What the Internet Gets Wrong about “Picky Eating”

How are the messages we’re seeing online about how our kids should be eating impacting the way we’re feeding our kids—and which ones do we need to completely ignore to save our sanity come meal times?

Welcome to YTF Community, a place to safely share in the challenges and joys of feeding our families. If you haven’t already, sign up as a paid subscriber and have access to exclusive content and weekly meal plans.

The other night I was gearing up to tackle the evening sprint of getting the kids a quick dinner (Pizza Pockets warmed from the freezer!) and then shuttling between karate and t-ball (the cuteness of preschoolers playing baseball makes me cry almost every time!). Right before I put my phone away, I saw a post about how using a divided plate for kids was a “sure” way to make them become picky eaters. Because the food isn’t touching. And therefore, the post said, the child will never eat foods that touch.

The quick sound bite nature of content designed to make us engage is fun…right up until it starts to make us think there’s something wrong with the way our kids are eating. Or that the way our kids are eating is a problem that we need to solve every time they sit down for a meal or snack. Or that we’re doing something wrong for feeding our kids the way it works for us in our real lives.

I, too, feel this pressure and over the years, I’ve gotten better at being able to pull back and look at the bigger picture. Which always helps my perspective. To help you release a little of that pressure too, and to be able to spot content that may not serve you, here are 5 myths I see over and over online—from the divided plates issue, to sugar before age 4 (does it really set the kids up to prefer sweets?), to “processed” snacks impacting kids eating “real” food, the way to feed babies that prevents pickiness and more.

It’s easy to get caught up in the feeling that we’re doing everything wrong. But what if we’re already doing a lot of things right and just to know how to put what we’re seeing online into better context?