A relatively harmless vice. I could be on a bus to a casino to play the slots (or worse) instead of goofing off here. Of course, I also could be doing something useful for humanity too, but that’s a different rant.
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I feel like I need to contribute here, as a childhood picky eater that has (slowly) expanded my palate.
To blame parents entirely for kids’ picky eating is short sighted and rather unempathetic.
Some kids, for no specific reason, just… won’t eat anything they don’t want. I was one of those kids. For ages I subsisted on blue box, hot dogs (plain!) cheese pizza, fish sticks. Peanut butter and ritz crackers. Eggs, but only with runny yolks to mop up with toast. Solid yolks were anathema.
I was picky enough and stubborn enough that my physician finally told my mother to just feed me whatever I’d eat, since I would go without food for days rather than eat a salad. Why? No idea. This was before ARFID was a diagnosis, and gastrobuttons that let you ‘force feed’ a kid weren’t a thing yet.
It wasn’t til my 20’s when I discovered tableside Caesar salads and that opened my tastes up. Again, no particular idea why that, and why then.
Kids can be unbelievably, unbearably stubborn, and unlike adults, they have all day to nurse their grudge.
I have known adults that are still stuck in that mode. We’d go out for lunch to a sushi place and they’d get the chicken katsu as the only thing on the menu they’d eat.
I feel sad for those folks, mostly, even as I will still pick around overly large chunks of onion in a spaghetti sauce. (Hate the texture)
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Here is a kid whose parents exposed him/her to real food. Also possibly fake but insta reel so 
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Yes, poor children in other countries aren’t that picky, just happy to get any food.
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I had a “Try it, You’ll Like It” upbringing. Both parents are foodies, both grandmothers and 2 aunts were talented cooks and bakers, 1 grandfather owned a restaurant and 1 uncle was a baker.
I wasn’t too picky as a kid. I was open to most things.
There were a few things I disliked: many curries ( I liked korma, didn’t try Thai curry until I was 16), grapefruit juice, liver. I disliked most pizza from around Grade 8 until university.
I disliked submarines and heros until I was 30. I didn’t eat fried eggs or omelettes until I was 18. I didn’t eat scrambled eggs until I was around 45 
I’m probably pickier now.
My kiddo recently: "Hey, why do you have that and I don’t?"
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Like with many “issues” it is rarely only one factor which defines the source and also with this topic many factors, e.g. genetics etc will contribute. At the same time growing up in Europe (and traveling around quite a lot in different countries there and having many friends all over) and now living for the last 20+ years in the US it is quite obvious that the food culture and the importance of food (for the average citizen, not looking at places like HO which doesn’t really reflect that) is quite different in Europe compared to the US and parents (and societies) approach to food is reflecting it. Are there picky kids in Europe - no doubt about it (but the % will be lower). Are most parents (and school cafeteria, restaurants etc) take a different approach to it - no doubt about it. There are so many small examples which illustrate it, like when I see what our daughter gets to eat in school vs. what we got or kids from friends in Europe. Or that it is quite common in the US that families eat dinner (or lunch) in front of the TV instead of eating “together”. By far not everybody in Europe is a gourmet and always thinks about the next meal but I would argue that on average there are more people (and thereby also parents) who “live to eat” in Europe than here in the US. Obviously with the continuous globalization eat will change (in both directions) over time and we will see where we will be in 20-30 years
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I’m always mindful of that TBH.
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It looks like it had an unfortunate typo in it that gave you the impression she was a year old.
In
- “our daughter, since she is pretty much one year old, eats the same as us and…”
I’m thinking @honkman meant to write “was” instead of “is”.
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My son adopted age 7 from foster care and a picky eater was not at all a symptom of affluenza. He was born in the “first world” but he was far from fortunate. Not everyone born in the US is first world.
He was denied food for weeks as a young child by his mother’s drug dealer boyfriend, and when they got food, his three older siblings stole his food. They were only 2, 3, and 4 years older. My son says the people who came with guns to buy drugs from his mother’s boyfriend were nice, because they told him to give the children food. He did for a few days. Then stopped. HIs foster mother was unloving and forced food down his throat.
Yes, my son’s situation is rare, but more common than most people think, that children become picky eaters because of food deprivation and abuse and neglect.
It’s presumed here that we are talking about children from intact, loving families who were economically and emotionally able to provide their children with nutritious food.
I’m just asking people not to judge children and families when you have no knowledge of the history and circumstances.
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I concur. The fact that any number of users can seemingly piss away several hours a day on a food forum
I don’t understand; many or most of us on HO being privileged is evidence that picky eating is the result of privilege?
Or maybe you are saying it is evidence that we forget how privileged we are?
Sigh. I failed at the hardest thing (for me).
I will keep trying to let such things go. Discussing the complexity of human behavior seems extremely difficult in this setting.
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I’m so sorry your son went through all of that
I am also so grateful of you sharing his story Thank you?
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Absolutely. Harmless and fun. I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it a vice. I was merely pointing out the obvious that can sometimes fall into oblivion 
Thread drift is real, mmmmkay?
We’e gone from picky eaters 6-8 years ago, as someone here pointed out, to munchies for diabetics, to discussing privilege (or “affluenza” if you will) in just a few twists and turns.
One point I and others are trying to make is that where food sources are scarce, pickiness is not an option. In a society of abundance, things are different. Abundant societies are more privileged than those lacking.
Another one that @honkman and I seem to agree on is that the number of picky eaters (and food allergies) seem to be more prevalent in the US than in other countries. Perhaps it is all merely anecdotal.
Someone more nerdy than I can probably pull up statistics if they exist.
That would be me!
Of course “picky” is relative, as is so much human behavior, which is why in the scientific literature, you won’t see the word normal. I’m thinking definitions of “normal” might be more prevalent here!
" The prevalence and burden of avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) in a general adolescent population"
“This study aimed to investigate how common possible ARFID is and associated health-related quality of life and psychological distress in a sample of adolescents from the general population in New South Wales, Australia”
This study is about Swedish twins!
I’m sure this is not what folks here had in mind, but I think it’s an interesting “diagnosis”.
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Except, it’s really not.
As I said before platitudes might sound good but they’re not actually useful. .
Growing up in the “third world”, the “children are starving” argument was often applied to battle pickiness — it wasn’t effective then, same as it isn’t now.
Have you tried giving a poor or homeless person something to eat? We often do. Not being “affluent” doesn’t “solve” pickiness.
But thinking that it does or should might be a sign of affluenza.
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Wait, what?!
You’re going to bring FACTS into this now @shrinkrap?
The US population is only 350m out of 7 bn but you found studies from other countries with the remaining billions of people?
Lolol
Research on these kinds of topics is certainly a first-world type “indulgence”, though, so I’m going to venture a guess that you won’t find too many studies on the subject from countries where more than half the world’s population reside, despite their commensurate proportions of picky eaters.
Interesting article about how different countries/cultures value food for kids and how special dishes (with the US food industry leading) can create picky eaters
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Being on the internet is itself indicative of privilege, whether we are one of the few here on HO, one of the 250+ million on Reddit, or anywhere else.
But I’m with you on the lack of relevance, because it doesn’t have much to do with anything else being discussed.
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Thank you for making my point for me.
