Ask a Dietitian

Here are a few pointers to consider:

• Involve children in meal preparation to promote interest and positive self-esteem.
• Introduce new foods when your child is in a good mood and hungry. Encourage your child to try at least one bite of the food. Accept refusals without a fuss, but plan to re-introduce the food again in about ten days.
• Remember, kids prefer food that is simple, easy to chew, warm, appealing, interesting, crisp or crunchy and easy to eat with their fingers.
• Try different ways of presenting the same food.
• Let your child feed him or herself. This includes letting them serve themselves.
• Treat meals as social time. Focus on conversation and not on who’s eating what.
• Don’t compare one child to another.
• Grow a garden if possible or even a few indoor plants to encourage curiosity about where food comes from.
• Above all, remember food is a key tool kids use to express independence.

Five Things Not to Say to a Picky Eate

1. You can’t have dessert until you finish your vegetables! This teaches kids that vegetables are icky and bad and they deserve a treat for eating them.
2. Eat! There are starving children in Africa! Although true, remember how little effect this had on you when your parents used it?
3. Please, please, please eat another bite! This teaches children to potentially overeat just to satisfy you.
4. You’re not leaving the table until you’re finished! This can cause a child to lose sight of their natural satiety, or fullness, cues.
5. What a good girl/boy! You cleaned your whole plate! This reinforces that cleaning the plate rather than stopping when full is the goal.

Although all kids go through picky phases that you shouldn’t worry about, if you suspect their poor food intake is causing chronic crankiness, lowered immunity, low energy or slow or reduced growth, talk to a registered dietitian or your doctor for assistance.

Watch for the Eating for Energy segment every Tuesday on BCTV’s Noon News Hour!