How to Get a Picky Eater to Try New Foods

Picky eating gets treated like a childhood phase, but plenty of grown adults live on the same six meals and know it. The good news is that it isn't a character flaw and it isn't permanent. Coach Jennifer Saucier walked through how to widen what you'll eat, whether the picky eater at your table is four or forty.

Why are some people picky eaters?

Usually it's some mix of three things, and none of them is stubbornness.

Some people taste more than others. Bitter greens, strong cheese, and some vegetables genuinely hit harder for certain people, so "I don't like it" is often true rather than dramatic.

Some of it is history. A food that made you sick once, a texture that caught you off guard, a dinner that turned into a standoff — the body remembers, and the food goes on the no list.

And a lot of it is habit. Eat the same eight things for years and anything outside them feels risky. That's not a fixed trait. It's a rut, and ruts can be climbed out of.

How can changing your mindset help with picky eating?

Jennifer's first tip, and the one that does the most work.

Watch the language you use. "I hate vegetables" is a sentence that decides the outcome before the fork moves. "I haven't found a way I like them yet" leaves the door open. That sounds small. It isn't — especially if there are kids at the table learning how to talk about food by listening to you.

A few reframes worth practicing:

• "I don't like it" becomes "I haven't tried it this way." Roasted, raw, and boiled are three different foods.
• "I'm a picky eater" becomes "I'm working on my list." One is an identity, the other is a project.
• Drop the good food / bad food talk. Food that's labeled bad becomes food that's interesting, and food that's labeled good becomes a chore.

How do you get a picky eater to try new foods?

Start simple, and change one thing at a time.

• Build off something you already eat. If you like roasted potatoes, roast carrots the same way, same seasoning, same pan. The method is familiar, only the vegetable is new.
• Put the new thing next to a safe thing. One unfamiliar food on a plate of things you like is a much easier ask than a plate of unknowns.
• Change the texture before you give up on the food. A lot of "I don't like broccoli" is really "I don't like soft, boiled broccoli." Roasted and crisp is a different experience.
• Start small. One bite. Not a serving, not a plate. A bite you can quit after is a bite people will actually take.
• Try it when you're hungry and calm, not at the end of a long day when everybody's short.

How many times should you offer a new food?

More than most people give it.

It can take many separate exposures before a new food stops registering as strange — and most of us quit after one or two. A no in June is worth another try in September, cooked a different way.

That's Jennifer's third tip and it's the least glamorous one: keep going. Nobody's taste changes on a Tuesday. It changes over a few months of small, low-stakes tries.

Can picky eating be reversed in adults?

For most people, yes.

It's slower with adults than with kids, because the habits have had longer to set. But the mechanism is the same at any age: repeated, low-pressure exposure widens what you'll eat. People who've eaten the same eight meals for twenty years do add new ones — a few at a time, not all at once.

A note worth adding: if someone's eating is so restricted that they're losing weight, avoiding whole food groups, or it's affecting their health, that's worth a conversation with a doctor or a dietitian rather than a strategy from a blog post.

Do distractions at the table affect picky eating?

They do, more than you'd expect.

Eat in front of the television or a phone and you're not really tasting anything — you're chewing on autopilot. For a picky eater, that's a missed opportunity, because trying something new takes attention. It's also how people eat past full without noticing.

Put the phones down, turn the TV off, and give the meal ten minutes of actual attention. It's a small change that makes every other tip on this list work better.

If the picky eater at your table is a kid, the companion to this one is worth reading too: How to Get Your Kids to Eat Vegetables (Without a Fight).

Same principles Jennifer closes every talk with:

• Whole foods first. Meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, a little starch, not much sugar.
• Balance every meal and snack. A protein, a low-glycemic carbohydrate, and a healthy fat.
• Go easy on ultra-processed carbohydrates, added sugar and alcohol.

Nobody widens their diet overnight. You widen it one bite at a time, on purpose, for a few months.

If you'd rather not figure that out alone, that's what nutrition coaching at Bandit is for. Talk to a coach — twenty minutes, no pressure, and you'll leave with somewhere to start.

Jennifer Saucier is Director of Nutrition Services at Bandit CrossFit, a CrossFit Level 2 trainer and Healthy Steps Nutrition certified coach.