, you know, if you guys get the picture.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  She basically said, like, start with fried foods, or put it in a sandwich.

• 19:14PJ Vogt?

  Wait, she said just put it in a sandwich?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Just like, because I'm already used to eating sandwiches, and I like sandwiches, like, maybe if you do a fish sandwich. This is like a very entry-level way.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, things that can help mask the fishiness.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, or fried foods, could do some fried fish, fish and chips.

• 19:31PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, fried fish makes more testing than fish sandwich.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Maybe she didn't say sandwich, maybe that was my addition. But it's an example.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  The doctor can take that up and you look.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  And she also said, like, you should be realistic about what you're gonna do, right? Like, first step shouldn't be like, I'm gonna eat a hundred bites of this fish.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  She's like, take it one bite at a time, small bites.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Like, take the cues that your body's giving you as well.

• 19:59Speaker 06

  You know, like, I would really do this, like, I'd be gentle with yourself. Think about, like, how many bites I wanna kinda manage? Do I wanna just get over that initial gag and call it a day?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  She was like, you should have a chaser.

• 20:11Speaker 06

  I would absolutely have a chaser.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, like a shot of whiskey or something?

• 20:16Speaker 06

  Or like, another bite of food.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 20:19Speaker 06

  I work with five-year-olds, for gosh sakes. Chocolate chips, you know?

• 20:25PJ Vogt?

  My fear is that this, like, ends with you guys at, like, an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant, and you're just hammered, like, vomiting and gagging shrimp or something. You can drink your way through a lot of things.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Not, not, no, no, this, the purpose of this whiskey is to clear the taste out.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It's kinda reset.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, not the feel-good.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  So she gave us a few tips that were, you know, smart and reasonable, but what I really wanted to know before diving in was, you know, as a doctor, did she think this experiment could work? Mm-hmm. Do I have a real shot at curing this?

• 21:02Speaker 06

  I think that the odds are in your favor. And I'll tell you why. One is because it is restricted to this one domain. You're able to tolerate the look and smell of it and be around it. Right? So that's another kind of clue that it's not as severe as it could be. You're highly motivated to work on this, which means that you're going to go into it with your threat kind of perception down and be more kind of just curious about it. And you're doing it for your girlfriend, which is just lovely. And so there's like, all the things that would be rooting for you to be able to get through this are on your side.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  After a short break, a series of trials and experiments. Will Manny be able to cure his picky eating?

• 22:00PJ Vogt?

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• 23:51PJ Vogt?

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• 24:19Speaker 01

  Welcome back to the show.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  So after talking to Dr. Zucker, you know, I felt a little bit more confident about our goals here. I'm still a little skeptical, but like, we have a plan now. We have this experiment. And so Noah, Devin, and I thought, it's finally time to do this thing. Which was what? Which was three steps of fishy meals and increasing fishiness. All right, this is Manny. I've just sat down with the first of three increasingly fishy meals. I recorded everything along the way. We just jumped straight into step one, which, you know, I found myself sitting in my apartment with some takeout.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  There is a restaurant by me in my neighborhood that's kind of moderately popular, and it's a seafood restaurant, and I've ordered their fried fish sandwich. It's a spicy fried fish sandwich.

• 25:16PJ Vogt?

  So you were thinking fried fish sandwich because again, fried is the dominant flavor.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:21PJ Vogt?

  And sandwich also.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Also the sandwich.

• 25:23PJ Vogt?

  This is like a double.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Eat a lot of sandwiches.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  It's in a vehicle that I know and love.

• 25:29PJ Vogt?

  You're mainly eating like fish inflected bread.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  That's what I would like to hope.

• 25:33PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'm sitting there examining this sandwich. I am touching it. I'm smelling it. I'm assessing it generally. My first kind of thought is that it looks exactly like a fried chicken sandwich. And for that reason, I think all of the receptors in my brain are saying, wow, this looks really good. And it smells good as well. Crucially though, we're going to try to see if it tastes good or tastes good specifically to me. And so, yeah, let's take this first bite. And the first bite is great because there's no fish in it.

• 26:11PJ Vogt?

  You're just at the fried part.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  I just got the fried part. Then I'm like, oh, wait. So I look at the sandwich. I'm like, oh, there's the fish.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Definitely fish.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  I can already tell my, my jaw is like slowing down. Like my brain does not want me to continue chewing this. But I'm going to fight through it.

• 26:30PJ Vogt?

  Did you gag?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I didn't gag. I think because the, there's spices in the fried part are so like, they were so savory and they were so, um, what's the word? They smelled really good and I didn't, I don't know. I think it just masked the fishiness. I, I kind of like barely taste the fish in this, but I still do taste the fish. And so that is, my body is just kind of like, it is not enjoying that part of this, the fish.

• 26:58PJ Vogt?

  So it tasted gross, but it was kind of a success in that you were able to like, like people eat food. They don't like all the time. That's, that's different than having a disgust reaction.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I ate a few more bites. I think, I mean, if, if you guys looked at the sandwich, you'd be like, you didn't touch this thing. But for someone who has an aversion, I ate a lot of the sandwich.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think if we were, we weren't with Manny when he ate the sandwich. I think if we were there, we probably would have forced a few more bites, which is probably against the wisdom of the doctor.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Ethical.

• 27:28PJ Vogt?

  That's, that's like parenting the 1980s.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm old school.

• 27:32PJ Vogt?

  If the sandwich were like a moon, like what phase of moon would it be? Like, there's full moon, there's crescent moon.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  We're talking pretty close to full. Werewolf's about to come out.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  It's very bright.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe the night before a full moon, you know?

• 27:47PJ Vogt?

  I'm seeing it.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  The night before? No, but I think what I took to be a success was that I even ate part of a thing that was touching fish.

• 27:55PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so step one, we could generously call a success. So we wanted to up the difficulty level a bit for step two.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  We decided to do a home-cooked meal.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Hey, can you guys hear me?

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're outside.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  I'm open, I'm open to the door. Welcome, please come in.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  So Devin and I were gonna cook, so we got some ingredients and went to Manny's place.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  There they are.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Hey, man.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  How's it going? It's our picky eater.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  And Devin and I had Googled a few different fish recipes to consider.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Do you remember the search terms we used?

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, like, fish for babies.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Like, easy, easy fish recipes for kids, things like that.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  That's just insulting.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. But yeah, a lot of it was pretty simple, kind of either white fish or salmon roasted in butter and kind of covered in garlic or other things.

• 28:50PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  Fish tacos, sheet-panned fish and chips. But we wanted something that wasn't super fried. We wanted to kind of step it up a little bit. So we'd actually kind of see if he can take this next step or if we're kind of still stuck at the fried fish stage.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  And we landed on a recipe that I've made several times before, from the New York Times, roasted salmon glazed with brown sugar and mustard.

• 29:12PJ Vogt?

  I haven't had it.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  By Sam Sift, and it's a very popular one on their site. And it's super easy. It's like, you don't even need the recipe, really.

• 29:17PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  And what was good was you could dial in the kind of sweetness of the sauce and how much there is.

• 29:24PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, so it's brown sugar and Dijon mustard.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  It's almost like barbecue sauce on a chicken. So let's see, this one on the left is gonna be the one for Manny. So I'm gonna make sure that one's extra sauced. We added way more glaze than how I would ever have.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Noah hadn't even tasted the glaze, and I was like, we're gonna need more.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  More!

• 29:41Speaker 03

  So, yeah, it was pretty covered. We made sauteed green beans as a palate cleanser, and he had whiskey on the rocks as his other palate cleanser.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  All right, I'm here with my whiskey that I'm probably gonna need after this.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  This looks gross, but I'm going in.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  So then I ate some of it and the glaze was really good. And I remember kind of being like, this is the first time I could see why someone would like this.

• 30:16PJ Vogt?

  Really?

• 30:17Speaker 01

  It's it's like, this tastes good. I don't want to say that it doesn't taste good. It's more of the, it's more of the like mental factor of like trying to get past what it is. But I will say this, I'm having an easier time eating this than the fish sandwich.

• 30:31PJ Vogt?

  Really?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  I was taken aback by the feeling of like, oh, I can, I kind of get it. I get this.

• 30:38PJ Vogt?

  It's like the feeling you get with like unfamiliar genre, like the first time you hear like a country song you like, you're like, oh. Yeah. Alright, it might not be for me.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, the guy singing about his rent is too high or whatever.

• 30:49PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Wait, my rent's too high.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  That is pretty much the feeling I had eating this salmon.

• 30:55PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so phase two relatively successful.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:59PJ Vogt?

  Can I just observe that, um, I don't know, if like, if like picky eating is mainly just a social problem. Like it's not like you have some food deficiency from not eating fish or whatever. You just, I understand that you guys are trying to solve this problem partly because like you have a podcast to make and you have a question for the podcast or whatever. You also just have very nice friends. Like the lengths that you guys are willing to go.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:24PJ Vogt?

  To make this work is very sweet and unusual.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I thought about that. It is, and it's in stark contrast to how our usual dynamic is.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  And so I was struck by that at some point during this experiment.

• 31:39PJ Vogt?

  You mean because they weren't just like teasing you?

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, Noah looking up a recipe, making me a meal.

• 31:44PJ Vogt?

  I know.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  It's kind of wild.

• 31:46PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  So now that takes us to the real test, which is step three. Going to an actual restaurant to see how big of a pain in ass is Evangeline. And honestly, I didn't know how this was gonna go. Step one, two, I thought went fine, but I was curious how Manny was gonna perform at an actual restaurant with some actual fish dishes.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  So where did you guys go?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  We went to a restaurant called Swoonies in Brooklyn. It's just like a neighborhood spot.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Oh, I like Swoonies. They have some weird, cool fish dishes there. It's pronounced the Dorad. I believe that's their fish, that's like their main fish entree.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  I've had that.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've never heard of that before.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Do either of you know what crudo is?

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, they are a bunch of fish dishes that we had never heard of. But we ended up choosing three of them, and the first one was the tuna crudo.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Here's the thing about this dish. So tuna crudo, that's what it's called. It's raw, like cubed tuna, but it's in kind of like a salad with like avocado and what is that? Cilantro? But the main part that I liked was that it's served with this bread that is incredibly buttery. And so what we were doing were put all this stuff onto the bread and then eating it.

• 33:02Speaker 03

  It's kind of your sandwich theory.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  No one wants to acknowledge the sandwich theory. It's a valid theory. And the one thing I remember is not tasting the tuna at all. Like, I just didn't taste the tuna.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  First reaction, like, there's definitely a little bit of the texture you're getting in there, but it's really good. Like, the whole thing's really good. I'm taking the second bite. It's kind of rare for me, a second bite.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  I was shocked because he went in and immediately was just like, oh, I like this. I was kind of like, oh, well, we can just go now. I mean, we did it.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  I'm shocked by what I'm seeing. Not only does he like it, he's actively going back for more bites. I think we might need to order another entree here. This is crazy. So then after the crudo came the lobster orzo, which was another appetizer. And it's, I mean, orzo, if people don't know what it is, like, it's pasta kind of, but it's like thicker rice, I guess. And it's got, this one's more of a red sauce, and it's really creamy and delicious.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  But the thing that I thought helped a lot with our experiment here is that you couldn't really see the lobster inside of it.

• 34:12PJ Vogt?

  It was like hiding spinach in a brownie.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. You're kind of like microdosing seafood.

• 34:18PJ Vogt?

  But you were finding that your microdosing seafood experience was like, not just that you were tolerating it, but enjoying it.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:25PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  So I'm having a really good, and in my view, successful experience at Swoonies, but I do imagine if we went to like a lobster shop or something and it was just straight up lobster, fork and knife, I'd still have some struggle.

• 34:41PJ Vogt?

  Or if you went to like a Portuguese restaurant where sometimes they'll serve you like a whole fish with the eye looking at you.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 34:47PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, I don't really like, like, every time there's a full fish in front of me, like, this doesn't feel right. Like, I'm more on your side of it where, like, fish can be an ingredient. Fish can be an ingredient. If you're like, if the progress you've made is fish can be an ingredient, that's progress.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, honestly, it did feel like progress. Like, I was actually eating the stuff that they were putting down on the table. But then the final dish came out and it didn't look like the other ones. Like, it actually just looked like, you know, here, I'll just show you a photo. This is the dorad.

• 35:21PJ Vogt?

  This is the dorad. Oh, that's just a fish.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:23PJ Vogt?

  It's a big piece of fish.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  I think I was calling it dorade without knowing. But this, you know, this is just literally a fish without the head, I think.

• 35:33PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, and without the tail.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this was the final test. This is like the final boss, right? I took a forkful, I examined it, and then I went for it. What can I say? It's really good. The char, the charredness of the skin on the top, this tastes like a steak. And so, I don't know, this is really good.

• 35:57PJ Vogt?

  But so wait, you fully enjoyed like an actual filet of fish?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  That was really good to me.

• 36:02PJ Vogt?

  Not fried?

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Not fried. And there was very few kind of hangups about it. Third time's the charm. Yeah.

• 36:08PJ Vogt?

  It's funny though, you know, the process you're describing, because I feel like you have answered the question like, can you cure picky eating? Like, I think you have.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:17PJ Vogt?

  And I think like most people, if there's like a kind of cuisine or a kind of food that they're a little bit averse to because unfamiliar, this is kind of like how they walk in. Like, the first time you try it, maybe it's fried, maybe it's an ingredient, something else. Maybe you go to a place that prepares it really well. And like, you just like slowly get used to something unfamiliar until you discover the pleasure in it. And then one day you turn around and you've just like changed.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I really didn't have any hopes for myself in any of these experiments. I really was like, okay, this is kind of a lost cause. There is something so, I mean, this is, it sounds obvious now, but just like the repetition of doing it over and over again until you get used to it, um, just like helps a lot. The texture of these fish, the fish that I've had in these past couple of months, I'm used to it now. And so I'm-

• 37:07PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so this is a two-month process. The argument you guys were having, the question you're trying to answer is, can you cure picky eating? What do you believe now?

• 37:15Speaker 01

  I think you, and at least in my case, you can kind of cure it. Because I'm not going to eat fish that's just sitting there, that's not presented in any kind of way. But depending on like the flavors around it, depending on the vehicle it's served in, there are ways you can tolerate it.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  For my purposes as a bystander, the answer is yes. Because I was shocked when he was taking bites of this raw tuna and enjoying it. And I was like, this is good enough for me.

• 37:44PJ Vogt?

  And do you feel like, not, I don't want to make too big a deal out of this, but like, do you, like, picky eater is like a trait. Like, it's like one of the aspects of your personality. Do you feel differently now on the other side of this experience?

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, there's definitely, there's like all the corny stuff that it's taught me, like how much I can personally affect in my life. But there's also other foods that I have picky eating aversions to that I want to try now.

• 38:11PJ Vogt?

  What do you want to try?

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Like corn, for example. I just-

• 38:15PJ Vogt?

  Corn?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Hate corn.

• 38:16PJ Vogt?

  Corn?

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:18PJ Vogt?

  What's your issue with corn?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  You know what? It is kind of similar to fish in a way that it's slimy and like, the texture is weird. Um, it's okay if it's like sprinkled in a salad or something like that, but just like eating it right off of the ear is tough, really tough for me.

• 38:35PJ Vogt?

  Popcorn.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Right off the ear. Popcorn's fine.

• 38:38PJ Vogt?

  Cornbread.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Cornbread's great.

• 38:39PJ Vogt?

  Okay, you're gonna be fine.

• 38:44PJ Vogt?

  And how do you guys feel?

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Good, I'm overjoyed. Oh yeah, it was nice to see you.

• 38:52PJ Vogt?

  Manny, Noah and Devin. Their podcast is called No Such Thing. If you like our show, we think you'll really love theirs. Some episodes to check out that we really liked. Are suburban dogs happier than city dogs? I hope not. And should men sit when they pee? Which has got a lot of conversation over here. No Such Thing. It's available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, everywhere else.

• 39:45PJ Vogt?

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• 40:49PJ Vogt?

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• 41:49PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Odoo. Ever feel like you need one app for sales, another for inventory, another for accounting, and the list never ends? If your software stack feels more like a source of constant daily stress than actual success, it's time to modernize your workflow with Odoo. Odoo is truly the only business software you'll ever need because it consolidates your entire operation into a single seamless ecosystem. Think about the hours lost to copying data between platforms, managing mismatched logins, and troubleshooting broken integrations. Odoo eliminates all of that by linking your CRM, e-commerce, human resources, and financial tracking in real time. Not only does it make your daily routine massively more efficient, but it also replaces

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• 43:00PJ Vogt?

  Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Trudy Pinamaneni, and is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Fact checking by Holly Patton. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Additional production support from Sean Merchant and Kim Kupel. If you'd like to support our show, get ad-free episodes, zero reruns, and the occasional bonus audio, please consider signing up for incognito mode. You can learn more at searchengine.show. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Leah Reese-Dennis. Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Prellio, and John Schmidt, and to the team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Matt Casey, Maura Curran, Josefina

• 43:43PJ Vogt?

  Francis, Kirk Courtney, and Hillary Shuff. Our agent is Orin Rosenbaum at UTA. Follow and listen to Search Engine with PJ Vogt now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

• 44:14PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vistaprint. As a small business owner running a podcast, I'm always looking for authentic ways to connect with listeners, which makes Vistaprint such a valued expert partner for us. I was on their site the other day brainstorming new things we could make for our show, and the creative momentum took over. I ended up designing Search Engine stickers, and I tried to make a sign for our office. When your physical branding looks this sharp and professional, it immediately communicates credibility and shows your audience that you mean business. Vistaprint truly helps every dollar go further, delivering premium quality and design support that make your company look established without breaking the bank. Whether you need your design tweaked or a total rebrand, Vistaprint has you covered with the expert service small businesses deserve.

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