The most interesting item from the article is:
Most children eat a wide variety of foods until they are around 2, when they suddenly stop. The phase can last until the child is 4 or 5. It’s an evolutionary response, researchers believe. Toddlers’ taste buds shut down at about the time they start walking, giving them more control over what they eat. “If we just went running out of the cave as little cave babies and stuck anything in our mouths, that would have been potentially very dangerous,” Dr. Cooke said.
A natural skepticism of new foods is a healthy part of a child’s development, said Ellyn Satter, a child nutrition expert whose books, including “Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense” (Bull Publishing, 2000), have developed a cult following among parents of picky eaters.
Each child has a unique set of likes and dislikes that Ms. Satter believes are genetically determined. The only way children discover what they are is by putting food in their mouths and taking it out over and over again, she said.
As an aside, one way "coasters" (Americans who live on the East or West coast) are different than the rest of us is they have an overinflated sense of self importance. They're like Christopher Columbus in that they live in an isolated sphere and believe they're the first people to discover something. In the article above Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld is credited with writing an entire cookbook about how to sneak vegetables into kid's food.
Her new book, “Deceptively Delicious” (Harper Collins), outlines a series of recipes based on fruit and vegetable purées that are blended into food in a way that she says children won’t notice. Half a cup of butternut squash disappears into pasta coated with milk and margarine. Pancakes turn pink with beets. Avocado hides in chocolate pudding and spinach in brownies.
Fascinating... I'm sure no parent in history has ever thought of this before. Come On! - even the rubber stamp U.S. Patent Office would have to reject this due to its obviousness. Reminds me of another brave NYC writer/conqueror of new lands, Judith Levine, who wrote a book on living without shopping for a year. And by "not buying it" she meant not going out to eat as often as she did, borrowing instead of buying wax for her downhill skis, getting rid of a superfluous old pickup truck, but still visiting the house in Vermont. Come On! She wasn't going to live like a savage.
