[jjulius]

It's a different approach for us (am parent of a 5 and 3 year-old). Every type of food is equal, nothing gets put on a pedestal. Candies, snacks, ice creams, vegetables, fruits, legumes, meats, seafood - it's just "food". We highlight that you shouldn't eat too much of one thing all the time because your body likes a good variety, but that's about all the pressure we put on them. They're learning about sugar, for instance, in their preschool and we've talked about it in that context.

If they don't like something, fine. Totally cool, we don't care. The second you pressure a kid to eat a vegetable or a fruit, it becomes a fight and they will dig their heels in. Just keep serving whatever you cook, and either they'll come around or they won't. After all, they're human just like we are - we all have foods we like and dislike, and that's OK. No point in striking a deal, just keep exposing them to a wide variety of stuff and eventually they'll try it all - if they like it, great, if they don't, oh well, at least they like other stuff.

I can't speak for any other parents but myself, but this approach has worked wonders for us. Our kids definitely do shun certain foods or look away, but they eat a very wide variety of food. We don't have to bring a PBJ with us to a restaurant, or chicken nuggets to a friend's house, because they'll usually eat most of what is served. We've had grandparents bring "treats" over - we'll put them on their dinner plate with the rest of their food and, hand to god, last night my 5yo ate half her candy bar and left it there while asking for multiple helpings of peas and devouring her entire turkey burger. Only thing left on the plate was the candy.

Everyone's mileage may vary, obviously.

/shrug

[directevolve]

This is a great approach if you have fairly flexible kids, which it sounds like you have. But pickiness can be extreme. For example, my boss’s kid hates anything except dry, plain carbohydrate. Pasta without butter, dry toast.

My girlfriend works as an occupational therapist. For kids with severe food issues, they take a sensory approach. They identify which specific aspects of food trigger aversion and desensitize kids to those triggers in a gradual and indirect way.

For example, many kids have trouble with “mess:” tacky, liquid, sticky sensations that are a party of many food items. To overcome this, they do “messy play,” which might involve having kids touch shaving cream and work their way up to spreading it around.

[esafak]

If they don't like something I just give them more of it, in smaller doses or disguises, until they get used to it.

[recursive]

"just give them" doing a lot of work here.

Maybe I'm particularly bad at disguises or maybe my kid (just one, not the other) is Sherlock Holmes for food disguises, but this is nearly impossible for me. In that I can't generally find a way to do it.

[esafak]

Throw it into something they love. Sauces are a great way of hiding ingredients.

[recursive]

Problem is that it still looks like a sauce, which won't work for an anti-sauce hard-liner.

And he's remarkably astute detecting flavor variations.

[esafak]

No soups either, just raw ingredients? I would prepare his favorite food with minor variations, adding a little sauce or changing the texture, to broaden his horizons.

In your case, I would furthermore gamify it: I bet you can't figure out what I added or did differently!

[recursive]

I have one kid on which all this stuff would work.

And then I have the other kid. He will refuse to participate in the game. I keep the pressure on though. That means he's always exposed to foods outside the comfort zone without too much pressure. But efforts at subterfuge or psychology almost always backfire with him. So I keep all the cards on the table.

"This is a broccoli piece. You have to taste it or else {bribe}".

I don't have all the answers, but we've tried a lot of things with him.

[googlryas]

If there's one thing on my 4 year olds plate that he "doesn't like", I have him close his eyes and try to guess which food item I just put in his mouth. After the game is over he'll usually just continue eating everything without complaint.

[jjulius]

Yeah, basically! I won't not serve it to them again no matter how much they insisted they didn't like it last time. When I serve dinner, I always make sure a little bit of everything makes it to their plate before they come to the table. And yeah, exposing them to the same food in different dishes or cooked in a different manner has definitely helped them be open to trying it down the line.

I think zero pressure + constant exposure is the overall key.

[9rx]

> we all have foods we like and dislike

For dislike you mean like rotten or spoiled food? I'm not sure I've met food in proper edible condition that I didn't like.

[jjulius]

I think a person who has liked every single piece of food (in edible condition, to use your phrase) they've ever put into their mouths is a pretty rare specimen.

[genewitch]

My dad, a holocaust survivor, was one of these people. I have a much more expansive palate than most of my peers because of it but I draw lines at brains and organs presented as such, that sort of thing.

I've tried most cultures' foods, at least.

[loxs]

Not really, I am one. I have tried all kinds of "exotic" foods like Swedish Surstromming etc. I can definitely relate to how people eat them and can find some way (of eating it) that it's delicious, like in sandwiches etc. This is a skill (I think) and many people just don't have it. If someone eats it, and especially if they have eaten it for centuries, you can just win by trying to figure out how to eat it. There is no downside.

That being said, I won't eat food that is obviously (and provably) dangerous like Korean live octopus, Casu martzu (cheese with maggots) etc.

[jjulius]

Ah, this is where nuance comes in. For instance, I do not like carrots - it's a taste thing, I don't enjoy the flavor a bit. I've kept trying them for years and if something is carrot-forward, I don't enjoy it. I tried some miso-glazed carrots that I'd whipped up for my family just this past weekend and they just weren't for me (I appreciated how tender they were, and enjoyed the miso glaze on it, but the carrot taste put me off). Now, if you shred them up, or dice 'em, and toss 'em into a salad, a sandwich, or in some slaw and I can't taste them at all? Sure, I'll devour them along with the rest of the meal.

But they're hiding in there, you can't tell they're there. I still don't "like" carrots, but I don't mind eating them if I don't taste them. There's a difference between the two, I think.

That said, to your point, I was super picky as a kid, and that approach (trying food I didn't like in a dish that I did like) helped me quickly not be picky when I was a younger adult. My palette is tremendously wide now and there's only a relative handful of things I don't "like". I'm also now always down for an adventure and experiencing something new, so I'm happy to try weird shit, whereas I never used to be.

[loxs]

Yes, I too have "less favorite" foods. Carrots being one of them, celery - another. But I try eating them regularly and this definitely helps. And no, I don't mask them to the point of them being completely undetectable. On the contrary, I do increase their concentration with time and there are foods where I enjoy them even when they dominate the flavor. For example, pickled celery is delicious.

[entropicdrifter]

Why is it that, specifically with food, people who have absolutely no taste seem to hold a strange pride about it?

You don't see this with e.g. film or music, somebody pridefully saying "I'll listen to anything anybody considers music" like it's some sort of badge of honor to have no preferences.

I'm not trying to knock you here, it's just weird to me to be proud of having no preferences.

[recursive]

In a very direct way, humans need calories to live. You can just opt out of movies entirely without much impact, so I don't think they're symmetrical.

A "picky" movie watcher isn't really the same thing as a "picky" eater. The eater is doomed to be locked in a cycle of working around their preferences for as long as they live.

[9rx]

Not to mention that we've been carefully curating the best of the best foods over millennia. In a few thousand years we'll likely have forgotten the movies that weren't so good, so chances are at that time you will enjoy all the movies that survived as well.

[9rx]

I don't know, but why do we find this struggle to differentiate between fact and feeling so often here?

[ziddoap]

>I'm not sure I've met food in proper edible condition that I didn't like.

Have you ever tried hákarl (fermented shark)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl

I think if you tried enough things, you'd come across some edible food that doesn't suit your taste.

[shermantanktop]

The term "food" is not defined in a universally agreed-upon way. A delicacy in some cultures is offal or garbage in another.

I can buy "I'll eat anything." If what you mean is "I like everything that someone somewhere will consider to be food," well, color me skeptical.

[9rx]

If someone can reasonably consider it food, fair to say that is food for the sake of this.

Like I said, I haven't met the food I don't like yet. It is impossible to know how I feel about the foods I haven't yet met. There is an infinite selection of food out there. Perhaps something will cross my plate someday that turns up my nose. I always try new foods when I have the opportunity, but that day hasn't yet come.