"Veit is a wonderful writer who brings to her subject a wealth of research and an attitude of refreshingly non-ideological neutrality... If you have ever sat at a restaurant, marveling at the bilge offered on the kids’ menu and wondering how on earth we got here, 'Picky' has the answers."
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
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Today, it seems like kids are naturally picky. Yet, amazingly, pickiness used to be almost nonexistent. Well into the 20th century, Americans saw children as joyful omnivores who were naturally curious and eager to eat. Of course, this doesn't make sense. Don't kids have special taste buds? Aren't they highly sensitive to food's texture and color? Aren’t children incapable of liking “adult foods,” and don’t parents risk harming kids psychologically by urging them to eat?
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But Americans in the past didn’t think any of those things. They assumed that children could enjoy the same foods as adults, and children almost always did. They loved spicy sauces, vinegary pickles, and bitter greens. They spent their allowances on raw oysters and looked forward to their daily coffee. So how did modern kids become such incredibly narrow eaters? The story is fascinating – and about much more than rising abundance. PICKY shows how picky eating came to define "children’s food" and reshape American diets at large. And it explains how we can still use the tools that parents used in the past to raise happy, healthy, wildly un-picky kids today.
"This is academic history as high art, executed so deftly that its impressive assemblage of facts never interferes with the reader’s enjoyment... Veit does not fault kids, hers or yours, for poor eating habits, nor does she fault parents. Instead, she blames a culture that normalizes the behavior and marketing that makes it hard to resist. She shows how pickiness hurts children—compromising their health and denying them pleasure—and hurts parents with worry and guilt.”
Commonweal
Commonweal
Picky in the News |
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First Coast Connect: WJCT
"The Pickiest Eaters in History" |
