Of all the things my mother did for me, the one I'm second most grateful for was not catering to my childish tastes.

I see some of my friends not far beyond chicken fingers for every meal and shudder...

So thanks, Mom! You were right. Here's to "Dinner is what I cooked, and if you want something else then breakfast is in 12 hours."

My best friend and his wife are the best parents I've ever seen in practice, in many ways. Quality time, attention, simulating activities etc. They're both schoolteachers.

BUT! Their kids eat 3 meals for dinner: pizza, chicken nuggets with French fries, or easy Mac. For lunch they have pb&j, for breakfast eggs or cereal. Chips and candy for snacks. Throw in some applesauce you suck out of little pouches. That's it.

I'm pretty much appalled. The kids seem healthy, although I'm not an expert. But man, they're missing out on literally all the good stuff.

I hope they come around in a couple years. I haven't asked them their plan or anything.

I'm firmly in the camp of not cooking around kids unless they really hate one particular thing, or it's too spicy perhaps, or an allergy.

I became an extremely picky eater suddenly around age 4.

I literally didn't eat a single vegetable or fruit that wasn't an onion or tomato sauce until age 20, and my diet consisted mostly of "kid food" - hamburgers, hot dogs, breakfast cereal, milk, etc.

Meanwhile, my family was eating lots of home cooked mediterranean meals. I can't count the number of times I'd be eating a hot dog while they were enjoying something like stinky artichokes.

My parents cooked around me. Never forced me to eat anything I didn't like. Never insisted I "just try" a food that was going to make me gag.

Shortly after I turned 20, something just clicked and I started eating everything. Now my diet is more varied than the rest of my family.

Don't force your kids to eat stuff they hate.

If they're not actually malnourished or obese, they'll likely turn out fine. The last thing you want to do is establish a pattern of stress and anguish re: meals and food. That probably never turns out well in the long run.

Good-sounding advice I have heard from professionals is a middle ground between your approach and the grandparent comments' "this is what the meal is" approach: Don't cook separate meals for your kids, but include at least one food in the meal the child will definitely eat, even if it's just bread, crackers, etc. (I have also heard "don't make dessert separate from the rest of the meal.") Also, if your kids are old enough, don't pre-portion the food or serve it to the kids; let them make their own plates. If they just eat bread and cheese, that's up to them - but it doesn't set up the idea that they are going to get something "special" if they don't like what's being offered.

Not being a parent, I have no idea whether this works. I'd be interested to hear whether anyone has tried an approach like this. I'm sure kids can find some way to defeat it no matter how good it sounds.

Personally, my biggest issue growing up was less pickiness (like a lot of kids, I went through a picky phase and emerged from it not picky), and more that my parents had the classic "finish what's on your plate" rule, which I think has definitely contributed to unhealthy eating habits in adulthood.

One problem with parenting is that there is so much simple advice out there that “works” for some people so they become quite sure they’ve found the one true answer. We have raised both kids with the same “this is dinner” attitude and it worked wonderfully on the first kid and not at all on the second kid. It’s hubris for people to think they have figured out what works enough to tell others they should do the same.

One of my daughters finds almost all foods revolting. She accepts rice, ketchup, ramen, breakfast cereal, and most sweets. Sometimes she'll accept pickled beets. She doesn't tolerate veggies, fruits, most meat, most breads, and most restaurant food (including fast food).

We have convinced her to eat other foods, but she gags every time. I suspect she has an eating disorder. She has been seeing a therapist, but I wonder if she needs to see a different therapist who specializes in eating disorders. In any case, she seems physically healthy; she runs and plays and doesn't get hurt.

What's amazing to me is I was completely unaware of these kinds of disorders before she came along. I think she wants to eat veggies (because she really believes us when we say they are good for her), but her body strongly resists.

I had the same thing, and I ended up growing out of it in my early 20's. The gag reflex is so tough to get around, I think I gradually got past it around the same time. I'll never be an adventurous eater, but I've become a huge fan of asparagus, spinach and green capsicums (bell peppers).

To be fair, I think around 10 my best friend at the time (Japanese) and I were picking the "worst" nigiri off the menu for each other to try.

You eat a raw clam with a "tail", and everything else relatively adjusts itself, re: gag reflex.

What about smoothies? Will she eat veggies if you blend it all in NutriBullet with some tofu, dates and banana? It's different visually and texture.

Sometimes. She's unpredictable when it comes to smoothies.

Does she have a sensory processing difference that makes some foods taste disgusting?

I'm obviously not sure what your daughter's situation is, and it sounds a bit more extreme than mine was, so take what I'm about to say not as advice but just as a different perspective.

When I was a kid, I hated the texture of most foods. They made me gag. It wasn't necessarily the taste, and I really did wish I could eat vegetables because I knew they were good for me. They even smelled and looked good. But I just couldn't get past the texture.

My pediatrician was "old school" and told my parents that I was just a picky eater and not to worry about it. Did I eat dairy? Fortified cereals? Eggs and meat? If so, I'd be fine. His point was that kids just need macronutrients, and the vitamins sprayed on cereal plus a daily supplement was more than enough.

Did I under eat as a result? Probably. Was I a little under weight? Yeah, but not dangerously. Honestly, it probably helped me long term because my weight has never been a problem as an adult. I'm also normal height.

So, did I have an eating disorder? I mean, in a way, maybe. But it was a reaction to a sensation. I didn't have any other reason past "it feels gross in my mouth." I'm not an expert, but doesn't disordered eating need to be accompanied by "wrong thinking?" I had no other cause or motivation for my picky eating.

> she seems physically healthy; she runs and plays and doesn't get hurt

Again, I'm not trying to give advice because I don't know the specifics, but maybe don't worry too much unless she is actually presenting as physically unhealthy. Like, unless blood work shows some nutritional deficiency that can't be corrected with a vitamin supplement.

> She has been seeing a therapist, but I wonder if she needs to see a different therapist

Again, I don't know your situation, so maybe she is seeing a therapist for other reasons - but I believe that being made to see a therapist as a kid for my picky eating would have made things worse, especially since I didn't have any other problems. It may have even made me believe I had other mental problems.

I just didn't like the texture of most foods. Even as a kid I realized how weird that was, and that I should be eating more foods. I just couldn't do it physically until I was older and outgrew it. Now I'm fine. I'm an adventurous eater. I eat anything and everything, and I'm quite healthy.

Side note, I have adult friends who I learned were even pickier eaters than me as kids and who never really grew out of it. They're all fine, if maybe a little underweight.

There's evidence suggesting that super restrictive diets can extend lifespan. Also, hey, some people are just a little bit eccentric and have weird eating habits. Maybe they don't need to be "fixed." ymmv.

> Don't force your kids to eat stuff they hate.

We take a different approach.

1) We explain to our kids their tastebuds are different and you have to learn to like some of the things that are healthy for you. Then we ask them to eat some to help learn and then then they can fill up on the rest.

2) We bury veg into food. It's amazing what you can grate into bolonaise sauce and similar and no-one knows.

3) Within reasonable bounds they don't have choice. We see some parents pander to their kids dislike. Of course the kids then learn they can refuse and get 'tasty' stuff. When kids have this option naturally they are more likely to push for the alternate and promote how bad veg etc is. To a degree restricting choice makes life easier.

And generally I respect kids are different and our experience of not having issues around this can be luck of the draw, also I think some people simply don't want the extra initial effort to establish boundaries. And as a parent I feel it's our duty to fuel a developing body and mind with the best we can as this is a core foundation for life.

This is very strange to me, coming from a culture of "food is what is cooked". There was no stress around it because that's the way the world worked, sometimes you don't like the food but you still eat it. The same way you'd prefer to play all day instead of going to school. I can't fathom how one would call this traumatic, it's just part of learning to not be a spoiled brat that gets everything their way.

> it's just part of learning to not be a spoiled brat that gets everything their way.

I don't understand the idea that not wanting to eat food you hate makes you a "spoiled brat". Adults aren't expected to eat food they hate, and they don't. It's one of the few things kids are forced to do that has no analog in the adult world. This isn't the same thing as teaching a kid how to wake up early or do chores. Eating food you hate isn't like, a necessary life skill.

If a kid is a picky eater, you're usually not cooking up an elaborate meal for them - you throw a hot dog in the microwave or pour them a bowl of cereal. That seems easier than just about any other technique for dealing with a kid who doesn't want to eat "adult" food.

> I can't fathom how one would call this traumatic

It's not traumatic like a car crash, but pick a food that would make you vomit and imagine a person in authority and twice your size trying to force it down your throat. This happened to me in preschool, and it sucked. At home I was allowed to eat (or not eat) in peace.

You don't actually know what your neighbors were cooking everyday or why, or how it affected their kids.

I'm western, but almost all of my childhood and early/mid teens was spent in Asia. I think growing up seeing all the variety of odd and stinky things made me much more willing to try; they were having it, so _I want it_.

I wonder how much environment shapes how open one will be to food. Most picky eaters I've met come from places with cultures of TV-centric dinners (America, Australia, UK) opposed to family-centric ones (Japan, Germany, Singapore), which makes me wonder if there's a link or just coincidence in experience.

I am also a westerner that spent my childhood in SE Asia. Everyone ate in large, familial gatherings, and what was served was what was served. You could always fall back to plain rice if you genuinely didn't like what was available, but in practice I don't ever remember that happening. Sure, there were things you liked more than others, but sharing food with my friends was fun, and if they liked something, why wouldn't I?

We were also more involved in the production/acquisition of the food of the day- go fetch some eggs from the hens, go ask the folks next door for some lemon grass, that kind of thing. I really do think being a part of the creation of the meal was good for our development. It certainly made me more interested in tasting what the adults did with the ingredients we brought them!

>and what was served was what was served.

yeah but like, what makes you think that "what was served" was served with absolutely no concern for what members of the family liked or disliked.

I won't say there was zero concern (people did fight for the best durian), but overall, everyone was just happy to have food. The concept of being able to even be a picky eater just didn't exist (or at least, I never saw it) outside of genuine allergies or the like.

It's a great point about the broader process. Specifically, including people who aren't your immediate family (do you want them to see you refuse something?) and investing in the prior-to-plate portion (sunk cost fallacy!).

Can’t speak for the other countries, but I’ve met plenty of German picky eaters.

I have a friend who is in his 40s, never eats veggies, and is one of the fastest bike racers in town. As much as people go on about veggies it isn't as if you can't live without them. The nutrients exist in other things too.

The macros maybe, but many of the nutrients don't. You can't get the health benefits with other foods.

Your friend is more likely to die at a younger age and have health problems when they are older.

50. Wish I hit that "clicked" moment at some point. There ARE some raw vegetables I will (and do) eat. But cook them, and they're vile to me. But more than anything, I avoid a lot of sauces, things containing vinegar (which is a LOT) - really not a lot of rhyme or reason to any of it. But boy do I hear you about the pattern of stress and anguish re: meals and food.

I've often said that if I could get away with not eating - I would not eat anything.

Socially - this is a huge handicap.

Ha! Are we siblings? My mum's line was "Dinner is what I cooked and if you don't eat it now you can have it for breakfast served cold." And she meant it.

> I know many humans who have diets not far off from that.

The minute you add Tomatoes + Cheese (found in pizza), you're suddenly fixing a major vitamin A deficiency (that Hamburgers / Potatoes lack).

Like, at least round out the meal with other ultraprocessed foods if you want to prove something.

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What causes bone deficiency? Well, a lack of calcium (also found in cheese) and Vitamin D (needed to process calcium more efficiently), which potatoes also lack.

Pizza, Tacos, and Ice Cream would fix that, no joke, if I'm thinking about the "worst foods" that still hit those vitamins.

Remember that pizza cheese is often not cheese, but a substitute called Analogue Pizza Cheese, made of casein (the protein in milk), starch, vegetable fats, emulsifiers, stabilisers, preservatives, colourings and flavourings. Burger cheese is either the same stuff or "processed cheese" which means scraps of cheese with the same additives. There's very little in the way of nutrition in any of this.

I'm not sure about the tomato paste either, but if the majority of the paste is the additives and the tomatoes have been heat treated and salted and sugar'd to an inch of their lives, you're not getting anything but calories, like mywittiname's comment suggests.

That's something to keep in mind with any processed foods: many of the materials in them are not there to provide nutrition, and don't.

The majority of Pizzas in the USA use mozzarella from Leprino Foods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprino_Foods

> Leprino supplies cheese to 85% of the pizza market, including Pizza Hut, Domino's, Little Caesars, Papa John's, Hungry Howie's, Tombstone, Tony's, Jack's, and Digiorno.

So I looked up the Vitamin A contents of Heinz ketchup and Kraft Singles (the highly processed "cheese" used in fast food cheeseburgers). Each say 2% RDV per serving, that's roughly 20mcg per serving.

I'm not sure below what level constitutes deficiency. Perhaps that small amount is enough.

Hitting 4-6% of the recommended daily value over a sustained time is likely severe deficiency.

Hitting 50% over time is noticeably inadequate at a population level. https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/132/9/2920S/4687708

Most green vegetables have barely any nutritive content. Babies naturally find them disgusting as well - this is an example of instinctive flavor preference actually working correctly. The problem is that evolved palatability is not well-calibrated for things like widely available sugars (including starches)

You're getting downvoted, but this is correct. Most green veggies have high oxalates and high phytic acid (antinutrients) that actively prevent the absorption of certain nutrients. For example, Spinach has calcium oxalate that prevents the absorption of calcium (it binds to calcium instead and passes through your digestive system).

Unless those veggies are soaked & boiled, fermented, or sprouted, chances are they're adding little nutritional value to your diet and can even cause anemia or other issues if you're just eating them raw.

This seems like a good argument for eating varying things over the day. E.g. you don't have to have greens with your breakfast, but it's probably good to eat them every so often for fiber.

And yes fermented greens like sauerkraut or kimchi may be better in many ways.

If you don't have problems with constipation, what's the point of fiber?

Fermentable fiber is food for lots of symbiotic bacteria in the gut. Our health depends on the health of many of those bacteria populations. They produce proteins for us for which we don't have the genes, modulate immune functions, etc.

You don’t need gut bacteria at all if you’re only eating food humans can efficiently metabolize on their own. E.g. if you eat only animal products, your body can completely break down the food into fats, peptides, etc. with no need for bacteria. There is no chance that my ancestors depended on bacterial symbiosis because there would have been long stretches of time each year where the only foods they had significant access to would have been the kind that gets absorbed before bacteria even have a chance to try to eat it.

> You don’t need gut bacteria at all if you’re only eating food humans can efficiently metabolize on their own.

You don't know what you're talking about. See https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00726-017-2493-3 as an example (one of many).

Specifically:

Research has indicated that the profile of the gut microbiota is the key determinant of the levels of tryptophan catabolites (TRYCATs) in the systemic circulation. Consequently, the profile of the gut microbiota is an indirect contributor to the degree to which serotonin is present in the brain. As serotonin is a fundamental neuro-transmitter at every signaling terminus of the gut–brain axis (O’Mahony et al. 2015), this is a consequential fact. Aberrances regarding TRYCATs are known to play a role in the onset and progression of depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, and somatoform disorder (Maes et al. 2007, 2011; Maes and Rief 2012), and aberrances in the levels of neurotoxic and immunomodulatory TRYCATs have been observed in several neurodegenerative and neuroimmune diseases (Morris et al. 2016).

As evidence regarding the impact of the human gut microbiota on the health of the gastrointestinal tract continues to grow, the significant correlation between these factors is becoming indisputable (Klose et al. 2010). Moreover, it is becoming clear that a highly responsive and mutual connection exists between the resident species of the gut microbiota and the host, primarily insofar as the host metabolome status is regulated by the microbiota locally and systemically (Zhang et al. 2015).

Disruptions to the human gut microbiota have widespread implications. For instance, they are associated with diseases external to the intestine, including the systemic immune system, the genital system, the central nervous system, and adipose tissues (Ciarlo et al. 2016)

Right, tomatoes, pepper, cucumbers are basically water (specially the ones we buy in supermarket), very little nutritional value but fills you up quickly so no good if you are trying to properly feed a child who is picky. Good fiber but that's all

To be nitpicky, startch is a polysaccharide, i.e. a long chain of sugars. Although it's ultimately made of glucouse, polysaccharides are normally not considered sugars, perhaps partly because they're usually not sweet, but also because of their complexity that sets them apart from their constituent sugars. So a bit like we don't call a house "brick".

It isn't a question of whether eating only burgers, fries, and soda is a common problem or not. It is a question of a paper going on about Ultra Processed Foods as if that is a well defined thing, when it should have said "eating only a burger, fries, and soda causes rats problems"

The hamburger in the study had tomatoes and lettuce (but they explicitly pointed out no pickles or onions). So there was some vegetable material there already.