Just Two More Bites! Helping Picky Eaters Say Yes to Food

Solving the Puzzle of Picky Eating Ralph and Katy Greene are committed to having family meals. They juggle work, long commutes, music lessons, and nap times so that they can share at least one meal a day with their three kids. Yet family mealtimes are not working out as planned. Instead of warm, bonding experiences, they are nonstop battles. No matter what the food, the kids whine and complain. On any given night, one of them will refuse to eat. Take pasta night. Eighteen-month-old Ned is the hardest to please. He eyes every food suspiciously. When he spots something he doesn't want, he'll scream, "No, no, no." Now and then, he simply says "Yuck" and drops food on the floor. The two older kids are not much better. Three-year-old Drew doesn't like smooth rigatoni; he likes it with ridges. Naturally, his older sister, Beth, age four, wants smooth rigatoni. Even though Katy wants them to eat, she refuses to cook two different kinds of pasta. To sidestep the pasta battle, Katy searched for the magical pasta shape both kids would eat. She tried everything from farfalle to ziti, without success. With each taste test, whenever Drew liked something, Beth didn't. "It's enough to make you crazy," says Katy. Instead of giving up, one day Katy and Ralph tried a new strategy. Drew and Beth would take turns choosing pasta. At first, neither child was thrilled, but soon it quelled their endless complaints. Katy and Ralph relish the truce (although they expect that one day soon Ned will start eating pasta too and upset the compromise). Still, they are perplexed. They describe themselves as "eating almost everything." Katy says, sighing in bewilderment, "We know it's not genetic. How did we end up with three picky eaters?" Ralph and Katy are not alone. There are roughly nine million picky eaters under the age of five living in the United States today, and each one is picky in his or her own way. While fussy eating is both common and normal in young children, some take it to amazing extremes, eating only a few select foods. More typical are kids who reject homemade chicken nuggets but eat store-bought, those who eat fruits but not vegetables, those who drink milk but refuse solid foods, or those who drink juice and refuse milk. The variations of what kids eat or don't eat are endless. Day after day, some picky eaters eat little or nothing, while others eat well but only if offered one of a small number of foods they like. Whatever the pattern of saying no to food, the parents' struggle to help their children eat better is always the same. Regardless of whether picky eating is a minor daily irritant or a potential threat to a child's health, it's natural for parents to worry. Most suspect there must be something they can do to make life easier for themselves and their picky eaters. Knowing exactly what that is, though, can be tricky. There are lots of pieces to the puzzle of understanding why a child refuses food. A maze of influences--developmental, biological, and environmental--affect a child's appetite and food choices. Influences Kids are different from one another and from one age to the next. Max refuses meat and chicken, loves salad and bread, and can't get enough cucumbers. Josh eats only pale-colored foods: cheese, yogurt, peeled apples, potatoes, and chicken. Amanda constantly drinks milk and juice but barely eats anything. Can parents make sense out of their children's eating? In my work, the first step to finding solutions is to help parents recognize what is special and different about their child. To find the answer, I consider the influences of developmental stage, life experience, biology, and personality. Each one can support or interfere with healthy, hearty eating. DEVELOPMENT [read more]