Picky

How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History

By: Helen Zoe Veit

Narrated by: Helen Zoe Veit

An eye-opening investigation into why American kids no longer eat broadly and with gusto

Are children naturally picky? It sure seems that way. Yet, amazingly, pickiness used to be almost nonexistent. Well into the twentieth century, Americans saw children as joyful omnivores who were naturally curious and eager to eat. Of course, this doesn’t make sense today. 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?

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 relishes, 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 fussy eating came to define “children’s food” and reshape American diets at large. Maybe most importantly, it explains how we can still use the tools that parents used in the past to raise happy, healthy, wildly un-picky kids today.

©2026 Helen Zoe Veit (P)2026 Blackstone Publishing

A Must Read for Parents of Demanding Children

This is the most compelling argument I’ve heard in some time concerning the nonbiological, cultural origins of American appetite and eating habits!

This is not a self-help book and Helen Zoe Veit is not a homemade granola hawking trad wife! The author offers a one-of-a-kind take but if her work here reminded me of anything it was Barbara Ehrenreich’s early work on reproductive medicine.

This is a social history of one of the most challenging, heartbreaking, and pernicious components of the Standard American Diet: children’s food. It is 90% carefully choreographed presentation of research, maybe 10% advice! I’ll be recommending it to any parent in which I see any evidence of independent thought and problem solving in the raising of their children! (And fantasizing about how to write similar social histories of bathroom, transportation, and media use in raising successive generations into ever better consumers across the 20th Century!)