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I've had one too many people remark on how amazing it is that kids under my care eat such a variety of foods and I need to get something off my chest about it.
Of course I'm going to say that the secret to getting kids to eat things is to put them on their plates and not bug them about eating them. And also that when you talk about food you do it in a celebratory way, how delicious the delicious food is, how lovely it is that we can derive our parts from it.
You know what else though? Some kids really are going to have a narrower range of food they eat for a wide variety of reasons. I've come to the conclusion that a very strong dislike is actually an intolerance, not a whim. A child who refuses all slippery foods should be offered the same respect as a child who breaks out in to hives. Don't put up a struggle until the kid gags and vomits all over the table. Take their word for it, and give them other things to eat when you're having guacamole and vichysoise. Maybe give them the opportunity to test it out later, but have something else to eat. Also, don't make them prove their case. If they loved raw vegies last week & can't abide them this week, it's frustrating, but that's life.
I treat adults the same way. No, of course, if you're an adult I am not ultimately responsible for your diet, but I will ask your restrictions before feeding you if I have a chance. It's more pleasant to me to know I can meet your needs. It's not a burden. If I can't meet your needs it's sad. I have a vegetarian friend who always has to bring her own food when eating with her sister. They've been doing this forever! If I have her over there's going to be at least a complete meatless option. Why not? There's nothing inherent to a vegetarian diet that a meateater can't eat.
I think there's a pretty long list of foods my son doesn't like. There was a period in his childhood where he would accept so few foods for dinner that in order to have a tolerable level of variety for the rest of us I would have had to make two complete different dinners. I couldn't do that. So when he was eight I said, I was going to cook what I wanted, and if he didn't like that he could make his own dinner, as long as it had all the healthy components. Of course I often cooked what he would eat anyway. Anyway, he learned some nutrition, and got cooking skills, and I got to eat things that weren't spaghetti, roast chicken, sweet potatoes or broccoli. Notice his preferred diet was already pretty balanced. I have a brother in law who can occasionally be gotten to eat a spinach salad but otherwise eats meat and starch. He's had a lot of severe intestinal issues that family lore attributes to his unbalanced diet but which I suspect rather derives from whatever prevents him from being able to enjoy the vast world of delicious plant food. Particularly since his daughter has a narrow list of what she will eat too. She eats white food (including white protein food), carrots and butternut squash, with occasional forays into other vegetables and fruit. People have worried about her for over thirty years but she quietly eats what she wants. She says her issues with the foods she avoids is almost always texture, and she will occasionally experiment with trying new ways to make things have a texture she can handle. My brother was a no-slippery-foods person. He called bananas and avocados "snot foods." He had a reputation for being a picky eater in my family, while my nice fellow, whose list of foods was approximately the same length as my brother's, was deemed in his family to be an adventurous eater.
So yes, "picky" and "adventurous" are relative terms. Generally a person is a picky eater if they don't eat what the speaker thinks everybody should eat, and they're an adventurous eater if they eat things the speaker would themselves hesitate to eat. My daughter used to think she was a picky eater because there was a handful of things she wouldn't eat. I kept telling her she wasn't (because she had a long list of foods she would eat and she tried new foods now and then). As an adult she's figured out that she actually does have some food sensitivities.
Anyway. The grand goblin's favorite lunches are chicken (or miso) vegetable soup, into which I put a lot of brightly colored vegetables, and the "snack plate" which has five to ten different types of food and a salad dressing dip (she likes thousand island, which is my fault). I'll cut up some cooked and raw vegies and add some crackers or other starchy food, fruit, and some protein (sardines, cheese, hardboiled egg, beans, or peanut butter with celery). It's not more effort to assemble this than to do a lot of the things that people do for lunches. Also, it means I'm more likely to eat up the pretty vegetables I might otherwise have lost the ambition to prepare.
Of course I'm going to say that the secret to getting kids to eat things is to put them on their plates and not bug them about eating them. And also that when you talk about food you do it in a celebratory way, how delicious the delicious food is, how lovely it is that we can derive our parts from it.
You know what else though? Some kids really are going to have a narrower range of food they eat for a wide variety of reasons. I've come to the conclusion that a very strong dislike is actually an intolerance, not a whim. A child who refuses all slippery foods should be offered the same respect as a child who breaks out in to hives. Don't put up a struggle until the kid gags and vomits all over the table. Take their word for it, and give them other things to eat when you're having guacamole and vichysoise. Maybe give them the opportunity to test it out later, but have something else to eat. Also, don't make them prove their case. If they loved raw vegies last week & can't abide them this week, it's frustrating, but that's life.
I treat adults the same way. No, of course, if you're an adult I am not ultimately responsible for your diet, but I will ask your restrictions before feeding you if I have a chance. It's more pleasant to me to know I can meet your needs. It's not a burden. If I can't meet your needs it's sad. I have a vegetarian friend who always has to bring her own food when eating with her sister. They've been doing this forever! If I have her over there's going to be at least a complete meatless option. Why not? There's nothing inherent to a vegetarian diet that a meateater can't eat.
I think there's a pretty long list of foods my son doesn't like. There was a period in his childhood where he would accept so few foods for dinner that in order to have a tolerable level of variety for the rest of us I would have had to make two complete different dinners. I couldn't do that. So when he was eight I said, I was going to cook what I wanted, and if he didn't like that he could make his own dinner, as long as it had all the healthy components. Of course I often cooked what he would eat anyway. Anyway, he learned some nutrition, and got cooking skills, and I got to eat things that weren't spaghetti, roast chicken, sweet potatoes or broccoli. Notice his preferred diet was already pretty balanced. I have a brother in law who can occasionally be gotten to eat a spinach salad but otherwise eats meat and starch. He's had a lot of severe intestinal issues that family lore attributes to his unbalanced diet but which I suspect rather derives from whatever prevents him from being able to enjoy the vast world of delicious plant food. Particularly since his daughter has a narrow list of what she will eat too. She eats white food (including white protein food), carrots and butternut squash, with occasional forays into other vegetables and fruit. People have worried about her for over thirty years but she quietly eats what she wants. She says her issues with the foods she avoids is almost always texture, and she will occasionally experiment with trying new ways to make things have a texture she can handle. My brother was a no-slippery-foods person. He called bananas and avocados "snot foods." He had a reputation for being a picky eater in my family, while my nice fellow, whose list of foods was approximately the same length as my brother's, was deemed in his family to be an adventurous eater.
So yes, "picky" and "adventurous" are relative terms. Generally a person is a picky eater if they don't eat what the speaker thinks everybody should eat, and they're an adventurous eater if they eat things the speaker would themselves hesitate to eat. My daughter used to think she was a picky eater because there was a handful of things she wouldn't eat. I kept telling her she wasn't (because she had a long list of foods she would eat and she tried new foods now and then). As an adult she's figured out that she actually does have some food sensitivities.
Anyway. The grand goblin's favorite lunches are chicken (or miso) vegetable soup, into which I put a lot of brightly colored vegetables, and the "snack plate" which has five to ten different types of food and a salad dressing dip (she likes thousand island, which is my fault). I'll cut up some cooked and raw vegies and add some crackers or other starchy food, fruit, and some protein (sardines, cheese, hardboiled egg, beans, or peanut butter with celery). It's not more effort to assemble this than to do a lot of the things that people do for lunches. Also, it means I'm more likely to eat up the pretty vegetables I might otherwise have lost the ambition to prepare.