Transcriber: Vivian Lim Reviewer: David DeRuwe
We live in a world where the average U.S. grocery store
offers a stunning 30,000 plus different options.
And yet we’re in a picky-eating epidemic where kids won’t try new foods.
How bad is it?
A review in the journal “Appetite” looked at over two dozen studies
and found that up to half of our kids may be picky eaters.
Now that's a lot of worried parents looking for answers.
And if those parents type “picky eater” into Google,
guess what comes up as the most popular searches?
Picky eater recipes, food list, dinner ideas.
Seems the main concern of many parents
is what foods can I fix that my child will eat?
But what if I told you picky eating is not all about food.
Parents, in the next 15 minutes,
I’m going to show you that food and eating are two separate issues.
But first, I need you to understand something:
Eating is one of the hardest things human beings ever have to learn to do.
Wait a minute, eating is one of the hardest things we have to learn to do?
I don’t even think about what I put in my mouth.
How can that be so hard, right?
We think it’s automatic,
but when I was trained in the SOS approach to feeding,
I found out that every time we eat, we go through a 32-step process.
And when we first learn to eat, it isn’t automatic.
There’s a specific sequence we need to follow:
First, we only have to swallow.
Then we figure out how to move purees front to back with our tongue.
When babies can’t do this skill,
that’s why they spit out the baby food, right?
It’s not until a few more steps later that we finally learn to chew.
First, an up-and-down munching, then a proper rotating movement like an adult.
So just like babies need to first learn to raise their head, then sit,
then crawl, then stand, and finally take those first steps,
we need to learn the sequential steps of eating in order.
Something as simple as seeing your food is actually part of the process,
which is why those food pouches
don’t actually help babies learn to eat properly.
Who knew?
Did you get a parenting handbook when your babies were born?
I didn’t.
But if a child has trouble with chicken or crunchy vegetables,
they’re probably going to be labeled “a picky eater,”
when maybe they just haven’t learned to eat yet.
Because it’s complicated.
Kind of like parenting.
I’m a teacher, so when my firstborn, Paul, was a toddler,
we used to go to the supermarket,
and I’d talk about colors and letters and sounds all the way through the store.
By age two, when I was cooking,
I’d let him climb up on a chair and help me any time he wanted.
Then I had baby number two, and parenting got real.
I remember trying to make apple crisp with preschool Paul,
when his little sister, Leah, was about 18 months.
She climbed up to watch him cut apples with a dull cheese knife.
And of course, she wanted to be involved,
so I gave her what I thought was another dull cheese knife.
She promptly cut herself.
We didn’t cook together as much after that.
And then my kids who ate homemade sweet potato-spinach baby food,
no problem, started having their own very strong opinions about food.
Then number three, my little John who loved to eat,
would not let a green vegetable past his lips once he turned two.
When we found out his little brother Gabriel was violently allergic to eggs,
one of our family’s ultimate staple foods, I was about done.
The joy had gone out of cooking.
When they acted like I was torturing them,
but I was just trying to keep them alive,
I made a lot of mistakes.
“Mom, look at the creation I made with my veggies.”
“Eat your food.”
I knew I should encourage creativity and critical thinking.
There was just nothing left in the tank.
I found out there are many parents like me who are worried
and losing their tempers because of this picky-eating epidemic.
As I started writing about what I was trying
and then teaching other parents what actually worked,
I realized we’ve got to stop searching up the wrong questions.
We try to focus on the food, but there are some issues that come first.
I call them the five P’s of picky eating:
palate, pain, processing, pressure, and power.
Because I don’t just believe picky eating isn’t about the food.
Research and experience prove it.
Take Cara’s daughter, Abby.
Abby is a six-year-old in feeding therapy to strengthen her weak tongue.
She was born with a tongue tie, which was fixed as an infant.
But still today, her weak tongue
causes her to push food to the top of her mouth and hold it there
till eventually her family says, “Girl, you got to spit that out.”
See, that’s not about the food.
The shape of the mouth, the nasal passages,
even posture can affect whether a child can be successful at eating.
So if you can eradicate those physical root causes of picky eating,
your child may be able to start learning to eat.
Hey, I got a question for you:
When you’re sick, are you ravenous for a huge meal?
No, because when we hurt, we don’t want to eat.
The second P is pain.
Food allergies in kids increased 50% in just 10 years,
starting in the late 90s, according to CDC estimates,
and constipation is also a part
of nearly one in 10 kids’ “regular” lives.
Throw in reflux, IBS, low stomach acid, gut bacterial balance -
when you hurt after you eat, you’re conditioned like Pavlov’s dog,
that mealtime equals pain.
To your parents, you look like a picky eater.
But it’s not about the food.
Megan’s kids know all about pain around eating.
Her daughter’s food allergy was discovered
after eating instant potatoes for the first time,
and still years later, she won’t touch anything with that texture.
Kids are smart.
They avoid what hurts.
Megan’s son started having more trouble with unfamiliar foods
after tonsil surgery gone wrong and intubation at 16 months.
Can you say, “Don’t come near my face?”
Yeah, maybe eating is harder than we thought.
In fact, did you know it’s almost the only thing humans do
that uses all our senses at the same time?
So any sensory processing difficulties generally impact eating.
Processing is our third P.
Estimates say five to 15% of elementary kids
have some sort of sensory processing challenge,
but I have a hunch, it’s actually a lot higher.
based on the market for tagless shirts, seamless socks, and unscented everything.
And the problem with eating isn’t just taste, smell, and texture.
If any of your senses is overreactive,
it's going to impact how you engage with food.
For example, auditory - sitting in a school cafeteria
could be so overwhelming your appetite shuts down,
or if a child is overreactive to visual input,
a busy plate of mixed foods can do the same thing.
It's hard to eat if you can't handle looking at your plate.
Any parent who has a kid who won’t eat something
because it’s too mushy, too crunchy, too loud, too soft, too spicy, too ...
you get the picture.
Those parents know sensory processing difficulties
are causing major trouble at the table.
But it’s not about the food; it’s about the senses.
It’s about the processing,
which sometimes leads to the fourth P, pressure.
Remember old school parenting?
“You can’t leave the table until you clean your plate.
There are starving children in Africa.”
Right? Or the modern equivalent,
“I’ll give you dessert if you eat just three bites of broccoli.”
It’s reinvented as a bribe, but it’s still the same old pressure.
When we push our children to eat, when their body is telling them to stop,
we break something:
maybe communication with hunger and satiety hormones,
our kids awareness of pain, or our relationship.
We cannot make kids chew or swallow.
So forcing it is a lose-lose situation.
Our job as parents is to create boundaries within which children can make choices.
We serve the meal; they choose how much they eat.
Now, sometimes parents give their kids all the choices and no boundaries.
That’s our fifth P, power.
Some families are making two or even three meals a night
just so everyone will eat,
or the kids are wandering into the pantry 37 times a day,
serving themselves snacks.
And if that's you, I just have to say I totally get it.
Nobody looks at their newborn and says, tenderly,
“Darling, I’m going to feed you chicken nuggets and mac and cheese
every day for the rest of your life - bah!
That’s not what we intend.
We all fall into bad habits when we're beaten down,
especially when we're afraid our child will never eat a vegetable in their lives.
So families, no guilt, no shame,
but also stop it.
Short order cooking does not serve anyone.
Kids feel safer when they have appropriate boundaries and choices.
Now, you may be thinking,
“OK Katie, this all makes sense, but what can I do about it?”
First, be a detective about palate, pain, and processing.
You may need experts on your team to help solve those root causes.
But then, there’s so much more you can do at home,
even for a lot of our sensory kids.
Thousands of families have success with my simple three-step process
to reduce stress at mealtimes:
prepare the space, lead with your ace, and keep a poker face.
Let’s unpack those:
Step one is to prepare the space, and it’s about boundaries.
A good dinner starts with a proper snack time,
so you need to space out your meals and snacks by a few hours
to help build an appetite for your kids.
When Vanessa implemented just this first strategy,
her oldest actually started saying she was hungry
and sticking around to eat more.
See, picky eating isn’t about the food, but it might be about the boundaries.
Now, when your kids have this appetite, what are you ready to serve them?
That’s step two: lead with your ace.
You want to front-load your meals with vegetables
because the first bites of food taste the best,
especially when we’re hungry.
Jessica tried leading with her ace.
Her five-year-old called it a rainbow and munched away,
her no-raw-vegetables boy eventually nibbled some cauliflower,
and even her youngest tried something new.
That success wasn’t about the food; it was about the timing.
But let me tell you what Jessica did not do.
She did not put out that veggie tray and say,
“Hey boys, here are some veggies. Who wants to try one?”
Way too much pressure, even though it’s positive.
Instead, try step three and keep your poker face.
Keeping a poker face eliminates all that pressure
and allows your kids to make their own decisions
once you serve the food.
Jill found that lifting any requirement to eat the unfamiliar riced cauliflower
even made an impact on her teens with sensory processing issues.
They usually fight her about any new food.
But remember, picky eating isn’t about the food.
It’s about the relationships.
Plus, any exposure to food helps a child get closer to accepting it,
which is why there’s an even more powerful step you can take
to help your kids build a great relationship with food.
Amber is a great example.
She says this kid is picky,
like we can count the number of foods he eats on our fingers picky.
Today, I asked him to help me to cut some peppers,
and he asked to try one.
Teaching kids to cook
is the frosting on the cake of a great relationship with food.
Cooking helps fill the exposure bucket without problematic P’s.
Check this out:
No one is eating, so palate and pain are not an issue.
Well, what about processing?
Kids get to work with foods
without it having to cross the threshold of the mouth.
Plus, there’s no pressure to eat, so number four, gone.
And finally, the power shifts to appropriate child choice.
Research supports kids cooking.
A 2016 study found that involving kids in cooking
helps increase their openness to new foods, especially vegetables.
And I’m happy to report my joy in cooking finally returned
when I watched my kids thrive with independence in the kitchen.
My 10-year-old John says he loves that he can use a sharp knife
because it’s something that one of his friends can do.
And Gabe, who’s now seven,
well, he’s still helping me practice my poker face.
He switches from eating five helpings at dinner to five bites.
He reminds me that he needs to be in charge of how much he eats,
not my budget or how hard I worked on that meal,
because picky eating is still not about the food.
It’s too easy to label our kids as “picky eaters,”
but as parents, we’ve got to shift our language from picky to preference.
I bet you have a food or two you don’t like, don’t you? Yeah.
We all deserve the right to preferences, even the small humans.
And we’ve got to shift our thinking too.
Almost every podcast interview I do,
they asked, “So what’s the best recipe for a picky eater?”
You know what I tell them?
You don’t need a recipe to feed a picky eater.
You need a recipe to build a healthy relationship with food for your kids.
There's really no such thing as a picky eater.
If you prepare the space with snack time boundaries,
lead with your ace of vegetables, and keep a poker face at mealtimes,
we can create a generation of kids open to trying new foods,
both in the kitchen and at the table.
Picky eating truly is not about the food.
I know you get that now.
So as I close, it’s your turn.
The recipe is yours to create as you move your children
through the five P’s from picky to preference.
(Applause)