How to Deal with Picky Eaters
What parents need to know about kids fussy over food.
Kids who push their plates away and cross their arms in refusal to eat vegetables tend to be set in their culinary obstinance around age 4, new research finds. Pressuring them to eat their spinach, or otherwise expand their palette is likely to backfire, the researchers say. The little monsters will just tend to become more finicky.
“We found that children who were pickier had mothers who reported more restriction of unhealthy foods and sweets,” says the new study’s lead author, Megan Pesch, MD, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. “These mothers of picky eaters may be trying to shape their children’s preferences for more palatable and selective diets to be more healthful. But it may not always have the desired effect.”
The fussy eaters are less likely to be overweight, but “most are still in the healthy range and not underweight,” Pesch and her colleagues conclude in the journal Pediatrics. “We still want parents to encourage varied diets at young ages, but our study suggests that they can take a less controlling approach,” Pesch says.
Such choosy children are not uncommon, and the reasons range from genetics to a scientifically understandable dislike of bitter…
