Picture this: your little one comes home from kindergarten and tells you the lunch you packed for them is wrong and bad. ‘Why?’, you ask. Your child explains their food has too much of “x” and will not make them healthy and they can never have this food again. But then they also follow up with ‘Is this true? But I really like this food! What do I eat instead?!’. In this moment you’re living your child’s first experience with the demonization of food, and in turn it could encourage very specific rules around food and a strained relationship with food. As a parent all you want for your child is to be happy, healthy and fulfilled, and every action you take is for their own good, so having your child come home with this new learned insight is gut-wrenching as you’ve indirectly been told that what you’re feeding your kid is wrong (not that this is the truth, but as a parent I can sympathize with how this may feel). Unfortunately, in the society that we live in, everyone has their opinions on food, and sometimes they counteract someone else's opinions, or are counterintuitive to what we know about digestion and how the human body extracts energy from the foods we eat. How would you approach this? In this blog I’ve come up with some ways to talk more neutral about food, how to present food at meals and snacks, and language to encourage and limit.
What should my child eat?
Within nutrition for children there are different milestones to hit that help with increasing variety, meeting their macro and micronutrient needs, improving their confidence in food choices and trying new things, utensil coordination, and jaw and chewing strength. Most importantly the recommendations meet your child’s calorie, protein, carbohydrate, fat, fiber, micronutrient, and hydration needs for adequate growth and keeping up with their changing digestive tract. Your child’s portions at 4-6 months old, when most children are ready to try their first bites of purees, are going to look very different than at 1 year, 2 years, 4 years, in adolescent years, when growth spurts happen, and so on. Similar to adults, the recommendations for a generally-healthy child encourage a breakdown of about half of their intake should come from carbohydrate-rich foods (grains, starchy veggies, some in dairy and nuts/seeds, fruits and vegetables), then the other 20-30% should come from fat, then lastly 15-20% from protein. Ideally they should be getting these macros from all the food groups: starches, fats, protein (animal and/or plant based), dairy, fruits, and vegetables.
Meal Times with Your Kid
I encourage the division of responsibility, closed kitchen, and family meals technique (as much as possible as this can apply to your household). How this looks is making one main meal vs several different ones, everyone sits down together to eat (within reason, maybe starting with one meal per day or per week depending on your starting point), and each person is welcome to get seconds or stop before they are done but it’s encouraged to at least try a bite or touch everything on their plate. Of course this is all in a perfect world, where not every kid, or every parent rather, is going to love the same foods every meal, so there may have to be some variability to ensure everyone walks away nourished. My suggestion here is try one main dish and different sides, such as pasta and meatballs with breadsticks, veggies, and fruit. If each person has their preferences for spice level, condiments, toppings, fruit and veggie, then make this part of the variability.
The Parent vs Child’s Division of Responsibility
You and your child each play a role in the meal presented to them. As the parent your responsibility is what is being prepared, what time you will eat, and where you will eat. Until the child is ready to get in the kitchen and safely portion their own plate you also hold the role of what and how much goes on their plate. Your child’s responsibility will be how much and what exactly they decide to eat off of their plate. Once a child has more autonomy to plate their own food, I still encourage parents to work with their kid to try at least a bite of everything. This approach helps take the pressure off of too many options, ie reduces overwhelming the cook or the chance of the kids not coming to a decision together, encourages confidence in trying new things with a gentle, not pushy or punishing, approach, and brings everyone together to eat the same, or very similar, foods, which also helps kids expand their palate.
My child is a picky eater, what should I do?
Most kids at some point will go through a picky stage with food. Whether this is part of their life-long preferences with food, or a period of time, it varies kid-to-kid. Also every kid, like every adult, can decide on their likes and dislikes and truly not prefer a food. So it’s not a perfect solution, but you can take some small steps to help boost your child’s confidence in trying new foods and expanding their liked items.
Remind your child that it’s okay not to love food, but you would love for them to try a bite, and that it can take more than 10x to try something and grow more comfortable with it.
Have them dip it in their favorite condiment, add a fat source like butter, oil, or cheese to the food, and/or enhance the flavor with spices and herbs. (I always add garlic, a pinch of salt and pepper, and butter to my son’s veggies– it doesn’t always work but it truly helps!)
Pair new and less-comfortable foods with some of their favorites to help with them easing into trying/retrying it.
Always make trying the new food a fun experience. Examples include creating a jingle with the food, relating it to something they learned in school, or serving it on a fun plate or with playful utensils.
Avoid battles, forcing the food on your child, or threats/punishments as you don’t want to increase negative connotations with this already less-enjoyed food or trying new things.
If you suspect it’s more than just small likes and dislikes, or your child may be lacking in one food group completely, talk with your doctor about your concerns and request a referral for a feeding team, ie dietitian and feeding therapist.
If you are worried your child is not getting enough nutrients, or variety of, adding in a daily multivitamin and/or discussing with your medical team lab work to rule out any nutrient deficiencies are some approaches you can take.
Let’s have a Snack
Incorporating snacks into your child’s diet is a helpful way to meet their nutrient needs and avoid them getting overly hungry by meal time (which also can help with trying new things). Snacks should compliment their meals, not take the place of them. Try 1-3 snacks per day for your child, from 1 year to adulthood (as even adults could benefit from daily snacks). Think of them as mini meals, where meals should encompass 4-5 food groups, snacks should be 2-3. Try having snacks a couple of hours after meals. This could be as simple as a glass of milk or nutrition shake, to combinations like crackers and cheese, yogurt and fruit, or a granola bar and trail mix. If you are home, I still recommend having your child sit at the table with their snack vs walking around to be intentional with it being snack time (also specifically for toddlers this helps reduce the risk of choking). If snacks are grab and go during the day’s activities, then fit this in with however it works for you. For young toddlers you choose the variety of snacks they have throughout the week. For older toddlers and beyond, before they are given the autonomy to get in the kitchen and delegate their food choices regularly, I recommend providing 2, no more than 3 different options they can choose from to help with decision making, choosing a balanced snack, and avoiding an overwhelmed feeling, especially if they are pretty hungry.
That Craving for Sweets
Yes, 100% sweets and desserts have a place in your kid’s diet. I don’t recommend hiding, locking them away, avoiding buying them, or never introducing these to your child. When and how you choose to introduce sweets to your child is up to you and may fit within which ones are typically in your household. Adding a small portion, like 1-2 oreos, spoonful chocolate chips, chocolate syrup to dip crackers in, mini cookie, candy, and ice cream as a mid day snack, late night snack, or putting it on the side of their plate at a meal, are great ways to offer these. (The lunchable packs are a good example of how this could look for a meal.)
Food as Reinforcement
Another recommendation is not making sweet treats, or food in general, a reward or punishment regularly, or the only way to set boundaries. It doesn’t mean a special occasion cannot involve going out for ice cream just because, or enjoying cake on one’s birthday. The idea here is to allow for food to fit with all the emotions, joy, happy, sad, angry, mad, tired, etc., but for there to be other ways to redirect negative actions and encourage. Such as if your child has not listened to the word “no” and breaks something valuable to you, having different tools to set the tone for them not listening rather than saying “no dessert” or “no X food”. On the flip side, if a snack later is typical, like dessert before bed, saying no to this because your child did not complete their plate is a loaded scenario. If they truly are full and didn’t complete everything on their plate, from their comfortable and uncomfortable foods, then having a small snack later may be appropriate as they adequately listened to their body’s hunger and fullness cues. If they have not attempted to try everything on their plate, preferred to be doing other activities and may have been too distracted to eat, or you as the parent can tell they were just holding out until the snack later, setting the boundary of you eat what’s served first is appropriate here. Approaching this with giving them another chance to eat their meal before bed rather than yes to something else ties back to the division of responsibilities tactic.
But what if my kid will eat only the sweets?
Chances are if your child is hungry they will eat what’s on their plate, or portions of it. It’s okay if your child chooses to eat the best tasting thing first, and whether this is the sweet food or another food group. The practice may take time for you and your child to get used to, as their likes/dislikes will shift, and so will their preferences for the sweet thing or something else on their plate. Another approach is offering dessert after lunch or dinner.
Food Neutral Ways to Talk About Food
To help your child develop a positive rather than strained relationship with food, it’s important to use neutral language as early as possible. Kids will so quickly pick up on comments and actions around them, then slowly form their preferences. They of course will hear different language, opinions, and approaches to food throughout their life, so providing them with a good foundation is key. Below are some examples of how to reframe language around food to keep it more gentle and nourishing rather than restrictive and rule based.
Limit the use of “good” and “bad”, or “healthy” and “unhealthy”. Instead try referring to all foods as nourishing, while also recognizing their taste, color, flavor, and texture. You can also try using language like “more often” or “more of”, and “sometimes” or “less often” when referring to different groups of food.
Instead of saying never to food, try ‘this food will have to wait, this is what we have served now’, or ‘these are your two options, “x” food will have to wait’. Using the closed kitchen and division of responsibility tactic described above is helpful in this instance.
Instead of pointing out how much sugar or calories something has, try noting the taste like ‘Wow this is sweet and yummy, let’s also have something salty’.
Avoid referring to foods as weight gain or weight loss foods, or foods causing weight gain in certain parts of the body. Truly all foods can fit (aside from those that cause an allergic or sick reaction) and not one particular food will cause weight gain. Whether your child, or maybe you have two children in the same family with different situations, needs to gain or maintain weight, or there is some concern for excessive weight gain, help them understand their hunger and fullness instead. Take the pressure off of food being a reward and an incentive rather than discriminating between what foods will and will not be served.
Approach commenting on how much or little, or the types of food your child eats gently. Some children may not be affected by comments from others on their food, whereas some may identify with how they are told they eat and feel inclined to follow this as a rule.
Questions or comments about this blog post? Reach out to one of the Enhance Nutrition dietitians to learn more. We would love to support you and your child in developing a healthy relationship with food!