Your Picky Eater Will Eventually Like Veggies…in Their 20s

Take it from a former picky eater, yours will eventually like 90 percent of the things you want them to eat.  Just be patient because it is going to take a few years.  15 at most….

I came across something today that really piqued my interest and spoke to me in a lot of ways.  In an article talking about people’s snacking habits, there were a couple of sentences that really stood out to me.  The article talked about how most people will not like foods that they hated as kids until they are around 22.  Mainly vegetables.  That was me to a T.  You had to force-feed me something green as a kid but by the time I was in college I was ordering salads willing.  To learn a little bit more as to why this may have been I did some digging.

Most of us know that our tastebuds change over time.  As we get older, we start to enjoy different things, and sometimes our usual cravings totally change.  It’s all a matter of biology.  Thanks to a great piece on Spoon University.com, I found out that one of the main reasons kids do not like vegetables is bitterness.  Some kids have a higher sensitivity to bitterness and therefore want nothing to do with them.  Again, I can speak wholeheartedly to this.

Get our free mobile app

Another interesting factor that was brought up was how kids tend to act on instinct.  The author, Rose Gerber from the University of Pittsburgh,  makes the case that kids will try to avoid something that they feel is bad for them.  In this case, bitterness is what kids want to avoid.  This is also why it may take a while for some adults to start liking things like coffee and beer.

As I was reading all this stuff, I could not help but draw parallels to my own life.  As I said, I was the pickiest easter growing up.  But by the time I hit 20 or so I started to like almost all vegetables, beer, and one of my favorite things in the world, coffee.  So, you don’t have to be too hard on your picky eater.  They will eventually come around and start liking things that are good for them.