A buddy of mine emailed me this morning about his kids and how they are really picky eaters and asked for advice. I really don’t know that I’m qualified to give advice on much of anything outside of writing some code and making BBQ sauce.

But what I realized in thinking was that, when I was my sons age I too was one of those picky eaters because my parents didn’t expose me to other foods. That isn’t a knock against my parents, but they also let me try foods once and then when I would push it away, they would just go to an old staple like hamburgers or hotdogs. Now, fast forward many years and I’m a parent many of the things that I use to push way, like spaghetti, I love to eat and love to cook it for the boys and they usually eat 2 – 3 servings at a sitting.

It is easy to offer once and then goto a standard and I’m not saying that I haven’t done that, I did it last night as a matter of fact. But I am also really trying to offer the kids as many different types of foods that I can and more importantly, let them figure out the foods that they like and don’t like. As long as they really try something, if they don’t like it, then I’ll figure out something out, but I really want them to try it and then let me know what they did not like about it. Maybe it was too salty for them? Maybe if I can alter an ingredient or two, they will love it?

So here is my only advice for those with picky eaters, try and encourage different foods and try to encourage it a few different times if they don’t like it at first. Change up the recipes if needed too because rarely will you every make the same dish multiple times identically. So good luck cooking and here’s to those with picky eaters to trying something new.