Decoding the Picky Eaters: Working With Our Kids’ Eating Behaviors
Nothing frustrates a parent more than constantly catering to the kids who are picky eaters — especially when we’re aware of how unbalanced and unhealthy their choices are.
When kids are hungry, they’re fussier than usual. Even more so when they’re picky eaters! Because they avoid certain foods, they often lose out on certain nutrients which makes them more prone to meltdowns, tantrums, and infections. But before we dismiss the picky eater’s behavior as a form of manipulation or the dreaded “willfulness” and “stubbornness,” let’s interpret food with a child’s mindset and level.
Understanding how kids see food: Warm Color Palettes
Studying the effect of color isn’t just for fashion pieces; it’s for food too! Ever wonder why celebrations always use red, yellow, orange, or warm colors? It’s because that spectrum of colors makes people feel happy; even in some cultures, these colors represent vitality. With the healthy stuff usually being green, it’s no surprise kids won’t go for it — cool colors like that don’t usually trigger those kinds of feelings.
But the Italians have developed a way to sneak in those vegetables — by blending brightly colored ingredients like tomatoes, pumpkin, red bell pepper, carrots, and celery to make a heartwarming and nutrient-loaded Bolognese sauce. Pesto, on the other hand, works with a lot of cheese which brightens up the cool green color from the Basil. For an additional dose of lipids and “healthy fats,” they mix pine nuts.
As someone who cooks, I usually sneak Flax Seed into my pesto sauce which is known for its cholesterol-managing properties.
This is also another reason why kids immediately love sushi. The brightly colored fish especially when they’re fresh is a sight for their eyes. Salmon is orange, fresh Tuna is bright red, California Maki is rolled in bright, sparkly orange ebiko (shrimp roe) and has mango!
The scent and taste that kids love: strong savory-sweet
While we want to control our kids’ sugar intake, there’s a biological reason why they need sweets. It’s not only because one tastebud is more developed than the other or we ate too many sweets when we were pregnant with them but, it’s the calories! With their bodies developing so quickly, they need the energy to run around, do things, and explore even.
However, this doesn’t mean taking a trip to the candy shop and getting an ice cream every mall or park trip. Natural sweets like fruits such as bananas, apples, mangoes, grapes, and watermelons satisfy their need for sweets while giving them the minerals and nutrients they need! If fruits are not available then, that’s what kiddie milk is for.
Do they grow out of it? Yes, they do. Case in point: once they hit teen years, we’ll start to notice our coffee supplies getting depleted awfully fast and our trashcans filled with empty cups that once had iced coffee.
A treat for the ears: their love for crispy and fried!
Besides fried food always presenting with a bright golden brown color, it’s also a treat for the ears and teeth. Cracking something in their teeth like crispy chicken skin, freshly fried french fries, or freshly baked crispy cookies is cathartic in sound; it’s a productive way to release their aggression. This is why kids love Korean Fried Chicken — it’s sweet, it’s brightly colored (because of the glaze), and it’s crispy!
The Japanese were on the right track when they cooked Kakiage —a deep-fried assortment of shredded vegetables. They usually bind shredded leek, carrot, onion, turnip, and sweet potato with potato starch.
A kid’s sensory activity for touch
We know some cultures see eating with our hands as barbaric but for kids, this is how they learn about food. When certain foods feel squishy, their survival instincts tell them it’s something life-threatening, hence why we need to perfect cooking vegetables. Because we often overcook our vegetables, they look like this wilted mess from a bog which our kids would rather say no to.
Vegetables don’t even take that long to cook unless it’s a potato, yam, carrot, or any dense vegetable in general. Leafy vegetables usually take 30 seconds and what some Chinese restaurants do to make veggies stay bright is that they add a teaspoon of baking soda for every liter of water. That way, it stays crunchy and it looks pretty.
Making meal time a pleasant experience for our picky eaters and our families
It’s tiring to fight with picky eaters; we’re hungry and there are just times, we don’t have the energy or bandwidth to fight with them anymore. But we can’t always cater to their needs because what happens if the place they’re in doesn’t have the food they need? And like everyone always says, “Too much of one thing is a bad thing.”
Another thing we can do to work with our picky eaters is to eat the food we want them to taste in front of them. It’s the whole “monkey see, monkey do” principle; if a monkey sees another monkey eating the food and not dying, they’ll feel safer trying out the food.
However, it’s also good to check if our kids have any disorder that causes them distress every time they eat a particular food. There’s usually a pattern and reporting that to their pediatrician can help us come up with a meal plan while navigating our kids’ possible condition of Sensory Processing Disorder. This disorder can exist with other developmental delays but can stand on its own also, creating the image of just a “difficult” kid.
When getting kids to do something (most especially picky eaters), the goal is to work with their nature. Not against it.
More about picky eaters and kids?
The No-More-Tears Guide To Getting Your Kids To Eat Vegetables
Help Picky Eaters Ascend to New Heights
Danica and Ciara Sotto: Of Cousins and Cooking
