One of the downsides of the nutrition mindset is that it encourages parents to examine the immediate meal.

Actually, sometimes the nutrition mindset focuses parents' attention on the immediate mouthful! But the habits approach encourages you to step back and look at patterns.

Breakfast can change HOW your kids eat.

Here's a favorite post that explains...

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Yes, breakfast is important nutritionally, but it is also the biggest missed opportunity for teaching your kids to eat right.

You’ve heard the nutrition news a zillion times before: kids need to eat breakfast.  It makes them healthier and better students at school.  (Though I’m not sure kids need the chocolate chip pancakes at IHOP which come in at over 600 calories, or the flapjacks at your local diner which are probably just as fantastic.)

But you probably haven't thought about breakfast from the habits perspective.

Used correctly, breakfast can teach kids to eat new foods.   Used incorrectly... well, you probably know what happens.

Here are three ways to get the most out of breakfast:

1) Use breakfast to get kids used to the idea that they eat different foods on different days and they’ll be more open to new foods.

Most parents settle on the same 1 or 2 things to feed kids in the morning.  It’s a busy time, and we want our kids to eat breakfast (after all, we know how important this meal is).

But feeding kids the same stuff all the time gets them used to eating the same stuff all the time.  No wonder they balk when different stuff comes around - even if different comes later in the day.

Read Make "New” Work For You.

Tip 1: Rotate the breakfast foods you serve.  You don’t need to introduce foods your kids have never eaten.  Simply establish the procedure of not serving the same food two days in a row.  If you must serve cereal every day, at least switch up the brands and the flavors.

2) Use breakfast to expand the taste, texture, appearance, aroma and temperature of foods your kids will eat and they’ll be more open to new foods.

Most parents think they are providing a variety of foods, but they’re not. Breakfast foods tend to all have basically the same taste, texture, aroma, appearance and temperature. 

Toast, cereal, bagels, muffins, French toast, pancakes … they’re all relatively bland, bready products.  Some offer a little more sweet, or a little more crunch, but the variation is minimal.  That’s because the main ingredient is the same: refined flour.

Read The Ingredients Game.

Tip 2: Pay attention to which tastes your kids gravitate towards and then slowly introduce them to other flavors.  Do the same thing with texture (do they only like crunchy?), appearances (are they white or beige eaters?), aromas and temperatures.

Read The Variety Masquerade.

3) Use breakfast to reduce your kids’ dependence on sweet and fat-laden foods and they’ll be more open to new foods.

A lot of what we feed our kids in the morning fosters eating habits that run counter to the healthy stuff we’re always begging them to eat.

Do our kids really need to develop a lifelong taste preference for butter, cream cheese, and sugar?  Not if you want them to eat broccoli.

Tip 3: Teach your children that …

• Butter is an ingredient in food, not a topping on food.  Yes, it’s yummy but it’s also 100% fat, and nothing else. Get your kids in the habit of eating toast topped with peanut butter, cottage cheese, hummus, guacomole... anything but butter. 

• Cream cheese is a treat, not a staple. According to the USDA cream cheese doesn’t fulfill your kid’s daily dairy requirement because it doesn’t have enough calcium.  Instead, it’s a fat delivery system - thinkcream cheese - that packs in 100 calories per ounce. Most people slather on at least 2 ounces. Read about USDA Milk Group.

• “Children’s cereals” – which have up to 85% more sugar than those marketed to adults -- are treat snacks, not breakfast foods.  Maybe this is one reason most kids have such a sweet tooth! Read A Spoonful of Sugar? 

• Syrup.  Is there really any point?  Think Coke without the bubbles.  Ounce for ounce Aunt Jemima’s syrup has 5 times as much sugar as Coke.  (Coke has 3.3g sugar per ounce; the syrup has 16g per ounce. A point of reference: those little packets of syrup served at fast food joints are approximately 2 ounces.) Teach your kids to enjoy pancakes with jelly, fresh fruit or -- here's a radical idea -- plain naked (then they'll know what pancakes really taste like).

When it comes to teaching kids to eat new foods every meal counts, especially breakfast.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

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Source: Zinczenko, D. and M. Goulding, 2008. Eat This Not That for Kids. New York, NY: Rodale. p. 74; product labels.

A few weeks ago I conducted a workshop at a daycare/preschool center in NJ where parents pack their children's food. What did the teachers there have to say? 

1. Parents send in too much food.
2. Parents send in too much snack food like pretzels and crackers.
3. Parents wonder why their children aren't eating their vegetables. 
4. Parents think teachers should monitor what the children eat better.

Imagine, a small child sitting down to lunch. He pulls out 5, 6, even 7 containers. Most contain preferred foods like crackers, pretzels and cookies. One has a sandwich. One contains carrots.

How, these teachers wonder, are they supposed to make sure this child eats at least a few bites of the sandwich and some of the carrots? Because when the parent comes to pick her child up, that's what she's going to want to know: 

• Did he eat the sandwich and carrots? Or, more likely...
• How come my son ate his crackers but not his sandwich?

Don't think this is a phenomenon limited to this one daycare/preschool center. Everytime I talk to preschool teachers I hear the same complaints.

And so teachers resort to the bribing, bartering and cajoling that parents use: You have to eat at least a bite of your sandwich before you can have your cookies.

(Don't know why that's a failed strategy? Read Wheelin' & Dealin': 10 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Trade Peas for Pie.)

Here's something to consider: Providing too much food actually encourages children to be picky. They never have to consider eating anything they don't want at any given moment. 

In my experience, many parents are guilty of sending their preschoolers off in the morning with too much food. In fact, the pickier the child the more likely parents are to overpack. It's a strategy that backfires.

• Here's the logic: "I never know what Sally will eat so I pack a lot of choices to make sure she has something she wants."  But...
• When parents pack lots of snacks (crackers, sweetened yogurts, juices) there is no reason for your toddler to eat the healthy stuff.

Packing too much food sets your child up to fail.

It sets up a bad dynamic for the preschool teachers. And, it also teaches your child to fear hunger. Read The Upside of Hunger.

Children need time and incentive to considering eating right. Read: Let Your Kids Sit with Their Own Struggles.

Send your child to daycare or preschool with a reasonable amount of food.

And your child will be more likely to eat (at least some of) everything you send--the healthy stuff included.

You'll also be making your child's teacher's life a little easier.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

That's what happened to Michelle's son. He was a shopping cart-riding/broccoli-gnawing tot until he got to preschool where he was exposed to Goldfish crackers, gummy candy, and some sort of birthday treat from a classmate nearly every week.

And to Courtney's son. He was an eating champ until he got to daycare where they served him cafeteria food like macaroni and cheese, corn dogs, and even Pop Tarts for snacks.

What can you do?

You can become an advocate for change. You can also use this as an opportunity to teach your child how to live in a world dominated by this stuff.

There isn’t anything your children need to understand about eating right that can’t be presented in child-sized nuggets.

No child is too young to learn how to handle sweets and treats. But you can't teach this stuff just by limiting the junk. You've got to talk to your kids too.

Talk to your child about proportion.

Proportion is easy to explain: We eat some foods more often than other foods.

And, there's room in the diet for everything. Including Pop Tarts—which I still eat once a year or so when I'm in the mood to taste my childhood!

Here's a sample dialogue.

• Mary: The food you eat at daycare is pretty tasty, isn’t it?
• Bob: Yeah, I love it.
• Mary: I love that kind of food too. But you know what? It’s not the healthiest food.
• Bob: It’s not?
• Mary: No. Remember how I always say that we have to eat things like fruits and vegetables more often than we eat hot dogs, noodles, and cookies?
• Bob: Yeah.
• Mary: Well, because you eat all that Fun and Treat Food during the day, we have to be extra careful to eat Growing Food at home. That’s why I am always going to offer you things like apples and pears for snack when you get home from school. You don’t have to eat the snack, but there won’t be food again until dinner. Okay?
• Bob: Okay, but I don’t like pears. They’re mushy.
• Mary: I didn’t know you don’t like pears. Thanks for telling me. This must be a new thing because you liked pears last week. Let’s make up a list of the fruit you like right now and I’ll make sure to include those items in our Rotation Rule. Okay?
• Bob: Okay.
• Mary: But remember, I’m going to keep serving pears from time-to-time. I like them and you never know when you might want to start eating them again.

Don't know about Growing Food, Fun Food and Treat Food? Read Slackers Rule. Or what the Rotation Rule is? Read End Picky Eating with The Rotation Rule.

Some lessons can’t be learned by structure alone. They need explanation.

Imagine walking into your child’s classroom to find the teacher handing each child a book. Afterwards, you watch the teacher sit down in her chair, open her book, and start reading quietly to herself. 

It wouldn’t take long before the children figured out what they were supposed to do: open their books and start reading. 

So far the teacher’s actions seem reasonable. They also seem perfectly adequate: the children have all the information they need to figure out what they’re supposed to do.

Now imagine that the children don’t know how to read. Do you still think the teacher’s actions seem adequate? Probably not. Some lessons need active instruction.

If you’re worried that having this kind of conversation with a young child would make him feel bad about his daycare center...

As if you’re somehow putting them down or accusing them of serving unhealthy food, you could add something like:

• “Every family eats differently and your teachers have to make sure they serve something that everyone likes.” Or, 
• “Your teachers know that kids like to eat Fun and Treat Foods with their friends. But we can’t eat these foods all the time.”

The key to authoritative parenting is blending a solid structure and firm discipline with warmth and compassion.

That’s why talking to your children is so crucial. It’s where the warmth and compassion come in.

During these conversations you not only get to explain your thinking to your children, but your kids get to explain their thinking to you.

For more on this topic, read When School Nutrition Stinks.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Emotional eating can begin by age 2.

Yet...

• The discussion about obesity centers around what people eat, not why they eat. And,
• The discussion about when to teach eating habits centers around school-aged children.

Don't you think that's an example of too little, too late?

As I finish up my book (due out in January!!), here's an old post on how good parents sometimes teach bad habits.

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If you are good you can have a cookie!

Who hasn’t resorted to a little behavioral bribe?  Food—or more specifically the lovely cookie—has the power to produce miraculous results: kids who wait patiently through phone calls, lines at the bank and even grocery shopping trips that take forever.

“You can have an ice cream if you play quietly by yourself for another 15 minutes.”

Don’t do it.  It might just affect your children’s lifelong eating habits.

A 2003 Yale University study found that adults who remember their parents using food to control their behavior have higher rates of binge eating.  They are also more likely to be excessively concerned about their weight, suffer from weight fluctuations, and other problems such as chronic dieting.  Yikes.

Food works to reinforce behavior in the short term, but it also communicates mixed messages to children about the role that food should play in their lives.

So much parental energy goes into encouraging healthy eating, but then we reward our kids for behaving well by giving them…brownies!

These peas are good for you.  These cookies are just plain good.

It makes sense that when parents reward children with dessert, these same children grow into adults who reward themselves with dessert.  But it’s not just dessert consumption that is affected.  A 2001 study found people whose families used food as a reward for success and good behavior were more likely to be bulimic than people whose families did not use these tactics.

1) The key to teaching kids to eat right is to keep your eyes on the long term prize.

Nutrition puts enormous pressure on parents to get the right foods into kids.  And that pressure makes parents do crazy things.  If you’ve ever found yourself wrestling under the table to get one more slurp of applesauce into your little superstar then you know what I mean.

One study of college students founds that 72% of the students who had been forced to eat food as a child said they still wouldn’t eat that food today. 

And a substantial body of research shows that pressuring kids to eat more makes them eat less.  Give up your membership in the Clean Your Plate Club.  Instead, pay attention to the long-term lessons your kids are learning.

2) Carefully use rewards to encourage healthy eating, but avoid using food to encourage behaving.

In an earlier post I talked about the power of rewards so I wouldn’t blame you if right about now you were thinking that I am the contradiction queen. I don't think I am.

Giving stars as a reward for eating behavior—trying new foods, for instance, or eating vegetables before the rest of the meal—is completely different than using food as a reward for desirable behavior. Read Star Power.

I'm not going to dispute that rewarding your kids with foods they really like will get their attention, but pulling out the big guns (and let’s be honest, nobody bribes good behavior with broccoli) overpowers kids.  Really big rewards produce really big results because of the amount of pressure they apply. What's a poor kid to do?

But while using food coercively works, it won't position your kids to develop a positive relationship with food. Research confirms this.

 3) Look for non-food rewards that work.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.  Allow your kids to:

• Plan a special outing.
• Pick games for family game night.
• Choose a movie for the family to watch.
• Select a sport for everyone to play together.
• Stay up a few minutes past bedtime.
• Allow a sleepover.
• Have a few friends over for a special “party.”
• Choose a small toy from a special toychest.
• Play an extra computer game.

I’ve often said that you shouldn’t sacrifice your kids’ long term eating habits for the sake of the immediate meal.

Here I’m saying, don’t sacrifice your kids’ long term eating habits to stave off the immediate meltdown.   Instead, arm yourself with an arsenal of non-food rewards and set your kids up for a life time of healthy eating.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

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Sources:

Batsell, R. W., Jr., A. S. Brown, M. Ansfield, E., and G. Y. Paschall. 2002. “"You Will Eat All of That!": a Retrospective Analysis of Forced Consumption Episodes.” Appetite 38: 211-19.

Puhl, R. M. and M. B. Schwartz. 2003. “If You Are Good You Can Have a Cookie: How Memories of Childhood Food Rules Link to Adult Eating Behaviors.” Eating Behaviors 4: 283-93.

• "What's that Mommy?"
• "That's candy that food manufacturers want you to think is fruit," I replied.

In my opinion, giving my daughter that kind of information was the only way to arm her against the food industry's marketing power.

Now, Bettina Siegel from The Lunch Tray -- You do know about this terrific blog, don't you?-- has produced this amazing video.

Bettina says:

I continue to believe that one of our most promising strategies  is showing kids how they’re quite deliberately manipulated by the food industry — to the tune of almost $2 billion in children’s advertising dollars spent each year — into choosing highly processed food and fast food over more healthful options.

Here's the video:

Read more about why Bettina made this video.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

According to the New York Times, a new study shows that:

[I]nfants whose parents sucked on their pacifiers to clean them developed fewer allergies than children whose parents typically rinsed or boiled them.

Read the complete New York Times article here. 

Depriving kids of germs might backfire.

Some exposure to germs at an early age is good for kids. It helps the immune system develop a tolerance to trivial threats.

As a result, babies whose parents sucked on their pacifiers had blood tests that showed lower levels of a type of immune cell associated with allergies.

This sounds a lot like the new advice regarding food allergies.

Early exposure is better than delayed exposure. Read Peanuts, Eggs and Shellfish Before One and Don't Wait to Introduce Fish For Dinner.

To me, both these findings suggest that focusing too narrowly on germs or allergens produces unintended consequences the same way focusing too narrowly on nutrients produces unintended consequences.

You have to look at the big picture — always.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

OK. It is a fancy form of sugar water with added protein. And added vitamins.

Big deal. Kids don't eat nutrients; they eat flavors. And flavors shape habits.

In fact, sugar is the second ingredient, after water. Check out the ingredients.

If you have trouble getting your kids to eat vegetables, look at how many sweet foods you feed them. 

• Ask yourself how PediaSure SideKids will help your kids like vegetables.
• Then, read Training Tiny Taste Buds (I've reprinted it below) and see how many foods have less sugar than juice (and PediaSure).

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New Research shows:

• German and Spanish kids are twice as likely to prefer high fat foods than kids in Cyprus and Belgium.
• Hungarian, Spanish and Estonian children have a preference for fat, salt and umami (savory), espcially when compared to Swedish, Belgium and Italian children.
• German children are less likely to prefer sweet juice than Swedish, Italian and Hungarian children.

Want to know something else?

Country was the strongest predictor of taste preference.

That means, culture impacts taste preferences more than: 

• Breastfeeding vs formula
• Age at which fruit is introduced
• Television viewing
• Whether or not parents use food as a reward
• Taste sensitivity

Want to know something else?

There are kids who aren't familiar with apple juice.

The researchers couldn't test the sweet preferences of the children in Cyprus because these kids were unfamiliar with apple juice (and the researchers wanted to use a standard sweet medium across the study).

How'd they do it?

Researchers maniuplated the level of sugar in apple juice, and the level of salt, fat and umami in crackers. Then, 1705 six to nine year old children were given paired tastings and asked to indicate which of the pair they liked best.

The study was conducted in Italy, Estonia, Cyprus, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Hungary and Spain.

You don’t need to move across the world to solve a picky-eating problem. You just have to establish a foreign culture at home.

Forget about feeding the American way, and start seriously rethinking what, when and why you offer the foods that you do.  Read Food Culture and What It Means to be "Child-Friendly."

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Source: Lanfer, A., K. Bammann, K. Knof, K. Buchecker, P. Russo, T. Veidebaum, Y. Kourides, S. de Henauw, D. Molnar, S. Bel-Serrat, L. Lissner, and W. Ahrens. 2013. “Predictors and Correlates of Taste Preferences in European Children: the IDEFICS Study.” Food Quality and Preference 27: 128-36.

• Old Advice: Wait before introducing potentially allergenic foods because it will help reduce your child's chances of developing an allergy.
• New Advice: Delaying may increase your child's chances of developing an allergy.

In other words, once you start weaning feel free to feed your kids peanuts, eggs, shellfish and other potentially allergenic foods. Read more: Peanuts, eggs, and Shellfish Before One.

Now, more evidence about the benefits of introducing fish...early on. It may prevent allergies from forming.

 The New York Times reports on a couple of studies:

• Children who were introduced to fish between 6 and 12 months had a lower prevalence of asthmalike symptoms than children who were given fish after this window.
• Children who were given fish twice a month from the age of 1 were 75% less likely to have allergy symptoms—rhinitis and exzema—at the age of 12.

Many parents I know are reluctant to introduce fish to young children.

I'm not sure whether that is because these parents are worried about allergies, or because they're worried their children won't like fish.

Here's an old post on how to interpret your weaning infant's reaction to new foods; it's something for you to "chew on" while I finish the book!

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Most parents think introducing their infants to solid foods is difficult because their child may not like the taste, may not like the texture, and may not even know how to navigate the mushy messes down their throats.   

A backup can save the day.

Parents often ask me what they ought to do when their child refuses to eat the meal that's been prepared. A backup is almost always my answer.

I don't need a backup anymore because I'm not parenting a defiant eater anymore. But boy, did cottage cheese save my life.

Here's an old post about backups for you to read while I finish my book! And do read this post on Cook. Play. Explore. which describes the author's experience using this technique.

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Cottage cheese gets a bad rap.  It has the misfortune of being thought of as a diet food (and a pretty awful one at that).  But let me tell you how it changed my life.

My daughter likes cottage cheese.  She doesn’t LOVE it, would never choose it over something preferable – something like sushi, steak or even mac ‘n cheese – but when I serve up meatloaf, a spicy chili or a new dish that doesn’t quite make it, cottage cheese is her “go-to” meal.

I learned a long time ago that giving my daughter the option of eating cottage cheese whenever she didn’t want my dinner enabled me to cook whatever I desired.  And that opened up the culinary world to my husband and me – and, as it turned out, to my daughter as well.

Cottage cheese is our backup.  And, sometimes, having a backup is all you need to turn a tense meal around.

Kids have all sorts of reasons to decline your meal: they don’t like it, they don’t feel like eating it today, they’re cruising for some control.  Having a backup eliminates the sting of your kids’ snubs. 

Having a backup means you don’t have to beg, bribe or cajole your kids into eating, you don’t have to cook an alternate meal (or multiple alternates if you have a couple of kids) and you don’t have to worry about starvation.  You can simply say, “There’s always cottage cheese.”

A backup gives your children the safety net they need.

The backup gives your kids control over what they eat because they know exactly what the options are: they eat either the meal you’ve prepared or the backup.

The backup gives your children the freedom to try new foods because they know there’s always an out: the backup.

The backup eliminates the power play.

Your children don’t have to like cottage cheese.

Don’t panic if your kids don't like cottage cheese. There are lots of other foods you can use as a backup: tofu, hummus, plain yogurt, beans (or anything else out of a can that can be consumed without cooking).

Whatever backup food you choose, make sure it meets the following criteria:

1) The backup must always be the same food item. Pick ONE food and only ONE food to use as a backup.  It will undermine your efforts if your give your children choices for the backup of if the backup changes from time to time.

2) The backup must always be available. Use a food that isn’t highly perishable and which you usually stock. Cottage cheese works because it comes in small snack sizes that stay fresh for weeks at a time.

3) The backup must be nutritious.  That way you won’t worry when your children choose it.

4) The backup must be a NO COOK item.  The point is to make your life easier, not harder.

5) The backup must NOT be a preferred food.  Don’t choose cereal, sandwiches, flavored yogurt, or anything else your children would rather eat. You don’t want to give them an incentive to choose the backup. Instead, select something your kids like, not LOVE, and which they find kind of boring.

The backup works by changing the dynamic at the dinner table.  When you set the overarching parameters, and your children make the choices, you alter your interactions so there's no more fighting about food. And your kids end up eating more of what you serve.  Now that's a habit to cultivate!

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~