August 17, 2010 You Can't Feed Your Way Out of a Picky-Eating Problem.
You’ll never find the right food to solve a picky-eating problem.
That’s because picky eating isn’t really about food. It is about control, a reluctance to try new things, sensory sensitivity, a chewing and/or swallowing problem, or some other issue.
Read It’s Gross and You Can’t Make Me Eat It!; For extreme fruit and vegetable avoiders…; My child only eats Cheerios and Puffs: When to seek medical help.
Still, parents are always hopeful, and I am often asked to recommend a list of foods that a picky eater is likely to eat.
But searching for just the right dish is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Actually, it’s worse. It’s like looking for a motorized needle that is constantly moving. (Or like looking for a needle that is, perhaps, just a little bit possessed!)
Unless you’re extremely lucky, you’ll never find the needle (or that guaranteed-to-be-the tastiest noodle). Even if you did find it, discovering it today is no guarantee that you’ll do so tomorrow. Kids (I mean needles) are fickle that way.
Kids don’t know what they like and don’t like.
It’s hard to believe this if you’ve got children who are loud and clear about which morsels will pass their lips and which ones won’t, but young kids don’t have what researchers call stable taste preferences.
Research shows that young kids don’t really know what they like or don’t like…They’re still exploring.
For instance, in one recent investigation, kids were asked to taste and rate the same 5 flavors of ice cream on two consecutive days. Researchers found that 3-4 year olds typically rated the ice cream flavors differently on each of the two days. Kids 5 and up, however, were more consistent about what they liked.
In other words, if your kids are younger than 5, don’t believe what they say.
Kids don’t even know which foods they’ll try.
What do you think would happen if you presented a selection of fruits and vegetables to a group of 5-14 year old kids, asked them which items they were willing to try, and then two days later served them everything, even the offensive items?
If you are like every normal parent on the face of the planet you would expect the kids to eat the foods they had said they were willing to try, and to avoid the foods they had said they weren’t willing to try. Surprisingly, you would be wrong.
A recent study tried this procedure and the researchers found some interesting results: not only were the kids willing to try the fruits and vegetables they had said they would try, but even the children who said they wouldn’t eat the fruits and vegetables ate them. Not only that, on average, they ate more than half the amount they were served.
In other words, when kids predict what they will and will not try, don’t believe them.
(Of course, in this study, teachers and not parents were introducing the new foods – and we all know that kids always perform better for teachers -- but still, the kids did say they wouldn’t try the foods and they did try them.)
Parents make poor predictions about what their kids will eat or like.
Research shows that parents make accurate predictions about half of the time. That’s a pretty good average considering how flaky our kids are.
But if you can’t predict what your kids will like or eat, then you shouldn’t ...
1) Go searching for the perfect food.
2) Limit mealtime selections to foods that conform to your ideas about what your kids will eat.
In both cases, you’re just as likely to be wrong as to be right. So you might as well serve what you want.
The only solution to a picky-eating problem is to provide a variety of foods. To stay the course. To resist the urge to cave in.
Giving in to your child's demands, particularly with sweet, salty and fat-filled “child-friendly” foods, only narrow’s a picky-eater’s developing palate. Instead, continuing to provide a wide range of foods, especially fruits and vegetables, will eventually (and I stress eventually) expand your child’s palate.
I realize that providing foods to a kid who won’t eat them is stressful (you worry that he’ll go hungry or become nutrient deficient) and irritating (you did spend some time preparing the meal after all and you don’t like to waste food), but making a short-term compromise at the expense of your child’s long-term habits, is a form of Dealin’ with the Devil. And nobody wins when dealin' with the devil.
Read House Building 101.
~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~
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Sources:
Busick, D. B., J. Brooks, S. Pernecky, R. Dawson, and J. Petzoldt. 2008. “Parent Food Purchases as a Measure of Exposure and Preschool-Aged Children's Willingness to Identify and Taste Fruit and Vegetables.” Appetite 51: 468-73.
Coulthard, H. and J. Blissett. 2009. “Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in Children and Their Mothers. Moderating Effects of Child Sensory Sensitivity.” Appetite 52: 410-15.
Dovey, T. M., P. A. Staples, G. E. Leigh, and J. C. G. Halford. 2008. “Food Neophobia and 'Picky/Fussy' Eating in Children: a Review.” Appetite 50: 181-93.
Liem, D. G., L. Zandstra, and A. Thomas. 2010. “Prediction of Children's Flavour Preferences. Effect of Age and Stability in Reported Preferences.” Appetite 55: 69-75.
Reader Comments (8)
Awesome, awesome post! I love this--thank you for all the wonderful advice (from a mom who, thankfully, has elementary aged children that eat a wider variety of foods than most of their peers!)
Brenda,
I'm glad you liked the post. How did you end up with adventurous-eaters?
Dina
Dina, I've been following your blog for a while and I love it. This post totally reflects how we train our kids in eating habits. My husband and I have always answered our 2 boys' I-don't-like-it statements with," You don't have to like it to eat it! Just eat it!" As a result, at 9 and 5, they've learned to eat a wide variety of food (hummus& nori are quite big at our house), green vegetables and both are voracious fruit eaters. Eating habits are definitely trainable
Anita,
I love it: You don't have to eat it! Just eat it! Wow. It just goes to show that "I don't like it" (or "I don't want to eat it") is just something kids say; it's not to be taken seriously.
Great going! And I'm glad you like the blog.
Dina
Dina, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that my husband and I will eat a variety of foods. Of late, we especially love Asian foods...Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and also Mediterranean like Spanish or Greek so they have seen us eat the different foods and eventually want to try it themselves (like calimari or 'sushi' (California rolls for now). I like to cook so that helps because I will try out different recipes. A lot of my friends either don't like to cook or think it takes too much time so they just go with the things they know and do that over and over and it's not very adventuresome!
I love that food can take us on an adventure even if it's just from our own home! Just today we went to a Mediterranean food market and came home with Baba ghanoush, hummus, fresh pita bread and my kids had all of it for lunch! Granted, it helps that we live in a big city with lots of choices. Since my kids were babies they have always gone to the grocery store with me (except during the school year--not as much b/c I shop when they're in school!). They learn how to pick out different foods and how they go together. And since the time they have been able to stand up they have been helping me cook. It's all those little components that add up to a good eater IMO!
Probably more of an answer than you were expecting but it's something I'm passionate about! :-)
Brenda,
Fabulous combination of modeling, encouraging, exploration, and patience. I love it. Thanks for sharing your story.
Dina
I totally loved this post. I'm a teacher, (not a mom yet) but I have nieces and nephews who totally fit the description of "picky etaers" and I've never agreed on the way my sisters handle those situations, I don't know... I've seen the way kids react when their parents are worried about how much they do or do not eat, or even how their own parents end up fixing them a "personalized" dish with all kinds of little details (like taking off tomato seeds!!!) and then they even end up tricking them into winnning rewards or prices if they do eat what they're told to. I've always felt it's more a "control" thing, and I was glad you mentioned it in the beginning of your post. Is there any research on that? As a teacher I like to be up to date in all kids-related topics, and this one particularly is really interesting for me, so I'd be grateful if you shared a little bit more info on that. Thanks! (and I'm sorry if there are spelling or grammar mistakes on my post, english is not my first language).
Sus,
I'm glad the post resonated with you. And I agree that when parents cater too much to their kids' pickiness it can really backfire.
There's lots of new research showing that pickiness is behavioral, although it isn't always (and you have to be on the look out for cases where kids might have a swallowing disorder). Figuring out what's going on in every individual case is the challenge!
Dina