American children are the pickiest eaters in history, and this is why

With her new book, history professor Helen Zoe Veit tackles a fraught, emotionally charged, controversial subject: kids being fussy eaters.

The prevailing modern wisdom is that “children have biologically keen taste buds, that children are naturally sensitive to texture and color, and that children are evolutionarily cautious about new things,” she writes in “Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History.” And yet, throughout nearly all of history, kids survived and even thrived without cheddar bunnies, chicken nuggets or plain buttered noodles.

To understand how we arrived at this moment of peak pickiness, Zeit goes back to the 1800s.