Even if your partner has the most kind, caring, and patient family in the entire universe, there will still be at least some friction between you and your in-laws. And anyone’s in-laws are rarely ever ‘perfect.’ Some of these arguments can revolve around seemingly mundane things like what to have for dinner.
But the thing is—it’s usually not about food. If someone tries to force you to like something you honestly hate, if they’re always critical of you, it’s a (not so) subtle way of exercising control. Redditor u/EntertainerIll9058 went viral on the AITA online group and elsewhere on the internet after sharing how they got into an argument with their in-laws over the pizza they always order that isn’t all that tasty. So, the OP tends to buy their own food at parties.
Scroll down for the story. Bored Panda has reached out to the author for further comment, and we’ll update the article as soon as we hear back from them.
What you like to eat depends on your taste, lifestyle, and even genetics. Not everyone's going to be a fan of every restaurant or dish
Image credits: cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)
A person opened up about how their in-laws kept pressuring them to fall in love with a particular fast-food place's pizza
Image credits: ckstockphoto / envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: EntertainerIll9058
Not everyone will enjoy everything at the dinner table. Your genetics and past experiences can influence how you perceive some tastes and smells
Image credits: Kaboompics.com / pexels (not the actual photo)
Whether or not you enjoy a restaurant’s food is a matter of personal taste. Sure, anyone can nibble on anything out of politeness at a family gathering. But if you’re at a party, typically, you want to have fun yourself at least a little bit. Food, drinks, dancing, games, good company—you’ve got to enjoy life.
If you don’t like a particular ingredient or dish, it might be because you’re used to eating a very different diet, have a different lifestyle than other people, or your genetics are different. For example, coriander (aka cilantro) is an ingredient that is used in many dishes around the world. Yours truly is a fan of it. Many others aren’t!
This is because the herb can taste or smell like soap or dirt to some people. One study noted that there is a genetic component to cilantro taste perception, suggesting that one’s dislike for the herb can “stem from genetic variants in olfactory receptors.” So, naturally, depending on your genes, you might avoid anything with coriander in it.
Another issue to consider is your past experience with certain ingredients and their combinations. Just like a whiff of a dish your grandparents used to make can bring a smile to your face, smelling something that made you ill in the past can create a visceral reaction.
Similarly, it might be that the issue isn’t with the dish itself, so much as the context in which you ate it. For instance, if you kept eating a particular dish when you could barely make ends meet or during another stressful period of your life, you might not want to revisit it.
At the end of the day, we’re all responsible for enforcing our boundaries when it comes to our relationships, health, fitness, diet, and finances. To put it simply, if you don’t like a particular pizza, nobody can force you to eat it. You don’t even have to explain your choice in detail aside from a quick and polite, “Thank you, but I’d rather order something else.”
Even if a particular brand is very popular and successful, it doesn't automatically mean that you'll enjoy their food. It's okay to be picky sometimes
Image credits: Polina Zimmerman / pexels (not the actual photo)
It feels like anyone who’s ever had a major disagreement with their in-laws or felt pressured to conform to someone’s food preferences found something relatable in the online post. At the time of writing, the author’s story had 8.6k upvotes and garnered around 1.3k comments. As the post went viral, it was picked up by a few online outlets.
The restaurant that u/EntertainerIll9058’s in-laws seem to love so much is Papa Murphy's, a take-and-bake pizza company that’s based in Vancouver, Washington. The fast-food chain and its franchises have over 1.5k locations across the United States, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates.
The current company came about as a result of a merger in 1995 between Papa Aldo’s Pizza, which was founded in 1981, and Murphy’s Pizza, created in 1984. The merger also merged the names of the two companies. In 2019, MTY Food Group announced that it would acquire Papa Murphy’s.
In 2003, Papa Murphy’s was voted Best Pizza Chain in America by Restaurants and Institutions magazine. Fast forward to 2022 and the brand was in the press for a very different reason. Papa Murphy’s was sued in a class action lawsuit that alleged that the company was supposedly secretly wiretapping the private conversations of everyone who communicated via the company’s online chat feature.
The take-and-bake concept is fairly simple. The pizzas are made in-store, but they’re not baked there. Customers pick them up and bake them at home. You can do a walk-in order online, or call in. From a business perspective, this model means that you spend less money on restaurant space and equipment, which means fewer costs.
How would you handle the situation if you were in the author’s shoes, dear Pandas? Have your extended family members ever pressured you to eat a particular dish that you just couldn’t stomach? How do you navigate any arguments with your in-laws? If you had to pick a single cheeky party meal that you genuinely love, what would it be? Let us know in the comments.
The author answered some people's questions in the comments of their post
Most readers were on the person's side and thought the in-laws were in the wrong
A few internet users had incredibly unpopular takes on the family drama
