A Childs Culinary Perspective

The Palate of a Picky Eater

The world of food is often a mosaic of different flavors and textures from sweet and creamy to salty and crunchy. As adults we have had a lifetime of tasting different foods to expose our palates to those flavors and textures, but children, who have an inexperienced palate and a higher concentration of taste buds, get the pleasure or sometimes the displeasure of trying intense flavors for the first time. New flavors to a child’s palate can be a full-on assault on the senses or a symphony of sweet delight.

Today we will be taking a look into the palate of a child. I recently sat down with my nine-year-old son hoping to get his perspective on food.

As a chef, when my son was born both my wife and I loved the idea of making our own baby food, nursing him as long as possible instead of giving him formula, and attempting to give him the best natural diet possible.

We thought of when he got older and wanted to eat “kids” foods like mac n cheese, and chicken nuggets we would make them from scratch instead of buying pre-made crap at the store or the expensive healthy alternative at the Food Co-op across the street from where we lived.

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For the first couple of years, we did fairly well meeting the culinary goals we had laid out for our child pre-birth. This was all fine and dandy until he started to have friends and playdates. He soon learned of “Dino chicken nuggets”, boxed mac n cheese, and the dreaded happy meal. The happy meal is like crack for children, it hits all of their little senses at once, it smells good, it looks fun, and when you open it up you get a toy! All of these factors right there seal the deal and guarantees that they will come back for more.

If you want to read more about fast food check out my previous article.

In a way, the food that children are exposed to today has drastically changed from when I was a kid, and in other ways, it hasn’t changed much at all. For example when I asked my son what some of his favorite foods were I was kind of surprised when he said fries, sushi, and smoked salmon. The fires weren’t surprising at all but the sushi and smoked salmon were kind of shocking due to the robust flavor of those foods. When he started school he had wanted to try the lunch that the school provided but quickly opted to bring his own. If you want to read more about school lunch click below.

When I asked him why he doesn’t like the lunch that is provided by the school he just told me that it didn’t qualify as food (he can be a little Gordon Ramsay at times). When I asked what was served to him at school that didn’t meet his qualifications to be considered food he rattled off the typical lunch fare of frozen bean burritos, or corn dogs and tater tots with ketchup which he calls the red mustard.

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All children can be picky eaters at some point in their life but mine seems to be picky in an opposite fashion. When dropping him off at his friends the parents asked me typical food questions like does he eat spaghetti or mac n cheese, I said yes not considering that in most American homes, these foods either come from a box or there is some kind of pre-packaged element to the meal.

At this point in my son’s life, the only mac n cheese or spaghetti that he had ever eaten was made from scratch by me. By making ninety percent of his food from scratch like he was at a Michelin-starred restaurant for kids, had I deprived him of seemingly what every other kid was eating? For the first time, I was made aware that my kid was a picky eater. I was shocked.

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At the end of the day when I picked him up from his friends’ house, the other child’s mom asked me, “What do you do to mac n cheese that I don’t”? She then stated that everyone uses the box of mac n cheese so what was I doing differently? I thought for a minute, well not everybody uses the box but…, flustered she asked me again what do you do differently? I laughed and said well, I use real cream and a selection of cheeses, she cut me off and said, well I use the box, ok fine, there is nothing wrong with that, I grew up eating the box but for some reason, I fed my child this fancy-ass food, eliminating his crap food cravings before they even started. Or so I thought.

Before long as he began playing with more and more kids he developed a taste for things like, hot pockets, frozen pizza, and pop tarts. These are all items that I ate regularly as a child but had shunned years before my son was ever born.

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I began to realize through my son’s sense of wonder that there was nothing wrong with consuming some of these foods in extreme moderation and I was glad that he could now be a regular kid and share some of these foods with his friends on occasion.

His palate will change quite a bit throughout his lifetime. He has been exposed to a wide variety of foods already in his little life, and he is usually open to trying new things. But after all, he is still a kid and tends to have some strong preferences as any kid would. His palate will be influenced by several different factors in the course of his life.

I am looking forward to seeing what flavor and texture combinations he comes up with as he gets older and how willing to experiment he becomes. The only thing I will ask of him is to keep an open mind and at least give it a try.