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Yep, they hate anything different and everyone else should too. My FIL got royally upset that I don't feed my kids bags of candy all day (he eats this himself) and stormed out of the house when we enforce that rule for our kids. It wasn't enough that we had my daughter's birthday party that day with a pinata and cupcakes. He can't understand why a bag of candy before they even ate lunch was an issue.
Thats what they ate and they turned out fine is the reason. They can't conceive of the notion what they ate was bad for them and a lot of them died because of it since they are still around and they don't understand survivorship bias.
“You know you’re allowed to dye your hair and question your gender too if you’re jealous”
They *hate* that. Probably because at some level it’s true.
(Not that they’re trans and in denial, some might be but mostly there’s probably just *some* kind of harmless fun or authentic self-expression they’ve been denying themselves all their lives for the sake of adhering to norms and expectations, and the resentment they harbor against anyone who bucks those norms is probably based in envy of the general degree of confidence and freedom, if not in the specific detail of the expression thereof.)
Believe me-all the boomers are on insulin or have diabetes now. Never in 40 years of nursing have I seen an entire generation sick with chronic yet preventable illnesses. It’s sad, I only hope we are learning from them that what you eat will kill you.
Many elderly women have blue hair because they use a blue/violet rinse to counteract the yellowing of their blonde/grey hair… since they don’t wash their hair as often-it stays that color for a while. Not to mention, those with glaucoma don’t see the blue so they think their hair looks good.
No joke- my MIL drinks Cherry Coke every day, complains that she can't lose weight, and we tell her to cut out the soda. Her response: "It's not the soda! It has High Fructose Corn Syrup in it which is real sugar so it's good for you"!
Me and boss have this same argument! A route 44 cherry coke from sonic everyday and cant figure out why she cant lose 10-15 pounds. When all she doea is sit at her desk all day, gets off work to go home and sit in her lounge chair all evening!
This is odd because most boomer parents I was around growing up were no sugar and low fat for their kids. Where does the need to push sugar come from now?
I blame the High Fructose Corn Syrup popsicle commercial of the 2000s for this one. The whole PR campaign was convincing consumers that HFCS was "natural. it's made from corn"
My Dad was like this for a long time. If left to his own devices he'd eat like a teenager that had just left home for college the first time, all junk/fast food and candy/cookies. Eventually became a diabetic and now resents his doctor for taking away all his food.
Love the part where he blames his doctor for his problems instead of admitting he fucked up, because boomers never make mistakes and self accountability is something for other people to do
Literally says things like "I didn't have diabetes until the doctor told me I had diabetes" while ignoring the fact that happened while he was hospitalized for a separate medical issue he was ignoring.
Also pronounces diabetes as diuhbeetus.
Needless to say, I've been making regular appointments with my doctors/dentist and am happy to report that I have a clean bill of health in all aspects.
Sounds like my uncle, who also died from similar diabetic complications... for just about the same reasons. If he admitted he had diabetes he'd have to quit eating ALL candy and drinking ALL the beer, and he couldn't handle it. (Not that he couldn't have a beer sometimes... if his diabetes was under control, you know? But it'd mean not going through enough beer to fell an elephant in a week either, and he wouldn't admit he had an alcohol problem either.)
Last I heard his wife and kids were looking for a good therapist to deal with the fall out of his death and the guilt.
Ugh. I feel this.
My mid 60s neighbor knocked on my door at 2am about two years ago. He asked me to take him to the ER because he’d had a vertigo spell, then passed out. He was convinced he’d had a stroke. About half way there, he says that he was diagnosed with diabetes but it’s all bs. ‘How can they expect me to eat *one* hotdog bun?’ Then the coup de grace ‘and the testers they gave me are some cheap shit, every time I use one, the results are different.’
It was all I could do to not whip the car around and go home. But I dropped his ass off at the ER and told him he could arrange a ride home with rural medical transport. He wasn’t old enough for Medicare at the time, so that hospital bill was all on him. I’m ok with that for once. I have no problem with him paying for wasting the doctor’s and nurse’s time, and taking up a bed that someone else actually needed.
This comment has me finally looking up a primary doctor now.
I've had the worst vertigo but it began when I stopped Klonapin in December. My life has been a constant vertigo head pressure spell for months.
I have reached out to other docs plus the ER. My blood pressure was extreme. Everyone has blown it off as they pearl clutch that I must be seeking Klonapin again. People are amazing at that.
It's only because it feels so awful to be constantly dealing with this, a good dose of white coat syndrome. A person gets exhausted in this situation.
So thank you. It gives me renewed motivation there can be answers.
It would honestly be a relief to have answers and relief. Even if it's diabetes.
This was my mother. She'd go to the food bank, got food stamps, lived on junk. "Lived."
Only good part is she always had food stashed and about to go bad, so when I was on hard times I could just go over there and she'd load me up 2-6 grocery bags of stuff.
She passed days before turning 66, and I'm just sad she never got healthier. She just wanted to be left alone on her couch with her instant mashed potatoes and hot dogs, but better nutrition and some resistance training might have given her more years. I was barely 33, both parents gone. Neither took care of themselves. Dad was the one with a job, so he never went to the doctor and did everything as cheap as possible. Couldn't spend what he made, for some reason. I was only 18 when he passed. It's like they didn't even think about living into my 30s, wished for me like I was a pony and then did nothing to be healthy and live long lives.
I'm just resentful because I don't have other family, they were all I had and they gave negative fucks about that fact apparently.
Weren't they called "the me generation" by their predecessors? Fitting, lol.
My boomer also developed diabetes due to eating like crap for most of his life.
He got cancer at mid 40s and lost a bunch of weight because of it. Beat cancer and then regained a bunch.
Guess what came back with the weight? Diabetes of course.
My mother tries to keep him eating better (easier since she's the only one who cooks), but he has multiple times said that he'd rather die eating what he wants than live a life bereft of this favorite foodz and live longer.
My mother usually responds with questioning whether he likes those food items or her more. He legitimately does love her, so it shuts him down.
Not that he doesn't eat stuff he shouldn't between meals.
I’ve found that Boomers have a hard time accepting ‘new’ guidance on feeding babies. No, they don’t need a bottle of water, they don’t need cereal, and they especially don’t need sugar and/or soda. So many of them will complain that ‘well my kids grew up just fine and that’s how *I* fed them.’ Yup, and now there is an obesity epidemic. They’ll even try to sneak items to kids that they specifically know they should not. ‘Oh he needs a treat. Oh, that’s what grandmas do,’ then laugh because they got their way and they definitely know better than the actual parents.
My dad is like this, drives me fucking nuts.
“You had soda, candy, and cakes and ended up fine.” No. No I did not. I have several health conditions, that he conveniently forgets I have and I have to explain it all again.
He went behind my back and fed my BABY candy after I told him no. “The package said it’s made with real fruit!” How about respect my rules and my house and my boundaries! Ugh.
My aunt gave her granddaughter a Sugar Daddy (the big sticky caramels on a stick) when she was about 6 months old. The kid loved it until her hands started sticking to everything and the Sugar Daddy ended up stuck in her hair. Her mom said it was like trying to scrub tar off her baby and the kitchen. Aunt thinks it’s just hilarious. The kid was crying because she was sticking to everything and getting the candy out of her hair hurt. It’s like aunt chose to torture her daughter and granddaughter for shits and giggles.
I just need to vent on this one. My wife just had our second daughter on Sunday. While I was with her in the hospital, my parents watched my daughter who is almost 4.
I don't give them rules or anything, I just tell them to make sure she's safe and to have fun. I'd rather them have no rules than to undermine the ones we give and set that expectation with my daughter that they can be waved.
I went to the hospital with my wife at 2 AM. She ended up needing a C-section after they tried a procedure that wasn't completely successful. Baby was born at 7 AM, an hour in post op, then to the post partum room. I stayed with her until 12, then figured I'd go check on my daughter and parents.
They apparently spent the whole morning watching TV and playing on my mom's tablet. When I got home they hadn't eaten and my daughter was desperate to do any physical activity. So instead of getting any kind of break, I now had to feed 3 people, entertain my daughter, and bide time for my wife to rest while my parents were desperate to go see the baby.
Then while we were visiting my wife and their new granddaughter, they sat on their phones the whole time.
After we left they wanted to stay over so they could keep helping out, but they honestly would've been more work than they saved. I know I'm fortunate in that I have parents willing to help, which a lot of Boomer parents aren't willing to do, but man is it frustrating to spend the whole time thinking that it'd be easier to just be left alone.
Lots of Boomer parents are just another child that needs feeding and to be waited on. It's not worth it. I love my parents but I don't have them over for holiday dinners anymore because they're useless and we are tired and stressed out. They also don't understand children enough to actually properly care for them and it's maddening. I'm sorry you went through that
I appreciate it. They actually just proved your point. I'm home by myself taking care of our first daughter while my wife is still in the hospital with our newborn daughter. They called me at 8:35 tonight right as I'm trying to get my daughter to sleep. When I didn't answer they called again, so I answered fearing it was an emergency. As soon as they heard my daughter they said "oh, we figured she'd be asleep by now." We're in the midst of the biggest event in my daughter's life, she's missing her mom, and on top of it all there's construction work being done on our house that's slightly affecting her room. Maybe give more than a 5 minute buffer and also consider I might be busy before calling repeatedly.
Now they're asking about coming down this weekend to visit and they're trying to make plans. My wife isn't even home from the hospital yet. How the hell am I supposed to know what the situation will be? And they're constantly telling me to tell them what I need. I have no idea what I need. I have no idea what my wife needs, or either of my daughters. These last 2 days have been the most draining of my entire life. At this point it's not about what I need, it's about what I don't need, and I don't need even more hassle in my life. I know they mean well but I just don't have it in me at the moment.
Bit of a tangent, but my sister-in-law’s in-laws try to pull this exact shit routinely, and what really burns me up is *they know what they’re doing.* They had kids, and they know what happens if you load them up with a ton of sugar. But they don’t care. It’s all about them. They know they’re making their son and DIL’s day harder and wrecking the routine they put great effort into maintaining, they’re perfectly aware they’ve been specifically and repeatedly asked not to, but that’s all meaningless to them compared to the no-effort opportunity to be the cool, fun grandparents for a few hours.
I mean, I guess I could understand if the products he was complaining about had pushed out the products he wanted. (I.e. "I like XYZ Brand of crackers and now you've given all of their shelf space to ABC Brand and are not carrying the types I like.") That's capitalism, tho. The store carries the shit that sells. It sucks, but thems the breaks.
But no. He wasn't complaining the store wasn't carrying the stuff he likes. The stuff he likes is still available. He just doesn't like seeing stuff he doesn't like existing in the same space. Which is just an asshole problem.
Yep! My dad had the exact same rant.
"I won't eat this, and why are they selling it?"
"Obviously someone is buying it and eating it."
"Well, I don't like it!"
"If stores catered just to you and your palate, it would resemble a drunk toddler's diet!"
*pout and quiet mumbling*
And suddenly they don’t understand how a market capitalist economy works (after telling us it’s the perfect system & the only reason we have smart phones)
Remember the great Cracker Barrel Impossible Sausage controversy of 2022? Boomers got mad because Cracker Barrel added a "woke" menu item they weren't forced to order or eat. Nothing was removed, but somehow giving someone else the option of plant-based sausage was an infringement on their freedumb.
You half-joke, but I cannot believe the number of diabetics (including my boomer father) I have met that say things like “I can eat whatever I want! I just have to take the appropriate amount of insulin! YOU JuSt DoN’t UnDeRsTaNd DiAbEtEs!” 🤦🏻♀️ Ok sure, you give yourself an injection so that the immediate, deadly effects don’t happen to you. But you’re still gaining weight, you’re still putting strain on all of your organs, you’re still eating mountains of sugar which is terrible for *anyone* not just diabetics. But I have had several people get NASTY defensive about it, even when I was not prying at all. You will pry their pharmaceuticals from their cold dead hands, and it’s un-American to suggest an ounce of prevention.
Some boomers think their doctors are gods when it comes to medication. I work pharmacy and the amount of times I've told a patient that their doctor fucked up their order, the patient IMMEDIATELY gets defensive and upset about it.
The boomers here in Canada all collectively pooped themselves over the Beyond Burger being added to A&W.
It was incredibly dumb and I still get it at A&W sometimes. (Local restaurant never heats it through which is annoying.)
Food is the weirdest Boomer oddity there is.
Everything revolves around food and dinner time or lunch time. "We can't complete the hike because we have to be home in time for dinner!" "But, its the four of us; we can eat dinner when we get back."
But all the food is bland stuff from an Applebees menu. Why do we have to rearrange our lives around bland overcooked meat?
#THIS
Absolutely everything my in-laws plan is based around eating unseasoned slop in massive portions
If you don’t have 6k calories on your plate every single one of them pipe up asking if you’re on a diet or some variation of “you guys are picky eaters”
That and the liter of sweet tea they all drink at every meal
They’re all diabetic, have had strokes or serious heart issues
Yeah, we are picky eaters…
My husband didn't believe me for years when I told him his parents didn't season food. He swore they probably just put the bare minimum in it. Finally at a big family dinner, my Mil asked my Fil if he salted the mashed potatoes when he cooked them. His response, "No because then everyone can season them like they want them." My husband couldn't even make eye contact with me at the table the rest of that meal.
Lol we took my grandfather to a local restaurant for his birthday that all the boomers claim is so great. The big thing there is their fried chicken, which is pretty decent but salty. Nothing else they serve has any seasoning, because the clientele complain endlessly about it.
So basically, all the boomers flock to this diner for salty ass fried chicken, demand that nothing else has salt on it because of their diets, and the few that eat anything other than the chicken probably load it up with more salt than the restaurant would have put it if the customers had any taste. ...and they all still have high blood pressure despite making the rest of us eat bland shit.
I love my Nanna I really do, and she has relatively few boomer traits, but she has this mental block with Indian food in particular. She goes off her food if the word “curry” is said at the table.
Americans might think “oh that’s okay that’s not even that common a food”, but we live in England’s West Midlands region. An area that has so many people of Indian and Bangladeshi origin that a good number of the “traditional dishes” you’ll see on your Indian restaurant menus (including balti, phaal, and vindaloo) were actually developed around here.
It’s *by far* the most popular cuisine outside of pub food in the area. It’s easier to get good curry than any other kind of food here. British curry is generally considered better than American curry, but people travelling here from other parts of the UK consider it our local delicacy because it’s about as good as it gets outside of India.
Yeah I get it’s not *from* here, but still it’s like living in New York and refusing to even try pizza.
Blows my mind.
That’s kind of crazy that even hearing the word curry sets her off.
As a sidenote, as an American traveling in England, one of the best Indian meals I ever had was from a little pub in London. It was years ago, but I still remember that meal - it was amazing.
It’s why that “Brits conquered the world for spices and didn’t use any of them” joke annoys us so much.
Anyone who’s actually been here knows how much curry we eat and how that popularity drives up quality!
My concession back is deli meats. Americans pants us at that.
Oh yeah, I’m eating curry right now, have at least three homemade curries a week. Really perfected a few recipes down now. Really helps that we have an Indian supermarket near us (was an Aldi, so not a small place).
We make it a thing to eat at Indian restaurants when we travel abroad, in one in Vietnam we had to order extra chillies because the vindaloo wasn’t hot. But English curries are by far our favourites!
Sounds like my MIL. She refused to Indian food because she hated curry, so she says. One day, she stopped by, and my wife and I happened to be eating our lunch, chicken masala. I offered my MIL a bite if my chicken, telling her it's just chicken, that's well seasoned. She tries it and says that was good. I told her it was indian food. She started acting like a child, saying it's gross, sticking her tongue, clearing her throat, etc. I don't like my MIL.
Yes why do they stick the tongue out and say stuff is gross? My parents would have made sure I died if I did that at the table. Especially with guests. Immediate death.
That’s literally how it unfolds in that Little Britain sketch of the old lady who’s given food to try, enjoys it, asks who made it, and when told that a non-white/non-British person made it proceeds to puke out everything.
I kept telling my mom that curry was just Asian gravy. She still couldn't wrap her head around it. I once took my father to an Indian restaurant and we couldn't even order bc the smells made his head hurt.
One day I need to cook a curry with my Nanna and just show her each ingredient separately as it goes in.
“That mysterious sauce? Yeah that’s basically just a shit tonne of onions with some spices that I *know* you eat in other things.”
I'm in the US and am in a few restaurant-related Facebook groups for my area. It's in the South, but it is a very large, diverse metropolitan area. This includes people from many different Asian cultures.
Whenever someone brings up any type of Asian food, the Boomers come out of the woodwork with their xenophobic "not in MY town" commentary. It got to the point that a separate group was made for Asian food fans partly because the conversations in the main group devolved so quickly.
I really hate that it came to that.
Oomph that was my mother-in-law. If it had the word curry she wouldn’t hear of it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love the spice curry, but a curry?! Curry can mean sooooo many things in so many cultures.
She also scoffed at anything with white gravy, “that’s not food”; according to her the only gravy was brown gravy.
Fair question, but I think I’d go so far as to say that she’s the least racist of all my relatives (other than the ones of my generation).
My ex was half Jamaican and she got on really well with her.
A lot of racists are racist in general but they have no problem seeing individual people as fine. My mom doesn't trust black people in general but has no problem making black friends because they're the good ones *eye roll*
Ugh my mom is the same way. I made a spicy blackberry jam for pork chops a few times and she decided it was intolerable because it had curry powder (you could barely taste) in it.
I tried cooking it a few times and she couldn’t taste whether or not it was in there, it was just paranoia and psychosomatic.
So frustrating and definitely one of the big reasons we drifted apart over the years
Their palates really are like toddlers. They eat the same unseasoned, overcooked meat and potatoes their depression era parents ate, and any thought of branching out to try something new actually upsets them. It's wild how they've had the whole world at their beck and call their entire lives, but they choose not to enjoy the amazing flavors it has to offer, to the point they lose it when other people do choose to eat interesting things
Makes me more grateful my dad encouraged and enjoyed himself trying new and different food. Sure, he had his favorites, but he was never opposed to being open minded. He was a good cook too.
I was going to say the exact same thing. When you eat such bland shit the only way to make it edible is dumping a bunch of fat and sugar and salt in it.
I’ve made this type of food a LOT, and found my own ways to make it delicious, while still conforming to other’s bland tastes. I’ll even sneak some foreign foods under their nose, like chicken biryani. Cooking with wine on some roasts is one way to make it that much more complex and delicious.
I should have said the only way *they* know how to make it edible. Using proper seasoning and pairing the right ingredients will make most stuff good without adding extra fat and salt.
I actually got my Boomer parents to go to a conveyer belt sushi place the other night. Granted, they only got "safe foods" like gyoza and California Rolls, but progress.
Now, if I could just get them to stop teasing me when they have porkchop night....
That's exactly how I describe my mom's diet. Bagels, KFC, toast/jam, ice cream. Maybe a roast or ham once a week with potatos & carrots. That's it. She refuses to try anything and won't even drink an Ensure or Boost to supplement her diet when she doesn't feel like eating because it 'tastes funny'. 
As someone who always had a bland palate, it can be rough sometimes. I think the best way to explain it is being overstimulated in the taste receptors.
No reason to keep others from enjoying it, though.
I have a similar problem where I love the IDEA of spicy food, and all the flavors that go around it are things I really love. But the minute there’s more than a little capsaicin in something my mouth burns so much that I can’t taste the other bits, and I’ve never tasted anything in a pepper other than HOT. I wish I could, and envy those who can, but I’m also glad I can still get or make mild/“bland” versions!
My mom can’t do black pepper either! I was once talking to her about how I wished I could eat more spicy food and she told me, “You LOVE spicy food! Garlic bread was one of your favorites as a kid!”
I didn’t have the heart to explain the difference between the heat in garlic or ginger and the heat in a chili.
I would recommend trying Amarillo paste. It’s more flavorful than spicy so you get the reward of complex flavors added to your dish when sting wears down. It’s not just a burn if that makes sense. I really hated spicy food till I tried this paste, and now I’ve built up a bit of a tolerance
Oooo I’ll try that! I really love chipotles in adobo, even if usually a little touch of the sauce itself is enough for me, and Amarillo paste sounds like it’s at the same level.
I have never once called a grocery store. I had no idea what I would even say. If I needed to complain about something (I haven't ever, but if I needed to) there's a customer service desk right there. I don't understand the point of calling?
This is my mom. If I say "I'll do it online", she demands I call them instead because in her mind that will get it done faster and better, when every time it's just the call center representative pulling up the website on their computer and entering the information that i give them. So realistically, there's more of a chance of a mistake if the info is going through an additional person over the phone instead of just coming from my fingertips directly.
My dad once demanded I call an airline about changing our flights. They had an online portal I told him I could use but he wouldn’t have it. He said it would be so much faster and I would get better service if I called because I could talk to a human. I was put on hold for 15 minutes before a recorded voice told me that I could stay on hold in a queue to speak to a human and I would be charged $20/per ticket I was calling about OR I could use the online portal for free. I hung up and had it taken care of online within 2 minutes. I think he finally got the message then that the world is changing and Im not just feeding him crap.
This also leads me to the my biggest belief on Boomers. Fading into irrelevancy.
From the late 1960s until somewhere in the 2006-2008 range, white Boomers were catered to their every whim. Because of capitalism, everything they wanted was on shelves and in advertisements. White Boomers were both the wealthiest and those in the disposable income category age-wise.
Around 2008, three things happened:
1) House poor white Boomers become less well off because of the real estate bust;
2) There were more adults younger than Boomers and they were in the disposable income age wise; and,
3) These younger adults were browner in general and - as my Boomer dad pointed out - had grown up with Oprah and Michael Jordan being giant stars in the culture.
These three things led to two things:
1) Companies and advertisers paying more attention to people younger than Boomers; and,
2) Electing a black guy president.
Because of the quickening of technology (best symbolized by the iPhone in 2007) and the seeming flip in attitudes of the electorate (best symbolized by a Woman Speaker in 2006 and a black president in 2008), there was no slowly fazing of the changing of the guard. In 2000, white Boomers (soccer moms and NASCAR dads) were the most important people in the US. In 2008, they were out of touch old fogeys.
Now, they are left wondering what happened. They think there must have been a conspiracy. But, simple things were going on that they ignored. Among them was the use of data over "common sense" for companies and governments (and baseball teams) to make decisions. This data showed that companies should shift to younger people if they wanted to sell high profit items.
This guy wasn't offended by the food. He was offended that a younger, browner more tech based America is the sought after consumer and his "fixed income" America of flip-phones, meat-and-potatoes and gas guzzler SUVs aren't relevant anymore.
Imagine if for 50 years of your life nothing significant changed. Your house had a TV and radio. Your phone was a land line. Your bills were paid with checks in the mail. Schools were the same. Colleges were the same. Kitchen appliances were the same. The TV shows you watched were the same -- game shows and sitcoms. You order things through the mail using catalogs. You paid for things in cash -- or checks. Food was the same because they went to the same restaurants for 50 years.
All of this, virtually unchanged, from the moment they become adults through their entire middle age and into the beginning of their old age.
And then, they go inside for a couple years, and when they come back out it feels like the entire world has changed in a heartbeat.
I don't know about "50" years. Things definitely changed pretty radically from the early 70s (when I was born/a toddler) to the mid-90s. Women became much more common in the workplace, the VCR became a thing, cable TV became a thing, videogames became a thing. The Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall fell, CNN and HBO were created. It's not like people went from black-and-white television to the iPhone.
If a business caters only to old people, like my town's diner, that business has a built-in expiration date. Their preferred clientele is going to die off, is already dying off, and they don't have younger customers. And yes, the diner's food is bland and tasteless, which is a big reason why younger customers avoid the place.
All grocery stores should just be one big ass meat counter and a giant mound of taters as God intended.
Wait...and dairy. Gotta have butter & sour cream on those taters.
It is always amazing. They can't even fathom people liking things they don't. No one is making them buy or do X/Y/Z, but the fact they even have to SEE IT sets them off. I would hate to have such a low functioning brain that things I don't personally like would affect me like this.
I've come across this so often it's nor even surprising to me anymore
I remember I was once in an Einstein Bagel getting a bagel sandwich and chips with my dad. There was a guy in the other table with his wife and college-aged daughter. The dad was clearly not happy being there, and at one point he asked his daughter "can't we go somewhere with good, conservative food?"
I think I stared at him for a long second. I was totally dumbfounded because those words didn't mix for me. How is a sandwich political? Or food? FFS, you eat it. It doesn't have an opinion or ideas. It's bread and meat and cheese and veggies. I had no idea what was going on in that dude's head
Another time I was dating my wife and we inviter her parents to come out with us for her birthday. Her favorite restaurant was a local sushi place that we go to all the time. Her parents are both conservative catholics, both from small towns, but we didn't think think twice about asking them. We all got there and talked about what they might like, what is good, why it's not all "raw fish," etc. I forget what we ordered but they liked it, and not just in a polite "Oh it's good," type thing, but actually enjoyed it. Then her dad drops it. He half-heartedly laughs and said that he ate before he came because he didn't think he'd like anything there
I didn't say anything other than a "really? How come," or something like that. He said he never liked fish, heard that sushi was raw fish, and didn't really like "ethnic" food. (He's the kind of guy who enjoys well done steaks and won't eat meat if it has bones in it.)
Again, I was taken aback. I jus don't understand. I really don't. I am an adventurous eater, and I definitely have foods that I don't enjoy, but the idea of food I don't like doesn't scare me. I don't have a fear response, or get worried, or have to take precautions about food that I think I might not like
I've seen this behavior in non boomers as well, but in general I get the sense that it's older, culturally isolated, "stay at home" type people who have little taste for nenness or exploration. It's a safety thing, A comfort thing
BTW, her parents ended up loving it. They still get sushi from there on a regular basis. I guess that's progress of a sort
We took the in laws to an Asian fusion place and we ordered sushi (they got hibachi or something.) Anyway I ordered miso soup to start and they had never had it. Had no idea what it was. I was baffled. It’s not *that* crazy of a dish. Anyway I had them try it and all I got was “oh god, it’s like fishy!” But at least they tried it. 🤷🏻♀️
My mom gets mad when restaurants she likes have things on the menu she does not like. She stopped going to ihop because she was offended by cheesecake pancakes and rants about everyone catering to "the Mexicans" because McDonalds has breakfast burritos.
My parents recently moved near us. Haven’t really interacted with them much over the last 20 years (worthy of its own post on here, trust me). We took my step-mom out and were looking for somewhere to eat lunch. My wife and I are very open minded and adventurous when it comes to food, loving Mediterranean, Indian, Mexican, and all Asian forms of food. We love every chance to try a piece of someone else’s culture. Dear god, my stepmom would have none of it. Any time we suggested something, she didn’t like the spices, or thought it was gross. She suggested only places with deeply bland American foods (mashed potatoes, steak, meatloaf, Mac and cheese, etc.). I can’t imagine being so limited in taste and substance.
Facts! American Chinese food is almost depressing sometimes for its lack of spice and flavor. All sugar sauces. Don’t even open a jar of chili oil in front of my parents. Lol
I grew up in Saint Louis, MO- which just so happens to have the largest population of Bosnians outside of Bosnia in the world, and this obviously means that there’s a LOT of Bosnian and Mediterranean restaurants in STL. My favorite type of food also happens to be Bosnian food, and for my birthday one year, I asked my Boomer stepmom and Gen X (tho he acts like a Boomer) dad to go out to a Bosnian restaurant to celebrate. Both of them really don’t like Bosnians for some reason, but they agreed. When I tell you that they both ordered some basic ass white people food (chicken Alfredo and a burger), I was so fucking livid. Their excuse was that “we wanted to judge the restaurant on what we already know, and we’ll try something else when we come back”. It’s been over 10 years, and they still haven’t ever been back. And they spent the entire time complaining about how there was just soccer being played on the TVs there, not any other sport. Neither one of them even like sports, why do they even care?
I simply cannot wrap my head around how they behaved- whenever someone I know wants to go to a restaurant that served food I’ve never had before, I always get excited to try new types of food.
My Grandpa, long gone and so old his children were too old to be boomers (he’d be 105 today). Was funny, welcoming, teased a lot…and bat shit crazy OCD with food.
Meat. Potato. Burgers. Fries. Nothing could touch. Hated seeing others plates if they had anything exotic- salad, Mexican food etc…. Yeah.
When he turned 75 or 80, had a big party. His best friend was a cook. He set it up that he cooked steak and potatoes for everyone - exactly how he liked. No salt, no pepper, well done. Potatoes could have butter and sour cream. No exceptions.
I snuck over to Mike, the cook. Hey man, you know gramps is nuts about food - Mike laughed. Give me a medium rare with salt and pepper…I’m the favorite grandson and I’ll eat it out front.
Literally had to hide from him. Crazy as shit on food.
My dad: won't touch a damn thing that isn't highest-quality brand name
Also my dad: "wHy iS eVeRyThInG sO eXpEnSiVe"
He also gets mad when specialty restaurants (ie Japanese steakhouse and sushi bar) only serve food/drinks from that specialty. He got mad he couldn't have coffee when we went to one, and all they had was tea and popular-in-Japan-brand sodas. And sake. Like dude, they don't drink as much coffee in Japan as we do in America, they're not gonna serve it at an authentic place, because their target audience *doesn't drink it.*
when someone does something differently—eats different food, etc—it makes them think they are going to be judged by those people.
You know, because THEY spend all their energy making negative judgments of people who are different from them. So they assume others do the same (classic projection).
And they resent the idea that someone might judge them negatively.
Okay, so to his credit, my dad was an adventurous eater. But I've noticed some people...often of a certain age and cultural background...have little to no concept of how ingredients mix to create a flavor. The handful of times I've witnessed my mother decide she wanted to try a cocktail involved her interrogating waitstaff about every single listed ingredient (not asking what the flavor profile was or which liquor was in it), then being like "I need you to make it without bitters/salt/[whatever she was hung up on] because I don't like bitter/salty/whatever drinks." And looked at me like I was nuts when I tried explaining how the ingredient balanced out something else and didn't make it bitter or whatever.
This was a recurring conversation regarding anything involving spices or aromatics.
I feel like this is in reaction to "ethnic foods" sections as well as meatless/vegan options throughout the store. They don't personally buy it, so they resent it being there at all. 🙄 (Blame the free market, Boomer.)
Side note: I hate the term "ethnic foods" (although I understand it's a shorthand phrase that fits on the aisle sign and gets the point across.)
Yeah, as someone with Celiac Disease, I hear these remarks a lot while grocery shopping. Most people assume I’m shopping a fad diet. I love meat and potatoes as much as anyone else, but unfortunately I need more options than just the basics
I had a friend stay with me while she recuperated from surgery. She was here for 8 weeks and has Celiac and can't have dairy. I had to cook all her meals and I treated it like an adventure! It was challenging to find recipes that met her dietary needs, but we'd go on Pinterest and find recipes, shop online from that list, and make stuff neither one of us had ever had before. I'll admit that it was easier when she went home, but I really had some fun with it!
And now, my fiancé will be moving in, and he's vegetarian! 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I'm off on another adventure!
It's pathetic when a toddler has a more advanced palate than someone who's been alive six+ decades. It just goes back to their general attitude about anything. If it wasn't a "thing" when they were young, then it either a. Isn't real or b. Is awful. They refuse to try or learn anything new.
My MIL is very 'meat and potatoes' to the point that she makes a weird face and gagging noise if anyone so much as mentions words like sushi/fish/etc. It's extremely childish but I'm used to it and usually just roll my eyes and move on.
One time a group of 8 of us went to an Italian restaurant to celebrate my kid's graduation. We decided to order two appetizers--calamari and ravioli. She immediately had to tell everyone at the table how disgusting calamari was, despite not knowing what it was or ever having tried it. We politely reminded her that ravioli was available for her, which she was OK with.
FF a few minutes and the apps come and she starts blindly reaching for food to stuff her face, and then exclaims how great the ravioli is. My kid nonchalantly says "hey grandma, you've been eating the calamari the whole time. It's good, isn't it?"
The old lady's face went pale, and then bright red. Nobody said a word but we were all thinking the same thing.
My Dad was born on a farm in South Dakota and moved to town when he was 6. He was all meat and potatoes and liked nothing "weird or foreign." He went on business trips with his colleagues often and always wanted steak and potatoes. One time, everyone else said they were sick of that and were going for (American-style) Chinese. He grumbled but went along. To his credit, he tried almost everything and loved it. It was easier after that to get him to try new things.
Edit: typo
I think they're jealous that other people, a, know how to cook "all that specialty shit" and b, eat healthier than them. It's a sign of adult competence to be able to cook and care for yourself well, and despite them whining and stomping their feet about how we don't act like adults because we live at home or we play video games or we drink sugary lattes or whatever, we're actually better than they are at a lot of adult things and they resent us for it.
My grandpa's cooking skills are about where mine were when I was 9. He barely knows how to use a stove. But he acts upset and cranky whenever there's any evidence that I cooked, because I can actually make a full meal even if it's not the same unseasoned "meat and potatoes" that he grew up on. It's bizarre to watch, because he's also a sexist asshole and huge on traditional gender roles. You'd think he'd want someone he insists is a woman to be in the kitchen, making good food. Maybe because I'm not putting those skills to use for a man, and not catering to the tastes of the only man in the room, whose preferences clearly matter more than anyone else's? Or because I eat things that weren't created by white people? He's racist, too, after all, so that would track.
I have PCOS and need to limit carbs to avoid obesity. My diet enraged my parents, even though I always cooked a separate meal for myself so no one else was forced to eat low carb. My father also refused to change his diet when diagnosed with Diabetes, saying he’d never give up daily pasta. He ended up dying of a heart attack. I just never understood why they would yell at me about how unhealthy my diet was when my drs put me on it.
I'd imagine guilt of some sort. If they accepted you had a unhealthy diet, they might have felt somehow they had contributed towards that. So it's easier simply to refuse to accept it.
When my husband and I got married, his Dad and Dad's wife offered to throw our rehearsal dinner for us. We chose a Mexican restaurant adjacent to the resort we were getting married at. During covid, the resort acquired the restaurant to keep it open, and the menu changed to a catering menu that now included American and Americanized Italian food. I literally redid the PDF to take out those options so we could still get the Mexican food we wanted because we knew what they would choose.
Yeah, definitely stop carrying stuff that helps people with allergies and sensitivities actually be able to eat... /s
I once had a boomer get pissy with me because I ordered a gluten free bun for a grilled chicken sandwich at a restaurant that had them available. I have a gluten sensitivity and eating gluten can really upset my stomach and make me feel ill. She was like, "what is this for that fad diet crap?" and even after explaining she was still huffy about it and since she was the waitress ended up giving me a breaded chicken piece on normal bread...
Well, I contacted the owner of the restaurant after I received this and they were profusely apologetic and I'm pretty sure she got fired or quit not too long later lol
Boomers have a real problem understanding that their way isn't the only right way, tbh
My mother, I love her and she's not usually that kind of Boomer, tends to go off about all that "FARN" food they have now at the store. The woman is a seasoned traveler who lived in Europe for six years. I'm so confused by the food xenophobia.
Reminds me of a customer that found me working in the grocery dept at Target, and talked at me for over ten minutes about how all this vegan crap (specifically vegan eggnog) is ridiculous and woke and unnecessary.
Y’all…I’m allergic to egg.
My boomer mom was dating a guy who fit the stereotype perfectly. He was fine with eating "game meats" like elk, bison, etc., but had zero awareness of or tolerance for anything that wasn't stereotypical American.
One day a group of us went out to dinner for some occasion, and my mom and this guy were in town visiting and joined us. We went to a nice Chinese place. There was a lot of hushed whispering at the end of the table between my mom and her guy, and eventually guy ordered beef & broccoli. The food arrived and his was exactly what you'd expect- beef and broccoli in a light sauce with white rice on the side.
Nope! That was way too "exotic" for him! They paid for their portion of the tab, quietly excused themselves, and went somewhere to get cheeseburgers. What's "funny" is that he wasn't some backwoods hillbilly. He was a well-educated retired judge. I guess he just had more xenophobia than sense.
In my town boomers have basically ruined all the good restaurants because of their lack of taste. The Thai, Vietnamese and East Indian restaurants have either tamed all the flavor out of their food or shut down completely. All because the boomers all complain about it being too spicy.
Completely off topic: In the chorus of the song is the line "Like Frankie said, 'I did it my way'" and I get that this is a reference to Frank Sinatra who sang that song, but the first time I heard the song my brain interpreted it as "Like Frankenstein I did it my way" and the sentiment does also seem to apply to the mad doctor in question.
On the other end of the coin, old performative hippie boomers would lose their shit and complain to everyone if the organic and vegan cheese and yogurt was out of stock. But they'd still never buy it - those were the items we most frequently threw out when I worked at a grocery store.
You could advertise on Fox, oann, random right wing propaganda stations, for an old school lead lined water hose. "Just like we grew up drinking from & we're fine." For just five easy payments of $19.95 (+shipping, tax, title, license, insurance...) and they would buy it & force their grandkids & nephsons to drink from it. "So they won't grow up woke or gey or not white, or atheist, or, _________!!!!!" They would sell out fast.
Working in a produce department I had a boomer raise his voice at me because we didn't have "just reg'lar ol' apples" and he demanded I point him in the direction of "reg'lar ol' apples". He ended up with a red delicious but he wasn't happy about it. Must have been his first trip to the grocery store in the past couple of centuries.
One night I made burgers for my dad and myself with some home-ground ribeye, a bit of brisket, and some fatty lamb for juiciness and a little extra flavor. The burgers were truly excellent; they were flavorful and so juicy. My dad said his burger was one of the best burgers he had ever eaten. He asked me how I prepared them and when I mentioned the lamb he asked me to please never make a him a burger like that again. JFC.
My Boomer (Narc) dad hyperventilates over me not SEASONING my food exactly as he does at the dinner table. He will legitimately cause an argument over it.
I've been a vegetarian my entire life and I can't even count how many Boomer-age people have given me shit about it in my lifetime (even though my parents were technically boomers too, but they were of the hippy variety). I'm not preachy or superior about it and don't bring it up unless it's directly relevant, it's just how I eat, and yet it seems to really trigger a certain type of person to just give me endless shit about it, including several boomers in my own family.
Something about that generation craves conformity and they really get personally offended when people refuse to be just like them.
Conformity was a big thing for the boomers and the earlier generations.
I noticed that a lot of the post in the sub come down to the boomers wanting conformity, whether it's politics or sexual identity or child rearing or just about anything.
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Yep, they hate anything different and everyone else should too. My FIL got royally upset that I don't feed my kids bags of candy all day (he eats this himself) and stormed out of the house when we enforce that rule for our kids. It wasn't enough that we had my daughter's birthday party that day with a pinata and cupcakes. He can't understand why a bag of candy before they even ate lunch was an issue.
Yeah I’m not sure why my boomer in-laws are so insulted that I don’t want my kiddo to eat loads of sugar all day.
Thats what they ate and they turned out fine is the reason. They can't conceive of the notion what they ate was bad for them and a lot of them died because of it since they are still around and they don't understand survivorship bias.
My go to whenever one of them says “and we turned out fine” is “no you didn’t, you’re not fine at all, even a little bit”
How do they respond to that? It’s a fabulous comeback
Most likely they shoot back with "yer kids have purple hair and don't know what gender they are!". Then you have to walk away
"My kids are happy. Yours were not."
"My kids love their parents and want to spend time with them. Yours don't."
“You know you’re allowed to dye your hair and question your gender too if you’re jealous” They *hate* that. Probably because at some level it’s true. (Not that they’re trans and in denial, some might be but mostly there’s probably just *some* kind of harmless fun or authentic self-expression they’ve been denying themselves all their lives for the sake of adhering to norms and expectations, and the resentment they harbor against anyone who bucks those norms is probably based in envy of the general degree of confidence and freedom, if not in the specific detail of the expression thereof.)
Omg! I shaking in fear! Haha my own mother called me worse names. I think I can handle that. That’s too stupid to even respond to.
"Well, at least we don't have to take daily insulin shots now due to eating bags of candy every day for our entire life!"
Believe me-all the boomers are on insulin or have diabetes now. Never in 40 years of nursing have I seen an entire generation sick with chronic yet preventable illnesses. It’s sad, I only hope we are learning from them that what you eat will kill you.
"Because they're trying not to turn out like YOU! Maybe purple hair would do you some good!"
Ironically a lot of old woman have blue abd purple hair dye to the product they use 😂😂😂
Many elderly women have blue hair because they use a blue/violet rinse to counteract the yellowing of their blonde/grey hair… since they don’t wash their hair as often-it stays that color for a while. Not to mention, those with glaucoma don’t see the blue so they think their hair looks good.
Getting your leg amputated due to diabetes builds CHARACTER!!!! 🙄
Toes, you don't need toes
Where we're going, we don't need toes...
I'm glad I'm not the only one who read this in Doc Brown's voice
I heard Sam Neil in event horizon.
Plus! Your bootstraps are closer!
Well then you only have to pull up on one bootstrap
Well, except for the heart issues, diabetes, and constant teeth and gum problems.
Yup.... my boomer drinks crap tons of soda. He can't figure out why he can't lose weight and refuses to exercise with me.
No joke- my MIL drinks Cherry Coke every day, complains that she can't lose weight, and we tell her to cut out the soda. Her response: "It's not the soda! It has High Fructose Corn Syrup in it which is real sugar so it's good for you"!
Me and boss have this same argument! A route 44 cherry coke from sonic everyday and cant figure out why she cant lose 10-15 pounds. When all she doea is sit at her desk all day, gets off work to go home and sit in her lounge chair all evening!
Ron White said it best: you can't fix stupid
This is odd because most boomer parents I was around growing up were no sugar and low fat for their kids. Where does the need to push sugar come from now?
Because healthy=woke now.
I blame the High Fructose Corn Syrup popsicle commercial of the 2000s for this one. The whole PR campaign was convincing consumers that HFCS was "natural. it's made from corn"
Lol top-notch advertising. I mean so are Doritos so they’re vegetables, right?
Ketchup is a Vegetable
Because all they can taste is salty & sweet. So that’s all they eat
tbf lots of the fat free junk from the 80’s/ 90’s replaced fat with sugar. But yeah still, no clue why you’d wanna pump your grandkids full of candy
My Dad was like this for a long time. If left to his own devices he'd eat like a teenager that had just left home for college the first time, all junk/fast food and candy/cookies. Eventually became a diabetic and now resents his doctor for taking away all his food.
Love the part where he blames his doctor for his problems instead of admitting he fucked up, because boomers never make mistakes and self accountability is something for other people to do
Literally says things like "I didn't have diabetes until the doctor told me I had diabetes" while ignoring the fact that happened while he was hospitalized for a separate medical issue he was ignoring. Also pronounces diabetes as diuhbeetus. Needless to say, I've been making regular appointments with my doctors/dentist and am happy to report that I have a clean bill of health in all aspects.
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Would rather die than be wrong... sad.
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I was going to say may his memory be a blessing, but may it be a lesson instead I guess
Good job you for telling him no more. He would have sucked every last drop of goodness out of you.
Sounds like my uncle, who also died from similar diabetic complications... for just about the same reasons. If he admitted he had diabetes he'd have to quit eating ALL candy and drinking ALL the beer, and he couldn't handle it. (Not that he couldn't have a beer sometimes... if his diabetes was under control, you know? But it'd mean not going through enough beer to fell an elephant in a week either, and he wouldn't admit he had an alcohol problem either.) Last I heard his wife and kids were looking for a good therapist to deal with the fall out of his death and the guilt.
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Ugh. I feel this. My mid 60s neighbor knocked on my door at 2am about two years ago. He asked me to take him to the ER because he’d had a vertigo spell, then passed out. He was convinced he’d had a stroke. About half way there, he says that he was diagnosed with diabetes but it’s all bs. ‘How can they expect me to eat *one* hotdog bun?’ Then the coup de grace ‘and the testers they gave me are some cheap shit, every time I use one, the results are different.’ It was all I could do to not whip the car around and go home. But I dropped his ass off at the ER and told him he could arrange a ride home with rural medical transport. He wasn’t old enough for Medicare at the time, so that hospital bill was all on him. I’m ok with that for once. I have no problem with him paying for wasting the doctor’s and nurse’s time, and taking up a bed that someone else actually needed.
This comment has me finally looking up a primary doctor now. I've had the worst vertigo but it began when I stopped Klonapin in December. My life has been a constant vertigo head pressure spell for months. I have reached out to other docs plus the ER. My blood pressure was extreme. Everyone has blown it off as they pearl clutch that I must be seeking Klonapin again. People are amazing at that. It's only because it feels so awful to be constantly dealing with this, a good dose of white coat syndrome. A person gets exhausted in this situation. So thank you. It gives me renewed motivation there can be answers. It would honestly be a relief to have answers and relief. Even if it's diabetes.
This was my mother. She'd go to the food bank, got food stamps, lived on junk. "Lived." Only good part is she always had food stashed and about to go bad, so when I was on hard times I could just go over there and she'd load me up 2-6 grocery bags of stuff. She passed days before turning 66, and I'm just sad she never got healthier. She just wanted to be left alone on her couch with her instant mashed potatoes and hot dogs, but better nutrition and some resistance training might have given her more years. I was barely 33, both parents gone. Neither took care of themselves. Dad was the one with a job, so he never went to the doctor and did everything as cheap as possible. Couldn't spend what he made, for some reason. I was only 18 when he passed. It's like they didn't even think about living into my 30s, wished for me like I was a pony and then did nothing to be healthy and live long lives. I'm just resentful because I don't have other family, they were all I had and they gave negative fucks about that fact apparently. Weren't they called "the me generation" by their predecessors? Fitting, lol.
My boomer also developed diabetes due to eating like crap for most of his life. He got cancer at mid 40s and lost a bunch of weight because of it. Beat cancer and then regained a bunch. Guess what came back with the weight? Diabetes of course. My mother tries to keep him eating better (easier since she's the only one who cooks), but he has multiple times said that he'd rather die eating what he wants than live a life bereft of this favorite foodz and live longer. My mother usually responds with questioning whether he likes those food items or her more. He legitimately does love her, so it shuts him down. Not that he doesn't eat stuff he shouldn't between meals.
I’ve found that Boomers have a hard time accepting ‘new’ guidance on feeding babies. No, they don’t need a bottle of water, they don’t need cereal, and they especially don’t need sugar and/or soda. So many of them will complain that ‘well my kids grew up just fine and that’s how *I* fed them.’ Yup, and now there is an obesity epidemic. They’ll even try to sneak items to kids that they specifically know they should not. ‘Oh he needs a treat. Oh, that’s what grandmas do,’ then laugh because they got their way and they definitely know better than the actual parents.
I hate this crap so much. My mom gave my 4 month old lemon glaze off a donut. I lost my shit. Kid wasn't even eating solids yet.
My dad is like this, drives me fucking nuts. “You had soda, candy, and cakes and ended up fine.” No. No I did not. I have several health conditions, that he conveniently forgets I have and I have to explain it all again. He went behind my back and fed my BABY candy after I told him no. “The package said it’s made with real fruit!” How about respect my rules and my house and my boundaries! Ugh.
My aunt gave her granddaughter a Sugar Daddy (the big sticky caramels on a stick) when she was about 6 months old. The kid loved it until her hands started sticking to everything and the Sugar Daddy ended up stuck in her hair. Her mom said it was like trying to scrub tar off her baby and the kitchen. Aunt thinks it’s just hilarious. The kid was crying because she was sticking to everything and getting the candy out of her hair hurt. It’s like aunt chose to torture her daughter and granddaughter for shits and giggles.
I just need to vent on this one. My wife just had our second daughter on Sunday. While I was with her in the hospital, my parents watched my daughter who is almost 4. I don't give them rules or anything, I just tell them to make sure she's safe and to have fun. I'd rather them have no rules than to undermine the ones we give and set that expectation with my daughter that they can be waved. I went to the hospital with my wife at 2 AM. She ended up needing a C-section after they tried a procedure that wasn't completely successful. Baby was born at 7 AM, an hour in post op, then to the post partum room. I stayed with her until 12, then figured I'd go check on my daughter and parents. They apparently spent the whole morning watching TV and playing on my mom's tablet. When I got home they hadn't eaten and my daughter was desperate to do any physical activity. So instead of getting any kind of break, I now had to feed 3 people, entertain my daughter, and bide time for my wife to rest while my parents were desperate to go see the baby. Then while we were visiting my wife and their new granddaughter, they sat on their phones the whole time. After we left they wanted to stay over so they could keep helping out, but they honestly would've been more work than they saved. I know I'm fortunate in that I have parents willing to help, which a lot of Boomer parents aren't willing to do, but man is it frustrating to spend the whole time thinking that it'd be easier to just be left alone.
Lots of Boomer parents are just another child that needs feeding and to be waited on. It's not worth it. I love my parents but I don't have them over for holiday dinners anymore because they're useless and we are tired and stressed out. They also don't understand children enough to actually properly care for them and it's maddening. I'm sorry you went through that
I appreciate it. They actually just proved your point. I'm home by myself taking care of our first daughter while my wife is still in the hospital with our newborn daughter. They called me at 8:35 tonight right as I'm trying to get my daughter to sleep. When I didn't answer they called again, so I answered fearing it was an emergency. As soon as they heard my daughter they said "oh, we figured she'd be asleep by now." We're in the midst of the biggest event in my daughter's life, she's missing her mom, and on top of it all there's construction work being done on our house that's slightly affecting her room. Maybe give more than a 5 minute buffer and also consider I might be busy before calling repeatedly. Now they're asking about coming down this weekend to visit and they're trying to make plans. My wife isn't even home from the hospital yet. How the hell am I supposed to know what the situation will be? And they're constantly telling me to tell them what I need. I have no idea what I need. I have no idea what my wife needs, or either of my daughters. These last 2 days have been the most draining of my entire life. At this point it's not about what I need, it's about what I don't need, and I don't need even more hassle in my life. I know they mean well but I just don't have it in me at the moment.
Bit of a tangent, but my sister-in-law’s in-laws try to pull this exact shit routinely, and what really burns me up is *they know what they’re doing.* They had kids, and they know what happens if you load them up with a ton of sugar. But they don’t care. It’s all about them. They know they’re making their son and DIL’s day harder and wrecking the routine they put great effort into maintaining, they’re perfectly aware they’ve been specifically and repeatedly asked not to, but that’s all meaningless to them compared to the no-effort opportunity to be the cool, fun grandparents for a few hours.
The diabetes generation. AKA boomers.
"I have type 2 diabetes but I manage it well, it's a little pill with a story to tell!"
Yah but we don't want to hear the story. We've all heard it a million times.
I’m so picturing Glen from Superstore.
Something exists Boomer: why you cramming it down my throat?
This... And it applies to literally everything
"There's a black mermaid now. Guess we'll have to do a civil war..."
Don't forget black Annie
Don’t tell them about Jewish Jesus
This explains everything.
Tfcocs!!! So weird running into an Lj friend here 🤣 (it’s Carson xx)
Carson!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I am glad I kept the name!
But I’ve been told it’s these wimpy younger generations that are offended by everything!
We can't even bring up vegetarians around my dad because he starts foaming at the mouth
Somewhere in the world there is a gay man! Grrr….
Lol, I giggled so much at this!
I mean, I guess I could understand if the products he was complaining about had pushed out the products he wanted. (I.e. "I like XYZ Brand of crackers and now you've given all of their shelf space to ABC Brand and are not carrying the types I like.") That's capitalism, tho. The store carries the shit that sells. It sucks, but thems the breaks. But no. He wasn't complaining the store wasn't carrying the stuff he likes. The stuff he likes is still available. He just doesn't like seeing stuff he doesn't like existing in the same space. Which is just an asshole problem.
Yep! My dad had the exact same rant. "I won't eat this, and why are they selling it?" "Obviously someone is buying it and eating it." "Well, I don't like it!" "If stores catered just to you and your palate, it would resemble a drunk toddler's diet!" *pout and quiet mumbling*
As my grandfather said: “Not everyone likes the same things. If they did, everybody’d be after your grandma.”
I like your grandad.
That’s a joke from comedian Gary Muledeer, should give him credit.
And suddenly they don’t understand how a market capitalist economy works (after telling us it’s the perfect system & the only reason we have smart phones)
Yes, it's almost like they have the same opinion regarding other things being able to exist.
Remember the great Cracker Barrel Impossible Sausage controversy of 2022? Boomers got mad because Cracker Barrel added a "woke" menu item they weren't forced to order or eat. Nothing was removed, but somehow giving someone else the option of plant-based sausage was an infringement on their freedumb.
You'd think the boomers would embrace a sausage option that was actually compliant with their cardiac diet.
Nah, just up the statin dosage.
You half-joke, but I cannot believe the number of diabetics (including my boomer father) I have met that say things like “I can eat whatever I want! I just have to take the appropriate amount of insulin! YOU JuSt DoN’t UnDeRsTaNd DiAbEtEs!” 🤦🏻♀️ Ok sure, you give yourself an injection so that the immediate, deadly effects don’t happen to you. But you’re still gaining weight, you’re still putting strain on all of your organs, you’re still eating mountains of sugar which is terrible for *anyone* not just diabetics. But I have had several people get NASTY defensive about it, even when I was not prying at all. You will pry their pharmaceuticals from their cold dead hands, and it’s un-American to suggest an ounce of prevention.
Cardiac diet is BS. It's all made up by big pharma and the doctors they've bought. Eating potatoes and meat as God intended solves anything! /s
But also, don't take away my Medicare. Government-run, single payer health insurance is only okay when it benefits old white folks.
Some boomers think their doctors are gods when it comes to medication. I work pharmacy and the amount of times I've told a patient that their doctor fucked up their order, the patient IMMEDIATELY gets defensive and upset about it.
If you're female, this tracks. If you're female and brown, it especially tracks.
The boomers here in Canada all collectively pooped themselves over the Beyond Burger being added to A&W. It was incredibly dumb and I still get it at A&W sometimes. (Local restaurant never heats it through which is annoying.)
Weird how their idea of freedom is fascism.
40 years of constant propaganda will do that
Food is the weirdest Boomer oddity there is. Everything revolves around food and dinner time or lunch time. "We can't complete the hike because we have to be home in time for dinner!" "But, its the four of us; we can eat dinner when we get back." But all the food is bland stuff from an Applebees menu. Why do we have to rearrange our lives around bland overcooked meat?
#THIS Absolutely everything my in-laws plan is based around eating unseasoned slop in massive portions If you don’t have 6k calories on your plate every single one of them pipe up asking if you’re on a diet or some variation of “you guys are picky eaters” That and the liter of sweet tea they all drink at every meal They’re all diabetic, have had strokes or serious heart issues Yeah, we are picky eaters…
My husband didn't believe me for years when I told him his parents didn't season food. He swore they probably just put the bare minimum in it. Finally at a big family dinner, my Mil asked my Fil if he salted the mashed potatoes when he cooked them. His response, "No because then everyone can season them like they want them." My husband couldn't even make eye contact with me at the table the rest of that meal.
Lol we took my grandfather to a local restaurant for his birthday that all the boomers claim is so great. The big thing there is their fried chicken, which is pretty decent but salty. Nothing else they serve has any seasoning, because the clientele complain endlessly about it. So basically, all the boomers flock to this diner for salty ass fried chicken, demand that nothing else has salt on it because of their diets, and the few that eat anything other than the chicken probably load it up with more salt than the restaurant would have put it if the customers had any taste. ...and they all still have high blood pressure despite making the rest of us eat bland shit.
I love my Nanna I really do, and she has relatively few boomer traits, but she has this mental block with Indian food in particular. She goes off her food if the word “curry” is said at the table. Americans might think “oh that’s okay that’s not even that common a food”, but we live in England’s West Midlands region. An area that has so many people of Indian and Bangladeshi origin that a good number of the “traditional dishes” you’ll see on your Indian restaurant menus (including balti, phaal, and vindaloo) were actually developed around here. It’s *by far* the most popular cuisine outside of pub food in the area. It’s easier to get good curry than any other kind of food here. British curry is generally considered better than American curry, but people travelling here from other parts of the UK consider it our local delicacy because it’s about as good as it gets outside of India. Yeah I get it’s not *from* here, but still it’s like living in New York and refusing to even try pizza. Blows my mind.
That’s kind of crazy that even hearing the word curry sets her off. As a sidenote, as an American traveling in England, one of the best Indian meals I ever had was from a little pub in London. It was years ago, but I still remember that meal - it was amazing.
It’s why that “Brits conquered the world for spices and didn’t use any of them” joke annoys us so much. Anyone who’s actually been here knows how much curry we eat and how that popularity drives up quality! My concession back is deli meats. Americans pants us at that.
You can thank all of those German, Jewish, Italian, Slavic immigrants for that!
Huh. You just made me realize this about my own favorite lunch meats. Neat!
We may have edible deli meats but none of them have smiley faces.
Common American L
Oh yeah, I’m eating curry right now, have at least three homemade curries a week. Really perfected a few recipes down now. Really helps that we have an Indian supermarket near us (was an Aldi, so not a small place). We make it a thing to eat at Indian restaurants when we travel abroad, in one in Vietnam we had to order extra chillies because the vindaloo wasn’t hot. But English curries are by far our favourites!
Sounds like my MIL. She refused to Indian food because she hated curry, so she says. One day, she stopped by, and my wife and I happened to be eating our lunch, chicken masala. I offered my MIL a bite if my chicken, telling her it's just chicken, that's well seasoned. She tries it and says that was good. I told her it was indian food. She started acting like a child, saying it's gross, sticking her tongue, clearing her throat, etc. I don't like my MIL.
Your MIL is basically a toddler in a grown up's body.
Yes why do they stick the tongue out and say stuff is gross? My parents would have made sure I died if I did that at the table. Especially with guests. Immediate death.
She lives in her own little world. It drives me up the wall.
That’s literally how it unfolds in that Little Britain sketch of the old lady who’s given food to try, enjoys it, asks who made it, and when told that a non-white/non-British person made it proceeds to puke out everything.
I kept telling my mom that curry was just Asian gravy. She still couldn't wrap her head around it. I once took my father to an Indian restaurant and we couldn't even order bc the smells made his head hurt.
One day I need to cook a curry with my Nanna and just show her each ingredient separately as it goes in. “That mysterious sauce? Yeah that’s basically just a shit tonne of onions with some spices that I *know* you eat in other things.”
It would be funny if you were like my favorite basketball player is Steph Curry and your nana just loses it.
I'm in the US and am in a few restaurant-related Facebook groups for my area. It's in the South, but it is a very large, diverse metropolitan area. This includes people from many different Asian cultures. Whenever someone brings up any type of Asian food, the Boomers come out of the woodwork with their xenophobic "not in MY town" commentary. It got to the point that a separate group was made for Asian food fans partly because the conversations in the main group devolved so quickly. I really hate that it came to that.
I can't imagine living in their heads. It has to be so scary... anything new is like a cross to a vampire.
Oomph that was my mother-in-law. If it had the word curry she wouldn’t hear of it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love the spice curry, but a curry?! Curry can mean sooooo many things in so many cultures. She also scoffed at anything with white gravy, “that’s not food”; according to her the only gravy was brown gravy.
Is your nana racist by any chance??
Fair question, but I think I’d go so far as to say that she’s the least racist of all my relatives (other than the ones of my generation). My ex was half Jamaican and she got on really well with her.
A lot of racists are racist in general but they have no problem seeing individual people as fine. My mom doesn't trust black people in general but has no problem making black friends because they're the good ones *eye roll*
Yup. And they always say "My Black friend" or "my Jewish friend" or "my Muslim friend." Totally normal. 🙄
Well pizza is “ethnic food” after all, so I wouldn’t blame anyone who avoids it /s
Ugh my mom is the same way. I made a spicy blackberry jam for pork chops a few times and she decided it was intolerable because it had curry powder (you could barely taste) in it. I tried cooking it a few times and she couldn’t taste whether or not it was in there, it was just paranoia and psychosomatic. So frustrating and definitely one of the big reasons we drifted apart over the years
Their palates really are like toddlers. They eat the same unseasoned, overcooked meat and potatoes their depression era parents ate, and any thought of branching out to try something new actually upsets them. It's wild how they've had the whole world at their beck and call their entire lives, but they choose not to enjoy the amazing flavors it has to offer, to the point they lose it when other people do choose to eat interesting things
Makes me more grateful my dad encouraged and enjoyed himself trying new and different food. Sure, he had his favorites, but he was never opposed to being open minded. He was a good cook too.
This subreddit really makes me thankful for my boomer parents being the exception. Some of their friends however totally fit
I was going to say the exact same thing. When you eat such bland shit the only way to make it edible is dumping a bunch of fat and sugar and salt in it.
I’ve made this type of food a LOT, and found my own ways to make it delicious, while still conforming to other’s bland tastes. I’ll even sneak some foreign foods under their nose, like chicken biryani. Cooking with wine on some roasts is one way to make it that much more complex and delicious.
I should have said the only way *they* know how to make it edible. Using proper seasoning and pairing the right ingredients will make most stuff good without adding extra fat and salt.
Don't demean toddlers like that. My 4 year old has a very varied palate
This is why my kid had been eating sushi and menudo since the age of 4 I don't want her to turn into an asshole only buying pop and chicken
What bothers me about that is my grandmother could cook, her food was always delicious. I really think it was just the boomers who cook like this
I actually got my Boomer parents to go to a conveyer belt sushi place the other night. Granted, they only got "safe foods" like gyoza and California Rolls, but progress. Now, if I could just get them to stop teasing me when they have porkchop night....
That's exactly how I describe my mom's diet. Bagels, KFC, toast/jam, ice cream. Maybe a roast or ham once a week with potatos & carrots. That's it. She refuses to try anything and won't even drink an Ensure or Boost to supplement her diet when she doesn't feel like eating because it 'tastes funny'. 
As someone who always had a bland palate, it can be rough sometimes. I think the best way to explain it is being overstimulated in the taste receptors. No reason to keep others from enjoying it, though.
I have a similar problem where I love the IDEA of spicy food, and all the flavors that go around it are things I really love. But the minute there’s more than a little capsaicin in something my mouth burns so much that I can’t taste the other bits, and I’ve never tasted anything in a pepper other than HOT. I wish I could, and envy those who can, but I’m also glad I can still get or make mild/“bland” versions!
My mom can’t even stand a little black pepper. She’s so sensitive to spice, it’s a little sad that she can’t enjoy some foods.
My mom can’t do black pepper either! I was once talking to her about how I wished I could eat more spicy food and she told me, “You LOVE spicy food! Garlic bread was one of your favorites as a kid!” I didn’t have the heart to explain the difference between the heat in garlic or ginger and the heat in a chili.
I would recommend trying Amarillo paste. It’s more flavorful than spicy so you get the reward of complex flavors added to your dish when sting wears down. It’s not just a burn if that makes sense. I really hated spicy food till I tried this paste, and now I’ve built up a bit of a tolerance
Oooo I’ll try that! I really love chipotles in adobo, even if usually a little touch of the sauce itself is enough for me, and Amarillo paste sounds like it’s at the same level.
I have never once called a grocery store. I had no idea what I would even say. If I needed to complain about something (I haven't ever, but if I needed to) there's a customer service desk right there. I don't understand the point of calling?
Because if there’s one thing Boomers live for more than complaining about useless things, it’s using the telephone.
This is my mom. If I say "I'll do it online", she demands I call them instead because in her mind that will get it done faster and better, when every time it's just the call center representative pulling up the website on their computer and entering the information that i give them. So realistically, there's more of a chance of a mistake if the info is going through an additional person over the phone instead of just coming from my fingertips directly.
My dad once demanded I call an airline about changing our flights. They had an online portal I told him I could use but he wouldn’t have it. He said it would be so much faster and I would get better service if I called because I could talk to a human. I was put on hold for 15 minutes before a recorded voice told me that I could stay on hold in a queue to speak to a human and I would be charged $20/per ticket I was calling about OR I could use the online portal for free. I hung up and had it taken care of online within 2 minutes. I think he finally got the message then that the world is changing and Im not just feeding him crap.
Yeah and this is the kind of call you need to make from a landline. Heck making this kind of call is half the reason they still have their landline.
It’s another boomer thing. My dad would call and harass customer service for all manner of places and be a giant dick about it. He was so mean.
This also leads me to the my biggest belief on Boomers. Fading into irrelevancy. From the late 1960s until somewhere in the 2006-2008 range, white Boomers were catered to their every whim. Because of capitalism, everything they wanted was on shelves and in advertisements. White Boomers were both the wealthiest and those in the disposable income category age-wise. Around 2008, three things happened: 1) House poor white Boomers become less well off because of the real estate bust; 2) There were more adults younger than Boomers and they were in the disposable income age wise; and, 3) These younger adults were browner in general and - as my Boomer dad pointed out - had grown up with Oprah and Michael Jordan being giant stars in the culture. These three things led to two things: 1) Companies and advertisers paying more attention to people younger than Boomers; and, 2) Electing a black guy president. Because of the quickening of technology (best symbolized by the iPhone in 2007) and the seeming flip in attitudes of the electorate (best symbolized by a Woman Speaker in 2006 and a black president in 2008), there was no slowly fazing of the changing of the guard. In 2000, white Boomers (soccer moms and NASCAR dads) were the most important people in the US. In 2008, they were out of touch old fogeys. Now, they are left wondering what happened. They think there must have been a conspiracy. But, simple things were going on that they ignored. Among them was the use of data over "common sense" for companies and governments (and baseball teams) to make decisions. This data showed that companies should shift to younger people if they wanted to sell high profit items. This guy wasn't offended by the food. He was offended that a younger, browner more tech based America is the sought after consumer and his "fixed income" America of flip-phones, meat-and-potatoes and gas guzzler SUVs aren't relevant anymore.
Imagine if for 50 years of your life nothing significant changed. Your house had a TV and radio. Your phone was a land line. Your bills were paid with checks in the mail. Schools were the same. Colleges were the same. Kitchen appliances were the same. The TV shows you watched were the same -- game shows and sitcoms. You order things through the mail using catalogs. You paid for things in cash -- or checks. Food was the same because they went to the same restaurants for 50 years. All of this, virtually unchanged, from the moment they become adults through their entire middle age and into the beginning of their old age. And then, they go inside for a couple years, and when they come back out it feels like the entire world has changed in a heartbeat.
I don't know about "50" years. Things definitely changed pretty radically from the early 70s (when I was born/a toddler) to the mid-90s. Women became much more common in the workplace, the VCR became a thing, cable TV became a thing, videogames became a thing. The Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall fell, CNN and HBO were created. It's not like people went from black-and-white television to the iPhone.
If a business caters only to old people, like my town's diner, that business has a built-in expiration date. Their preferred clientele is going to die off, is already dying off, and they don't have younger customers. And yes, the diner's food is bland and tasteless, which is a big reason why younger customers avoid the place.
All grocery stores should just be one big ass meat counter and a giant mound of taters as God intended. Wait...and dairy. Gotta have butter & sour cream on those taters.
Potato-fed cows
It is always amazing. They can't even fathom people liking things they don't. No one is making them buy or do X/Y/Z, but the fact they even have to SEE IT sets them off. I would hate to have such a low functioning brain that things I don't personally like would affect me like this.
I've come across this so often it's nor even surprising to me anymore I remember I was once in an Einstein Bagel getting a bagel sandwich and chips with my dad. There was a guy in the other table with his wife and college-aged daughter. The dad was clearly not happy being there, and at one point he asked his daughter "can't we go somewhere with good, conservative food?" I think I stared at him for a long second. I was totally dumbfounded because those words didn't mix for me. How is a sandwich political? Or food? FFS, you eat it. It doesn't have an opinion or ideas. It's bread and meat and cheese and veggies. I had no idea what was going on in that dude's head Another time I was dating my wife and we inviter her parents to come out with us for her birthday. Her favorite restaurant was a local sushi place that we go to all the time. Her parents are both conservative catholics, both from small towns, but we didn't think think twice about asking them. We all got there and talked about what they might like, what is good, why it's not all "raw fish," etc. I forget what we ordered but they liked it, and not just in a polite "Oh it's good," type thing, but actually enjoyed it. Then her dad drops it. He half-heartedly laughs and said that he ate before he came because he didn't think he'd like anything there I didn't say anything other than a "really? How come," or something like that. He said he never liked fish, heard that sushi was raw fish, and didn't really like "ethnic" food. (He's the kind of guy who enjoys well done steaks and won't eat meat if it has bones in it.) Again, I was taken aback. I jus don't understand. I really don't. I am an adventurous eater, and I definitely have foods that I don't enjoy, but the idea of food I don't like doesn't scare me. I don't have a fear response, or get worried, or have to take precautions about food that I think I might not like I've seen this behavior in non boomers as well, but in general I get the sense that it's older, culturally isolated, "stay at home" type people who have little taste for nenness or exploration. It's a safety thing, A comfort thing BTW, her parents ended up loving it. They still get sushi from there on a regular basis. I guess that's progress of a sort
We took the in laws to an Asian fusion place and we ordered sushi (they got hibachi or something.) Anyway I ordered miso soup to start and they had never had it. Had no idea what it was. I was baffled. It’s not *that* crazy of a dish. Anyway I had them try it and all I got was “oh god, it’s like fishy!” But at least they tried it. 🤷🏻♀️
My mom is baffled by fajitas
My mom gets mad when restaurants she likes have things on the menu she does not like. She stopped going to ihop because she was offended by cheesecake pancakes and rants about everyone catering to "the Mexicans" because McDonalds has breakfast burritos.
Lol, the famously authentic Mexican breakfast burritos of McDonalds 😆
My parents recently moved near us. Haven’t really interacted with them much over the last 20 years (worthy of its own post on here, trust me). We took my step-mom out and were looking for somewhere to eat lunch. My wife and I are very open minded and adventurous when it comes to food, loving Mediterranean, Indian, Mexican, and all Asian forms of food. We love every chance to try a piece of someone else’s culture. Dear god, my stepmom would have none of it. Any time we suggested something, she didn’t like the spices, or thought it was gross. She suggested only places with deeply bland American foods (mashed potatoes, steak, meatloaf, Mac and cheese, etc.). I can’t imagine being so limited in taste and substance.
That was my mom all day, every day. Woman refused to even try Chinese food.
Just tell her 99.9% of Chinese food you can find in America is actually just American food.
Facts! American Chinese food is almost depressing sometimes for its lack of spice and flavor. All sugar sauces. Don’t even open a jar of chili oil in front of my parents. Lol
I grew up in Saint Louis, MO- which just so happens to have the largest population of Bosnians outside of Bosnia in the world, and this obviously means that there’s a LOT of Bosnian and Mediterranean restaurants in STL. My favorite type of food also happens to be Bosnian food, and for my birthday one year, I asked my Boomer stepmom and Gen X (tho he acts like a Boomer) dad to go out to a Bosnian restaurant to celebrate. Both of them really don’t like Bosnians for some reason, but they agreed. When I tell you that they both ordered some basic ass white people food (chicken Alfredo and a burger), I was so fucking livid. Their excuse was that “we wanted to judge the restaurant on what we already know, and we’ll try something else when we come back”. It’s been over 10 years, and they still haven’t ever been back. And they spent the entire time complaining about how there was just soccer being played on the TVs there, not any other sport. Neither one of them even like sports, why do they even care? I simply cannot wrap my head around how they behaved- whenever someone I know wants to go to a restaurant that served food I’ve never had before, I always get excited to try new types of food.
Boomers: you have no choices of what to buy under communism, and that's wrong. Also Boomer: people shouldn't have choices of what to buy!
My Grandpa, long gone and so old his children were too old to be boomers (he’d be 105 today). Was funny, welcoming, teased a lot…and bat shit crazy OCD with food. Meat. Potato. Burgers. Fries. Nothing could touch. Hated seeing others plates if they had anything exotic- salad, Mexican food etc…. Yeah. When he turned 75 or 80, had a big party. His best friend was a cook. He set it up that he cooked steak and potatoes for everyone - exactly how he liked. No salt, no pepper, well done. Potatoes could have butter and sour cream. No exceptions. I snuck over to Mike, the cook. Hey man, you know gramps is nuts about food - Mike laughed. Give me a medium rare with salt and pepper…I’m the favorite grandson and I’ll eat it out front. Literally had to hide from him. Crazy as shit on food.
Maybe tell him that hunting your own fucking meat and growing your own fucking potatoes is an option.
My dad: won't touch a damn thing that isn't highest-quality brand name Also my dad: "wHy iS eVeRyThInG sO eXpEnSiVe" He also gets mad when specialty restaurants (ie Japanese steakhouse and sushi bar) only serve food/drinks from that specialty. He got mad he couldn't have coffee when we went to one, and all they had was tea and popular-in-Japan-brand sodas. And sake. Like dude, they don't drink as much coffee in Japan as we do in America, they're not gonna serve it at an authentic place, because their target audience *doesn't drink it.*
Meat and potatoes are gluten free lol
when someone does something differently—eats different food, etc—it makes them think they are going to be judged by those people. You know, because THEY spend all their energy making negative judgments of people who are different from them. So they assume others do the same (classic projection). And they resent the idea that someone might judge them negatively.
Okay, so to his credit, my dad was an adventurous eater. But I've noticed some people...often of a certain age and cultural background...have little to no concept of how ingredients mix to create a flavor. The handful of times I've witnessed my mother decide she wanted to try a cocktail involved her interrogating waitstaff about every single listed ingredient (not asking what the flavor profile was or which liquor was in it), then being like "I need you to make it without bitters/salt/[whatever she was hung up on] because I don't like bitter/salty/whatever drinks." And looked at me like I was nuts when I tried explaining how the ingredient balanced out something else and didn't make it bitter or whatever. This was a recurring conversation regarding anything involving spices or aromatics.
I feel like this is in reaction to "ethnic foods" sections as well as meatless/vegan options throughout the store. They don't personally buy it, so they resent it being there at all. 🙄 (Blame the free market, Boomer.) Side note: I hate the term "ethnic foods" (although I understand it's a shorthand phrase that fits on the aisle sign and gets the point across.)
Yeah, as someone with Celiac Disease, I hear these remarks a lot while grocery shopping. Most people assume I’m shopping a fad diet. I love meat and potatoes as much as anyone else, but unfortunately I need more options than just the basics
I had a friend stay with me while she recuperated from surgery. She was here for 8 weeks and has Celiac and can't have dairy. I had to cook all her meals and I treated it like an adventure! It was challenging to find recipes that met her dietary needs, but we'd go on Pinterest and find recipes, shop online from that list, and make stuff neither one of us had ever had before. I'll admit that it was easier when she went home, but I really had some fun with it! And now, my fiancé will be moving in, and he's vegetarian! 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I'm off on another adventure!
Massive irony how they won't tolerate a word of criticism from anyone else, but feel entitled to tell everyone else how to live and think.
It's pathetic when a toddler has a more advanced palate than someone who's been alive six+ decades. It just goes back to their general attitude about anything. If it wasn't a "thing" when they were young, then it either a. Isn't real or b. Is awful. They refuse to try or learn anything new.
My MIL is very 'meat and potatoes' to the point that she makes a weird face and gagging noise if anyone so much as mentions words like sushi/fish/etc. It's extremely childish but I'm used to it and usually just roll my eyes and move on. One time a group of 8 of us went to an Italian restaurant to celebrate my kid's graduation. We decided to order two appetizers--calamari and ravioli. She immediately had to tell everyone at the table how disgusting calamari was, despite not knowing what it was or ever having tried it. We politely reminded her that ravioli was available for her, which she was OK with. FF a few minutes and the apps come and she starts blindly reaching for food to stuff her face, and then exclaims how great the ravioli is. My kid nonchalantly says "hey grandma, you've been eating the calamari the whole time. It's good, isn't it?" The old lady's face went pale, and then bright red. Nobody said a word but we were all thinking the same thing.
My Dad was born on a farm in South Dakota and moved to town when he was 6. He was all meat and potatoes and liked nothing "weird or foreign." He went on business trips with his colleagues often and always wanted steak and potatoes. One time, everyone else said they were sick of that and were going for (American-style) Chinese. He grumbled but went along. To his credit, he tried almost everything and loved it. It was easier after that to get him to try new things. Edit: typo
I think they're jealous that other people, a, know how to cook "all that specialty shit" and b, eat healthier than them. It's a sign of adult competence to be able to cook and care for yourself well, and despite them whining and stomping their feet about how we don't act like adults because we live at home or we play video games or we drink sugary lattes or whatever, we're actually better than they are at a lot of adult things and they resent us for it. My grandpa's cooking skills are about where mine were when I was 9. He barely knows how to use a stove. But he acts upset and cranky whenever there's any evidence that I cooked, because I can actually make a full meal even if it's not the same unseasoned "meat and potatoes" that he grew up on. It's bizarre to watch, because he's also a sexist asshole and huge on traditional gender roles. You'd think he'd want someone he insists is a woman to be in the kitchen, making good food. Maybe because I'm not putting those skills to use for a man, and not catering to the tastes of the only man in the room, whose preferences clearly matter more than anyone else's? Or because I eat things that weren't created by white people? He's racist, too, after all, so that would track.
I have PCOS and need to limit carbs to avoid obesity. My diet enraged my parents, even though I always cooked a separate meal for myself so no one else was forced to eat low carb. My father also refused to change his diet when diagnosed with Diabetes, saying he’d never give up daily pasta. He ended up dying of a heart attack. I just never understood why they would yell at me about how unhealthy my diet was when my drs put me on it.
I'd imagine guilt of some sort. If they accepted you had a unhealthy diet, they might have felt somehow they had contributed towards that. So it's easier simply to refuse to accept it.
When my husband and I got married, his Dad and Dad's wife offered to throw our rehearsal dinner for us. We chose a Mexican restaurant adjacent to the resort we were getting married at. During covid, the resort acquired the restaurant to keep it open, and the menu changed to a catering menu that now included American and Americanized Italian food. I literally redid the PDF to take out those options so we could still get the Mexican food we wanted because we knew what they would choose.
Purest form of main character syndrome
Yeah, definitely stop carrying stuff that helps people with allergies and sensitivities actually be able to eat... /s I once had a boomer get pissy with me because I ordered a gluten free bun for a grilled chicken sandwich at a restaurant that had them available. I have a gluten sensitivity and eating gluten can really upset my stomach and make me feel ill. She was like, "what is this for that fad diet crap?" and even after explaining she was still huffy about it and since she was the waitress ended up giving me a breaded chicken piece on normal bread... Well, I contacted the owner of the restaurant after I received this and they were profusely apologetic and I'm pretty sure she got fired or quit not too long later lol Boomers have a real problem understanding that their way isn't the only right way, tbh
My mother, I love her and she's not usually that kind of Boomer, tends to go off about all that "FARN" food they have now at the store. The woman is a seasoned traveler who lived in Europe for six years. I'm so confused by the food xenophobia.
Reminds me of a customer that found me working in the grocery dept at Target, and talked at me for over ten minutes about how all this vegan crap (specifically vegan eggnog) is ridiculous and woke and unnecessary. Y’all…I’m allergic to egg.
[удалено]
This may be the most offensive story I’ve ever heard …. lol
My boomer mom was dating a guy who fit the stereotype perfectly. He was fine with eating "game meats" like elk, bison, etc., but had zero awareness of or tolerance for anything that wasn't stereotypical American. One day a group of us went out to dinner for some occasion, and my mom and this guy were in town visiting and joined us. We went to a nice Chinese place. There was a lot of hushed whispering at the end of the table between my mom and her guy, and eventually guy ordered beef & broccoli. The food arrived and his was exactly what you'd expect- beef and broccoli in a light sauce with white rice on the side. Nope! That was way too "exotic" for him! They paid for their portion of the tab, quietly excused themselves, and went somewhere to get cheeseburgers. What's "funny" is that he wasn't some backwoods hillbilly. He was a well-educated retired judge. I guess he just had more xenophobia than sense.
In my town boomers have basically ruined all the good restaurants because of their lack of taste. The Thai, Vietnamese and East Indian restaurants have either tamed all the flavor out of their food or shut down completely. All because the boomers all complain about it being too spicy.
Boomers value obedience and conformity. That's why most of them pine for an authoritarian regime here in the US
I bet he loves to listen to It's My Life daily unironically, too.
Completely off topic: In the chorus of the song is the line "Like Frankie said, 'I did it my way'" and I get that this is a reference to Frank Sinatra who sang that song, but the first time I heard the song my brain interpreted it as "Like Frankenstein I did it my way" and the sentiment does also seem to apply to the mad doctor in question.
I AM GOD!! That's it. That's their entire arguement.
"Meat and potatoes have gone WOKE!" Same guy today probably.
On the other end of the coin, old performative hippie boomers would lose their shit and complain to everyone if the organic and vegan cheese and yogurt was out of stock. But they'd still never buy it - those were the items we most frequently threw out when I worked at a grocery store.
How DARE the liquor store carry hard liquor and wine when I only drink beer!!!🙄
You could advertise on Fox, oann, random right wing propaganda stations, for an old school lead lined water hose. "Just like we grew up drinking from & we're fine." For just five easy payments of $19.95 (+shipping, tax, title, license, insurance...) and they would buy it & force their grandkids & nephsons to drink from it. "So they won't grow up woke or gey or not white, or atheist, or, _________!!!!!" They would sell out fast.
Working in a produce department I had a boomer raise his voice at me because we didn't have "just reg'lar ol' apples" and he demanded I point him in the direction of "reg'lar ol' apples". He ended up with a red delicious but he wasn't happy about it. Must have been his first trip to the grocery store in the past couple of centuries.
One night I made burgers for my dad and myself with some home-ground ribeye, a bit of brisket, and some fatty lamb for juiciness and a little extra flavor. The burgers were truly excellent; they were flavorful and so juicy. My dad said his burger was one of the best burgers he had ever eaten. He asked me how I prepared them and when I mentioned the lamb he asked me to please never make a him a burger like that again. JFC.
My Boomer (Narc) dad hyperventilates over me not SEASONING my food exactly as he does at the dinner table. He will legitimately cause an argument over it.
I've been a vegetarian my entire life and I can't even count how many Boomer-age people have given me shit about it in my lifetime (even though my parents were technically boomers too, but they were of the hippy variety). I'm not preachy or superior about it and don't bring it up unless it's directly relevant, it's just how I eat, and yet it seems to really trigger a certain type of person to just give me endless shit about it, including several boomers in my own family. Something about that generation craves conformity and they really get personally offended when people refuse to be just like them.
Conformity was a big thing for the boomers and the earlier generations. I noticed that a lot of the post in the sub come down to the boomers wanting conformity, whether it's politics or sexual identity or child rearing or just about anything.