Picky Eating Isn't the Food's Fault: Fix the Relationship, Then Talk Nutrition
The feeding strategy itself matters less than how you execute it; a parent's own relationship with food is the most effective intervention for their child.
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The feeding anxiety starts at the nine-month checkup
Jennifer is a registered dietitian who did nontraditional work in the USDA's SNAP education program and considered herself someone who "knew how to feed a kid." At the nine-month checkup the doctor said her child's weight wasn't keeping up, and she said that moment felt like the rug being pulled out from under her. For years afterward she worked to keep her kids on their growth curves, and her second son showed early signs of extreme picky eating. Standing in the kitchen making lunch, she realized she couldn't be the only parent struggling this much, and in 2019 she started Kids Eat in Color, initially posting feeding tips as a hobby.
— Jennifer AndersonThe research behind "don't pressure your kid" isn't that strong
She says "don't force your kid to eat" is a great slogan, and for some families that one line is enough. But after digging deep into the research on feeding pressure, she concluded it isn't as strong as dietitians or feeding experts make it out to be, and parents actually have more room to experiment. The second part of her book is devoted to "what if the standard approach doesn't work": first give the general advice, then give the alternatives that are considered less ideal but can be executed with reduced risk, which she calls risk reduction.
— Jennifer AndersonPut a small piece of green pepper on the plate five hundred times
The exposure method she teaches parents: put a small slice of green pepper on a plate full of foods the child likes. The goal isn't to get him to eat it, but to desensitize him to the pepper's presence. Maybe after five hundred times he sniffs it, then licks it, then throws it at his brother, then one day eats it. The precondition is that the child is in a regulated state — if the child hasn't been soothed, he simply can't try new things, because he's scared of something else. So first get the child calm before he sits down at the table.
— Jennifer AndersonAn anxious child has a dry mouth and tight throat, and physiologically can't eat
Sarah adds the neural mechanism: when anxious, the mouth goes dry, the throat tightens, and there may be nausea or stomach pain — exactly the signs of sympathetic (fight or flight) activation, while eating requires the parasympathetic rest and digest state. In other words, if every time they come to the table they bring dread and a power struggle, you are physiologically pushing the child in the opposite direction from eating. Play, jokes, and little table games work because they bring the child into that relaxed, connected parasympathetic state, and only then do saliva and swallowing come back.
— Sarah BrenA meal can be rescued from the worst possible start
She tells of one dinner at her own house: before the parents even got back to the table, the two kids were already fighting and one slammed the door to his room. They let that child calm down alone in his room while the remaining three started eating. Fifteen or twenty minutes later the child came downstairs and started eating, the whole family was laughing, and everyone was eating. She says the meal ended with the siblings fighting again, but the moment of connection in the middle was real. So don't hold yourself to perfectionism — there's usually at least one good moment in a meal; find it.
— Jennifer AndersonSensational headlines can basically be swiped past
The first filter she gives parents: if the headline is sensational, you can be almost certain it's wrong, probably about 90% of the content is taken out of context, so just keep scrolling and don't lose sleep over it. But if it's a real event — say an outbreak of diarrhea one summer, or a specific food recall — then pay attention. What she really wants to give is a tiered framework: the first tier is severe food allergies and insufficient calorie intake (ARFID, extreme picky eating, food insecurity), which can make a child seriously ill or worse, and must be addressed first.
— Jennifer AndersonProtein and fiber are in the second and third tiers, food dyes in the fourth
The second tier is protein, and every meal and most snacks should include a real protein food. The third tier is fiber, because fiber trickles down: when a child eats enough high-fiber foods, he naturally eats less of the added sugar and added sodium. And food dyes, which grab the most headlines, are in the fourth tier, with a very narrow impact. She says that for the vast majority of children, artificial dyes won't change their health trajectory; for the small number of sensitive children, parents have probably already figured it out themselves. Removing dyes from the food system wouldn't solve the childhood health crisis either.
— Jennifer AndersonCall it a "cookie," not an "occasional food"
To help parents who don't have a healthy relationship with food, her entry point is "talking about food with facts": call foods by their names directly — this is a cookie, this is a sandwich, this is your chicken, this is your sugar. Don't say "this is an occasional food, this is an everyday food," don't sort your child's food into healthy/unhealthy or good/bad, and avoid moralizing and black-and-white thinking. She says there's no evidence that black-and-white thinking directly causes eating disorders, but research has found that black-and-white thinking is very common in children with restrictive eating disorders, and hearing that "foods are good or bad" gets embedded in their restrictive thinking.
— Jennifer AndersonYour own relationship with food is the most effective intervention
She believes that parents working on their own relationship with food is often the single most effective thing they can do to help their child build one. You can model the correction out loud: "I used to call these foods good or bad, but I changed my mind, I can just call them by their names, and if you catch me saying good or bad, remind me." Kids love catching their parents' mistakes. Sarah adds that her mother said in her forties that "one of the best things about being a person is that you can change your mind," and hearing that in her twenties has influenced her to this day.
— Jennifer AndersonIn their own words · checked verbatim
And so our goal then is to reduce that risk. And I call it risk reduction.
Jennifer Anderson14:15
And so often the strategies matter less than how you do them.
Jennifer Anderson14:15
if your kid isn't regulated they're not going to be able to branch out. They're not going to be able to taste the pepper because they're freaked out about who even knows what
Jennifer Anderson17:19
The opposite of fight or flight is rest digest.
Sarah Bren25:24
And so often what makes for the best headline starts around tier four where we are talking about food dyes.
Jennifer Anderson34:30
it's not going to solve the child health crisis that we're seeing
Jennifer Anderson36:31
Kids are not that easy to ruin.
Jennifer Anderson41:33
often us taking care of our own relationship with food is going to be the most effective thing for helping our kids with their relationship with food.
Jennifer Anderson52:42
Figures
| Year Jennifer started Kids Eat in Color | 2019 | 6:06 |
| Age in months at which the pediatrician said her child's weight wasn't keeping up | 9 months | 5:05 |
| Share of sensational headlines she considers inaccurate | about 90% | 32:28 |
| Calories in three bites of cheese | 100 calories | 21:21 |
Glossary
- ARFID / avoidant restrictive food intake disorder
- An eating disorder in which a child takes in too few calories because of avoidance; it belongs to the first tier of problems.
- rest and digest
- The parasympathetic-dominant state in which the body is willing to eat, secrete saliva, and swallow.
- hyper palatable food
- Processed food with added sugar, sodium, and other ingredients that makes it hard to stop eating.
- health impact tiers
- A tiered framework ranked by how broadly something affects a child's health; the earlier the tier, the higher the priority.
How to listen
Parents of preschoolers and school-age children being bombarded in turn by picky eating, food dyes, and protein anxiety, plus nutritionists and pediatric practitioners who do childhood feeding counseling.
30:27 to 31:28 is a sponsor read and can be skipped.