One of my friends was bemoaning the fact that her child - despite all her efforts - is an extremely picky eater. He dislikes vegetables (which isn't unusual for a child), would subsist solely on sweets and desserts if allowed (again, not unusual for a child), likes plain rice and potatoes (no sauces allowed) and eats meat only if it's cooked a specific way. My friend is concerned that he's not getting a balanced diet.
My brother and sister-in-law - both doctors - have four children. Two of them eat almost anything, or at least are willing to taste anything, even if they don't like it. The other two are picky, with my second nephew being the worst. He eats white food - things such as pasta with butter and parmesan cheese; rice with butter; quesadillas; chicken and turkey breast; and plain pizza, without any tomato sauce. He refuses to eat vegetables and even avoids lime-flavoured jello, because he associates anything green with vegetables. The only non-white food items he likes are beef and chocolate.
My sister-in-law, who knows a lot about child nutrition (her speciality is paediatrics), is surprisingly calm about it. She figures it's just a phase her most picky son is going through and, in the meantime, she sneaks nutrition into him. She gives him (and her other children) a chewable vitamin tablet every day. She also makes him drink yogurt smoothies, adding chocolate syrup to mask the flavour and colour of the other ingredients, such as banana, avocado and other fruits that he would normally avoid. She bakes delicious sweet loaf cakes into which she mixes vegetables such as grated zucchini and puréed pumpkin.
Is this ideal? Of course not. In a perfect world, children (and grown-ups, because some are just as picky) would be open-minded enough to try all kinds of foods. But I have a confession to make: I was an extremely picky child (although I prefer to use the word "discerning"). I only liked vegetables if they were cooked Chinese-style - my mother tended to overboil asparagus, broccoli and peas. I wouldn't eat eggs unless the yolk was runny and refused to eat the white meat of turkey and chicken.
Fortunately, it was just a phase. I grew out of it when I hit my teens and by the time I went to university, I was so eager to taste new foods I would scan menus in search of the unfamiliar.
I hope my nephew and my friend's son are as lucky and don't morph into the type of adult who only eats, say, potato chips, or drinks cola for years then wonders why they're ill all the time. Or discovers, late in life, how delicious different foods can be, like my cousin who lived in Japan for 10 years without ever trying uni, only to taste it after moving back to Hong Kong. She now rues the time she wasted by not eating it.
