Many adults assume that prolonged pickiness is a hard-wired stage and that kids naturally dislike many foods. But mass childhood pickiness is a modern phenomenon created largely by junk food companies that marketed products like sugary cereals as food specifically for children, convincing Americans that kids need different, easily likable foods. This fostered a culture of pickiness that is harming children’s health and depriving them of a range of pleasures and flavors that would have been available to them in the past — all while adding heaps of unnecessary anxiety to dinner tables across the country.