Doctor: Cara Familian Natterson, M.D., author of Your Newborn: Head to Toe and Your Toddler: Head to Toe (both Little, Brown and Co.) is in private practice in Santa Monica and on staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, St. John's Hospital, and Santa Monica UCLA Hospital.
Psychologist: Edward Christophersen, Ph.D., is a child psychologist at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, and coauthor of Parenting That Works (APA Books).
What constitutes a picky eater?
DOC We typically think of picky eaters as kids who refuse to try certain foods because of taste, but in fact there are a number of factors that might be the problem. Some children reject foods based on texture. At around 6 months, babies begin to eat solids, and while most will accept purees and mushy cereals, some cannot tolerate the semisolid sensation. Another type of picky eater prefers a monochromatic diet, eating only yellow and white foods like dairy and carbohydrates. He usually refuses green, red, and orange vegetables and prefers turkey and chicken to salmon and red meat. This is often because he is regularly being served foods in this color palette: Yellow and white foods (like grilled cheese and pasta) tend to be cheap and easy to make, so many parents cook them frequently. And snacks such as Cheerios and string cheese are portable and so become daily staples. But sometimes a toddler will refuse green vegetables simply because it's more fun to get a reaction from you than to eat them.
Are picky eaters born or created?
PSYCH Some children are naturally more sensitive to taste, smell, and texture than others. That said, you rarely see limited food preferences in children from large families, which just aren't able to cater to picky eating habits by preparing separate, "preferred" foods. My hunch is that picky eating stems from a combination of a child who's pretty sensitive and a parent who's pretty anxious about that child's sensitivity and therefore overly accommodating.
DOC I'm skeptical that they're born. Some parents are reluctant to offer their children "grown-up" foods—such as vegetables or dishes cooked with spices or onions—for fear they'll dislike them. To compensate, they get stuck in a rut of serving "safe" foods, like mac-and-cheese. If right from the get-go parents fed kids what they themselves eat—hopefully a variety of nutritious foods—they would probably encounter fewer problems.
Do you suspect that picky eating is largely an American phenomenon?
PSYCH I don't think there's another nation on earth that has as many junk foods as we do in the U.S., and as few opportunities for naturally occurring exercise, like walking.
DOC Some adults in this country make terrible food choices and then offer their children the same things. America has such an intense addiction to junk food that our kids' palates are skewed away from "grown-up" stuff that's good for them. In other words, after a steady diet of Big Macs, what kid would want to eat spinach?
Next Page: How to successfully introduce new foods to your child
