Why does it bother some people when the food on their plate is touching other foods?

My son has always been that way. If a pork chop got into his baked beans for example, he wouldn’t finish eating. I could care less myself, I like to mix my food up anyway. Go figure.

I used to be this way, but now, depending on the meal, it isn’t an issue.
I really am trying to rid myself of those annoying little quirks, mostly to make room for new ones, mostly.

It could be some sort of mental illness.
Perhaps it is some latent and buried racism and deeply rooted feelings of white supremacy and racial purity, that, lacking any other outlet, expresses itself by compulsively segregating foods on the plate.

I usually do the opposite: I mash everything together into a paste.

It has never been an issue for me. it all gets mixed together in the stomach, anyway.

You’re a nut @ragingloli!

The fear of foods touching—formally known as brumotactillophobia comes in varying levels of severity and is believed to be a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

I was like this when I was younger. I also didn’t like sauces and dressing. I only wanted one taste at a time. I’m not like that anymore. I started changing in my teens. My boyfriend taught me to eat rice and meat in the same bite.

In my 30’s I started liking salads and salad dressing and that’s when I really changed and became more relaxed about my plate and the food.

For me it was everything about how it tasted. Especially if there was something on my plate I didn’t like it would be horrible that the yucky food touched the good food.

When I was a child the cafeteria in school had a space for each item so the foods were all separated. That was really good. I’d bet that’s done very purposefully for children. Bad tasting food for most kids is traumatic.

For kids, whose taste buds are very reactive to certain foods and some foods are awful, they don’t want to risk trying a good food and having some “bad” food taste in the same bite.

My mother used to serve us dinner with one large spoon placing for on our plates. Most of the time it was okay, but she would put liver and onions on the plate, then a spoonful of mashed potatoes, but the liver “gravy” would still be on the spoon and be all over the potatoes. Since the potatoes were all I could stand anyway, it completely ruined my dinner. I got little sympathy.

I can understand how it may be more of a thing in children (the way children are sensitive to strong tastes, loud noises, and any overload of stimuli), but its extension into adulthood has always seemed like a form of OCD to me. But then I have OCD and I’ve never had a significant problem with foods touching (even as a child), although it depends on the foods and how related they are. If them touching was so disgusting to me, then I probably wouldn’t have them both on the same plate to begin with.

Well….I hate wasted space too.

I hate soggy bread, so I don’t want a piece of bread or a roll touching other food usually. I’m not going to freak out, but I really don’t want it sitting in spaghetti sauce or gravy. If it touches a piece of roasted chicken no big deal.

@Demosthenes Good point about not having the items on the same plate, but sometimes separate plates aren’t easy, like at a party with a buffet. Although, when I do eat at a buffet, I generally do take two plates, sometimes I have to go back for seconds and do it that way.

Soggy bread is the worst. I put syrup in another container when I order pancakes.

@Dutchess_III Me too, or around the pancakes on the plate so it doesn’t soak in very much. I don’t like traditional pancakes, the only time I have one is if my husband has an extra or that is what is served to me. I eat waffles or french toast though and also don’t want them soggy. Growing up we put sugar on french toast. I’m guessing it was much cheaper than maple syrup.

Mom made homemade syrup out of sugar and Mapeline.

@Dutchess_III Sounds good. How was it?

Well I grew up with it so I loved it.
As an adult I modified it by adding 1 cup of brown sugar (the original called for 2 c white sugar. Talk about racist!) and a touch of vanilla along with the mapeline.
One of my cousins from Washington came to visit. I fed him breakfast…pancakes.
He said “Good homemade syrup, Val!”
About knocked my socks off! How did he know it was homemade?
For the first time it hit me…gramma (who I only met once) must have made it. My mom and my cousin’s mom were sisters.

Brown sugar. Love that stuff. When I was a kid they talked about getting caught with your hands in the cookie jar. With me it was my hands in the brown sugar box…

Oh yes! Eat the stuff straight! I also at Crisco some times. Got a whole cookie thing going on in my tum!

Crisco?.Good Lord Almighty..
Patooey! Surely you jest?

It depends on the food and the context. Being the shy picky kid was never fun going to cookouts.

Imagine someone telling you to eat more and asking whats wrong with you as they slap a pile of smelly collard greens on your plate and the gross smelly green liquid touches your perfectly fluffy and soft fresh buttered roll and your warm cheesy mac and cheese. Now it’s all gross and smells like salty cabbage or whatever the fk that stuff was.

The whole food touching thing just reminds me of being a picky kid and getting made fun of or called out and it was just embarrassing. It’s not an issue nowadays, but then again I always actively avoided cookouts at people’s houses because i don’t wanna offend anyone by not liking their food. I don’t know im just a sad introvert that wants to make his own food and control my own plate situation.

@JLeslie: I always put sugar on French toast, too. It makes it almost like a pastry. It’s just what my mom did and so I picked that habit up.

@jca2 @JLeslie I only got to have sugar (confectioner’s sugar) on French Toaston special occasions, my mother considered it posh.

French Toast with confectioner’s sugar and a quarter of a lemon to squeeze on it! Mmmmm!

@Dutchess_III We made syrup from mapilene and sugar in Boy Scouts. Never as good as maple syrup.

Lol! I jest not! I also ate birthday candles.

@Dutchess_III B day candles??? Damn girl, either you had a cast iron stomach or your mom and daddy should have fed you up and put some meat on them bones. I can see brown sugar, can’t beat it with a stick. But wax and Crisco? I’m surprised you survived to womanhood. ; )

@zenvelo It’s regular sugar not confectioners on the french toast.

I do use confectioner on thin pancakes, similar to a crepe, with some butter, and lemon. It’s almost like lemon icing.

@jca2 That’s interesting, I thought it was a Jewish thing, but maybe it is a NY thing or some parts of Europe. You meant regular granulated sugar right?

I put cinnamon on my French toast. The syrup provides more than enough sweet.

yeah I don’t know @Nomore_lockout. I just liked them!

Well ok then @Dutchess_III .And I won’t even inquire how long it takes to digest wax.

It probably doesn’t digest.

Ouch. Just, ouch.

Maybe wash it down with a Crisco cocktail huh?

@JLeslie: Yeah, regular granulated sugar. I wonder if that tradition was from my grandmother. I don’t remember my grandmother making French toast, so I don’t know what she did, but since my mother very likely got it from my grandmother, it’s possible. My grandmother was Czech, and a lot of the phrases she used and foods she cooked were Jewish or Yiddish in origin. Maybe from her parents being immigrants and living in Jewish areas in NY/NJ?

@jca2 Maybe being in Jewish neighborhoods or maybe just an Eastern European thing. My family was from Latvia and Russia.

@JLeslie: Yes, possibly. Eastern Europe thing.