From KCRW, I'm as in Klyman and this is good food.

In the 19th century, it was actually assumed that children were especially unpicky as eaters.

When people talked about kids eating childishly, what they meant back then was eating with greediness and eagerness and curiosity and a lack of discrimination.

When did American children get so picky? As a child, my mom cooked dinner and it was expected

that I would eat it. We ate the same things. But as a restaurateur, I watched many families negotiate food preferences that resulted

in cooking what often felt like endless plates of plain pasta. How did children go from eating

with greediness and curiosity to insisting on a bowl of plain noodles? In her book, Picky, Helen Zoe Veit explains that the rise of mass

childhood pickiness is a story about Americans crumbling confidence in children's ability to love

diverse foods. Hi. Hi. Nice to talk to you. Great to talk to you. I mean, we are all over this book.

This is so up our alley.

Helen, I think many people would be shocked by the foods that American children of all backgrounds ate in the 19th century and before.

Can you share a few examples of typical foods of the day back then?

Yes, and I agree. It is, I think, really shocking to modern people today because a world filled with

cheerfully omnivorous kids who ate just with their parents ate and wanted more of it most of the time.

It almost sounds like science fiction today.

Back in the 19th century, American diets were pretty diverse.

They could be very seasonal.

So in winter, people often ate pretty plain foods and things that stored well.

But when Americans could get

their hands on diversity, they ate a huge range of different animals, species, plants, all

sorts of heirloom varieties that, you know, many of which we don't even have today, they were

eating things like different kinds of shellfish, sometimes songbirds, lots of wild plants.

...