Kid Eats Q&A: My 1 year old will eat anything I put in front of her, but what should I be putting in front of her?

This is a great question—thanks Lorena for asking it on my Facebook Page— because almost every parent I know underestimates their baby’s eating ability.

What should you feed your 1 year old? 

How about…

• Ravioli with sage butter, pecorino and crispy sage leaves...
• Cannellini beans with rosemary oil, garlic confit, and shallots...
• Lentils with caramelized onions, and wilted arugula...

Sound too ambitious? For mere mortals, perhaps, but not if you’re New York Times food writer Keith Dixon. Read Momma, I’ll Have Some of Whatever You’re Having.  It tells the story of how Dixon and his wife bought a food mill to make “traditional” food purees for their baby but were soon churning out gastronomical mega-mashes. (Oh, how I wish I ate this well.)

Think of this early eager-eater phase as a food-training period.  Not just for your baby, but for YOU.

Let me explain.

Most 1 year olds will eat anything. It’s a delight to feed them.  And as long as you pay attention to the usual concerns—allergies, choking and overly “hot” spices—you can feel free to put anything you like in front of your little tyke. 

Sadly, the eager-eating stage usually ends sometime between 15 and 24 months, and this is when most feeding systems crash and burn.

The only thing that is going to save you, that will get you through the picky “you can’t make me eat it” phase, is to switch your mindset from nutrition to habits. That takes practice.

It's one of the great paradoxes of parenting: If you focus on nutrition your kids are most likely to develop bad eating habits because you'll be tempted to serve foods that barely pass the nutrition "sniff test" and to employ "questionable" feeding tactics.  If you focus on shaping your child's habits, however, the nutrition will naturally fall into place.

Here are some guidelines to get you through the good times...and everything else!

1) Put as wide a variety of foods in front of your eager-eater as possible.

Expose your eager-eater to a wide range of tastes and textures so more foods are familiar, not foreign.  And keep mixing up what you serve to teach the idea eating different foods on different days is the expected way to go! 

Read House Building 101.

2) Think about food from your eager-eater’s perspective.

Want your eager-eater to keep up with fruits and vegetables? Don’t overdo sweet, salty or crunchy foods otherwise these are the kinds of foods they'll gravitate to: French fries and chicken nuggets (not spinach and broccoli).

Read The Variety Masquerade, Pizza. Pizza. Pizza and My Toddler Used to Eat Vegetables.

3) Don’t assume your eager-eater will only like bland food. 

Lots of kids love intense flavors.  Indeed, research shows that kids who eat foods high in sugar, salt and fat—the basic “Child-friendly” diet—end up seeking out these kinds foods in order to achieve a “flavor-hit.”  They’re going for the high! Train your eager-eater to buzz from basil, crave some curry...

Read The Truth About “Child-Friendly” Foods.

4) Give up trying to predict what your eager-eater will like.

Figuring out what your eager-eater will eat is really a guessing game. Research shows parents make accurate predictions about what their children will eat or like only about 50% of the time.  In other words, you might as well toss a coin.  (And remember, just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean your eager-eater won’t!) 

Read You Can’t Feed Your Way Out of a Picky-Eater Problem and Onion Soup? No Way! Mac ‘N Cheese? OK!

5) Don’t expect your eager-eater to eagerly eat today what she eagerly ate yesterday.

Kids are fickle.  Maddeningly so. In fact, it's this characteristic of kids that trips most parents up.

Research shows that young kids don’t have stable taste preferences.  What they are willing to eat is based as much on their mood as their mouth.  So cook what you want to eat, not what you think your eager-eater will eat.

Read What "I don't like it" Really Means and The Easy Way to Solve Your Toddler’s Sudden Decision to Refuse Certain Foods

Still worried about allergies and choking?

Here are some tips.

Allergies:

Though I know a handful of experts who no longer recommend that you “test” out new foods by introducing them one at a time—if your child experiences an allergic reaction to a mixed dish you can always work backwards to identify the allergen—most pediatricians still stand by the one-at-a-time approach.  But this doesn’t mean you have to test out every ingredient. Use herbs and spices as desired.

Choking:

• Cook food well enough so that you can easily mash it with a fork.

• Consider adding liquid to dry foods to make them easier to swallow.

• Cut food into bites that can be swallowed without chewing, i.e. about the size of a raisin.

Remember, it's not what you feed, but what you teach, that matters.

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Healthy Eating for the Holidays

Here’s a healthy eating tip to get you and your toddlers through the holidays:

Teach your kids to problem solve.  And while you’re at it, teach them to plan ahead, self-soothe and delay gratification too.

I know it sounds far-fetched, but studies show these skills are related to healthy eating because they lead to what researchers call “effortful control.”  That’s a mouthful, right?

Effortful control: the ability to thoughtfully process information, to systematically make decisions and to regulate impulse and emotion.  Sounds like your toddler.  No?

Actually, toddlers are hard-wired—literally—to be impulsive.  They want what they want NOW. I’m sure you won’t be surprised that research shows that impulsivity doesn’t lead to healthy eating.  Rather, it leads to snack and junk-food consumption.

Now you understand why toddlers—and maybe even spouses— want to eat the way they do! But you can teach them—kids, maybe not spouses— to do better.

Teaching your kids to do better might just save your sanity. OK, since Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away it might be a tall order for this year. But teach your kids these skills and next year will definitely go a lot smoother. (It's good to have a goal!)

Impulsivity and reasoning come from two different places in the brain.

Although children develop their reactive impulse during infancy, their ability to reason starts to develop during the preschool years.  That’s why 4 year olds make so much more sense than 3 year olds. 

But—and here’s a big but—researchers have discovered that you can help children develop their reasoning and self-regulation skills as early as age 3. 

Why bother? 

• One study recently found that children with poor delay of gratification at age 4 had an increased risk of becoming overweight by the time they were 11. 

• Another study found that children with lower self-regulation skills gained weight more rapidly between 3-11 than children who had better regulatory skills.

In other words, the more self-control your young children exhibit, the better off they’ll be in later years. Read Marshmallows Make You Smart!

The more you transfer decision-making to your children, the more ably they’ll make decisions, and the better they'll eat. 

Toddlers aren’t known for patience, thinking ahead, planning for the future.  But it’s only through the exercise of having to consider future consequences that children learn to delay gratification and to be forward thinkers.

Consider this: The next time your children demand cookies and it’s the day before a big party, instead of telling them “no” explain your rationale.  Then, start giving your children choices between getting that goodie now and indulging in a (potentially better) treat later.  This will teach your kids how to plan ahead and the benefits of delayed gratification.

You can teach your kids other important skills too.  Think like a researcher! Start giving your children plenty of opportunities for problem solving, and exposure to tasks with increasingly complex rules. (Consider asking your children to sort cards based on color, then to sort them based on color and shape, etc.) In other words, you don't have to dumb everything down. On the contrary, expect your kids to rise to the occasion. They will—especially with practice.

Believe it or not, these skills will translate into better eating because they teach your kids better self-regulation.

The holidays are a perfect time to start teaching your kids skills like self-control and delayed gratification.

You know there will be plenty of opportunities! You might as well use them to your advantage.

 ~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

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Sources:

Isasi, C. R. and T. A. Wills. 2011. “Behavioral Self-Regulation and Weight-Related Behaviors in Inner-City Adolescents: a Model of Direct and Indirect Effects.” Childhood Obesity 7(4): 306-15.

Dowsett, S. M. and D. J. Livesey. 2000. “The Development of Inhibitory Control in Preschool Children: Effects of "Executive Skills" Training.” Developmental Psychobiology 36: 161-74.

Riggs, N. R., M. T. Greenberg, C. A. Kusche, and M. A. Pentz. 2006. “The Mediational Role of Neurocognition in the Behavioral Outcomes of a Social-Emotional Prevention Program in Elementary School Students: Effects of the Paths Curriculum.” Prevention Science 7(1): 91-102.

Blaming Schools for Bad Lunches

I’m with everyone on how bad school lunches are. 

School lunches aren’t just comprised of nutritionally inferior fare they taste pretty bad too.  (Check out Marion Nestle’s list of resources if you’re interested in improving the quality of lunch at your kids’ schools.)

But blaming schools for our kids’ bad eating habits is misplaced.  Schools don’t produce our kids’ bad eating habits. Kids come to school with bad eating habits and schools reinforce them.

Studies show that kids develop bad eating habits well before they go to school.

Some of the upset over the quality of school lunches presupposes that kids are eating healthy (if not stellar) diets at home.  Most are not. 

Research shows that 2-3 year olds typically consume a diet high in saturated fat and sodium and low in fiber. 

In addition, on any given day:

• 25% of 2-3 year olds don’t eat a single serving of fruit.
• 30% of 2-3 year olds don’t eat a single serving of vegetables.  When kids do eat vegetables, they’re more likely to eat white potatoes (usually French fries) than any other type of vegetable.

These aren’t encouraging statistics. But here’s the most shocking fact:

On any given day, more preschoolers will consume sweetened beverages, desserts and snack foods than will eat fruits or vegetables. 

No wonder 2 out of 10 children aged 2 to 5 are now obese.

I’m not trying to let schools off the hook, but these early eating habits are important because they shape everything.

It’s hard to change how kids eat.  In fact, research shows that if you want to know what children will like when they’re 8, look at what foods they eat when they’re 4.  It doesn’t change that much.

It's unrealistic to expect schools to undo all this damage.

I'm not trying to blame parents either.

It's hard to teach kids to eat right, especially when there is so much pressure to get the right nutrients into kids. Indeed, I think that all the noise about nutrition makes parents choose feeding strategies that end up biting them in the butt. Read Training Tiny Taste Buds, Manufacturing Magic and The (Chocolate) Milk Mistake for examples of how chasing nutrients can go awry.

Nonetheless, there is a lot parents can do to increase the quality of their children’s eating, even in the face of nutritiously inferior foods at school.

You can neutralize the impact of school lunch on your kids' diets at the same time that you are teaching your kids good lifelong eating habits.

Here are 5 strategies:

1) Increase the quality of the food you serve at home – and vary the kinds of foods you serve more consciously – to accommodate school lunches.

It’s sad news, but you may have to cut out the cookies or the crackers or the pizza at home to balance the amount (and frequency) of these items that your kids are eating at school.

Also, make sure you add a small serving of fruits and vegetables to every meal and snack that you serve.  The more frequently you serve fruits and vegetables the more accustomed to them your kids will be and the more readily they’ll eat them. 

And, if you want some recipes that kids are guaranteed to enjoy, read Chef Bobo’s Good Food Cookbook.   I use this book myself, and I’ve never met a kid who didn’t like the cauliflower soup. I’m not kidding.

2) Tone down the emphasis on nutrition. Instead, talk to your children about the behaviors that translate nutrition into healthy eating. 

• Proportion: Eat foods in relation to their healthy benefits.  In other words, eat the healthiest foods the most, the marginal and junky foods the least.
• Variety: Eat a wide range of foods.
• Moderation: Eat when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full.

Teach your children these 3 styles of eating and they’ll automatically eat more nutritiously.  And remember, you can introduce these principles no matter how old—or how picky—your children are. Read House Building 101.

3) Practice transparent parenting.

Talk to your children about how you make decisions.  Specifically relate your food decisions back to the principles of proportion, variety, and moderation so your children know why they can’t have ice cream, or why you’re serving vegetables… yet again.

4) Guide your children, but let them make the choices. 

Most school lunches have pitifully few choices, but look for choices and you’ll see they’re there.  For instance, most schools offer kids a choice between flavored or plain milk, or between milk and juice.  Consider letting your children choose flavored milk 2 days per week. 

5) Recognize small changes in your children’s eating habits.

Small improvements add up.  They really do.

Of course, I would still love to see schools improve their game.

But even if they do, it probably won't amount to a hill of beans unless parents do the same.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

 For more on this topic read When School Nutrition Stinks

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Sources:

Fox, M. K., E. Condon, R. R. Briefel, K. Reidy, and D. M. Deming. 2010. “Food Consumption Patterns of Young Preschoolers: Are They Starting Off on the Right Path?” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 110: S52-S59.

Skinner, J. D., B. R. Carruth, W. Bounds, and P. Ziegler. 2002. “Children's Food Preferences: a Logitudinal Analysis.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 102(11): 1638-47.