"picky eaters" news and stories

• Adam Leith Gollner and his fresh for good fruit.
• Toratatsu in Vancouver offers sweet tastes and great dining on foods like "unbelievably tender pieces of free-range chicken ... pickled in a citrus marinade, lightly dredged in cornstarch, flash fried, splashed with more marinade and served cold."
• Be still my taste buds: Recipe for Local White and Green Asparagus Tart with Maple-Cured Bacon, Morels, Ramps, and Fifth Town Goat's Cheese.
• It looks like dry rosés are the new wines of choice.
• Tequila -- it's so hot right now, and pricey.
• Recipes: Healthy Chicken Tenders, Fish Tacos, Buckwheat Banana Pancakes, and Daf's Homemade Granola.
• Fix your picky kid eater by teaching them to cook.

• In the wake of John and Cindy McCain's "family" recipe blunder, here are some of the other candidates' favorite dishes
• Food detectives solve your kitchen mysteries, from the Puzzle of the Unmelting Mac 'n Cheese to the Riddle of the Ooey Gooey Zucchini Bread
  
• Food TV's Hearty Boys dish about their two year-old son, Nate, who, despite his parents' food-centric lifestyle, is a picky eater. (Read their tips on how to get your own picky eater to eat).
  
• A short history on fricassee
  
• Check out the winners of the paper's 8th Annual Good Eating Awards, which features businesses around the Chicago area who have contributed significantly to the food scene
  

The first time my mom gave my younger sister a taste of mashed banana when she was a baby, my sister screamed and hollered like she was being poisoned. My mother was really confused by her behavior as I had loved mashed banana as a baby. She even went so far as to take a taste of the bananas, to make sure that they hadn't gone bad. They were perfectly fine. To this day, my sister still isn't particularly fond of bananas.

Yesterday, the New York Times Dining and Wine section ran an article on kids who are picky eaters and a recent study that may have confirmed that being a averse to new foods may well be a trait that is based in biology. It seems that it's fairly normal for kids to be off-put by new foods as that was a way for them to be protected from the hazards of the world back in our caveman days. They have some good suggestions from the experts on ways to handle introducing new foods to your reluctant kids and mention a book by Jessica Seinfeld (wife of Jerry Seinfeld) on ways to hide healthy food in with the stuff your kids will eat.

For those of you out there who are parents, were your kids picky eaters? If so, how did you handle it?

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I once had a boyfriend who could not tolerate the taste or smell of hard boiled eggs. I remember learning this the hard way, after I had made a really terrific, labor-intensive salmon salad (with freshly poached salmon, not canned). We sat down to eat, and as he put the fork into his mouth, a terrible looked passed across his face and he looked like he was about to retch. The fork beat a hasty retreat back to the plate, and he looked at me with a very serious expression on his face and asked, "Does this have hard boiled eggs in it?"

These days I try to ferret out whether someone is a picky eater before I get too attached, but I've discovered that just about everyone has that one thing that they just can't stand to eat. For some folks, it has to do with a texture and for others it's the association that makes it objectionable. My mom doesn't care for pepper and my dad hates the combination of crunchy and creamy (think ice cream with candy bits in it). My list is fairly short, consisting only of shrimp (as I have a highly inconvenient allergy).

What's your objectionable ingredient? Has your list gotten short as you've gotten older? How do you handle it if you are served something that contains this item?

This post inspired by a question on Serious Eats' Food and Drink forum.

photo by Marisa McClellan

Many experts say that it takes time for a child to accept a new food once it has been offered to them. The number of times you should offer a food varies according to who you ask. The most recent number seems to be 15 times, but once of the reasons to bring up new foods so often is to prevent the kids from getting into a rut with what they eat.

Pediatric nutritionist Jeanne Cox says that variety is important to make sure that kids are getting all of the nutrients that they need, even if the foods that they like are already healthy ones. New foods add flavor variety and change the vitamins and nutrients the children take in. If they are offered, and allowed to eat, the same foods every day, they may be less likely to try new foods in the future.

Cox tells parents that they should offer children, especially picky eaters, very balanced meals that include protein, starch, vegetables and/or fruits. Each element should be varied, serving potatoes, bread (whole grain, of course), pasta or rice for the starch, for example. Even if a child only eats the protein on one night and the starch on another, in the long run, the child will have eaten a relatively balanced diet and probably tried a few new foods, too - new foods that he or she might just want to eat again.

More about picky eaters:

• The "Cool factor" and picky eaters
• The science of picky eating

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