Many parents cook special meals for little picky eaters

MONDAY, April 22, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Parents too often wave the white flag when it comes to young picky eaters, a new study shows.

According to a national survey from the University of Michigan, three in five parents say they are willing to play personal chef and prepare a separate meal for a child who forgoes the family dinner.

This often leads to the children eating something less healthy, said Dr. Susan Woolford, a pediatrician at University of Michigan Health CS Mott Children’s Hospital.

Parents should instead greet such stubbornness with a shrug, Woolford said.

“Rather than allowing the child to choose an alternative menu, parents should provide a balanced meal with at least one option that their child is typically willing to eat,” Woolford said in a hospital news release.

“If their child chooses not to eat, parents should not worry as this will not harm healthy children and they are more likely to eat the options offered at the next meal,” Woolford added .

The biggest meal challenge for parents is feeding a picky eater a healthy diet, according to results from the University of Michigan Health CS Mott Children’s Hospital’s National Poll on Children’s Health.

But the desire to ensure that a child in preschool or primary school eats a balanced, nutritious diet often leads to strategies that backfire, according to poll results.

“Preschool and primary school age is an important time to establish healthy eating patterns,” says Woolford, who co-leads the poll. “But parents’ concerns about whether their child is eating enough and getting the nutrients he or she needs can lead them to adopt practices that may actually undermine their efforts to teach children healthy eating habits in the short and long term. sabotage. ”

For example, one in eight parents swing the opposite way and demand their children eat everything on their plate, the poll found.

Another half say their kids have to try a little bit of everything, and just under a third leave dessert if the meal isn’t finished yet.

Such tactics can encourage children to stuff themselves instead of eating until they are comfortably full, Woolford said.

“Requiring children to eat everything on their plate, or forgoing dessert unless all other foods are eaten, can lead to overconsumption, especially if portion sizes are too large for the child’s age,” Woolford said.

Portion size is key to lowering the risk of childhood obesity, but it’s difficult for parents to “correctly determine” a child’s portion, survey results show.

Nearly 70% of parents surveyed give their child a portion that is slightly less than that of adults, while even fewer parents let their child choose how much to eat, use predetermined portions from the package or give the same portion as adults.

Woolford recommends a ‘parents worry, child decides’ approach. Parents are responsible for offering healthy options, and then children choose what foods they want to eat and how much they want to consume.

There are also other resources, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “MyPlate” guide, that can help parents balance major food groups and estimate appropriate portion sizes for the entire family, Woolford said.

Only a third of parents surveyed think the standard American diet is healthy, compared to half who consider the Mediterranean diet to be higher in nutritional value.

However, few have tried alternative diets for their child, the poll found.

“Parents may recognize that the standard U.S. diet contains high amounts of saturated fats, added sugars, sodium and refined carbohydrates, which can generate excessive calorie intake that exceeds nutritional needs and contribute to health problems,” Woolford said.

“Despite this recognition and the evidence suggesting that other dietary options can help prevent many diseases, only about 9% have tried the Mediterranean diet for their children and fewer have tried feeding their children a vegetarian diet,” Woolford said.

Nearly all parents said they have tried at least one strategy to get their child to eat vegetables as part of a healthy diet.

These tactics ranged from serving vegetables every day, preparing vegetables the way the child prefers, trying vegetables the child has not had before, or letting the child pick out vegetables at the supermarket.

“Parents should try to involve children in meal decisions, pressure food consumption and offer a variety of healthy options at every meal so children feel more in control,” Woolford said.

The survey shows that most parents try to buy healthy food for their children. More than half said they limit foods with added sugars and processed foods.

But it’s difficult to identify unhealthy foods, Woolford said. Foods marketed or packaged as healthy may still contain added sugars or unhealthy amounts of salt and fat.

Parents should focus on nutrition labels and ingredient lists on the back of a package rather than the marketing on the front, Woolford said. This will help them weed out foods with too much sugar, salt and fat.

Involving kids in this grocery store detective work can even help them become healthy eaters for themselves in the future, Woolford said.

“Let them help choose the healthiest options, not ones that are necessarily marketed directly to children, but foods they want to try that are lower in sugar, fat and salt,” Woolford said.

“Spend most of the time in the produce department and try to make it fun by perhaps selecting new options from different parts of the world that they haven’t tried before,” she added.

More information

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has more information about healthy eating for children.

SOURCE: University of Michigan, press release, April 22, 2024