Martha Stewart Says No Thanks To These 7 Foods Every Time

Martha Stewart is the type of TV personality that seems to effortlessly draw our attention, no matter what she's doing: picking out flowers, baking a cake, shelling shrimp, or going to prison. It is not easy to look glamorous while doing all these things (especially the last one), yet she has succeeded in this time and again. Her good taste in all realms of home life and beyond seems to have propelled her career and given us, the ranks of people who have no idea how to behave in a kitchen, a model to follow when making any food or home-related decision.

To get a holistic picture of this model, it's important to know not only what Stewart likes, but also what she doesn't like. She has given us many pearls of wisdom over a long and illustrious career, but there's no way she could have given us all the advice she has in store just yet, which is why knowing her dislikes can help us piece together a fuller picture. To that end, here is a series of foods and types of foods that Stewart says no thanks to every time.

Although airplane food has somewhat improved over the years, it's not usually someone's first choice when thinking about favorite foods. The hot meal is often bland in flavor and a little grayish in color, while the cold sides can be equally disheartening. Even so, most of us will eat some of this gruel in a pinch, especially if we forgot to bring snacks on a long flight.

Not Martha Stewart. Indeed, she would never forget to bring snacks or even a full meal on a long-haul flight. As she told the New York Times in 2017, "I might make a delicious smoked salmon sandwich on seven-grain bread; I might take a tabbouleh salad. I take homemade yogurt with applesauce." She also added that her hard-boiled eggs, fresh from her own chickens, are much better than anything a plane has to offer. And if you're lucky enough to be traveling with Martha Stewart, she might even bring one for you.

Martha Stewart famously stands against pumpkin spice for almost any use. While the warm and spicy scent might remind many of us of the holidays, giving us a pleasantly fuzzy sensation, Stewart steers clear of it, saying in an interview on Bravo TV that it was basic. Although she clarified with USA Today that she loves it in pumpkin pie, she does dislike its other uses, notably in cappuccino.

But the funny thing about pumpkin pie is that she might not even like it there, either. Her own pumpkin pie doesn't contain it. Instead, she uses Chinese five-spice, which also contains cinnamon and cloves, like pumpkin spice, but with a more nuanced and layered flavor profile. Indeed, she doesn't seem to have anything against the individual spices contained in pumpkin spice, which is a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and ginger. Perhaps the most insidious trait of pumpkin spice for anyone who doesn't appreciate it is the fact that it has nothing to do with pumpkins other than by association.

Truffle oil may sound like a fancy, high-end food, and it does tend to sell for fairly high prices in tiny little bottles at the grocery store or at special food shops. But it's all a lie, and Martha Stewart sees right through it. Indeed, the vast majority of truffle oil you see on shelves contains no real truffles. The process of infusing oil from real truffles, which are already quite expensive when whole, is extremely costly, while extracting oil from the mushrooms is out of the question.

The product most people know is actually some kind of vegetable oil infused with a synthetic aroma that resembles truffles. This is why Martha Stewart told USA Today that she would never use the stuff. And she didn't stop there. She went on to say, "It's synthetic, it's fake, it's horrible. It clings to your taste buds, it's a hideous thing. Forget truffle oil." Message received.

Most people wouldn't eat raccoons, especially not on a casual or daily basis. The same is true for Martha Stewart, but unlike most people, she also had a chance to try this unpopular meat. As she told Seth Meyers in an interview, she once attended a raccoon and chicken supper, where she was the only guest who didn't try the raccoon. She explained that although everyone else loved the raccoon, she still declined it because she doesn't like to eat things that are rare to see on a menu.

Although raccoon might not, in truth, be all that rare in Southern cuisine, who can blame her for turning down this meat? We all know what raccoons, aka trash pandas, eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And dining on raccoon meat also carries certain health risks, including bacterial and parasitic infections.

Martha Stewart has cooked her fair share of meat in her day. Stewart's famous roast chicken is an all-around favorite, while she certainly knows her way around a Porterhouse steak. But in an interview with Elle, she confessed that she does not cook hearts. While she did not specify which animal hearts she had in mind, beef hearts and pig hearts are not that unusual in the realm of high-end restaurants or in restaurants that typically serve offal.

In particular, she mentioned Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a high-end restaurant in Upstate New York, where they are "on this great big rampage to serve from nose to tail." The restaurant also served her pig's blood, which she agreed to eat, if reluctantly. Despite this valiant effort to use all parts of the animal and minimize waste, Martha Stewart continues not to serve heart, though we're sure she cooks with heart.

Variety may be the spice of life, but perhaps Martha Stewart prefers to stick with actual spices to keep her food interesting, instead of resorting to a variety of meats. Indeed, she told Elle in an interview that she does not cook "brains, sweetbreads or offal ... things that in other parts of the world, they use a lot of."

Though she declined to say why she stays away from these types of meats, the answer for most people would have something to do with the soft, sometimes creamy texture of these items, or the simple unfamiliarity of them. In other words, Martha Stewart is no Anthony Bourdain, but that is totally fine. We don't look to her for how to prepare an obscure seafood dish, but for how to make a comforting meal that will impress most people. Sweetbreads and other offal are simply not ideal for that objective.

Takeout is a hugely popular way to eat a meal, as highlighted by the exponential rise of food delivery apps around the world over the past decade or so. But there is at least one person who has not jumped on the bandwagon, and that's Martha Stewart. In an interview on the Kelly Clarkson Show, as reported by Delish, she revealed that she has never once ordered takeout in her life. Now that's commitment, though, to be fair, it's not clear whether that also referred to delivery.

Instead, Stewart makes the effort to go out to dinner, even after a long day of working hard. Or, of course, she'll cook up her own meal, which seems a lot easier for her to do, with her talent and expertise, than for us regular folks. Either way, takeout is not really on brand for Martha Stewart. The revelation should come as no great surprise, even though one might expect her, too, to have her creature comforts.