I think the majority are made. There are so many emotional issues around food, on both sides.
There are some that are born, with disorders, and they do need the professional help and suport by the medical profession. But these are few.
Babies at a year old sometimes reduce the amount of calories they eat, as their growth rate is not as high as during the first year, and parents do panic when they see an infant clamping shut mouths when food is still in the bowl.
Sometimes the parents have their own food problems, and have a narrow group of foods that they are able to eat. Both parents eating habits play a part on the childs attitude towards food.
I certainly think that 'family eating' has dropped over the years, and not eating at a table has contributed to the rise of poor eaters.
Schools in my generation (ooh am nearly 40! AHHH!) did not teach us what a balanced diet meant, and how to cook it. Many adults today have little idea how to cook simple meals, anything behond boiling a kettle and pressing a button on a microwave is considered too much effort.
This is where annabel K has made so much money, there MUST be people out there who have no idea what a puree is, or what a potato masher is if they are buying the books!!!
Children quickly grasp the control that they have over parents , and parental guilt at times makes them unable to be firm.
Many parents feel that its up to the children to control and choose their own diet. For many reasons this is not something that should be done.
There is no such thing as 'childrens food' it is something that food advertisers have done over the years to make us buy there products.
Rare are the occasions when I buy cheese strings for my children, a crap food if ever I saw one!
What is truly shocking is that poor diets in children is not just restricted to the families living on benifits, who for all sorts of reasons, find providing a better diet for there family impossible. ( for e.g not owning a car, and being unable to shop at supermarkets and get better value for money)
There is a group of middle class children who are on extremly poor diets. I have had many of my childrens friends in my home who dont recognise many of the ordinary vegetables that I cook for them.
If its not pizza , chips,sausage , chicken nuggets,at home, mobile phones provide a way to get a curry delivered .( i mean that the children ring and get parents to pay!!!)
Food should be an enjoyable thing, something positive in life, I find it amazing that parents make simple cruical mistakes because they dont have the ability to see the long term damage they are doing. Its also not just the crap diet, its the what parents SAY to their children that is building the next batch of adults with eating disorders.
I have a child with extreme food allergies, common foods have the potenital to kill him, but his range of foods that he eats is far wider than many of his peers.
There are undoubtedly times when he is afraid of food, that cant be helped, and he has good reason to be cautious. But he does enjoy his food, its equally a happy, social occasion with food he loves.
As a family we pick a new food to try every year, this year we are going to france on hol, so its going to be horse /frog legs , last year was oysters.
In some ways having a child with so many alleriges has meant that we have to provide our family with a better quailty of diet. I dont have the choice to buy many junk type foods as they are unsafe for our son. For every cloud there is indeed a silver lining.