> Is having a short food memory the same as being picky? I tend to think of the term picky as meaning liking a narrow range of foods. Since I enjoy a large number of different types of foods, I prefer the term finicky, but I'd like to see what others think.

I think you meant to say a long food memory here -- meaning not wanting the same thing to close to the last time you had it? Anyway, I would say that not wanting to eat the same thing very often isn't finicky or picky, but I don't have a word for it.

For me, I think my food memory is probably similar to Sam's in length. I do also sometimes encounter a phenomenon where I eat something and then CRAVE more of the same, but that sort of counts as still being the same meal, I think, so it's not too big a deal.

I will quite often eat the same thing two meals in a row, although rarely three. I think that my food memory in the sense Sam defined it is very short (probably in the two hour range) but that each repetition of the meal dramatically increases the length of my food memory. I have even experienced "food burnout" where I love something so much that I eat it almost constantly for a period of time (often once every day or two for months), then get so sick of it that I can't eat it again for years. I know that it's not a permanent dislike, though, because sometimes I come back to the craving phase after a long enough time.

Don Monkey