When Kids Ate Jellied Brain: How America Invented Picky Eating

Edith Wharton loved oyster sauce as a child. Mark Twain devoured squirrels and rabbits. Elizabeth Cady Stanton happily ate "cold jellied brain." If these sound nothing like today's "kid foods," there's a reason: picky eating is a modern invention.

According to historian Helen Zoe Veit's new book Picky, American children weren't selective about food until the early 20th century. The very word "picky" only entered widespread usage around then. Before that transformation, kids ate "spicy relishes, vinegary pickles, wild plants, and a huge variety of animal species and organ meats."

The Great Appetite Shift

What changed? The answer lies in a perfect storm of societal shifts that fundamentally altered how American children experience hunger and food.

First, kids became less hungry. As families moved from farms to cities and bought cars, children stopped walking miles to school or doing hours of farm chores. They simply weren't working up the same appetites that made Mark Twain eager for those string beans after a day hunting wild turkeys.

Meanwhile, milk became the enemy of appetite. Thanks to pasteurization and government regulations, milk became safer—and suddenly essential. By the 1930s and '40s, the standard recommendation was a full quart of milk daily for children. That's roughly 600 calories of milk alone, leaving kids too full for solid foods.

The rise of snacking dealt the final blow to mealtime hunger. Food companies began manufacturing snack cakes, cereals, and cookies specifically for children, creating a constant stream of calories between meals.

The Bland Food Revolution

Perhaps most damaging was a misguided public health campaign that convinced parents to serve children only "easily digested" foods. Progressive-era nutritionists, lacking knowledge of germ theory, blamed rich and flavorful foods for children's frequent illnesses. Their solution? Feed kids bland gruel, eggs, and broths seasoned with nothing but salt, onion juice, or "a splash of milk."

Even butter was considered too rich for young palates.

This advice created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Children raised on bland food naturally developed preferences for simple, mild flavors. The sophisticated palates that once appreciated fennel seeds and raw oysters as treats gradually disappeared.

The Permissive Parenting Trap

Parenting advice evolved too, often in counterproductive ways. Before the 1940s, food-refusing children were simply allowed to go hungry until the next meal. But mid-century experts like Benjamin Spock argued that children instinctively choose healthy diets on their own. They warned—without evidence—that urging kids to try new foods might actually create picky eaters.

This philosophy persists today in social media parenting advice. Influencers warn against "pressuring" children to eat, suggesting instead that parents should enthusiastically narrate their own eating—"this is crunchy; this is green"—hoping to "invite" children to their plates.

The result? A generation of exhausted parents performing dinner theater for unimpressed toddlers.

The Modern Consequences

Today's American children get the majority of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods. The situation has become so severe that kids are actually getting shorter, Veit reports. Parents find themselves trapped in daily battles over meals, often resorting to separate "kid foods" to ensure their children eat something—anything.

Nancy Zucker, a Duke psychiatrist who works with extremely picky eaters, sees families where mealtime has become "like a sports commentary, where parents are constantly, 'Take a bite of this!'" She asks pointedly: "Would you be having fun if you were the kid?"

Different Approaches, Different Results

Veit suggests more traditional approaches: limiting snacks and milk between meals, "affectionately and persistently" encouraging children to try rejected foods, and—most controversially—not offering alternatives when kids refuse meals.

But Zucker warns that some strategies can backfire. For certain children, "the hungrier they get, the more irritable they get, the more anxious they get, and the more rigid they get." She's seen kids refuse food so long they ended up hospitalized for dehydration.

The solution, she suggests, might be simpler: restore positive associations with food through fun grocery shopping and cooking together, while letting kids "just kind of eat and experiment" without constant commentary.