Core Message: Pickiness is culture, not nature. Children aren’t inherently picky eaters, as we’ve been led to believe. We’ve been led to believe this through experience raising children and maybe our own experiences. Pickness is learned, and with some key pillars of parenting, children will learn to like whatever you serve them. These ideas are:
- Make sure your child is pleasantly hungry before meals
- Dont offer alternative foods
- Limit their exposure to processed foods and food marketing
- Serve them the exact same interesting, flavorful foods you are eating, and talk openly about how and why you like them.
- If they have a negative reaction to a food, dont treat it like its an aversion, and NEVER tell a child they dont like something
- With love and positivity urge them to keep trying the same food over and over, warmly encouraging them using praise, excitement and other small rewards
- Dont be afraid to tell them the truth about how good food keeps kids happy, healthy, energetic, and tall.
- Be confident. You know more than your child about food!
Supporting ideas:
- Children before the depression were never picky. There is a long history of doctors thinking their LACK of pickiness was actually bad for them.
- Nutrition experts early in the 20th century started to recommend bland foods and strict portioning of food for children, before they understood germ theory of disease. These guidelines were in an effort to combat childhood disease.
- Eventually, by the 1950’s parents started to believe that there was ‘childrens food’. This was the same time that TV advertising became normal for children to see. children started telling adults what to buy, instead of adults dictating the foods.
- Supermarkets, advertising, and distance from the process of growing and preparing food self-reinforced this pickiness culture in children.
Overall a very interesting read. I mostly skimmed the book, becuase I was sort of hunting for the actionable steps. They ended up being in the second to last paragraph of the book. The writing was nice to read, and I may re-read it just for the sake of soaking up some more odd facts. There was a whole section on child coffee drinking (turns out caffeine does NOT stunt childhood growth - that was a whole correlation vs causation issue that was misinterpreted!).