Helen Veit has studied the history of picky eaters. It is, unfortunately, a very recent history. And she found it to be a modern phenomenon.
Helen Veit is an associate professor of history at Michigan State University, specializing in American food in the 19th and 20th centuries. She's the author of Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History (2026), which explains the rise of mass childhood pickiness over the last two hundred years. Her first book,, Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (2013), explores the origins of modern eating and was a finalist for a James Beard Award for Reference and Scholarship.
She is also director of the What America Ate project.
