Two Ways to Encourage a Picky Eater, and Two Things NOT To Do

Like a lot of kids, I was a picky eater growing up. I really only wanted to eat breaded chicken, I only liked potatoes that were fried (forget about any other vegetable, fried or not), and I lived for mac and cheese and grilled cheese. Pizza was good, but only with no toppings and very smooth sauce. Candy, and junk food were all fair game, but not fruit. Juice was alright, as long as it was sweet, but why drink juice when soda was right there? When we went out for burgers, mine came with only a single slice of cheese. Seafood was a total no-go. As you can see, it’s not a particularly varied or nutritionally rich diet. You would call it picky, because not only was I carefully picking what food I would eat, if I suspected anything was off about it at all, I would pick through it, trying to remove the offending bits and pieces.

Still, that’s pretty normal kid stuff. Where I differ is that I remained a picky eater until after college. That’s embarrassing to admit, but it’s true. One of my biggest worries about doing study abroad was figuring out what I would eat. One of my biggest regrets was not trying all the incredible new foods available to me when I was in London and Jordan.

When I was a kid, my parents would try to convince me to try new foods, sometimes by paying me to try new things. Later on, my friends would…