Pickiness Test

Answer 18 quick questions about your everyday eating — new dishes, textures, mixed plates, and more — and get a clear picky-eater level at the end. Takes about 4 minutes.

An unfamiliar dish gets described to you before you've seen or tasted it. A dish you've never heard of goes straight onto your order the moment it's offered — no second question needed. A menu item you don't recognize gets one quick question — what's in it — before you order it. Real reassurance has to come first: someone at the table needs to have tried it and liked it before you'll consider ordering the same. An unfamiliar dish quietly loses to the pasta you already know, without you ever actually saying no to it. One glance at "duck tongue" on the menu is grounds enough to wave it off before the waiter finishes describing it.

A friend invites you to try a completely unfamiliar cuisine. A friend suggests the new Georgian place and you already have a reason ready before they finish the sentence. Convincing takes a minute — someone needs to promise there's something plain on the menu — but then you're getting your coat. Someone floats trying the new Peruvian spot and you say yes without needing to be talked into it, though you wouldn't have brought it up yourself. The word "Ethiopian" is barely out before you're already asking what to order. You're the one texting the group chat about a Filipino place before anyone else has heard of it.

A new twist on a dish you already know well shows up next to the familiar version. Your sister sticks to her usual carbonara; you go straight for the version with guanciale swapped for pancetta, just to taste the difference. A new twist on your go-to lasagna gets a yes the moment it's suggested, no real convincing needed. The regular Caesar stays your order unless someone specifically points out the kale version on the menu. The classic cheeseburger you always order wins without the new truffle version ever really entering the picture. Finding out your regular pad thai order has been "reinvented" this week is genuinely irritating, and you ask when the old one is coming back.

A dish you already know well comes out with an unexpected texture. Your yogurt turns out grainier than the tub you had last week, and you finish the whole thing without it registering as anything. The lumps in the mashed potatoes register, but the fork keeps moving at the same pace. A stringy patch in the chicken gets pushed to the side of the plate while the rest goes on as normal. A few bites of the slimy okra and the fork goes down; finishing the rest takes real effort. One bite of unexpectedly mushy avocado and the rest sits untouched for the whole meal.

A strong smell reaches you before a dish has even been served. A wedge of stinky tofu drifts by on someone else's tray, and you go right on asking the waiter about dessert options. The fish sauce gets a comment — "huh, that's strong" — but dinner keeps moving. Durian on a stranger's tray gets a full-body flinch, though nobody actually moves seats. A whiff of natto from the next table is enough to ask for a seat further away. The smell of a blue cheese platter clears the room for you until someone puts it away.

A dish looks different than you expected, before any tasting happens. A grey-brown stew lands in front of you and the fork is already in it before you've really looked. The look at the purple soup lasts about exactly as long as it takes to pick up the spoon. Poking the mystery casserole apart happens before the first bite does. The waiter gets a full rundown of what's actually in the black rice before it earns a single bite. One look at the greyish sauce and the plate goes back before the fork ever touches it.

What actually ends up on your plate on a typical night. There's no mental list of go-to dinners to fall back on — whatever looks good at the store is what goes in the cart. Weeknights lean on three or four dinners you always trust, though adding something unfamiliar to the mix never takes much thought. Cooking something new needs an actual decision, or the same three weeknight dinners win by default. The same five dinners open every week's planning, and anything else takes real motivation to consider. Dinner comes from the same six dishes, full stop — nothing outside that list gets considered.

A big spread lays out many different, mostly unfamiliar foods at once. A buffet with forty dishes laid out, and you still fill your plate from the three you already know. One unfamiliar dish gets added to the plate, carefully, next to the usual choices. Two or three things you've never seen before land on the plate right alongside the rest, no hesitation about it. Most of what ends up on the plate is stuff you've never tried, picked on purpose. A spread like that is basically a dare, and the strangest-looking things get eaten first, the familiar stuff barely making the plate.

Someone asks what else, besides your usual choices, you'd genuinely be happy to eat. Dumplings, a big salad, roast chicken, fried rice — the list comes out in one breath, whenever anyone asks what else sounds good. Give it a few seconds and something workable comes to mind — maybe stir-fry, maybe soup. Pressed for something new, "chicken, but different" is about as far as the imagination stretches. Asked what else sounds good, you come up empty past the usual handful of dishes. There's nothing to offer when asked — the question gets handed straight back: "you pick."

Different foods on your plate end up touching or mixed together. Gravy pools into the stuffing and the green beans, and the whole plate is gone in the same five minutes it always is. Juice from the roast bleeding into the rice gets a glance, but the fork keeps going the same way. Peas that rolled into the coleslaw get pushed back to their own side before eating continues. The bit of dressing that touched the fruit salad gets left on the plate while the rest of the meal goes fine. Melted cheese dripping onto the noodles next to it is enough to ask for a new plate before any of it gets eaten.

A dish you know well shows up made a different way than your usual version. Your mom's meatloaf made with a different glaze gets set aside in favor of waiting for her usual version. A friend's take on your usual omelet gets eaten, with a comment about how it's not quite the same. A coworker's gumbo turns out different from what you make, and it just gets eaten as its own thing, no comment. A friend's tacos come with a totally different salsa than yours, and the plate still gets cleaned just as fast. A new spin on ramen gets ordered specifically to see how it compares to your usual bowl.

A sauce or condiment comes mixed into the dish instead of kept on the side. Ranch already drizzled over the wings doesn't read as any different from getting it on the side. The dressing already tossed into the salad would've been nicer on the side, but the bowl gets finished as served. The mayo stirred into the coleslaw gets pushed into its own little pile with a fork before the rest of the plate gets touched. A burger comes back to the kitchen specifically to get the sauce put on the side instead of already spread on. The pasta salad turns out to already have the dressing stirred through it, and it just doesn't make it onto your plate.

Someone else picks the place before you know what will be on offer. A friend says "let's just go to this new place" and you're already grabbing your keys before asking what's on the menu. A quick look at the menu happens in the car, but only after already saying yes. A text comes in about trying a new place, and the reply waits until the online menu has been skimmed. Saying yes depends on finding at least one workable option on the menu first. No menu, no yes — the invitation waits until the options have been checked and approved.

An invitation comes up to a shared meal you won't have any say over. An invitation to a coworker's potluck gets a yes without a single thought about what might show up on the table. Yes goes out right away, and "so what are you making?" follows a beat later, more excited than worried. Yes gets said to the potluck, and a granola bar quietly goes into your bag on the way out the door. A reason to skip the office potluck turns up whenever one comes around. Every potluck invitation gets the same answer — no — without much thought given to this one in particular.

Everyone's at the table, and it's time to decide what to order. Your friend agonizes over the menu for ten minutes; you just order whatever sounds good in the moment, no fixed favorite steering it. The menu gets read start to finish, narrowing between two or three things before landing on one. Something close to the usual gets picked, even after glancing at a couple of other options first. Chicken and rice, in some form, is what gets ordered at nearly every restaurant, the rest of the menu barely registering. Before the car's even parked, the order for tonight is settled, whatever this particular place happens to serve.

A food that reads as bitter, next to how everyone else at the table takes it. The bitter kale goes down forkful after forkful along with the rest of the salad, your plate clearing as fast as anyone else's. Somebody else at the table pauses over the arugula's bite; you don't, and the bowl's empty within a couple of minutes. Getting through the dark chocolate dessert needs a glass of milk alongside it. Half the plate of broccoli rabe is left behind, even with a piece of bread going along with every bite. Two sips into the bitter melon dish, the fork goes down for good, long before anyone else at the table has slowed down.

A food that reads as spicy or intense, next to how everyone else at the table handles it. The vindaloo gets pushed away halfway through, well before anyone else at the table is done. Getting through the curry takes more bread and yogurt on the side than anyone else at the table seems to need. The wings disappear at the same rate as everyone else's, no extra water needed. The extra-hot salsa goes down easily, no glass of milk needed, unlike a couple of others at the table. An extra round of ghost pepper sauce gets requested on top of what was already plenty spicy for the table.

A food that could be eaten exactly as served, or adjusted first. Black coffee goes down exactly as poured, no sugar, no cream, nothing added. A splash of milk lands in the coffee automatically, even on mornings the black stuff would've gone down just fine. Hot sauce gets cut with a spoonful of yogurt before the curry ever gets touched — every time, without fail. Getting through the chili without stirring in sour cream first is genuinely difficult. Nothing about the pho gets touched until sriracha and lime have both been stirred in.

Your results are no accident

The classic 16-type personality test rooted in Jung's typology has been rebuilt from the ground up: a new CoreTypes methodology, and a far higher level of accuracy. These might be the most useful ten minutes you'll ever spend on yourself: you walk away with the key to your decisions, your relationships and your results — and it's yours for good.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How much of a picky eater am I?

This test gives you a direct level, not a yes-or-no label — your answers add up to a score, and where that score lands on the scale is your answer. There's no separate "picky or not" verdict hiding behind it.

What percent picky eater am I?

That percentage is your total score converted onto a 0–100% scale that only this particular quiz uses, running from least to most selective. It says nothing about how anyone else answered — no outside numbers or comparisons go into the math at all.

Why am I such a picky eater?

That's outside what this test looks at. It measures how selective your eating is right now, across a handful of everyday situations — not where that pattern came from or why it formed. No cause gets assigned here, on purpose.

Is being a picky eater normal for an adult?

Plenty of adults sit somewhere on this same spectrum, so a high score here isn't unusual on its own — it's just one end of a pattern that shows up in ordinary people all the time. Nobody's number gets marked as better or worse than anyone else's; it's a spot on a scale, not a grade.

What foods do picky eaters avoid?

There's no master list of foods this quiz is checking you against. What it actually tracks is your reaction — to a texture that catches you off guard, to a dish you've never seen before, to a plate that doesn't quite look the way you expected — because that pattern tells you more than any single ingredient could. So no roster of foods picky eaters supposedly can't stand is waiting at the end of this.

Methodology

This test looks at everyday food pickiness as a matter of degree, not a fixed type. The eighteen questions are grouped into six habits that tend to show up around eating: how a completely new dish gets treated before it's even tasted, how texture, smell, and appearance change what feels edible, how wide or narrow a regular meal rotation runs, how much a plate's presentation matters, how food shapes decisions about shared meals, and how intense flavors like bitterness or spice come across compared to what others at the same table seem to experience.

None of the questions was pulled from an existing questionnaire — they were written specifically for this test, informed by general research into adult eating behavior and taste perception (see references below), then grouped and scored independently.

These answers rely on memory, not on a food diary someone kept for a month — what you recall about how you typically react is the real input here, so results can shift a little depending on which meals happen to come to mind. Take the outcome as a rough read on a pattern rather than a precise measurement, in the spirit it's meant: a bit of fun with your own habits at the table, not a final ruling on how you eat.

References

Pliner, P., & Hobden, K. (1992). Development of a scale to measure the trait of food neophobia in humans. Appetite, 19(2), 105–120. doi:10.1016/0195-6663(92)90014-W
Ellis, J. M., Galloway, A. T., Webb, R. M., & Martz, D. M. (2017). Measuring adult picky eating: The development of a multidimensional self-report instrument. Psychological Assessment, 29(8), 955–966. doi:10.1037/pas0000387
Bartoshuk, L. M., Duffy, V. B., & Miller, I. J. (1994). PTC/PROP tasting: Anatomy, psychophysics, and sex effects. Physiology & Behavior, 56(6), 1165–1171. doi:10.1016/0031-9384(94)90361-1

Author: Lex Tarrel, Personality Typologist Reviewed by: Igor Lyadskiy, PhD