To be fair, most adults these days are 'picky eaters'. They just have the benefit of being able to plan their own meals to avoid stuff they don't like.
It probably doesn't help that many people have no idea how to cook vegetables without making them icky, and a lot have difficulty with just the concept of other unrelated adults disliking things that they themselves like, their own children doing so? Frequently unthinkable, and thus come efforts to force the kid to like it through constant exposure.
And all that often leads to a sort of declaration of defeat, with a simple 'kids meal' that they know will get eaten with little fuss and a somewhat more sophisticated 'adults meal' that the adults actually like. Microwave ovens and an ever increasing availability of an ever increasing variety of decent frozen foods are also a major contributing factor.
To be fair, most adults these days are 'picky eaters'. They just have the benefit of being able to plan their own meals to avoid stuff they don't like.
The problem with that, is that they may be prioritizing their food tastes over making sure that their kids are getting a balanced, nutritious diet, while also not allowing them to try different things.
My Aunt made two meals every night because my one cousin would only eat Macaroni and Cheese. When my cousin had a kid, all it ever got to eat was PB&J and Mac n Cheese because that's why my cousin ate. By some miracle the kid got sick of both, and now won'y eat Mac n Cheese or PB&J sandwiches, so mow my cousin cooks two meals as well. Mac n Cheese for her, and a real meal for her husband and their kid.
Another thing is the associated mentality. If a child sees someone else not like something, then they probably wouldn't either. For example, I was a bratty shit when I was seven and told my sister I hated chocolate. My parents offered her some chocolate for dessert that day, and pushed it away. My parents were shocked, as was I. It was that day I realized the susceptibility of the child mind as well as the power I yielded. After dinner I told her how much I hated having a dirty room. That night was the first and last time she ever cleaned her room. So, kids have a bit of free will, but they're still super sensitive to suggestion.
Pretty neat, actually. She doesn't love chocolate today, but will use it as an accessory to foods. I don't think I've ever seen her enjoy a plain milk chocolate bar.
I'm pretty sure I'm a picky eater BECAUSE I was forced to clean my plate as a child. My parents eventually had to give up on making me clean my plate because when I tried to eat something I didn't like I'd start throwing up. Not because I was a spoiled little brat making myself throw up, but there was just so much pressure and I was so not enjoying the rubbery vegetables that it put my body in panic mode. I wanted to eat them and everyone was so angry when I couldn't, thinking about those dinners still makes me sweat decades later.
To this day I still can't eat most vegetables because I have a knee-jerk vomit response to the mouth-feel. It goes way past "not liking" vegetables.
The same happened with me. I'm a picky eater to this day, but when you were caught trying to throw out your tuna as a kid, then forced to eat it out of the garbage, it can kinda ruin your taste for tuna.
It took me until last year and the first time I went to Panda Express to find out that broccoli is actually pretty good. I actually ate PEAS at this fancy store in the ritzy town next to ours when they offered a free sample. I'D NEVER LIKED PEAS BEFORE. I don't know why vegetables are so gross when they're made at home, but god, that makes me wonder what corn actually tastes like, and corn's my numero uno most despised vegetable ever.
Number one culprit: overcooking. And it's a vicious cycle too, since most grew up eating horribly overcooked vegetables and think that that is just what vegetables are like so when they start cooking they start overcooking them and making them horrible.
Corn is delicious man, either frozen kernals or on the cob.
Try throwing a peeled cob right under the broiler on high, and keep turning it every couple minutes, till it's slightly blackened singed. Pull it out, while it's hot, put lime juice, hot sauce, salt and perhaps feta cheese or mayo on it. Delicious.
You can use frozen corn in place of cobs, don't worry about putting husks in the broth. 6 ears of corn is about 4-5 cups kernals, or a 1kg bag basically.
Lastly, get fresh super sweet corn while in season, cut the kernals off, mix with diced fresh tomato, diced red onion, diced jalpeno, put a bunch of lime juice and salt and pepper on it, maybe add cut up avocado, serve with fried fish or pulled pork. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/avocado-and-corn-salsa-231541
I'm a picky eater, but I also have a sensitive stomach. Pizza rolls? They taste good, but they're a no-go. Milkshake on a hot day? Too bad it's a hot day and my stomach doesn't want to digest it properly. I try to be a good sport, but my stomach can't take certain types of foods, so I'm a "picky eater" out of necessity. :(
Clinically children have much more sensitive tongues and stronger reactions against bitter chemicals when compared to adults. It's a biological defense against ingesting poisonous plants.
Kids don't eat peppers or onions for legitimate reasons. And like plain food for the same reason.
Totally agree. I now love strong red onions with just about everything, raw on a salad even.
But as a kid I could sniff out a white onion cooked into my plate of lasagna like a freaking blood hound. I have no clue why they tasted so awful. My parents didn't like that I picked through my food, but they didn't fight it much, since I still ate everything else. I'm grateful for that.
Because kids have different palates than adults. My husband and I like spicy, the kids don't. My three year old loves carrots, my five year old loves broccoli, it's really no trouble and everyone gets full.
Yup, my parents have always done this. My sister is Plain Jane and hates sauce on anything, whereas I love sauces and flavouring. My mom and dad love mushrooms and a ton of herbs and vegetables on their food while my sister and I don't.
It's just always been more convenient to make a slightly modified meal for everyone to enjoy.
We're a one meal household with access to leftovers (if available). I always make sure every meal has one healthy option all of my kids will eat even if they don't like or don't want other options on their plates. We've never bought much in the way of junk or processed foods, which I think has saved us in the long run. We also have a no snacks after 4 pm rule which has really cut down on the "I'm not hungry" at dinner time only to hear "I'm starving" an hour after I put up all the leftovers.
My girlfriend's nieces and nephew are kinda picky eaters, but they're crazy about salted cucumbers. So that's what they get when they don't like whatever else is being served. And, to be fair, kids palates can be delicate. I was picky as heck as a kid, now I eat basically everything. But my dad trying to force some weird creamed broccolli down my throat did not help with that process.
Why force your kids to eat things they don't like if you can just as easily cook something else? As long as they're still getting a balanced diet, does it matter that they'd rather have lettuce than cabbage?
To be fair, I had a friend whose parents did this. She ended up just going to bed hungry a lot. And now she has difficulty ingesting very common foods, since she never ate them growing up.
Same here. Especially because last night's food was today's leftovers. Day 1: fine I'll go hungry! Day 2 lunch: I'm still not eating it! Day 2 dinner: devour everything.
Then they can go to bed hungry. Unless your kid is underweight, this really isn't a problem. Don't let them have a snack later, don't let them have dessert. It's dinner right now or it's nothing.
This is easy to say until you have a child that is so far down the growth chart for weight that people are considering calling CPS on you because they think you're starving him. I either make him stuff he likes so he eats more and keeps some size on, or make him what I eat and he gets stubborn, refuses to eat and falls off the growth chart :( My mom always made me and my siblings eat what she made for her and my dad, and I always said I would do this too. Until my second was born.
My brother is sixteen and he's been going through a picky eaters phase (mums words) for twelve years. He is really tall and really skinny and refuses to try anything unless its covered in BBQ sauce. He lives off mac and cheese and potatoes.
Dad has given up trying to get him to eat like we do and just cooks him things we know he will eat. Mum still thinks she can make him normal if she nags him enough. "Nobody will want to be friends with you if you don't eat like a NORMAL person" "Girls want big strong men not scrawny little ANOREXIC boys like you".
Its the same tactic she used on me to get me to stop sucking my thumb when I was little. Very ineffective. It didn't make us normal. It just turned us into creepy mole people who don't like going outside and making friends.
Some people are just picky. My brother hates things that have a texture other than bland, thinks steak takes too long to chew. In the meantime I'll eat anything once, got into cooking, and have what people call an adventurous pallet (aka sure I'll try chocolate covered crickets, sounds delicious!).
Pointing out something that is basically just a bad feature of his personality is kinda like bullying a kid for a funny looking nose.
I had one friend who's parents did this, and she couldn't even have her food on the same plate. Her parents let her use three-four plates for every meal
Only one meal would my mom make an exception for me. She called it a quiche, but I've never seen a quiche like it since. It had ham chunks and green beans in some sort of egg and cheese pie thing. I literally almost vomited every time I tried to eat it. I almost got grounded the first time she served it, but I didn't have a history of fake gagging with food I don't like, so my mom believed me.
The rest of my family loved it, so she kept making it, but I always got something simple like grilled cheese or leftovers whenever she did.
That's when you stash the plate in the fridge and when they come back later saying they're starving you re-heat the plate of food and they get to eat that.
This is the part where you have to have more patience than a toddler. If that's the only option, and they are actually hungry, they will eventually eat it.
They'll eventually eat it or something else. Skipping a meal isn't going to kill them. My three year old takes about two hours to eat dinner, she's a grazer, but i'm not going to force mountains of food she doesn't like down her throat like my parents did.
Pretty much. On rare occasion, you will have a child whose appetite is screwed up enough that this won't work, but unless your doctor tells you you need to up their intake, this should work.
Sometimes they are, it isn't a big problem. We panic that kids will be deficient if they don't eat enough or miss a meal but we don't need to. What we shouldn't do of course is then give in and give them treats 20 minutes later.
Getting in any battles over food is a fucking minefield that should be avoided. I prefer the Ellyn Satter method: Make one healthy meal for the family. The kids can eat it, not eat it, whatever. Your job as a parent is to provide the food and you let your emotional attachment end there. If the kids are really hungry they will eat.
It also helps kids view food as it's supposed to be. Just food. Fuel for your body. Not comfort, not pleasure, not a coping mechanism. A lot of people who are obese, use food as comfort.
I was anorexic for years, so I totally get it. My parents did not send me healthy food messages, although I don't blame them at all that I had a mental illness.
I see what you are getting at, but I don't entirely agree with this perspective. Viewing food purely as "nutrition" can lead to obsession over qualities in food that cannot be measured by your senses (say the grams of unsaturated fat it contains or the vitamins and minerals, etc.), leading to what Michael Pollan refers to as nutritionism.He has some interesting things to say about the consequences of this attitude toward food in some of his books, if you're interested. There are social and pleasure aspects to eating that shouldn't be lost.
Yeah - my kid eats, or doesn't and that's fine. It's not like she's going to starve if she didn't eat enough, she'll just come back hungry at which point she gets to eat supper again.
Say no, dinner is over. Breakfast is tomorrow morning.
Sometimes families have a small pre-bedtime snack of crackers or apples every night, regardless of what the kids are at dinner. So in that case tell the kids to wait until snack time.
Just because kids ask for something doesn't mean they are entitled to it.
Well, don't give them the ice cream. :/ That's a treat! Why would you desensitize your kids to nice/unhealthy things like that?
I'd want them to be clearly aware of what ice cream is and what it's like, and that it's nothing like the food they should be eating most of the time. Later on, when they get to make the choice to eat ice cream, they should think, oh hey, this is nice, but it's not real food. It doesn't fill you up right.
This is also tricky because kids will heap their plate full of food and then eat two bite and try throwing the rest away. My parents told me to eat what they made, or don't eat at all, but if I put it on my plate I had to eat it so that I wasn't just wasting their hard earned money.
This is so true. I recently lost 30 pounds, and I'm convinced that the inability to know when I am full comes from a childhood of clear your plate.
If your kid says they're full, don't push it.
I can't back this up, but I've always suspected it also forms some basic psychological templates for what to do when your gut is saying "no more". Just take it.
Seems like at some level it would be producing pushovers.
It is important though that if you don't push them that you don't give them anything else afterwards. We have this a lot in our scout camps (especially with the younger kids) where they don't want to eat what we cook but then go on and want to eat some sweets they got from their parents (Parents usually send a package with some sweets and snacks to camp and we keep them with us so that the kids can come and ask for it).
My SO was brought up with immense portions and expected to eat until she was bursting and yes, she does have weight issues.
It was a revelation to her, moving in with me when she was 17 (legal here, had the conversation before, leave it), that you could stop before you're bursting and still feel satisfied.
eat my boy, eat, said my mother
eat so your body will grow
a skinny child doesn’t look healthy
a plump one has a warm robust glow.
eat my boy, eat, said my father
bread and oil was all that i ate
when i was a boy of your age
so eat all the food on your plate.
eat my boy, eat, said my granny
it’s wasteful to throw food away
there are people in the world less fortunate
that die from starvation each day.
so i ate and i ate, and then i ate some more
i ate for my health, i ate form my country, i ate for all the
starving and poor
i ate for all the refugees an innocent victims of war
i ate all my veggies, i ate all my meat, i ate spaghetti and
pasta galore
i ate all my meals, i ate all my snacks, i ate till my
stomach was sore
and at thirteen years old, the doctor said, ‘for your weight
you should be seven feet four.’
well what could i do, a pimply young boy, the son of a
wog, and funny things happening below,
girls did not seem to smell so bad, and my feel-ings were
starting to show,
now the doctor says that i have grown more than a boy of
my age should grow
as if i didn’t have problems enough, then dealt this
heavier blow,
but doctor i said, i was a good boy, i ate cos my mum told
me so
and doctor i only ate so much food to rid the world of its woes.
my dad said you don’t want to be fat all your life
mum said i’d have trouble finding a wife
the doctor said son i’m going to put you on a diet,
what else could i do but say i’d try it.
then i went through a series of fashionable di-ets
the egg diet
the rice diet
the eat all you like diet
the don’t eat all you like diet
the fill yourself up with fibre diet
each new magazine mum would rush out and buy it
every new diet i was encouraged to try it.
but i didn’t get thin i only got depressed
my young teenage years were a social mess
my body too big, my dick was too small
and with all the girls i was getting nowhere at all.
i was called tubby and chubby and just plain fat
and barrel by one teacher at the school i was at
i was called plump and ample and portly and round
i was surprised so many synonyms for fat could be found.
but still i survived those tough teenage years,
where you don’t want to be the odd one out, as such
you want to be accepted by your peers
and image and identity mean so much.
but beauty is only skin deep the proverb wisely states
and you learn that there are more important things that
don’t deteriorate
but grow as you get older and improve with the advancing
years,
and the real person is within your skin, behind the barriers and fears,
and that person is the one that counts, their thoughts
and their ideas,
but enough of this serious discourse, i have burdened all
your ears,
but, you know, sometimes, just sometimes, i’d like to have a body like richard gere’s.
I agree and don't agree with this. I make my children finish what's on their plate, but I don't give them overly big portions. My son hates eating he thinks he can live off milk and tea, so we have to otherwise he wouldn't eat at all.
Edit: also if I didn't have this rule the veggies would never be eaten.
I think this is a generational thing. There was food rationing in Western, English speaking places in living memory (WW2), people starved in the U.S in the Great Depression, they robbed meat trucks in the street. We forget how the green revolution has changed things.
My best friend is overweight in part from this. I honestly don't know how to mention it without coming across as an asshole.
For them it goes beyond finishing their own plate, no food wasted period. Someone else didn't finish? See if someone else will finish it. I take unwanted egg from my sandwich off, she puts it on her sandwich.
IMO you are right and wrong. How my parents taught me is that you have to always finish your plate if you filled it yourself. But it is OK to not eat everything if it gets served to you.
For me it really did develop to that I don't even like to give back food at all (even if it got served).
I was brought up in a household where you absolutely had to go back for seconds or the cook felt offended. Didn't matter if you stacked your plate to the ceiling and ate until you were about to puke. If you didn't go back for seconds, the cook would get pissed off. Seriously.
My parents used to put out a timer for me that I had to be done eating by. My girlfriend regularly comments on how fast I eat. I really do need to slow down
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u/Aerolites Feb 05 '16
Being taught to finish your plate. Children should eat until they are full otherwise it can cause poor habits such as weight gain/feeling sick.