Reviewing Ellyn Satter

So my wife, being a dietitian, told me that the expert on picky eaters is Ellyn Satter. I was interested because, as I've said in one of my earlier posts, there is a plethora of tips and tricks about picky eaters on the internet, so it's interesting to read from someone who is fairly widely acknowledged to be the expert.

I've been clicking around her website, http://ellynsatterinstitute.org/, and from what I've read so far, there are a lot of good tips. Possibly my favorite is the article about avoiding pressure, found at this link: http://ellynsatterinstitute.org/htf/avoidpressure.php.

I think most parents believe that in order to be a good parent, they need to push their kids into eating the healthy food. This is not the case. Your best bet is to set up an environment where they feel they can safely try foods. As Satter says in her article "Pressure on children's eating always backfires."

It's very true, and I think that sometimes it's hard for mature adults to understand. As human beings we oftentimes have a tendency to resist being told what to do, so by telling your child that they need to eat all their carrots, you're actually accomplishing the opposite.

You may be thinking "That's silly, why would someone, even a child, refuse food just because they were pressured?" Well, I am here to tell you that not only have I done it, I still do it. It was less than a year ago, so I was a mature (somewhat, mostly, sort of...) 23 year old who should have been past most, if not all, of these childish behaviors. I was at church dinner, and one of my lifelong friends told me I should try the salad with a certain type of ranch. I declined, since I don't like salad, nor the ranch or other sauce that tends to accompany them. He pushed a little, telling me it was great and that I just had to try it. At that point, I immediately the idea of trying it. He, and a few of my other friends, continued trying to convince me that I should try it, but it wasn't happening. There was no way in the world at that point that I would try the salad or the sauce.

A much better plan would have been to tell me that it was good and maybe I should try it, and if I declined, then to drop it. I might have thought about it a little more, and then decided to try just a little bit, had I been left to my own devices. But by pushing me into doing something I didn't want to do, I shut down.

So, hear me parents everywhere: if you want your children to eat their carrots, do not push them into it! Just give them an open environment where they aren't pressured.

The worst mistake you can make.

     Now it may be presumptuous of me to say this is the worst mistake you can make. I suppose a worse mistake would be to get the picky eater to eat by flinging peas into his mouth using a spoon as a trebuchet. But only just behind that is the all too common proclamation made in an attempt to get the child to eat, which in reality doesn't convince. To tell a picky eater "You can't even taste it" is a grave error made all too often.

     First of all, you have no idea whether I can taste it or not. You probably like the taste of whatever it is already, so having a slight bit of that flavor means nothing to you. However, for the picky eaters like me, it's an obvious change to what the meal could have been. We all have different tastes and tolerances, so maybe you truly can't taste those carrots in the soup, but to me they stick out worse than a clown at Sunday service.

      Second, it feels like an attack. It isn't going to be the same for everyone, but when I get told "You can't taste it" what I hear is "What is wrong with you? Why can't you eat like a normal person?" Not only is that depressing, but it also completely puts me off to whatever is now being put in front of me. I will dislike this food even if I can't taste whatever ingredient was originally putting me off.

    Rather than try to convince the eater that the ingredient has no taste, acknowledge that it's in there, and ask them to give it a shot. Highlight what is in the recipe that they like (hopefully it contains something  that they like, because otherwise there is next to no chance of this working out) and, if possible, make the pieces of the ingredient small so that the flavor has the best chance of actually "disappearing".

From a grown up picky eater

One would think that a boy who hated vegetables and loved greasy foods would never fall for a dietician. Well, it happened.

My name is Grant, and while I've progressed a lot from my childhood fits caused by the mere presence of greens, I still regard the majority of vegetables as "icky". Then my wife entered the picture. She had grown up eating fairly healthy and then got her degree in dietetics, so needless to say vegetables are now taking a greater place in my diet, whether I want them to be or not.

While I have grown and matured from where I used to be in my eating preferences, it's still rough sometimes to find things I like to eat.

What I've noticed is that there are a near infinite amount of blogs, books, and articles addressing the issue of picky eaters.  Ranging from fun recipes to near mind control they all claim to be the great fix for the picky eater. But what I find to be lacking were these very things written by picky eaters.  The writers of these books and articles talk about living with and cooking for the child with the selective palette, but what happened to the voice Of the picky child?

My hope with this blog is to shed a little more light on what happens in the mind of the picky eater. I want to show why is it that the tricks work, and why things may not work out as well as they did for the author.

So to close my first blog post, I would like to offer what is in my opinion the most important thing to apply when working with a picky eater. Be patient. Now, when I say that I don't even necessarily be patient as you work through different recipes and techniques. You might do everything right and still end up with a child that refuses to eat his broccoli, but that's ok. A child who doesn't like carrots is not a sign of a bad parent nor a bad child. Let them grow up and eventually on their own they may develop a love for the foods they once despised.

I mean, when I was younger I refused to eat potatoes in anything other than fry or chip form. No matter what recipe was tried I wanted nothing to do with them.  But then I grew up. I went off on my own and actually lived in Argentina for 2 years, where I learned to not only eat potatoes, but wholeheartedly enjoy them. Now I eat mashed, boiled, and baked potatoes whenever I get a chance!

So really, don't stress too much about it. Just let them learn to love different foods on their own time.