LOVE the gravy in her own thermos story!!!!!!!

grcxx and arts... what are you doing being reasonble ? Isn't this the fodors board ? We are supposed to fight tooth and nail over the lack or parenting or the helicopter parenting that has caused the problems of this generation!!!

: )

our first family trip to Italy with our kids was a revelation for DS, then about 10. he came home eating twice as many things as he was when the trip started. mostly they were foods he'd been offered at home, but somehow, the italians made them so much more attractive.

Needless to say, we went back to Italy a lot after that.

<<grcxx and arts... what are you doing being reasonble ? Isn't this the fodors board ?>>

So sorry, surfmom! What WAS I thinking?????????

Mea culpa, mea culpa, so sorry....

when i was little my parents didn't accept the "I don't like it" nag before I'd tasted something...so they would say, you have to taste it and if you don't like it you're allowed to spit it. This way, I was forced to eat but knew that I could spit it out, most of the times I ended up eating everything!! Suggestion: if you're in Tuscany with your kids, order fritto misto (a platter of fried vegetables and chicken and or rabbit) not too light but crunchy. The batter is also very simple so not that heavy! www.tuscanycious.com

To echo many - I know many parents who don't cater at all to their kids and from very very early ages there will be the ONE kid in the family who is just very picky. So there is a nature thing. The just force them argument would only lock you in battle with this kind of kid for years until they can manage their own life.

But I will agree with the original poster that I don't like the way travel articles always refer to kid food, picky eaters etc as it is a given that kids will only eat macncheese chicken nuggets etc. And I wish kid menus had smaller portions of more variety of foods and with veggies and fruits instead of fries only. My kids are reasonable enough eaters not super adventurous. I have traveled all over the world with them and there is always something you can find to eat so it has always been funny to me the way it is talked about how to feed the kids in travel articles.

Heck - a kid could live on butter, bread, noodles, yogurt a few apples and chocolate oh and cheese all over Europe so why even worry about what food is available. You don't have to be able to eat complex food to find something everywhere.

I have known two very picky adult eaters and each was a second child. I wonder if it is way of getting attention and appearing "special".
Anyway, one hated garlic but enjoyed "onion" bread. He shuddered at the menu in an Italian restaurant until I told him that "penne carbonara" was the Italian for macaroni cheese ;-)
The other person tucked into roast root vegetables at my house without knowing what most of them were, and especially enjoyed the sweet potatoes .
Later in a restaurant the soup of the day contained sweet potatoes. "Oh, I don't like sweet potatoes!"

These discussions always remind me that before I had children I used to think that environment was the most important factor in a child's development, but that after I had children I realized that I could take neither credit nor blame for their behavior. They are the way they are, and they are very different from each other, despite their parents and not because of us.

I can't remember the exact statistic but I seem to recall something like a child has to taste something 30 times before he/she knows whether they like it or not. I think a good strategy is always to encourage children to explore food, to try different things, and so on. That's often easier said than done. It shouldn't be a battle but unfortunately for many parents it is.

<<The other person tucked into roast root vegetables at my house without knowing what most of them were, and especially enjoyed the sweet potatoes .
Later in a restaurant the soup of the day contained sweet potatoes. "Oh, I don't like sweet potatoes!">>

LOL!! I do this all the time to my MIL who "hates" onions! But almost everything I cook has onions!

When my DH's mother, aunt, and uncle visited us in Egypt - I REALLY was not looking forward to it. His aunt is one of the pickiest eaters I have every knows. She hates almost ALL veggies, but I just went ahead and cooked usual stuff, and she ate zucchini and eggplant without even knowing it!

I'm a born-again picky eater. I was the world's worst as a kid and yep I do blame my parents for never making us eat anything we didn't like the look of. I see their point of view though - the one time they tried it with my older brother he puked all over the table and a guest. So I guess they just thought, well, that doesn't work! SO I lived on tomato soup, egg and chips, meat and potatoes (but not cooked together) toast, fruit, and spaghetti with grated cheese for years.

It was a horrible handicap to have as I got older; eating out was a stressful embarrassing nightmare. So I made myself get over it, plus I didn't want to pass my fussiness on to my son, and now I eat fairly normally. There are some things I won't eat still and I'm guilty of not even having tried them. Offal. Seafood (including shrimp). Just not stuff I want to put in my mouth, sorry, my loss probably. Not a big deal now I DO eat more things.

So in my case a lot of it is learned behaviour. I still find foods I've never tried and am pleasantly surprised when I like them. My range of veggies has expanded vastly.

But...I don't think it's entirely behavioural. I do have a very strong sense of smell and much of what we think of as a sense of taste is actually smell (doesn't everything lose it's flavour when you've got a bad cold?). I really can smell something and know I won't like the taste. I also have a sensitive taste - most people will say white rice is flavourless for example, but it isn't. Likewise tofu DOES have a faint taste of its own. They are just too subtle for most people to taste. So I think some of us just taste in a greater range than other people - like being dazzled by a multicoloured painting compared to someone who is gazing through a filter. It's not so much the strength of flavour that makes it unpleasant sometimes, but the combination of different flavours (chemicals?) that go to make up the overall taste of something.

Then of course there are 'acquired' tastes. Me, I love Marmite. Other people would sooner cut their own legs off than eat it. Mr N throws this vile stuff called Maggi liquid seasoning over everything he eats and the smell alone makes me gag.

Let's also remember that families that don't have picky eaters, which might be the vast majority for all we know, don't go on a travel board asking worrying questions about whether their kids will starve in Europe. Although the OP makes it sounds as though picky eaters are legion, I'm guessing they're not.

LoveItaly's account of her aunt & uncles children being picky eaters in different ways reminded me of my late best friend's two daughters. They were instructed to try at least a teaspoonful of everything offered at mealtimes whether at home or at friends. Having to only swallow the one teaspoon was acceptable so there was never any whining about not liking this or that.
In later years and adulthood one daughter only eats meat, the other has become a total vegetarian.
So much for all her efforts to try and get them to be 'all round' eaters!

Having to eat something to survive whether you like it or not is a factor which most of us do not have to consider, but I always think of it when I go to Bangkok and see cats and dogs eating plates of plain rice with gusto.

Some anthropologists believe that being picky about food is a human survival skill. Children who become picky eaters usually do so between the ages of 2 and 4, the time when mobility kicks in. In earlier times, picky children who wandered away from mom were less likely to poison themselves eating something they should not have. Therefore, picky eaters were more likely to survive and that trait remains with some of us today. Some kids outgrow being picky as they mature; some don't.

Being picky does not have as much to do with the parents as some of you might think. My first born will eat anything. My second born has been fed all the same foods as first born but is much pickier. When I was patting myself on the back at the pediatrician's office when my first born was the toddler who would eat anything, my pediatrician (who had close to 40 years experience as a ped at the time) laughed at me and said "you're next child probably won't be anything like the first. The odds are that the next one will be picky." He referred me to the many anthropology studies that show food pickiness is a survival trait.

padams, I heard that on BBC radio 4 so it must be true!!!

I'm an adult picky eater and it has absolutely nothing to do with my parents inability to expose me to different types of food. Although my dad is a "meat and potatoes" kind of guy, my mom cooked a variety of different things. I think I was picky from the beginning. My parents used to tell us that we had to clear our plates before we got excused from the table. To this day I have a terrible gag-reflex because of it. If I don't like it, I can't eat it.

I do like ethnic foods, and my favorite type of food is middle eastern. We had a field day in Turkey. But...I stick to meat and chicken and some veggies and rarely stray away from that despite the ethnic cuising that I am eating.

I honestly don't know why it matters though. I'm sure there are picky eaters in other parts of the world as well. I'm not a foodie and never will be. For many, vacations are based around food. For us that just isn't the case, and I still manage to have fabulous vacations and eat some great things. No foie gras or seafood or lamb for me though...

Tracy

There are a few items I have never tasted but just know I don't like them....calf fries, for example.

In earlier times, picky children who wandered away from mom were less likely to poison themselves eating something they should not have.

Then why is TGIFriday so popular?