See Your Way Through Your Toddler's Resistance to New Foods

Can you increase food acceptance simply by showing toddlers pictures of unfamiliar food?

Researchers are sneaking up on a surprising answer: YES!

Actually, you’re probably not too surprised. Everyone knows that the multi-billion dollar advertising industry exists because images can pack a powerful punch.

Well, now there is mounting evidence that parents can tap into the advertiser's advantage without spending quite so much money.  You may be able to reduce your toddler’s fear of the unfamiliar by showing them pictures of food in books. 

And while this technique might not work for all kids, the results are lining up to be most favorable for the most resistant kids.

Researchers distinguish between two types of toddler resistance: Neophobia and Picky Eating.

• Neophobic kids are reluctant to eat unfamiliar foods but they are happy to eat the foods they are familiar with.

• Picky eaters, on the other hand, reject foods they previously accepted.

Most toddlers I know exhibit a combination of the two conditions, making the distinction between neophobia and picky eating seem like a moot point for many parents.  But it’s not.

Delineating between the different factors that make feeding our little fiends so much fun can actually make things easier. (Think of it as increasing your arsenal so you can mount a stronger attack.)

Visual cues seem to be an effective way to fight back against the unfamiliar.

If you’ve got a kid who is gripped by a fear of new foods, i.e. you’ve got a kid who is highly neophobic, start thinking about pulling out those picture books.

Makes sense: Most people eat with their eyes.

Study 1 

Researchers discovered that increasing the number of times kids see unfamiliar fruits and vegetables could improve how much they say they like a food before they taste it. In other words, assessment on sight tilts in favor of "yum" over "yuck."  But, the kids still have to taste the new food in order to actually like it.

Study 2

Researchers found that 2-year-old toddlers were more interested in looking at pictures of fruits and vegetables that they had never tasted but had previously seen in picture books compared to pictures of fruits and vegetables they had never seen before.  

Researchers interpreted this finding to mean that looking at pictures in books increases children's interest in (and perhaps openness to) unfamiliar foods. 

Study 3

Parents of 2 year old toddlers were asked to read their children a picture book every day for 2 weeks.  The book featured: 

• 2 familiar foods, such as sweetcorn and strawberries, and 
• 2 unfamiliar foods, such as radishes and lychees.

Children then took part in a taste test. They were offered plates, one of fruits and then one of vegetables, each containing a combination of:

• Familiar foods
• Items the children had seen in the books
• Totally unfamiliar items.

You're probably not surprised to learn that the children tasted more of the familiar foods than the unfamiliar foods.  However:

• The children touched the unfamiliar vegetable they had seen in the book before they touched the non-exposed vegetable.  (Touching is often a preliminary step to tasting. Read Why Some Kids Should Play with their Food.)

• The children tasted the fruit they had seen in the book before they tasted the non-exposed fruit.

Seeing is a crucial part of eating.

It’s easy to overlook this point, but every time a child tastes a new food, he’s seeing it too (unless you use a blindfold!).

And kids size up new foods to make sure they match their ideas about what acceptable food looks like. Read:

• Look into My Crystal Ball,
• Collect Clues & Eliminate the New-Food-Blues

Advertising works through creating positive messaging, but it also works through creating visual familiarity and appeal.

This research shows you can do this too. Just another reason to love BOOKS!

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

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Source: Heath, P., C. Houston-Price, and O. B. Kennedy. 2011. “Increasing Food Familiarity Without the Tears. a Role for Visual Exposure?” Appetite 57: 832-38.  

The BIG Fix: What To Do When Feeding Strategies Fail

A lot of times parents try strategies that fail—even ones I have suggested. (Say it isn't so!)

If I ask my son to have one happy bite of something and he refuses to the point of tears, do I press it until he gives in/force it or just try again the next meal?  —Kendra  Read The Happy Bite.

But what if, when you ask him to work on a little more of his dinner, he still doesn't eat the peas and asks again for seconds of pasta. Does he get it? —Sally  Read How to Serve Seconds Without Hurting Your Kids’ Habits.)

— — Comments from my Facebook page.

Attacking an individual eating issue head-on usually doesn't work, at least not in the long run.  It's like applying a bandaid to cure a disease: it's a topical solution to a systemic problem.  (And you need a different solution for every problem. It's enough to drive you nuts.)

You need to change the system to change your kids' habits.

The way to solve pretty much any eating issue is to set up a strong feeding/eating structure.

I wish I had a magic bullet answer—Do this and your kids will eat peas! Try new foods! Turn into foodies!—but I don't.  And that is because:

Eating problems never start where you see them, and they're never isolated issues.  

Solving an eating problem is like fixing a water leak. The source could be anywhere. And the water shifts as you plug up its path!  (Bandaids? Water? Sorry for so many similes.)

To fix an eating issue for the long run you've got to fix the structure (or the system).  In other words, you've got to start fixing dinner problems at breakfast. Everything is related.

Think of structure as a set of rules (or patterns) that shape how you and your kids interact around eating.

I know the word rule sounds bad, and I apologize if it makes you bristle. But every family already has a set of unpoken rules that shape eating behavior.

Go a few rounds with your kids before fixing them their favorites? The rule your family is living by: everyone eats what they want (but sometimes you have to fight for it first).

I hate to be the one to say this but...

Children eat the way they've been taught to eat.

That's not to say that your children don't come to the table with their own issues.  They do. And some kids can be particularly challenging to teach. But if you can recite the routine, your kids can too.

If you want to change the way your kids eat you've got to change the way you interact with them around food.

Put this structure into place regardless of your issue.

Even if you can't see how it'll help.  It will.

1) Serve different foods from day-to-day for every meal and snack.  (Structure for What to serve.)

I cannot emphasis the importance of rotating foods on a regular basis for increasing your kids’ food acceptance, and for shaping their attitudes towards eating. If you can also mix things up so fruits and vegetables are offered more frequently, that's a bonus.

Read House Building 101 and Breakfast: The Most Important Meal of the Day.

2) Establish a regular routine for the timing of meals and snacks. Eliminate grazing and eating on demand. (Structure for When to serve.)

I'm not saying you shouldn't be responsive to your child’s hunger. By all means, adapt the timing of meals and snacks a little here and a little there. But kids have got to come to the table ready to eat (both physically and emotionally) in order to eat what you offer—when you offer it. 

3) Build compromises into the structure.  Don’t wing it.  (Structure for How to serve.)

This is the most complicated part of the plan, and so it’s the most difficult component to discuss succinctly, but it’s probably also the most important.  Structured compromises:

• Eliminate the power struggle.
• Stop your structure from being rigid.
• Prevent the structure from crumbling.

With structured compromises everyone know their role and everyone knows their limits.

Conversely, compromises that come willy-nilly encourage your kids to be combative. (With enough effort they might just win!)

Here are some structured compromises:

• Let your children choose food items from within the rotation: Would you like apple or banana?
• Pick a standard method for dealing with regular rejection.  Read How Cottage Cheese Changed My Life and Dishing Up Dessert.
• Empower (instead of enable) reluctant eaters.  Read When Less is More.
• Introduce new foods in a way that doesn't invite rebellion. Read Do Something New.

4) Make sure your lessons are hitting home.

1. Talk to your children about the structure.  Most parents keep the game plan a secret.
2. Then make sure your kids are learning the lessons you intend.  Read Conscious Parenting and Treating the Symptoms, Not the Cause.
3. Finally, respond to your kids' resistence by returning to the structure.

Many parents mistakenly believe that the opposite of pressure is leniency. It's not. The opposite of pressure is STRUCTURE. 

Don't set up a confrontation.  A strong structure will resolve your eating problems:

• Parents and kids both know what to expect when it comes to eating.
• Structure transfers discussion from the food to the behavior.  When the structure is successful, it eliminates discussion about eating entirely.

Structure acts like the walls of your house: it keeps everything standing. 

Sounds unbelievable, I know. But it's true.  When a strategy fails, go back and shore up the structure. It's the only sure-fire way to succeed.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

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.~