A couple of food dictator stories:
1) I had a coworker who was obsessed with fat grams in food. She consumed no fat. She also believed that everyone else should consume no fat. She rapidly lost quite a lot of weight. She believed the rest of us could/should lose weight like she did if we watched our fat grams the way she did. She would patrol the break room during all of the rotating lunch periods to see what we were eating, and, of course, to make comments about the amount of fat in our food.
She let us all know that she had a physical coming up, and she was so excited to hear what her doctor thought about her weight and her diet. Guess what: Her doctor was not pleased with her diet or her weight. She had managed, in eating no fat, to mess up her blood chemistry. Her blood levels were all out of whack. To her credit, she did share that with us. She was informed by her doctor that a healthy diet includes some fat. We didn't get anymore comments from her about what we were eating.
2) I do not like eggs. Ever since I was very young, I have not eaten them. I don't like the taste or the texture. My family always gave me a hard time about this because they are all egg eaters. If they were eating eggs, I would eat a bowl of cereal. I heard about how weird I was for not liking eggs. I was pressured incessantly about eating eggs. I have tried eggs on numerous occasions, and the result is the same: I don't like them. The pressure about eggs was applied even after I was on my own. I'd still hear about it when I visited. "Don't you want some eggs?" "Everyone else likes eggs." "You should at least try the eggs." "If you don't eat the eggs, you'll hurt my feelings."
When I was well into my 20s, my mother told me that she'd known I didn't like eggs from the time I was a baby. Apparently, the pediatrician told her to feed me jarred egg yolks. I think it was for extra protein. She did that, and I just spit them out. I would not eat the eggs. When she told me this, I said, "So you've known for my entire life that I don't like eggs, and yet you continue to pressure me anyway about eating them." "Well, yes," she said. "If you would eat them, eventually, you would grow to like them."
