Meal Tips for Picky Eaters

Challenges of Selective Eating

If you've parented a toddler or a preschooler, you probably know all about their powers of selective eating: Every bite of spaghetti will be gone, but every green bean will remain on the plate. They love applesauce one day, and the next day they won't even look at it. They'll eat from the blue bowl, not the red bowl, and the grilled cheese must be cut into triangles. Sometimes they seem like bottomless pits, and other times it's like they couldn't care less about food.

It's not unusual for young kids to be particular at the table, and there are various reasons for it. Sometimes they don't eat much because they're not hungry—children do have small stomachs, and their bodies will typically tell them when they've eaten enough (Ellyn Satter Institute n.d.). Other times, they might refuse (or demand) a certain dish because they're asserting their independence. But if it seems like your child is a persistently picky eater—commonly defined as someone with strong food preferences and a prolonged unwillingness to try unfamiliar foods (Taylor et al. 2015)—there are strategies you can use to help them embrace a wider range of foods.

Mindset Matters

The three most important things you can do when you're trying to balance a child's diet are to stay positive, be honest, and let them be in charge (to a point):

• Instead of making it sound like their preferences are a problem—"She’s so fussy! She won't eat anything!"—focus on the process: "She's learning to like new foods." A child who has a more positive association with food is more likely to see new foods as no big deal.
• Don't disguise food they don't like in food that they do. They'll figure it out anyway, and it reinforces the idea that certain foods are "bad" and should be hidden.
• Be okay with letting the child decide if they want to try a new food and how much of it they want to eat (Ellyn Satter Institute n.d.), even if it's only a half a teaspoon. Forcing a kid to eat something can have long-lasting negative consequences (Scaglioni et al. 2018).

Meal Planning and Portions

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (n.d.) recommends daily eating patterns, depending on your child’s age. For additional information on each of these food groups, including specific food choices and portion sizes, visit MyPlate.gov.

Teamwork

You'll have better luck broadening your child's food preferences if the two of you work as a team and you’re willing to be patient while they warm up to new tastes. The following tips from the Better Kid Care program are creative ways for you and your child to turn their experience with food from a struggle into an adventure (Cason, Cox, and Gettings 2014).

• Plans meals and shop together. Look through a kid-friendly cookbook with your child to find a couple of meals that sound good to them. Then let them help you find the ingredients at the grocery store. (See "Meal Planning and Portions" above for more guidance.)
• Plant a garden together. A child might find vegetables more appealing if they've watched them grow.
• Cook together. It'll probably be messy, but let your little one sift the flour or put the dressing on the salad. They might temporarily forget about being picky because they’re so eager to eat something they helped prepare.
• Whet their appetite. Try to offer snacks no less than two hours before meals so that when it’s mealtime, they’re ready to eat.
• Make one dinner. You’re not a short-order cook—don't reinforce the picky eating by making chicken nuggets and French fries for your child while you're making chicken soup for the rest of the family. (See number 6 for how to make one meal work for everyone.)
• Introduce new food in bite sizes. If a meal has mostly food that a child is comfortable with and just one or two new tastes, the child may be more likely to try a bite of the new food.
• Let them spit it out. Tell your child they can spit food they don't like into a napkin. This reinforces the ideas that tasting new food is good, but that they’re not obligated to swallow it.
• Make food fun. Prepare a meal with foods of various colors and ask your child to sort the foods by color. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics suggests coming up with creative names for the colorful food—for example, a green smoothie could be called a Leprechaun milkshake (Larson 2021). You also could let your child feel the texture of new foods when it's not time to eat them yet or let them play—maybe by doing something like driving a toy bulldozer through a pile of rice. The more positive the association, the less scary the food.
• Heat it up (or cool it down). Food textures and even flavors can change when food temperature changes, and that could make all the difference for your child. Maybe raw veggies are more palatable to them than roasted veggies are—or vice versa. Perhaps melted, stretchy cheese is tastier than cold cubes.
• Don’t give up. Keep trying new foods and new cooking methods. It could take up to 15 tries before your child will accept a new food, so keep offering it.
• Be a role model. Children learn by watching the adults in their lives. Let them see you trying new foods, too.

Time to Eat!

The sample meal schedules below come from the Better Kid Care program (Cox and Mincemoyer 2017). Remember, if a child does not seem hungry at a specific meal or snack time, try again a few hours later. Kids have small stomachs, so time a couple of snacks between meals to help meet their nutrition and energy needs throughout the day.

References

Cason, K., J. Cox, and M. Gettings. 2014. "ABCs of Growing Healthy Kids: Picky Eaters." Penn State Extension.

Cox, J., and C. Mincemoyer. 2017. "Sample Meal Schedules." Penn State Extension Better Kid Care.

Ellyn Satter Institute. n.d. "Raise a Healthy Child Who Is a Joy to Feed."

Larson, H. 2021. "8 Ways to Get Picky Eaters to Become More Adventurous." Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Scaglioni, S., V. De Cosmi, V. Ciappolino, F. Parazzini, P. Brambilla, and C. Agostoni. 2018. "Factors Influencing Children’s Eating Behaviours." Nutrients 10, no. 6: 706. DOI.org/10.3390/nu10060706.

Taylor, C. M., S. M. Wernimont, K. Northstone, and P. M. Emmett. 2015. "Picky/Fussy Eating in Children: Review of Definitions, Assessment, Prevalence and Dietary Intakes." Appetite 95: 349–59.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. n.d. "MyPlate Plan." MyPlate.gov.

Prepared by April Miller, M.S., RD, LDN, extension education support.