(from our cookbook, How to Cook Like a Peasant, link below)

And it makes people look fat and deformed.  Like this:

Think of it this way, your great-grandmother never made or ate dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. That’s because kiddie food didn’t exist until corporate food companies created it as a marketing gimmick to get people to pay more for crap that makes them picky, infantile, and fat.

For most of human history, children ate what adults ate, nobody was running a separate kitchen service for the under-12 crowd. If the family was having cabbage soup, the kids were having cabbage soup. If there was liver on the table, that’s what kids ate. And yet, children survived and thrived without ever tasting a Lunchable.

But walk into any American supermarket today and kiddie food is everywhere—from cereal with cartoon mascots to processed mac and cheese dyed bright yellow to chicken stripped of gristle and bone. Marketers have convinced Americans that children need this—that their delicate palates can’t handle real food, that they’ll starve if we don’t provide them with an endless parade of breaded, shaped, sweetened nonsense.

Let me tell you about my nephew Tommy. At age five, he would only eat white foods: white bread, pasta with butter, chicken nuggets, and milk. My sister was at her wit’s end. “He’s just a picky eater,” everyone told her. “It’s normal for kids.”

Except it’s not normal. It’s learned behavior, carefully cultivated by a food industry that profits from turning children into nutritionally stunted addicts. Those chicken nuggets Tommy loved? They’re designed in laboratories to hit the perfect combination of salt, fat, and sugar that triggers pleasure centers in the brain. They’re not food—they’re edible dopamine delivery systems.

Want to know what happened when Tommy spent a summer with his grandmother in Italy? By week two, he was devouring grilled sardines (skin on, bones in), bitter greens, and pasta with clam sauce. Not because Nonna was a miracle worker, but because she simply didn’t acknowledge the existence of kiddie food Food was food. You ate it or you went hungry.

The really insidious part? This kiddie food isn’t just making our children picky eaters—it’s literally deforming them. Remember our discussion about jaw development? Those soft, processed foods aren’t giving children’s facial muscles and bones the workout they need during crucial developmental years. No wonder we’re seeing epidemic levels of orthodontic problems. Your peasant ancestors didn’t need braces because they were too busy chomping on actual food.

But let’s talk about how we got here. Post-World War II, food companies had a problem: how to keep profits up now that they weren’t supplying armies. The solution was to create new markets and overcharge people for processed garbage. And what better market than children? By the 1950s, TV advertising was beaming colorful cartoon characters straight into kids’ brains, convincing them that real food was “yucky” and processed crap was “fun.”

Think about the message we’re sending: “Here, honey, you can’t handle real food. Here’s some chicken meat that’s been pulverized, reformed, and shaped like a dinosaur.” We’re literally teaching our children that food should be a form of entertainment rather than nourishment.

And the excuse I hear most often? “But my kid won’t eat anything else!” Really? Let’s do a little thought experiment. Imagine you’re living in rural France in 1890. Your six-year-old is refusing to eat the cassoulet. What are your options?

1. A) Drive to McDonald’s B) Make them chicken nuggets C) Say “This is dinner. You don’t have to eat it, but there’s nothing else until breakfast.”

Spoiler alert: The answer was C. And somehow, children survived. Not only survived but grew up with broader palates, better dental development, and a healthier relationship with food than today’s kids who think meals should come with toys.

My sister finally got it. After Tommy’s Italian summer, she cleaned out her kitchen. No more “kid-friendly” versions of adult foods. No more shaped crackers or squeeze yogurts. Just real food, properly prepared, served family-style…

The change wasn’t instant. Tommy had his moments of rebellion. But here’s what happened: without the kiddie food option, he started eating. Like, actually eating. Within six months, his face started changing, his jaw was finally developing properly from actually having to chew. His constant stuffy nose cleared up. He stopped getting sick every other week. And best of all, he became adventurous with food.

Last week, I watched him demolish a plate of curry that would make most adults sweat. “It’s spicy,” he said, grinning through orange-stained lips, “but in a good way.” This from the kid who once cried if his foods touched each other on the plate.

Here’s your action plan for breaking free from the kiddie food trap:

1. Clean house. Get rid of all kiddie products the way parents used to hide their porn magazines deep in their closets. And Candy counts as kiddie food, get rid of that shit.
2. Serve one meal for everyone. No special orders, no separate kiddie plates.
3. Let the little fucker starve if he won’t eat anything. Survival instincts will kick in once he realizes there aren’t candy bars in the pantry.
4. Involve them in cooking, just as most kids are in some way in most parts of the world. Children who cook are more likely to eat what they’ve helped prepare because they’re emotionally invested in the meal.
5. Expect resistance. They’re breaking an addiction, so it won’t be pretty. Stand firm, it’s like detoxing a heroin addict.

The food industry spent billions convincing us that children need special food. They don’t. What they need is what children have always needed: real food, good examples, and parents strong enough to say no to marketing bullshit.

Your great-grandmother wasn’t a child nutrition expert. She didn’t read parenting blogs or worry about whether little Timmy’s sandwich was cut into the right shape. She just cooked real food and expected her children to eat it. And they did.

It’s time to get back to that wisdom. Your children’s health, and their future relationship with food, depends on it because picky kids usually grow up to be picky adults who miss out on a lot of nutrition such as cartilage and gristle from eating a properly cooked chicken.

Besides, do you really want to be making two different dinners every night? Your peasant ancestors would laugh themselves silly at the very idea.