I steal this post headline from my friend Gerry, who sends me a link to the New York Times article from yesterday titled: “Picky Eaters? They Get It From You.”
It begins with a scene I know well:
A WEEK’S worth of dinners for young Fiona Jacobson looks like this: Noodles. Noodles. Noodles. Noodles. French fries. Noodles. On the seventh day, the 5-year-old from Forest Hills, Queens, might indulge in a piece of pizza crust, with no sauce or cheese.
Gerry and I had just been talking over lunch about how his oldest daughter has, shall we say, a limited tolerance for diversity on her dinner plate. My three-year-old has always been a fairly decent eater–she still chows on broccoli, baby carrots, and meatballs–but I too am guilty of what someone in the article calls the “terrible mommy thing” of preparing her a separate menu from the grown-ups’.
The NYT presents this as a good-news story, perhaps to keep us parents from bashing our heads in with spatulas:
…for parents who worry that their children will never eat anything but chocolate milk, Gummi vitamins and the occasional grape, a new study offers some relief. Researchers examined the eating habits of 5,390 pairs of twins between 8 and 11 years old and found children’s aversions to trying new foods are mostly inherited.
Aww. So it’s not that my kid doesn’t like my cooking. It’s that I gave her lousy genes. I feel much better now.
Jessica Seinfeld–yep, the Mrs. Seinfeld–is also interviewed, suggesting enthusiastically that we mash beets into pancakes and spinach into brownies or some such horse manure. (She’s peddling a book of recipes for these delicious treats.) And I’m thinking–what, it isn’t enough that I create a colorful array of nutritious foods on her plates? The steamed frozen peas, the pre-cooked corn, the whole-wheat rotelli and the ready-made turkey meatballs won’t do? Now I have to mash beets into pancakes?
I’ve so had it with these studies and so-called experts playing to parents’ anxieties. Next they’ll be pushing nutritionists for hire to customize meals for toddlers. What? Toddler nutritionists already exist?! And I’m a bad parent for not having one already?
I give up. My kid looks pretty healthy to me, lacking though her diet is in beets.