Who is the most expert at what nutritional requirements a growing kid needs?
You or the kid’s body and mother nature?
I vote for the kid’s body/mother nature. Our bodies tell us what we need and we will crave those foods. A growing kid needs different foods than a grown adult!
Give the kid what he wants, but of course not sugar/candy/ice cream except for dessert.
Yes, thank you for clarifying – the constant struggle is internal, it should not be with the toddler. Like I said, don’t fight over food. The hard part is not backsliding when life gets in the way. It’s one thing to use the advice given when you have 1 kid and loads of free time, it’s another thing when you’re late for soccer practice and you have guests coming later and the house is a mess and one kid is refusing to get their shoes on and the other two are fighting. That’s when the box of mac and cheese comes out, and then that erodes your progress a bit. At least, that’s been my experience as a father of 3. Theory vs. practice and all that.
I found most often when kids reject food it’s because their parent’s suck at cooking. This combined with available easy foods like hot dogs and French fries makes the parent just give them that crap. So the solution is to get better at cooking and not fall into the “i’m too busy” trap and feed them junk you just have to microwave to prepare.
A friend managed to get his toddlers to eat broccoli. They were going through their dinosaur-obsessed phase, and told them florets of broccoli were trees. Suddenly, they were no longer eating vegetables, they were the mighty Tyrannosaurus devouring whole forests.
It could also be an age thing. My older daughter ate everything at 18 months. At age 2, it call came crashing to a halt and she had the pickiest palate ever. We didn’t fight over it but gave her healthy options and she could make her own dinner if she didn’t like what we were having so long as she tried it. The phase lasted about 2 years. She’s 12 now and is far from being a picky eater.
Bleugggh:(
I was reading about something else and ended up at Ellyn Satter Institute.
*ESI is dedicated to improving quality of life. People are healthier in all ways when they eat and feed with practicality and enjoyment, based on the evidence-based, clinically tested, and highly effective Satter Feeding Dynamics Model (fdSatter) and Satter Eating Competence Model (ecSatter).
*
and a book I recently enjoyed First Bite. this books gives us a hopeful answer to “but we are genetically programmed to love fat and sugar!”
My niece has always loved broccoli, cooked or raw, and in fact her first complete sentence was “I want more dip.” She didn’t know it was supposed to be gross. 
When I was a kid, maybe 8 or 9, a neighbor invited me to eat dinner at her house. There was NOTHING on that table that I would eat. :o No, it wasn’t unfamiliar; it was downright inedible. :eek:
My mother fixed me a plate when I got home and explained what had happened.
(missed the deadline)
There’s a poster on another board who said “Food like your grandmother used to make!” would be a mortal insult, because her grandmother was by far the worst cook she ever encountered. Apparently this woman either boiled or roasted everything until it was beyond overcooked.
My father didn’t know until he was married that brussels sprouts are little round things. His mother always cooked them into a paste. She would bake a half ham in a 350 oven for 10 hours. Her ham was flaky when you cut it.
My dad was labeled a picky eater. I think it was survival instinct.
I won’t bother giving advice 'cos you’ve already got plenty of the good stuff … but just came in to say I bet you’ll find if you reflect on it that “hot dogs, french fries, pancakes and macaroni and cheese” are not in fact the only foods he will eat.
What about … toast, breakfast cereal, strawberries, bananas, peanut butter, watermelon … etc etc etc? Any of those?
People often get hung up on dinner foods, but you don’t actually have to get your vitamin quota at dinner - you can get a lot of it from vitamin-enriched rice bubbles for breakfast.
A couple of nights ago my wife made this delicious walnut-braised tofu with brown rice dish (yeah, damn you, it was delicious), and our three-year-old absolutely refused to try it. She ran upstairs. I called after her, “Dorky, are you gonna try this chipmunk stew or not?”
She came downstairs. “Are there really chipmunks in it? I’m a KITTEN, and kittens EAT chipmunks!” I’d just been thinking about how chipmunks would make stew with walnuts, but I did a fast pivot, and she happily meowed as she ate her chipmunk stew with chunks of chipmunk meat.
The dinosaur and chipmunk stories are proof that what I said is true: Ninety percent of parenting IS marketing!
My brother Jay used to be considered a picky eater. Not only is Mom a lousy cook (and not a very good ingredients-shopper), she defines picky as “someone who doesn’t like what I like”*. Jay might be a supertaster, he has one of the best noses I’ve encountered.
Thankfully I became our main cook when he was still little and the things he liked fitted well with Mom’s constant dieting, Ed and Dad’s allergies, and my limited cooking abilities. There weren’t any struggles because hell if I was going to cook elaborate stuff that was likely to need some sort of adaptations when simple stuff kept everybody alive and eating happily.
Eventually he’s become a much more adventurous eater, but he still prefers simple dishes where those of us with average tastebuds can identify the individual ingredients easily. And it better be cooked right. He’s a great source of restaurant recommendations!
He has my diet. I turned out fine, health-wise.
If he’s anything like me he may dislike bitter taste, which comprises rather a wide selection of foods.
Definitely.
I’ve mentioned this before: my son (now five) has always been difficult to feed, but we’re in a good place with him now - he will eat a wide variety of things these days. The keys to reaching this point:
This all works because he is who he is. He’s not in need of extra help due to a sensory disorder or similar, and it evolved from taking what we know of him, and thinking about ways to play to his own unique personality. Every child is different, and there’s so much learning we need to do in order to figure out how best to deal with them. Good luck with yours 
I’m not a kitten, but that does sound good. Is it OK if I PM you for the recipe?
Regards,
Shodan
Please don’t ‘hide’ veggies in other foods. I was, and remain, a ‘picky eater’, because I cannot tolerate certain tastes or textures. My involuntary reaction to finding an unexpected change in texture in food is typically to gag, and possibly throw up.
The other suggestions - involving him in the creation of the food, give him lots of options to try, making eating fun - those are good suggestions. But anyone who ever tried to hide anything in my food would lose my trust forever, and I’d just get more picky as a consequence.
We were fortunate and didn’t really have too many problems with out kids. They were probably typical for not being particularly adventurous.
So, I let others with more experience comment on that. I wanted to say something about the sister also getting into the act.
Our daughter is two years older than our son and when we ran into a problem of bad behavior getting copied by the older one, I would remind her of the privileges she gets for being older and if she starts to act like a younger child then those privileges go away. Not in a mean sense, but just matter of fact.