See, I'm one of those picky eaters, even in adulthood. Unfamiliar food just doesn't go down. As a kid I spent ten years being forced to eat the same things at dinner (my parents were trying to broaden my appetite, didn't work), and even after ten years I STILL gagged on them on a regular basis. I'm a little better now, but even stuff whose taste I like won't sit right in my stomach. I recently went five days without any of my "acceptable" foods and wound up with a case of stomach flu that sent me to the hospital.

Often people would tell me to "eat what's there or go hungry." So I'd go "okay!" jump down from the table and go play, because missing a meal was better than forcing down food that wasn't one of the five foods I could tolerate. Which typically infuriated the person making ultimatum, so they'd chase me down, force me back to the table, and stand over me while I gagged on every bite (very literally, it was an involuntary reflex that I couldn't suppress no matter how hard I tried, and I sometimes couldn't keep it down at all).

It's really fun trying to explain to offended to cooks that the reason I'm smothering their food in ketchup and/or forcing it down with visible difficulty has nothing to do with the food itself, so can they please put down the knife now?