The Care and Feeding of Picky Eaters

I was a picky eater myself as a child (and, to a lesser degree, still am as an adult), so it was no surprise that I gave birth to a couple of picky eaters. After much trial and error and putting on a few pounds (okay, more than a few) from eating my failures and tearing out my hair, I’ve discovered a few survival tips for moms trying to cook for picky eaters.

1.  Presentation is key

Food that is appealing to a kid’s eye will also be appealing to his or her taste buds. Instead of serving fruit on the side of the plate, use it to make a smiley face right on top of whatever you’re serving – scrambled eggs, pancakes, a sandwich, a slice of meatloaf, a scoop of pasta. Instead of (or as well as) fruit, pick whatever random treats your kids like: a couple of jellybeans, a handful of breakfast cereal, pickles and olives, goldfish crackers, chocolate jimmies. You can even add some "goop" for dipping, like ketchup, ranch dressing, hummus, or jam. Your kids will eat the fun stuff and then forget to stop when they reach the healthy stuff underneath. (Hopefully.) And don’t underestimate the value of cutting things into interesting shapes. Cookie cutters aren’t just for cookies; they work on sandwiches, toast, cheese, cold cuts, pancakes.

And on the flip side of this one, if you make it look – or sound – over-the-top disgusting, kids (especially boys) will eat it out of pure curiosity. Be sure to make lots of repulsed noises while the child is eating. Thanks to Calvin’s mom for this advice.

Admittedly, this approach has a few drawbacks.

2.  Creative use of leftovers

If your kids are anything like mine, there are always leftover bits on their plates. One of my kids eats the hotdog and ignores the bun; the other demolishes the bun but ignores the hotdog. So I offer each of them both bun and dog, then swap their plates. Or I’ll save the uneaten hotdog slices and throw them in with some leftover mac & cheese at the next meal. When I make soup and there’s lots of leftover broth, I throw in that half-serving of rice, handful of cooked carrots, and few bites of grilled chicken left over from last night’s dinner and make myself a bowl of soup. If sandwiches are on the menu, I use their uneaten sandwich crusts to fill out my meal of that same leftover rice, carrots, and chicken. 

But my favorite use for leftovers is to do a "smorgasbord" lunch. Fill a plate with tiny servings of a lot of different things: a few bites of pork, a tiny spoonful of peas, a plop of applesauce, six blueberries, half a graham cracker, two broccoli florets, a few cheese cubes - whatever's on hand. Mix a few treats in with the healthy stuff, like a small handful of sweet cereal or pieces of their favorite fruit, and get creative with dipping sauces - let them try some spicy mustard, salsa, or balsamic vinegar along with more familiar sauces. 

Sometimes I sneak in a few "exotics," like marinated artichokes.

3.  Let them help
My kids love to help in the kitchen, and they will eat (or at least try) almost anything that they helped make. Even the littlest kids can help tear up lettuce, beat an egg, stir together batter, and mix meatballs. Kids who can read can help you follow a recipe or directions. Older kids can break eggs, measure ingredients, chop vegetables, and use the stove. As well as keeping them where you can keep an eye on them while you make dinner, you get the added bonus of an opportunity to teach nutrition, hygiene, chemistry, math, and reading. Not to mention, it’s laying the foundation for having them prepare dinner on their own once in a while so you get a break from kitchen duty!

This approach may take a good bit of practice before it’s successful, however.

4.  Variety really is the spice of life

I’ve read all kind of statistics stating that children need to be offered a food X number of times before they’re willing to try it, or that they need to try a food Y number of times before they decide they like it. I’m not sure if I buy any of those statistics, but I do know that kids are moody and sometimes they’re not willing to try something but other times they are. So I keep offering them different foods, even if they have tried them before. I don’t force them to eat more than a taste, and sometimes not even that, but the foods are there if I happen to catch them in the right mood. Maybe it’s only a 1 in 100 chance that they’ll try it, but if it’s not on their plate, it’s a 0 in 100 chance.

Even when it doesn’t work, the results can be quite entertaining.

 5.  Reverse psychology really works

My husband often puts a forkful of food on the edge of my son’s plate and warns him sternly, “Do NOT eat this. This will make you grow tall and strong, and I want you to stay little. You had BETTER NOT eat this!!!” Naturally, my son immediately grabs it and sucks it down, giggling triumphantly as my husband moans in mock horror. Likewise, my daughter won’t eat a bite of the food that’s on her own plate, but if I leave a forkful of the exact same food on my own plate and tell her, “That’s mine, don’t eat it!”, it will be gone before I can blink.

The grass broccoli is always greener on someone else’s plate.

The bottom line is, you just never know what might make a child try or like something, so just keep experimenting and offering. With apologies to Thomas Edison, you haven’t failed. You’ve just found 1,000 things your kids won’t eat.

There's No Accounting for Taste

I was the world’s pickiest eater when I was a child. Until I was about 10, my family couldn’t go out to eat at McDonald’s because I wouldn’t eat hamburgers, only hotdogs. And even after I did start eating hamburgers, we had to wait for them to make me a special plain burger. Merely removing the tomato and pickle and scraping off the condiments was not good enough. If there was so much as a whiff of ketchup or mayo on the bun, I wouldn’t touch it. Pasta could be served with no sauce other than butter. And the only vegetable I would eat was frozen peas. My mother was convinced that I would die of scurvy by the age of 6. I spent many long, lonely hours sitting at the kitchen table staring at a plate of cold broccoli/corn/carrots/green beans until my mom finally gave up and let me leave it. And don’t even get me started on the tricks I used to use to avoid eating certain things, like tucking a bite of something unwanted into my cheek like a hamster then excusing myself to use the bathroom and flushing the offending morsel, or hiding a few forkfuls in my napkin and throwing them away unobtrusively after my plate was clean.

Once I was an adult, I knew this pickiness would come back to bite me in the form of picky children of my own. And I was not wrong.

Although I wouldn’t call my son a truly picky eater. His pickiness, unlike mine, is fairly limited to vegetables. He will eat most kinds of fruit, at least when he’s in the mood. Some days he’ll turn his nose up at a banana, other days he’ll wolf it down before I can blink. But at some point in time or another, he will eat nearly every kind of fruit I’ve ever offered him. He’ll eat hotdogs, meatballs, deli meat, starch in any form (noodles, bread, cereal, rice, crackers), eggs, pizza, cheese and yogurt. But try to slip a few peas in his pasta or some peppers on his pizza, and he’ll refuse to touch a single bite.

And yet, he will eat some of the grossest food combinations imaginable. He is, after all, a boy. This morning, for example, he was eating cornflakes while I fed his sister some yogurt, and he asked for his own yogurt. I gave it to him, and he immediately began putting handfuls of cornflakes into the yogurt, waiting until it got good and soggy, and then scooping it up and eating it with his hands.

He’ll also eat nearly anything as long as it’s dipped in ketchup. This is actually a trick I learned from my cousin. She discovered her son’s enthusiasm for dipping at an early age and contrived some kind of dip for every meal. I’ve tried offering various dips to my son, things that seem to me to be a pleasant taste combination, such as ranch dressing for chicken nuggets, barbeque sauce for corn on the cob, or honey for carrots. Nope. He will only dip things in ketchup. Olives, lettuce, green beans. Dipped in ketchup. Yuck.

But what does it matter if I think what he’s eating is gross, as long as he doesn’t? He might be eating green beans covered in ketchup, but they’re still green beans. He may only eat carrots if they’re mashed into oblivion and dunked in cranberry juice, but he’s still eating them.

Besides, judging by his growth thus far, he certainly doesn’t seem to be lacking in nutrition.

We Are the Egg Men

I channeled my mom today.

Not that channeling my mom is an unusual occurrence for me. Actually, my parenting style is very similar to hers, so I crib mom tips from my own childhood on a regular basis. But today I made lunch with my son in a way that totally brought back memories of making lunch with my own mom: we made Egg Men.

I was an incredibly picky eater as a child, so getting excited about food wasn’t exactly a common occurrence for me. But whenever my mom announced that we were having scrambled eggs, I was always thrilled because that meant we would make Egg Men. I’m not sure how the tradition started. I suspect that my mom had made me some scrambled eggs and I refused to eat them, so in desperation she tried to make them entertaining. And she succeeded!

The bits and pieces we used to decorate our Egg Men would vary based on whatever happened to be handy at the time. Options usually included one or more types of breakfast cereal (Life and Cheerios were my particular decorating favorites); pretzels or pretzel sticks; vegetable pieces like carrots, celery, broccoli, or sweet peppers (often offered but invariably declined); shredded cheese; and, on a really good day (usually shortly after Halloween), sometimes even a handful of M&Ms or Reese’s Pieces.

So when Ryan and I decided to make scrambled eggs for lunch, I assembled the necessary ingredients: eggs, milk, butter, salt and pepper, and the full lineup of decorating materials.

Ryan was delighted at getting to crack the eggs (I only had to fish out a few stray eggshells), helped me pour in the milk, manfully whipped the eggs into a frenzy, and then waited (sort of) patiently for the eggs to cook so he could begin decorating.

He was mystified by the olives until I sliced them and he realized they would make excellent eyes. A row of Cheerios supplied a big cheery smile. Shredded cheese became fuzzy hair. And after much thought of how to incorporate the pretzels, Ryan’s Egg Man was given two long arms and two lanky legs.

In the time it took me to get my camera from the next room, Ryan had already eaten one arm, one leg, a good bit of hair, part of a smile, and a chin. I guess it’s safe to say that this meal was a success.

And although I honestly don’t remember whether Mom decorated her own eggs when I was a girl, I still consider it an honor to her memory that I made my own Egg Man after Ryan made his. Like Mom taught me, everything tastes better when there’s some love and laughter mixed in.