偏食

1. Origins, structure, and basic meaning

• Structure: 偏食 is read as へんしょく and is a noun for picky or selective eating that avoids a balanced range of foods.
• Basic usage: Describing the habit appears in 偏食で野菜を食べない, while using it as a topic appears in 偏食を題材にする.

2. Common pitfalls and similar expressions

• An eating pattern
  • It describes a continuing eating pattern with a narrow range of foods, not one occasion of refusing a particular dish.
• Difference from 好き嫌い
  • Compared with everyday likes and dislikes about particular foods, this term focuses on the overall selective eating pattern.