The Portion Size Problem: A Matter of Trust

The problem with portion size is this: Parents don’t trust their kids to get it right.

Think about it, if you thought your children would eat the right amount you wouldn't have to intervene. But you get involved because there's lot of evidence that your kids are kind of crappy about portion control.

Overeating gets all the media attention but most parents of young children are more worried about under-eating. In one study of kindergarteners, 85% of parents tried to get their kids to eat more.  

Rather than control your kids' consumption, consider teaching your kids to self-regulate..accurately. Researchers accomplished this task in 6 weeks.  You can too.  (Read on for details.)

As I see it, the trust problem stems from two sources.

First:

• Parents know kids are born being able to regulate how much to eat. Parents take this to mean their kids won’t overeat. (And this is true unless parents subvert their kid’s natural instincts which we do all the time. Read Two More Bites.)

• Parents also know that kids frequently under-eat. They haven’t yet learned to gauge how much food they need to get from one eating opportunity to another. (And many young kids don’t understand why they can’t eat whenever they want to….like later, after they’re done playing!)  In the short-term, under-eating can be a big problem for parents.

At the same time:

• Either, parents think that young children know when they’re hungry and when they’re full (but they still have to be trained to eat enough food at the right times).
• Or, parents think young kids don’t really know how hungry or full they are and they’re not capable of learning this at such an early age.

The result is a situation where parents are willing to risk teaching their kids to overeat in order to make sure their kids don't under-eat.  It's a high-stakes gamble.

Research shows children vary in their ability to self-regulate how much they eat.

So you might be right to distrust your kids. Some kids naturally eat more than they need. Other kids stop eating way too soon.

Unfortunately, many of the tactics most parents rely on to solve the situation simply make it worse. Kids respond to pressure by eating less or to restriction by eating more.

But even when parental prodding is relatively benign consider this: 

When parents control how much kids eat, children don't learn to self-regulate—they don't learn to do the job on their own.  

You've got to let go.

Teach your kids to self-regulate.

In one study, researchers taught a group of 3-4 year old children to self-regulate. They:

• Talked about the concepts of hunger, satiety and overeating.
• Educated the children on the anatomy of eating: mouth (for chewing), esophagus (for swallowing) and stomach (where the food goes when swallowed).
• Provided playtime with dolls with external stomachs that showed different levels of fullness.
• Encouraged the children to check in with their internal cues of hunger and fullness before, during, and after eating.

You can do all of this at home—even the dolls. The stomachs were made from nylon material (i.e. stockings) and were filled to varying degrees with salt. Make a few and strap them on to a couple of Barbies.

1. Children played with the dolls and were taught to identify the stomachs with different amount of fullness.
2. The children were asked to place their hand over their own stomach and tell whether they were hungry, a little full or very full.
3. The children were asked to choose the doll stomach that was most like the state of their own stomach at various times throughout the day. 

Will your kids make mistakes if you leave the eating up to them?  Sure.  But that’s how they learn.

The  key is to talk to your kids about the underlying issues (hunger and satiation) and to focus less on the food. 

Set appropriate times for meals and snacks—no eating on demand—and then let your kids practice, practice, practice. It won't just solve your short-term problems, it'll teach your kids the habits they need for a lifetime of healthy eating.

Remember, you have to let your children choose not to eat in order for them to choose to eat. (It's a freedom thing.) And you have to allow them to choose not to eat enough in order for them to learn to get it right. If this freaks you out read The Upside of Hunger.

For more on this topic read: 

• Are You Teaching Your Toddler to Overeat?
• How to Serve Seconds Without Hurting Your Kids' Habits

 ~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

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Sources:

Orrell-Valente, J. K., L. G. Hill, W. A. Brechwald, K. A. Dodge, G. S. Pettit, and J. E. Bates. 2007. “"Just Three More Bites": an Observational Analysis of Parents' Socialization of Children's Eating At Mealtime.” Appetite48(1): 37-45.

Johnson, S. L. 2000. “Improving Preschoolers' Self-Regulation of Energy Intake.” Pediatrics 106(6): 1429-35.

Kid Eats Q&A: How to Serve Seconds Without Hurting Your Kids’ Habits.

Whenever parents ponder the problem of providing appropriate portion sizes for toddlers and preschoolers, the issue of how to handle seconds inevitably arises.

That’s what happened in response to my last post Are You Teaching Your Toddler to Overeat?  One reader asked:

“I put appropriate sizes on my daughter’s plate, and I don't make her eat or encourage her to eat more. If she eats, she eats, she's the one who knows if she's hungry or not.  Often she will eat all of her fruit or bread or something, not touch anything else, and then want more of the thing she ate. Should I give it to her, or in that instance, tell her ‘no’ because she hasn't eaten anything else, and then encourage her to eat the other stuff on her plate?”

I threw the question back out to parents on my Facebook page, and I agree with a lot of what people had to say.  However… 

The primary solution to the snag of seconds happens long before the battle.  This is definitely a case where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  That’s right, you can actually prevent the seconds situation from occurring.  Here's how.

Prevention Part 1: Set aside the goal of getting your toddler to eat a certain amount—or a certain type—of food.  Instead, think about teaching your tot to eat right.

Shifting your goal from worrying about consumption to shaping habits won’t just enable you to keep the highs and lows of any one meal in perspective (though this is certainly a benefit).

It will also help you avoid a common parental pitfall: Relying on a set of strategies that bite you in the butt in the long run.  Read The 2-More-Bites Tango: How YOU Can Take the Lead and Wheelin’ and Dealin’:10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Trade Peas for Pie.

And, if these benefits aren’t enough, consider this:

Shifting your goal from consumption to habits will enable you to set up a feeding system that works by transfering your attention to when and how food is served and by altering the parent/child dynamic. It also will drastically reduce the pressure you put on your child to eat.  Read The Pressure-Cooker Problem.

The result:

• You won’t have to monitor what your child eats.
• You’ll be able to encourage vegetable consumption without talking about vegetables.
• You’ll be able to make peace, stop being the enforcer, and start enjoying meals.

Never compromise your long-term goals for the sake of the immediate meal.

Prevention Part 2: Take the pressure off dinner by serving higher quality food through the day.

Here’s a math problem (and possibly a traumatic flashback to fifth grade):  Two children are eating dinner.  One child has eaten 2 bites of vegetable at each of the earlier meals and snacks, for a total of 8 vegetable bites before sitting down to the main meal. The other child hasn’t eaten any vegetables yet today.  Which child’s parent is more likely to crazed about how many carrots her kid consumes at dinner?

Change the dinner dynamic by upgrading the rest of the day. I recommend you serve a fruit and/or a vegetable at every meal and snack.  

Even if you don't achieve this goal every day, you will increase your kid's consumption, thereby resolving most of the seconds dilemma. And let's be honest, vegetables are at the heart of this problem. Would you really care if your toddler asked for seconds after barrelling through the broccoli without so much as checking out the chicken?

The benefits of serving a fruit and/or a vegetable at every meal and snack:

• A net gain of vegetable consumption over the course of the day. Read 10 Ways Improving Your Kids’ Snacking Will Improve YOUR Life.
• When the whole day is healthier you can relax at dinner.
• The more frequently kids are exposed to vegetables, the more familiar vegetables become.  And increasing familiarity is the secret to vegetable-eating success.
• Upgrading snacks will get you out of the Nutrition Zone Mentality since snacks are where the nutrition action really happens. Read Snacking and the Nutrition Zone Mentality. 

Eating is really a matter of math: Kids eat what they're exposed to the most. (And what they eat the most determines the nutritional quality of their day.)

Prevention Part 3: Downsize your expectations and the portions you provide.

Part of the problem with seconds is simply a problem of portion size: You pile on the pasta and the peas (hoping your child will eat at least some of the stack). 

• Even if your toddler eats some of the peas, the part that remains looks untouched, compelling you to ask your tot to do more.
• From your toddler’s perspective, the mountain looks unscalable. Why try?

Put very small portions of food on your child’s plate.  And, make the portions of different foods fairly equal.  In other words, don’t put two bites of broccoli and ½ cup of pasta on the plate.  Put down two bites of broccoli and 2 bites of pasta.

This is definitely a case where less is more, especially if you have a reluctant eater.

Other advantages of serving smaller portions:

• You’ll be giving your child the number of bites you normally negotiate down to, thereby avoiding the need to negotiate.  Read Raising Lawyers.
• You won’t be tempted to pile up the preferred foods and minimize the monsters—thereby inadvertently teaching your tot that some foods are desirable and others are tolerated.  Instead, you’ll be teaching that all foods are created equally.
• You won’t have to worry about your child overeating in order to get to the good stuff.
• You’ll be teaching your child a valuable lifelong lesson about portion size.

Prevention Part 4: Teach your child how to eat.

Think about eating from our kids' perspective: They tuck into their favorites first. Then, after they’re kind of full (or totally stuffed) parents come along and tell them to eat their veggies.

Turn that baby around by teaching your child to eat some of everything before she eats all of anything.  I describe this method of grazing around the plate—which I call One-One—in more detail in the post: My child asks for seconds of pasta before she’s even touched her peas.

Remember, kids don’t know when they are going to be full.  One-One gets a portion of all the goods into their guts before they’re totally goners.  Share this rationale with your toddler: “It’s hard to know when you’ll be full so I would like you to eat a little bit of everything as you go along so you don’t get too full on pasta before you’ve touched your peas.” It might take awhile for the lesson to sink in but don't let that deter you.

Put all the parts of the prevention plan into action.  Then, when your child asks for seconds of the pasta before he's touched his peas...

Say OK. 

Then dawdle.  “I’ll get you some more pasta after I finish a little more of my dinner. Why don’t you work on the rest of your meal while you’re waiting.”

Don't stress about it.

Try again tomorrow.

Then, put your focus back on perfecting all the parts of your prevention plan.  It won't just solve the problem of seconds, it'll change the entire way your child eats.  The prevention plan: It's where you'll find the secret to success.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Are You Teaching Your Toddler to Overeat?

What are you teaching your toddler about how much to eat?

I know that everything you’ve ever read says that infants and toddlers self-regulate. That they only eat what they need. That they don’t overeat.

And that’s all true.  Unless parents interfere with those internal mechanisms.  And we all do it.  All the time.

In one study of kindergarteners, 85% of the parents tried to get their kids to eat more.  In fact, encouraging consumption was such a common phenomenon that the researchers were compelled to conclude that the majority of parents of young children have one primary goal: to get their kids to eat more during meals.  Read Two More Bites.

I’ve written about the hazard of pushing your kids to eat more bites than they want—Read The Hunger Dilemma—but the problem of portion size is an equally important pitfall.  It’s one of the key ways in which parents inadvertently override their children’s internal self-regulation system.

According to recent research:

• You are probably teaching your toddlers to eat too much.
• Portion sizes are out of control—even for toddlers.  
• Most kids take in more calories than they need.

Portion size is not an insignificant issue.  Research shows that how much you serve determines how much your kids eat. 

Read Size Matters.

When we spend the first few years of our kids’ lives getting them to eat more, is it any wonder that they have to spend the rest of their lives trying to eat less?  Habits learned early in life tend to stick around.

I’m not blaming parents.  In fact, it’s almost impossible not to overfeed your kids in the current food environment.

Most foods are 2-5 times larger than they were years ago.  Read How Big is that Bag? Eating in the Age of Portion Distortion.

But it’s not just that.  Our cultural obsession with nutrition has created a culture of consumption.  Everything you ever hear about nutrition centers on how much people should eat. 

It’s not surprising that most parents are left with an uneasy feeling that they need to get more into their kids.  More protein. More calcium. More fiber. More fruits. And, of course, more vegetables.

(One comment I read on someone's blog said that the writer didn't believe the government guidelines were adequate.  She tried to get as much protein into her child as possible.)

Parents aren’t alone in their obsession with consumption. Read my Huffington Post piece: Are Pediatricians Hurting Your Toddler’s Eating Habits.

Stop worrying about nutrition. Research shows that our kids are generally taking in the nutrients they need. 

Who knew?  Our kids are getting their vitamins and minerals!

True, there are pockets of deficiencies—some kids aren’t getting enough iron for instance—but studies show that U.S. infants, toddlers and preschoolers are more likely to meet or exceed nutritional guidelines.

I’m not saying that there isn’t room for improvement.

• Dietary fiber intake is too low.
• Saturated fat intake is too high.
• And fruit and vegetable consumption should be improved (as much for the fiber these foods contain as for anything else).

Want your kids to eat better?  Shift what they eat. Then, abandon any effort to make your kids to eat more food whenever you serve up the good stuff. 

Serve less food.  And let your child come back for more.

It's the simplest way to teach the right habits. Especially if you aren't really sure what the right serving size is.

Did you know that an appropriate portion of pasta for a 2 year old is 1/4 cup?  That's 1/3 of a packet of Annie’s Real Aged Cheddar Microwavable Mac & Cheese.  When was the last time you cooked up the entire packet but then served only 1/3?

One strategy for figuring out the right serving size is to use the Tablespoon technique.

Give your child a tablespoon of food per year of age.  For a 2 year old this turns out to be...

• Breads and Grains: ½ slice of bread, ¼ cup pasta or cereal.
• Vegetables: 2 Tablespoons
• Fruits: 2 Tablespoons
• Dairy: ½ Cup
• Meat and meat substitute: 2 Tablespoons.

(I know these aren't all measured in Tablespoons. Don't blame me. I didn't invent the method.)

Children learn how to select an appropriate, child-sized serving from adults.

Every time you put a portion on the plate you are teaching your tots how much food they ought to eat.

So err on the side of serving smaller sizes and let your kids come back for more. It’s a habit that will set them up for a lifetime of healthy eating.

 ~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

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Sources:

Butte, N. F., M. K. Fox, R. R. Briefel, A. M. Siega-Riz, J. T. Dwyer, D. M. Deming, and K. C. Reidy. 2010. “Nutrient Intakes of U.S. Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers Meet Or Exceed Dietary Reference Intakes.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association Suppl 3, 110 (12): S27-S37. 

Ramsay, S. A., L. J. Branen, and S. L. Johnson. 2012. “How Much is Enough? Tablespoon Per Year of Age Approach Meets Nutrient Needs of Children.” Appetite 58: 163-67.