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.  

Fruits and Vegetables at Every Meal and Every Snack -- Every Darned Day

One of the most effective strategies you can use to radically shape how your toddler eat is this:

Serve a fruit or a vegetable at every meal and every snack every day.

 Of course, you’ll never attain that goal, but it doesn’t matter.  Just by setting the intention you will drastically increase your toddler’s consumption of fruit and vegs.

You could also strive to serve a fruit AND a vegetable at every meal and every snack every day.

That would be even better.

If you have a child who barely touches a fruit (forget about the vegetables), you’re probably laughing at me right now.

That’s OK. I can take it.  And I’ll get to you guys in a moment. 

For the rest of you, those parents among us whose kids haven’t totally fallen off the deep end yet, think about this: Most parents feed their infants a fruit-and-vegetable-dominated diet.

In other words, I am not really suggesting anything too radical.  I’m merely proposing that as your infants turn into toddlers that you keep up the good work.

Yes, I know that it is a lot easier to feed infants fruits and vegetables than it can be to convince a trepidatious toddler to open up at the sight of spinach, but stick with me here.

One reason infants are so accommodating in the Fruits-and-Vegetable department is that they don’t know any better.

It’s not just that most infants haven’t yet been introduced to all the wonders of the world—sweets, treats and chicken nuggets—that makes them so accommodating.  It’s that eating fruits and vegetables is their custom, their routine, their norm. Fruits and vegetables are their primary go-to-foods.

Most parents I know, inadvertently move their toddlers away from this way of eating by relying on rusks, cookies, puffs, crackers, and other toddler stuff more than they actually need to.

10 reasons to serve fruits and vegetables at every meal and snack every darned day.

1) Kids can’t eat what isn’t being served.  Every time you don’t serve a fruit and vegetable is another time when your child won’t eat a fruit or vegetable.

2) Eating is a matter of math: The more frequently you expose your kids to fruits and vegetables the more normal these foods will seem.

3) Putting fruits and vegetables into your feeding structure stops most of the conflict: When it comes to eating everyone will know exactly what to expect.

4) Fruits and vegetables will displace some of the other snack stuff you normally serve thereby upgrading your toddler’s diet.

5) By changing the ratio of fruits and vegetables to other tasty items you’ll point your kid’s taste buds in the right direction.

6) Fruits and vegetables will become a go-to food, not an once-a-day opportunity to fight.

7) You’ll introduce more fruit and vegetable variety because peas, broccoli and string beans will only take you so far.

8) You’ll be content to serve smaller portions: A few bites really add up.

9) Your previously sane self will return becuase you will no longer have to be the food police.

10) It’s the right habit.

Read 10 Ways Improving Your Kids’ Snacking Will Improve YOUR Life.

To you naysayers out there—“That will never work with my kid.”—I say this:

Do it anyway.  (Waiting for your children to grow into eating more fruits and vegetables is like waiting for Godot. It might never happen.)

Here's a four-point plan to get you started.

1) Set your sights on small steps. 

• Serve extremely small portions. Read When Less is More.
• Ask your child to take extremely small tastes. Read Nix the Negativity.
• Never ask your child to eat even one more bite. Read The Happy Bite and A New Approach to Teaching Tots to Try New Foods.

2) Talk to your children about your strategy.

• Say “Fruit and/or vegetable at every meal” more times than you would like to, and remember to tell your child why. ("We eat healthier foods more often than other foods.")
• Give your child choices within the structure. Read Curbing Your Kid’s Craving for Control.

3) Applaud small successes.  Each and every one of them.  Each and every time.

4) Read The BIG Fix: What To Do When Feeding Strategies Fail.

 ~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~ 

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.~