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Comment by dvaun | Hacker News Reader

We put everything on a plate and offer it to the child(ren). Then, if they become hungry later on, they can return to said plate and continue eating.

Dessert is considered "equal", so we place it on their plate. However, that also means that they can't raid the pantry for snacks afterward.

It seems to be working. Our oldest ate celery and peanut butter the other day, which is pretty unexpected to us.

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Talking by experience, my kids would just eat dessert and cry later that they want more dessert.

I went in the opposite direction. I put a small portion of meat on the dish. When it's over, I put some vegetables; rinse and repeat until the portion of food is assimilated.

It seems like giving small goals is helping with going through the entire dinner and not having a choice minimises building up dislike for a specific food.

I think the reasoning for the second phenomenon is something like:

1. I can eat potatoes or chicken. 2. I like potatoes. 3. I'll eat potatoes. 4. Remember that dislikeChicken++ 4. Go back to 1 until I'm full

This is honestly the most original take I've ever seen on handling picky kids, and despite it being sort of in jest I can't help but think there's some potential validity. Kids tend to be pretty easy to manipulate when it comes to food (e.g. "broccoli is tiny trees!"), as long as you can find the fulcrum point from which to pivot the presentation. I hadn't considered the choice/reinforcement aspect of this before, and will keep it in mind as a harmless test concept!

I told mine that brussels sprouts were cabbages grown by fairies. They love them now.

I say that broccoli are little trees and then pretend I am a dinosaur eating the trees.

Kids are very different. My first daughter had a healthy appetite while small, then after a cold she became a very picky eater; she remains somewhat picky today, as an adult. The second daughter, we "trained" to eat varied, healthy food. We were proud of ourselves and thought we know "how it's done". The third one broke us completely - at some point we were begging her "eat this cupcake, it has loads of chocolate!"

All our three kids ate everything until they were about three, after that they were really picky but it seems to get slowly better once they reach 8-9 years old. That said, when they were in daycare/kindergarten they eat what they are served. Very strange. Our oldest attended an “alternative” kindergarten where everything they were served was full of spices and herbs. She ate it all, but at home she barely touched the most plain of plainest meals. Peculiar.

My brother-in-law's children are trilingual, and they react differently depending which language you talk to them in. Because they speak French at school, if you ask them to clean up or eat their vegetables in French they do it without complaining. But do it in Polish of English, nope, not having any of it. 4 and 7 years old.

In the US most peanut butters include added sugar so your kid may have hacked your system.

Shout-out to Adams peanut butter which is delicious and has zero sugar.

Some Adams trivia:

- It's owned by Smucker's. I normally dislike anything from Smucker's, but Adams is a nice exception.

- If you get the giant jar from Costco, the oil separation is a significant issue. There's a simple solution: dump it all into a big mixing bowl (with the help of a silicone spatula), mix it, and pour it back into the jar. I did it last time I bought it and it was worth the 10 minutes I spent.

- Once it's mixed well, if you give it a quick stir every time you use it, the oil doesn't separate again.

The other hack for jars of any size is to store them upside down until you open them for the first time. Then when you open the jar, you get to stir the PB and the oil naturally comes up from the bottom instead of delicately trying to force the oil down without spilling it over the sides.

Just because this has been bugging me for years:

Why are all zero-sugar-added PBs not homogenized? It seems unlikely to me that sugar is the primary homogenizing agent in e.g. Skippy. I dread opening a new jar of peanut butter to the point where I will look for other things...

I think what keeps homogenized peanut butter homogenized is partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is apparently also not good for you. Adams Natural, for instance (they also make a homogenized version) contains peanuts and (optionally) salt.

It's owned by Smucker, but not developed by them. It originated early in the 20th century in Tacoma, WA and was purchased in the late 1990s by Smucker.

Oh fun hack. Store the peanut butter container closed on its side in the fridge. More surface area seems to help the separation issue and the fridge solidifies it so it has less chance to drip or leak.

All natural pb's I've tried don't separate if you store it in the fridge (but importantly, only after the initial stir)

True, but its not as tasty cold. I guess that is not a problem when making sandwiches for lunch in the morning, if that is your main use case.

I've taken to using a using an electric hand mixer directly in the jar. It gets the peanut butter thoroughly mixed very quickly. As one might expect, it can go wrong spectacularly if you aren't careful.

Making your own is really easy in a food processor and tastes excellent.

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