I was not expecting to enjoy this book so much, but I loved it. I thought it was very well written, thorough, extremely well-cited and researched, intelligently structured, and full of wacky historical tidbits and interesting connections to modern American life. It turns out the author, Helen Zoe Veit, is a food historian, which partially explains the quality level-- but she's a much better writer than many of the other academics I've read books from. Anyway, two thumbs up from me. (It can be a little repetitive, something I attribute mostly to the sheer level of detail; in this case, it didn't bother me, but I could imagine it bothering others.)

Summary

The History of Children's Food

Based on all the available records, children have for the vast majority of human history been incredibly un-picky eaters. They were known to eat basically anything. In practice, this just meant that they ate almost exactly the same things as adult family members.

By the early 1900s, American food reformers were attempting to create the widespread adoption of "children's food", believing that children couldn't handle adult food, and should instead be fed only certain things like bread and milk. (The prescribed diet changed over time, but always demanded bland food.) Most people couldn't adhere to these instructions initially, as they didn't have the resources to feed their children according to special diets, but still worried about if their children were eating "correctly" (something they didn't worry about in previous eras).

In the 1930s (ironically during the Great Depression), middle-class Americans were increasingly sedentary car-owning city-dwellers with access to an abundance of food options, including snacks and ultra-processed foods. Children at this time were made to drink a quart of milk per day, so at meal time, after having snacked on calorie-dense foods and not having moved much all day, knowing they could eat something else later if they wanted, they were naturally more likely to refuse to eat. This is when the term "pickiness" was coined-- it was a new concept at the time, since before, children weren't picky! At this time, pickiness was mostly attributed to children not being hungry enough and/or being accidentally trained by their parents to be picky.

In 1946, Dr. Benjamin Spock published The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, which implied itself to be based off scientific studies but instead was based on Freudian theory. This was a massive bestseller and caused a massive shift in attitudes towards parenting; relevant for food history, he wrote that parents should let children choose their own foods in order to not psychologically stunt them or make them averse to healthy foods; his already simple advice was further simplified and taken out of context, such that parents came to believe they should let children eat anything they want, whenever they want. Combined with the proliferation of the supermarket, mothers were expected to prepare meals to-order for individual family members-- particularly separate meals for their children-- rather than cook a single meal that everyone would eat.

In this environment, companies ruthlessly marketed ultra-processed foods towards children, and parents felt compelled to feed their children these foods when demanded to do so. The presence of ultra-processed foods mostly destroyed the appeal of regular ("adult") food (which also was less tasty than before, on account of being prepared poorly and being far less fresh), leading children to reject regular ("adult") food en-masse. This was eventually retroactively explained as being a result of children having undeveloped taste buds or otherwise due to biological predeterminism related to their age. Now Americans take it for granted that children simply have a natural aversion to "healthy" food like vegetables, and a natural need for simple, sugary foods.

The Author's Take On All This

The author makes the case that there's a set of behaviors that our culture puts into a "parents can and should make their children do this correctly despite predictable initial refusals" category. "Eating a healthy diet" has historically been in this category, but has in recent decades been shifted out of it, at least in the United States-- and this shift was a huge mistake for everyone. I thought she laid this out very effectively:

Sometimes young children tearfully reject baths, but we matter-of-factly get them into the tub and soon they’re giggling and splashing. Young children refuse to put on pants, but through humor or persuasion or by wriggling them onto their little limbs ourselves, we get them clothed before leaving the house. Children sometimes throw tantrums when it’s time to go to school or when it’s time to leave a playdate, but we don’t see those tantrums as signs that they’re biologically destined to be illiterate or to live at their friend’s house. Children twist their faces away from sunblock and clamp their jaws as the toothbrush approaches, but we don’t think that means it’s okay for them to get sunburns or cavities. Children whine about car seats and seat belts. We insist anyway, children learn to wear them, and sometimes they save their lives.

In other words, in most parts of daily life we’re confident that parents are wiser than preschoolers, and we’re confident that kids can get used to all sorts of things they initially fear or reject. We don’t think of ourselves as “forcing” children to do something against their will when we manage to shimmy the toothbrush past the clamped jaws most nights. If we reflect on it at all, we think that good parents teach children to do what’s safest and best for them, even if it upsets them temporarily. If we heard about a parent who always let a child decide whether to wear a seat belt or brush their teeth or go to school, we’d find it strange. We might call it bad parenting.

Food used to be in the parents-are-wiser-than-preschoolers category, too. Without thinking about it much, Americans well into the early twentieth century were casually confident that children would get used to new foods, and they were as firm and persuasive at meals as we are today in other parts of our children’s lives. As a result, children in earlier eras almost always did learn to like family foods, reinforcing the normalcy of these methods and quietly bolstering everybody’s confidence.

Parents should teach their children to enjoy a wide range of healthy food-- "adult" food-- partially for health reasons, but mostly because not doing so deprives them of some of the greatest joys of life. Eating your regular meals should be a delight, not a daily struggle.

In the epilogue, the author provides a very brief set of suggestions for parents to ensure their child grows up enjoying a wide range of food.

Thoughts

(These are rambly and skippable IMO but I wanted to write them out for myself...)

( cut for length )