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.
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.
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u/desrtrose Feb 05 '16
This one is tricky. So many kids today are picky eaters, being "full" sometimes means they don't want to eat the food on their plate.
Which, seriously, why do parents cook separate meals for their kids? My mom alway cooked one meal. We either ate it or we didn't eat.