Picky eaters are made, not born

Of course it is true. Parents are the problem when kids refuse food.

As a teacher of young children I would have to agree. The child comes in all anxious from the parents, of course they act out by being picky - the one form of control they possess

Wasn't there a long thread about this a few weeks ago.

Oh Christ. Now we have a "baby tastes" troll.

On the last thread we discussed the fact that some picky eaters are, in fact, born. There's been research into the science of taste sensation, and not everyone is the same. Some people are born with a highly selective sense of taste and their brains really do tell them that many foods are "bad", and life is a misery to them.

That doesn't mean that children don't have behavioral problems, and that parents aren't morons, there really is more to the question of picky eaters. But the sort of people who write parenting articles like to assume that parents can control absolutely everything about their children.

[quote]Some people are born with a highly selective sense of taste and their brains really do tell them that many foods are "bad", and life is a misery to them.

nope, these "super tasters" don't have brains that tell them foods are "Bad" they have a very sensitive sense of taste and smell, doesn't mean bad, just sensitive.

Oh, Dear. It's the "baby tastes" bully.

The "baby tastes" troll is one of my favorite new trolls. He is so angry!

[all posts by childish idiot removed]

Let us all speculate as to what type of traumatic event causes a person to become a "Baby Taste" troll!

Some picky eaters were made and some were born. The ones that were made will eat (albeit reluctantly) if they get hungry enough. Those that were born would rather go hungry. For those of the primary trigger is texture, which is even less understood than taste.

[quote]their brains really do tell them that many foods are "bad", and life is a misery to them

Very very true. And if any of you baby taste trolls (OP, R1 and especially R2) can cure SED/ARFID, I know thousands of people around the world who'd be grateful.

I thought I was a picky eater until I got my dna tested. I found out I'm a super taster and certain foods taste bitter to me that don't taste bitter to people who don't have the gene. No need to judge picky eaters, there can be biological reasons for it.

[quote]There is some shit I will not eat.

There is food you refuse to eat?

Getting overly worked up over how and what other people eat is such an obvious sign of an eating disorder.

Just spent the weekend with my morbidly obese older sister and her 20-something skinny daughter. The most common phrase they uttered was "I don't like." Generally about any sort of food stuff. Niece didn't like the delicious sharp cheddar cheese pressed sandwich because she's "used to American cheese." Barely ate half. Sister doesn't like mushrooms because she was once told a a vivid story about somebody puking like a volcano after eating mushroom soup. In fact, she said, "I don't like soup." I asked how she gets her vegetables in the dead of winter. She sort of looked at me blank. I realized she doesn't get vegetables in the winter and I had shamed her somehow. Later on she explained she doesn't like vegetables. It's the texture. And the taste.

So glad when I grew up I learned to try things.

Not really, R15. I was at Easter dinner a few weeks ago, and a cousin of mine blew a gasket because his grandmother, who was serving the dinner, put green beans on his plate. I mean, he really had a psycho meltdown. He started mumbling at her, "Green beans? Ha! How stupid! I don't eat green beans." Then he amped up the craziness: "I DON'T EAT GREEN BEANS! I just don't eat them! Why would anyone serve them to me?" And finally he hissed at his grandmother, "I haaaate those vegetables and I'm just going to throw them out." I jumped out of my chair and his mother shot me a withering look. I wanted to punch them both in the face.

I am so sick of this child-centric world we live in where the whims of some shithead kid are put ahead of adults. What the fuck is wrong with parents these days? They're all so afraid of their kids, fearing the kids may not "like" them. Uh, excuse me. You are the parent. They're not SUPPOSED to like you. Do your fucking job.

My parents made me sit at the table until the food was gone. I remember spending hours one Sunday afternoon until I choked down the peas. They wouldn't cook anything special, we all ate the same thing. But I was still a picky eater, and it was not from babying.

By the way, my mother was like the one mentioned in the Huffington Post blog: You don't like what you eat, then go to bed hungry. THAT'S how kids learn how to eat. All this macaroni and hot dog bullshit is the legacy of lazy parents.

I do think adults have a problem understanding that children have stronger senses of taste so certain delicious vegetables taste gross to them.

However, if parents set up the situation where "I don't like" is good enough reason not to try different varieties of food and cooking styles then they may never get anything healthy in their systems and they will be missing out on a whole lot.

I eat green vegetables with two meals per day, and they're delicious because I put plenty of butter on them (no shitty, unsatisfying margarine or olive oil). If more parents would use butter things would be a lot simpler at meal times. Plain/low fat vegetable dishes are mostly revolting.

And no, I'm not the least bit overweight. Sugar and starch make people gain weight... fat by itself is rarely the problem.

[quote] Picky eaters are made, not born

The author of this little tiny "article"/paragraph, is a cook. Medical doctors who have done extensive research have a different opinion than this cook who thinks he knows more than a bunch of doctors who have devoted their lives to research. These doctors have actually determined that some people have a certain genetic variation in taste perception. These people are called Supertasters. They can be further divided into medium and supertasters. Most estimates suggest 25% of the population are nontasters, 50% are medium tasters, and 25% are supertasters They have also found that certain people have taste receptor genes that are linked to food preference.

But OP thinks all this genetic, scientific research is nonsense and he has done his own extensive research into baby tastes (is that the Latin term?). And by extensive research I mean, he actually read a entire paragraph written by a cook from Brooklyn. Quick, we better notify the Nobel committee because the OP and the cook from Brooklyn have made a major medical research breakthrough.

[quote]By the way, my mother was like the one mentioned in the Huffington Post blog: You don't like what you eat, then go to bed hungry. THAT'S how kids learn how to eat.

And no one knows that better than you, Miss Crawford.

I was a picky eater. Then one day, I realized I just wanted attention. Overnight I stopped being a picky eater. Food immediately tasted better and it was like I had shrugged off a huge weight.

R17, your hillbilly relatives do nothing to disprove what R15 said.

Tiger mom shove food down throat. Picky eater no more.

Obviously, our own childhood experiences matter much more than science and research.

r17 Considering every kid these days has the Child Abuse Hotline on speeddial, many parents are leery of correcting their offspring.

Really R6? Really?

This article is absolute 100% bullshit.

There is no evolutionary reason for children to desire vegetables, and every reason for them not to.

For one thing, poisonous things are almost never sweet.

Also, they're growing at a tremendous rate (they're not on a diet like most adults), while having tiny stomachs, so it makes sense that they want to eat calorie-dense foods like sweets and carbs.

Kids have different agendas. They don't need to have adult food anxieties and snobberies placed on them.

Studies have shown that children who are allowed to eat what they want grow up to be adults with FEWER problems with food issues and obesity, because they learned how to self-regulate and eat according to hunger and need.

When parents make children finish a plate of food they dislike, or send them to bed hungry, or teach them that they have to stuff themselves with food they don't want in order to get food they do want (like all their vegetables in order to get desert), they're teaching them that some foods are "special" (like sweets) and other foods are punishment, and it also teaches them to doubt their own hunger cues.

Even worse are parents who use food as punishment/reward -- like, if you don't behave, you won't get ice cream like your sister, or if you do XYZ, I'll give you a candy bar.

It creates the kind of fucked-up adults who write articles like the OP linked.

R30 vegetables are sweet, give up sugar for a month then try broccoli again.

R30, covered in Cheeto dust..

My narcissist mother is the picky eater in our family.

She made a normal meat, starch, vegetable and salad dinner for us and then sat there eating a dinner roll and ice cream. No, she wasn't fat.

She still does it and is a joy in a restaurant. She's the lady with rolls in her purse asking the waitress to name every ingredient in the chicken soup.

Made or born, it's still equally annoying.

R31-32, thanks for missing the point.

I'm not talking about broccoli or cheetos, but the (proven) negative psychological effects of controlling a child's food.

My son is 3.5 and he eats vegetables. He didn't want to when he was younger though -- and I've never made him.

The fact is, obese adults are more likely to have been controlled as children with regards to food.

With cares? There is nothing wrong with being a picky eater. It is none of your business. Stop bring so intolerant of other people.

There kind of is, R36, because most picky eaters make cooking for them an absolute nightmare. And it's largely impossible to eat out with someone with childish tastes unless you want to go to McDonalds, which no one over 25 with functioning taste buds possibly could.

The Baby Tastes Troll, the idiot who wrote this article, and the whole parental advice industry all have something in common: The false belief that all parents have complete control over their children, or can have complete control if they just shape up.

Telling people that children will stop being picky eaters if the parents control their food is as silly as telling people that they can't get cancer if they follow a macrobiotic diet. Mature and intelligent people realize that life is too complex and unpredictable for those simple cause-and-effect equations to ever work 100% of the time.

Not that I don't love a good round of parent-bashing myself, but it doesn't really apply to the question of picky eating.

I think one thing needs to be separated out. My suggestion is parent/child control issues should be called something different, like reluctant eaters or something. Their behavior is transitory and goes away on it's own. Most kids go through it at some point. It's a common dynamic in parenting.

Picky eaters, on the other hand, don't outgrow it. My parents didn't use food to control me, they didn't make me eat foods I didn't like, encouraged me to try foods but didn't force the issue, and I'm still a picky eater. While I'm sure your arguments may apply in some situations, they don't apply to me or most picky eaters.

We've had at least two "baby tastes" trolls for as long as I've been DLing, which is slightly over a year. I don't know why they get such a thrill lording their human garbage disposal nature over the rest of us, but they do.

I don't consider myself a picky eater, but I don't like some of the foods on the supertaster list (cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, tonic water), but I love others (coffee, grapefruit).

I grew up with a brother who ate ten foods. That's picky. I have a friend who has a long list of foods he won't eat. My food "issues" are nothing by comparison. I'll never understand, though, what inspires the "baby tastes" trolls.

[quote]I do think adults have a problem understanding that children have stronger senses of taste so certain delicious vegetables taste gross to them

bullshite, you made that one up

r36, it actually is my business when a younger colleague is such a picky eater she was a major embarrassment when I brought her to lunch with a client. I told her that part of her professional development will require that she can order a meal at a restaurant that doesn't serve chicken fingers and eat it like a grown up without scraping things off and picking things out.

Extreme picky eating (like eating only 10 foods) is considered a medical disorder. It's not as easy as just forcing kids to eat. That just makes it worse. There are therapies children can get starting at a young age to help them cope with the textures and tastes that repulse them.

I don't know how much it helps, but it's a serious problem for these people -- it disrupts their lives and causes embarrassment and social and work problems, etc.

But that's not what the article is talking about. It's just the same old parent bashing crap, usually written by people who aren't parents.

[quote]Extreme picky eating (like eating only 10 foods) is considered a medical disorder

Recognized in the DSM V as SED/ARFID and given the response to the Duke University study's questionnaire, not as rare as people thought.

[quote] I was a picky eater. Then one day, I realized I just wanted attention. Overnight I stopped being a picky eater. Food immediately tasted better and it was like I had shrugged off a huge weight.

You were the type of person used to make a big deal out of it. Those people are kind of assholes. I don't like a lot of things (they taste bad to me). But I never make a big deal out of it. I would NEVER ask someone to make something special for me or change their menu

I have tried every type of food at least 30 times and I still don't like certain foods. But I never make a big deal out of it. My family still forgets I don't like cheese, mayonnaise or eggs, because I never complain. I just don't eat it. My family also aren't the type to monitor what every person is eating. People that do that have psych issues.

Baby Taste Troll, who yo babydaddy. DL wants to know now!

R42, that employee sounds a little crazy and is the type who likes to make a big deal out of it. Most restaurants will have at least 3 plain items. Like a chicken breast (you just ask for the sauce on the side), a steak or a salad

There's no need to make a big production out of it

[quote] he Baby Tastes Troll, the idiot who wrote this article, and the whole parental advice industry all have something in common: The false belief that all parents have complete control over their children, or can have complete control if they just shape up.

That's true, but I have seen parents make big mistakes by asking their children what they want to eat. You don't ask kids that. They'll pick junk most of the time. I see friends/family members cooking a separate meal for their children. That's ridiculous. That's what sets a lot of this up. You serve one meal for everyone. They can eat what they like from that meal. If a parent can not bring themselves to do this (they think it's mean), they should only offer a child 2 choices of the parents choosing. You tell them they can have this or that. And that's it.

R45 sounds like a lovely, well-adjusted insufferable prig.

Eat it!

.

"I told her that part of her professional development will require that she can order a meal at a restaurant that doesn't serve chicken fingers and eat it like a grown up"

And do you also helpfully tell people that their professional development requires that they lose weight, get plastic surgery, alter their speech patters, get rid of the clothes or they have, otherwise change themselves to please you?

Which does go a long way to tell us what kind of person becomes a Baby Tastes Troll, the critical and officious kind.

Hit a nerve, r53? Are you an insufferable baby tastes type?

God no, R54, I'll bore you to death talking about ethnic restaurants, and the times I ate turtle or wild boar.

I'm just sick of the assholes here who seem to make a hobby of shaming other people over trivial things, if they don't consider it a full-time job.

Oh fank you mister!

fank?

I still hate Brussels sprouts.

One food R58 does not make you a picky eater.

OP is the subway pervert troll who hates Obamacare because he can't afford it.

THAT's being "picky" OP.

pickey eater = subway troll = obamacare

Looks like the baby tastes troll had another failed dinner party. Bitch told me in another thread that I have baby tastes because I don't eat pork lol.

My mom said it was easier to just serve what we'd eat than fight with us about it (she hated to cook in the first place).

I'm both adventurous, and picky, at the same time.

[quote]I'm both adventurous, and picky, at the same time.

Same here. What's wrong with knowing what you like and knowing what you don't like? Where is it written, other than in BTT's brain, that human beings are supposed to be human garbage disposals? Does he like every book, every movie, every color he experiences? I doubt it. Because people have a little thing called "taste," no two people's being exactly the same.

BTT is one of DL's least intelligent posters.

[quote]What's wrong with knowing what you like and knowing what you don't like?

because it makes you insufferable around others.

The Baby Tastes Troll is the insufferable one.

As long as you a) like raisins and b) hate broccoli, you're doing just fine.

I don't like any creamy food

I don’t eat any cream or thick sauces

No cheese please