Possibly related anecdote:
I have a family member that has struggled to hold jobs and keep relationships, and seems to have had a learning disability their entire life, and potentially had brain damage early in childhood (due to lack of oxygen at birth, and being tasked with burning the family's trash out back (self-reported)).
I recently moved them into my house because they had nowhere to go and they are now completely obsessed with preparing elaborate dishes, growing fermented foods and carefully curating their microbiome (by doing dubious stuff they find on YouTube). This syndrome feels very much like what this family member is doing but the rarity makes me think it's probably not this.
It's to the point where their room is full of jars of nuts, fermented items, and they go into detail describing the pleasure of the textures/tastes of food and how much of a treat it is for them to enjoy random everyday things normal people eat.
My wife and I physically cringe when they talk about it in the kitchen given that they put more energy into this than seeing their own grandchildren, keeping jobs, or helping around the house.
Reading this, it's exceptionally confusing as to how many family members you're talking about exactly; Your use of they, them, their is causing me to imagine some microbiome obsessed tribe has moved in and is holding conferences on it in your kitchen...
Haha. I try to use they/them/their instead of he/her/him etc as a way of keeping stories a little more anonymized but I suppose it could be confusing.
I am curious, do other people find this style of writing confusing? Genuinely curious.
It read fine to me.
Singular they/them is mostly only a problem to non-native speakers. It's a pretty uniquely English thing to blur the singular and plural, at least among languages that use pronouns much.
no I didn't even notice till the child comment
That was a little confusing to me as well. English is not my native language, so maybe I just didn't understand the nuance.
No I found it readable though I can understand why they might be confused a little bit too but its nothing to worry about in my opinion.
Honestly regarding your anecdote and the gourmet syndrome the title itself, I don't really have nothing to add except I guess just note that human mind truly just works in remarkable ways.
But each day science uncovers more and more secrets about our brains. Maybe one day the gourmat syndrome or (your anecdote [if its a syndrome? or anything more observed or who knows, I am not sure as I don't have much medical knowledge being honest] might be explained in future too by future science advancements and scientists)
It's crazy how far we have come in medical science and (also not) [but I don't mean it in a bad way] at the same time.
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it will be easier to get them eating soylent green if we first convince them desiring good food is a sickness, not bad