Picky Eating? Keep Things Consistent

Consistency builds lifelong healthy eating habits.

Why Consistency Matters

Picky eating is a normal part of child development. It's tempting to react dramatically – or feel worried - when a once-adventurous eater suddenly snubs their nose at vegetables and demands only plain pasta. However, consistency is your strongest tool if for helping your child build a positive, lifelong relationship with food.

Say More?

It’s hard and confusing (maybe even annoying!) when your child rejects a food they loved yesterday. You are left guessing what they will like or how much they will eat. But, this is a normal developmental phase – so don’t get discouraged.

Patience and persistence are essential.

Kids' preferences will evolve.

The picky eater today may be the vegetable lover tomorrow.

Although it can be unsettling, and sometimes leaves even the most confident parents standing on shaky ground, reacting to picky eating with major changes in how you handle dinner time can disrupt a child’s relationship with food in the long-term.

Bottom Line: Consistency is key.

This approach (consistency) reinforces normal eating habits amidst the fickleness of passing picky phases. It builds a foundation of trust and comfort around food, essential for developing healthy eating patterns long-term.

How to Handle Picky Eating

There are things that you should KEEP doing, and NOT DOING, when your previously adventurous eater decides to put her foot down.

Here are some things you should KEEP doing:

1. Offer Variety: Continue introducing a mix of new and familiar foods – without pressuring them to eat any particular item. Remember, it’s your job to determine what comes into the house – what’s offered at mealtime and when meals and snacks are available. It’s your child’s job to decide what they want to eat (of what’s offered) and how much. Don’t try to control that which is your child’s to choose..

2. Be Considerate, but Don’t Cater: Ensure there's always something on the table they'll eat, but avoid creating entirely custom meals. Catering means giving into their every wish and whim. Considerate means recognizing that your child is gong through a particular phase and needs to have some comfort items along side those that challenge her tastebuds

3. Model the Behavior You Want to See: Demonstrate healthy eating habits yourself. Try new foods alongside them.

4. Invite Participation: Let them help make mealtime decisions, appropriate to their age. Invite them to choose a lunch or dinner. Invite them to come grocery shopping and chose a fruit, vegetable, cereal or snack. Invite them to participate (as is age appropriate) with dinner prep … anything that keeps them engaged with the process of choosing and preparing foods. This will help in the long run.

And some things you should KEEP NOT doing:

1. Catering to Their Whims: Serving only "white meals" because it's demanded sets a precedent you can't always follow. Plus, your child needs to know that you will be consistent even when they push back. You demonstrate your power as a parent when you quietly hold your ground.

2. Praising the Behavior You Want: Reacting too positively to desired eating behaviors can pressure your child and backfire.

3. Getting Discouraged: “Picky eating” is a phase, but it can last a while and it can also come and go. If your goal is to help your kids create life-long positive relationships with food, do not get discouraged! You have a lot of time to have the positive influence you’d like with your children, but you have to be persistent and consistent along the way.

Let's Wrap Up

This phase will pass. Stick with these strategies to guide your child through picky eating without drama. What other challenges do you face with your children's eating habits? Let's discuss below.

Next Steps

For more tips on handling picky eaters and encouraging healthy eating habits, follow or connect below. I'm here to help!

How to Navigate Wellness Goals with Integrity

When it comes to health and wellness goals, the best advice is that which aligns with your values.

Why It Matters: Shifting our lifestyle to achieve health and wellness is a gradual process that takes time and patience. It involves adjusting our mindset, behaviors, and sometimes even our budget. To make these changes stick, they must deeply align with our core values.

Tell Me More: There are three critical elements of setting and achieving health and wellness goals in an effective, sustainable, and authentic way. They are all important, but distinct:

EVIDENCE - helps you determine WHAT goals you want to pursue.

ADVICE - helps you figure out HOW to achieve them.

VALUES – give you a reason WHY.

More specifically, your values serve as a filter through which you can review the advice you receive to find that which makes sense for your life and the way you see the world.

Finding the Sweet Spot

In the middle of that three-ring Venn diagram is the sweet spot for finding advice that will help you achieve your (evidence-based) goals in a way that resonates with who you are and what you value most.

Reaching health and wellness goals, whether personal or for our family, demands time and patience. It involves modifying our thoughts, actions, daily routines, and possibly our spending. These changes need to truly resonate with us, aligning with our core values to be sustainable.

Make it Distinctly Yours

The journey to health and wellness is deeply personal and uniquely yours. Rather than simply ticking boxes based on what others think is important, or following trends others have identified as critical, you must craft a lifestyle that's in harmony with who you are and what you stand for.

How to Determine Quality Evidence: the Hierarchy of Study Design

Setting High-quality goals starts with identifying high-quality evidence

WHY IT MATTERS: How do you discern which evidence to trust when it comes to creating and shaping your and your family’s health goals? By understanding the hierarchy of evidence.

(In this post, I'm specifically focusing on the role of study design in determining high-quality evidence.)

I'M READY TO LEARN MORE: There are three tiers to the study design hierarchy. If you're interested to learn more about what they are, and why they are valuable, read on.

Study Design Hierarchy

Tier 1. Systematic Reviews: At the highest level of the hierarchy is the systematic review (or meta-analysis, which is slightly different, but related). These comprehensive analyses thoroughly and purposefully sift through a vast body of literature on a specific topic to summarize what is known on the topic. By synthesizing multiple studies, systematic reviews offer a robust understanding of complex health issues and put individual studies into a broader context.

Tier 2. Experimental Designs:Following systematic reviews, we find experimental studies, particularly Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), as the next best source of evidence. RCTs are designed to determine cause-and-effect relationships by randomly assigning participants to different groups. They provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of interventions or treatments. .

Tier 3. Observational Studies: Observational studies provide less reliable evidence, but are quiet common (especially in nutritional research). While observational studies play a vital role in exploring associations between variables, they fall short in establishing causality. Despite their limitations, observational studies serve as valuable tools, especially in cases where conducting RCTs may be unethical or impractical.

Navigating the Complexity

Understanding the hierarchy of evidence empowers us to make informed decisions about our health and nutrition. Systematic reviews provide a bird's-eye view of the landscape, while RCTs offer concrete evidence of causality. Observational studies, though less definitive, offer valuable insights into real-world scenarios.

Empowering Through Knowledge

As you navigate the vast sea of nutrition advice, use evidence-based decision-making to determine what goals you want to pursue. Remember, evidence can help you determine WHAT you want to do ... and advice can help you determine HOW to get there.

By understanding the hierarchy of evidence, you equip yourself with the tools to discern reliable information from mere conjecture. Let's continue this journey towards healthier, happier families by prioritizing evidence-backed approaches in our quest for wellness.

Your Turn: Let's Dive Deeper!

Now, it's your turn. Please join the conversation. What questions do you have about nutrition research or health headlines? Let's explore together and uncover the truths hidden within the scientific literature. Drop your queries in the comments, and let's embark on this

Evidence vs Advice: How to Navigate the Nutrition Landscape

Advice without direction can lead you astray.

Why It Matters: Navigating health and nutrition advice demands precision and evidence, not just following paths laid by others.

The Big Picture

It’s critical to set clear personal goals to ensure the advice you seek and follow is aligned with your desired destination, especially regarding your family's health and nutrition. This focus on evidence-based goals helps avoid the confusion of contradictory advice and ensures you're on the right path for you and your family, not just retracing someone else's journey.

Let's Dig In

Imagine gearing up for a road trip, packed and prepared for the adventure ahead. You eagerly accept a set of directions from a friend, confident that they will lead you to your destination. Yet, as you follow the directions diligently, you realize that you're lost, having never communicated your intended destination to your friend.

This scenario mirrors the challenges we face when seeking advice on feeding and nutrition without having a clear understanding of where we want to end up; of what our feeding, mealtime, or nutrition goals are.

Evidence First: Start with scientific evidence to define clear health and nutrition goals.

Advice Second: Seek advice that aligns with these goals to navigate towards your destination.

Personalize Your Path: Understand that advice works differently for each individual; what works for one may not work for another.

Stay Focused: Keep your destination in mind to avoid getting lost in a sea of well-meaning but potentially misaligned advice.

What’s Next

Learn to distinguish between mere advice and evidence-based guidance to make informed decisions for your family's nutrition and health. Next week, we delve into identifying credible evidence in the realm of nutrition advice.

4 Strategies to Help Your Kids Practice Tasting New Foods

Kids need multiple exposures to new foods before accepting them.

Why It Matters: When kids are young, they need exposure to a food 15 or more times before they'll willingly eat it. (And it just gets bigger as they get older.) This is a learned skill that requires patience and practice.

Tell Me More!

Here are four actionable strategies that parents can use to gently guide their children toward becoming more adventurous eaters.

"The instinct might be to insist on a "just one bite" policy, but pressure can backfire. Kids often resist when pushed to try new things, especially with food"

#1. Avoid Pressuring

Rather than pressuring your kids to taste (or eat) something new, focus on offering new and familiar foods without forcing the issue. Let them see you enjoy the food; model the behavior you wish to see. Remember, eating should never feel like a test or a demand. This requires patience, and persistence, but in the end often yields the best results.

#2. Provide Context, Use Language

Imagine being handed something utterly foreign and told to eat it with no further explanation. You'd likely hesitate, right? Kids are no different.

Before introducing a new food, give them a little background. Compare it to something they already like or describe its flavor, texture, or appearance. This not only builds trust and confidence in what they are about to experience, but it also arms them with the language to express their own experiences and preferences as they practice tasting new, unusual, and their favorite things.

#3. Remember that Flavor is Your Friend

There's no merit badge for eating plain, steamed vegetables. Make new foods appealing by using dips, sauces, and seasonings. If your child doesn't like raw or steamed broccoli, for instance, try roasting it with a bit of olive oil and seasoning until it's crispy. Enhancing the flavor can make the tasting process much more enjoyable and successful.

#4. Practice with Foods they Already Love

Introduce the concept of tasting with foods they already love. Organize a fun taste test with different varieties of a favorite food, like chocolate chips or apples. This activity isn't about challenging their palate but building trust and excitement around the idea of trying new things. It shows them that tasting can be a delightful adventure, reducing resistance when more unfamiliar foods are introduced.

Wrapping it Up

Adopting these strategies not only helps in introducing new foods but also fosters a healthier, more curious approach to eating that can last a lifetime. It's about making food an exploration, an adventure that you and your kids undertake together.

And, as always, I'm eager to hear your own experiences and strategies for encouraging kids to expand their dietary horizons. Share your thoughts and tips in the comments below, and let's continue this delicious journey together.

How to Help your Kids Embrace Dietary Variety

Diverse diets rich in fruits and vegetables are linked to better health, but kids are naturally reluctant to try new foods.

The Solution: Make dietary variety a habit with patience, practice, and strategy. Want to know more? Keep reading.

Remember, kids are creatures of habit - whether it's reading the same book every night at bed or eating the same breakfast. The key is finding small ways to provide variety in what they eat, without entirely throwing off their routines.

Strategies to Try

Here are 6 strategies you can use to encourage your kids to eat a variety of foods, without it feeling like a chore or pressure.

Color-Themed Meals: Create meals where every food is the same color. It makes mealtime fun and encourages creativity.
Letter-Themed Meals: Choose a specific letter for each meal. It’s a playful way to involve kids in meal planning and introduce new foods.
Vary the Routine: Change when familiar foods are eaten. Serve yogurt at lunch instead of breakfast.
Vary the Presentation: Offer familiar foods in different textures or flavors. Try raw carrots, cooked carrots, or carrot cake.
Explore Different Brands: Buy different brands of the same type of food to introduce subtle taste and texture differences.
Model Behavior: Eat a variety of foods yourself. Your actions influence your child’s willingness to try new things.

Conclusion

Introducing new foods can seem daunting, but these strategies make it smoother and more enjoyable. Next week, we’ll discuss encouraging your kids to taste new foods—a crucial step in diversifying their diet.

Did You Try These? Let me know how it went! Follow me on Instagram @KiyahDuffey for more tips and tricks. I’d love to hear from you!