Hi everyone! I was hoping to get some input on changing my 2 year olds diet.I have to admit it is pretty bad.He is very picky and won't try new things.He pretty much eats yogurt,cheese,pasta,beans,luna bars and corn.And the ocassional banana.Not very healthy.I also have to confess that he has a bad sweet tooth just like his mom and we eat sweets a couple times a day.I would like to switch him to a vegan diet but not until he has more healthy foods that he likes.I am ready to do whatever it takes because I know it will get harder the older he gets and it is my responsibility to make sure he is fed well.So,has anyone had problems with picky eaters and if so,what worked to fix it?

I don't have any kids, so feel free to disregard my advice! But I heard an expert recommend feeding the "unfavorite" foods first, while the child is very hungry. It makes perfect sense to me. A candy bar is good no matter how full I am, but I'd have to be pretty hungry to eat brussels sprouts. I figure even a couple of bites is pretty good.

Good luck! I love to hear about parents wanting their kids to eat healthful foods! :yes:

I don't have children either, but I remember my mom and dad going through the same thing with my little brother. He wouldn't eat anything but fish sticks, french fries, and bacon! They tried everything to get him to eat veggies or even anything else, but nothing worked. He had to grow out of it, which took a year or so. As unhealthy as his diet was, he didn't take lasting harm.

Luna bars are not recommended for children...

But other than that, they food your little one is eating doesn't sound THAT bad.

Maybe try setting out a little bowl of bite sized pieces of fruit for him? or tiny little cracker sandwiches with pb&j, or give him nutritious foods to "dip" - my kids all loved to dip anything! (tofu "fingers" or thinly sliced, steamed veggies, whole wheat bread or crackers etc.)

At two, I think I would go cold turkey on the sweets. He'll soon forget and if he is eating a chocolate bar, it is going to make a grape a lot less appetizing.
If you can't resist sweets, maybe you could wait until he is asleep to eat them?
(That's what I used to do :p ...luckily, my sweet tooth FINALLY went away in my mid thirties.)

I remember hearing something from a child psychologist that a parent shouldn't feel obligated to prepare different food for their child when the dinner you made is rejected. He/she is not going to starve and will eat "yucky" foods when they're hungry. If you make them broccoli and they say that they're not eating it, you just say "Ok" and take it away, giving them nothing else. They'll learn quickly that if they want to eat, they'll eat what you give them.

I'm not sure if this would work on a child as young as 2, but maybe it's worth a try?

Fortified cereals are a good snack, as is dried fruit (unsulphured), strips of tofu, peanut or soynut butter on bananas and applesauce. Kids will eat when they are hungry, try if you are able to eat new foods in front of him. Kids will often reject foods thier parents reject.

I remember reading that a small child has twice as many taste buds as an adult. So green veggies like spinach taste 4x as strong to a toddler than adult.

Edited because I pressed the "send" button too soon.

my parents did the modified version of what the other poster's child psychologist said. basicly, mom and dad prepared foods, and gave us a plate of them. we would eat what we wanted, even if we refused to finish, mom and dad would say "ok."

then, the plate with the food was left on the table. in variably, when my sister (a somewhat picky eater) got hungry, she'd toddle over and eat what was left on the plate.

we were never relaly picky eaters. but, giving in to the whims of children who are picky eaters only enforces their behavoirs. this i do know.

one weekend, i was babysitting a 7 yr old who only eats--literally--chicken nuggets, ice cream, and string cheese. That's it--morning, noon, and nite. well, not on my watch. I told her mom and dad not to pack anything for her to eat. then, when she came over that first morning, she hadn't had breakfast.

i had her help me make pancake batter (broccoli pancakes), and then when i cooked them up, she didn't want to eat them. ryan and i said "ok" and then continued to eat. She asked for string cheese. I told her that we didn't have any. She said "go buy some" and we said "we do not buy cheese." she wanted the chicken nuggets. "we don't have any." she wanted us to buy her some at mcdonald's. we told her we don't purchase anything from mcdonalds. She wanted ice cream--i told her that you don't eat sweets for breakfast. she started to cry. we let her cry. she started to scream--we let her scream. we did tell her that her screams hurt the rabbit's ears and that it isn't very nice to hurt his ears. (she loves the rabbit, so she stopped screaming).

after another 20 mintes, i said "why don't you try one of these pancakes that you helped me make. you did a really good job--so they taste really great!" She had 3. for lunch, we made some pasta salad and fruit smoothies--she ate them happily. for snacks, we had "ants on a log" with almond butter instead of peanut butter and a mix between dried cranberries and dried raisins (red and black ants!). no problem there. for dinner we had sesame baked tofu with soba noodles, stir fried veggies, and asian cole slaw (with seaweed no less). She was more skeptical, but knowing that we weren't going to give her ice cream, nuggets or string cheese, she ate. we had a later meal of fresh fruit with Macademia cream (she really loved that). we basicly ate like this the whole weekend.

the whole time, i made sure to include her in meal prep and describe everything that i was making, how it was made, where it came from (in the case of tofu, tempeh, etc), and so on. I bought an empty sketch book and we made a cook book for her with all of the recipes. using a polaroid we borrowed from the neighbors, we took pictures of each meal and pictures of her eating, prepping, and everything else.

at the end of the weekend, she was so proud to show her parents what we had done (we also played outside, did yoga an dmeditation, went to see a sand mandala and the service at it's destruction, went to an improptu concert, picked fresh berries, and played with the rabbit for as long as he could handle it. LOL). they were floored that she was willing to go to so many new things and try new foods.

now, that 7 yr old has a better deit than her parents. she's not vegetarian, but she no longer eats chicken nuggets (they don't taste good, she tells me), and only has string cheese as a snack at lunch with her ants on a log. Her teacher thought it was clever to use dried cranberries as the red ants, so she got a lot of kudos for that as well. pretty cool. but, sometimes one change makes all the difference. And besidse, now the parents have changed too.

Thanks for the advice,everyone.I think that it would be a good idea to just put the food in front of him that I want him to eat and not give him anything else.His doctor mentioned this tactic a while ago too but i haven't fully tried it yet.We had been eating out alot because we were moving but now we are in a new house where we can cook.And we eat in front of the t.v too much,which I think distracts him from his food.Maybe if I sat down with him at the table he would eat more.

Mushroom,I agree he should go cold turkey on the sweets because I do not want him to be addicted to sugar like I am.He already asks for sweets every day and gets mad if I don't give them to him.It would be good for both of us if we could do away with sugary foods altogether.I was also wondering why luna bars aren't good for kids.Is it because it is fortified or something? He loves them and I thought they were one of the better foods he ate.

So I guess the plan is to give him healthy foods and not give in if he wants something else.Hopefully soon he will be eating his vegetables and loving them!

personally, i think that forcing a child to eat something that they honestly don't like will cause food issues. the key is to agree upon what foods they like and that you feel comfortable preparing for them. you also can't expect kids to eat foods that they never see you eating. a lot of kids who refuse to eat veggies never see their parents eating them.

my son has gotten pickier and pickier as he's gotten older (he's six now). i find the key is to stay away from preparing foods i know he doesn't like (which means that yes, i have to leave onions out of stuff!) and offer him a selection of things i know he does like. if he does end up rejecting a meal i've made (and i do insist that he try it before deciding he doesn't like it), i tell him that's fine and that he is welcome to fix himself a healthy snack instead. of course it's different if your child is too young to slap some nut butter on a piece of bread, but you get the idea.

i think it also helps to keep sweets and other junky foods pretty much out of the house at all times. i try to not just have a tub of ice cream in the freezer, and instead go out and buy individual ice cream sandwiches when we feel like having a treat, or buy a small bag of potato chips, or whatever.

kreeli:

i completely agree. most kids will eat a certain variety of foods--and at least they should try new things. i think that's important to recognize. on the part of my friends and their 7 yr old. she literally didn't eat anything else, which is a totally different matter.

my sister was forced to eat fish (which she hates and has always hated) but she only had to eat 2 inches of fish. usually in a whole bottle of ranch dressing. lol anyway, when she was old enough to prep stuff herself, she didn't have to eat the fish.

i think that's a good way to go. :)

also, eating together at the table is great. :)

If I remember correctly, my mother never made me eat something, but would keep serving me a new food until I at least tried it. But we didn't have very much food in the house so I was usually very hungry and not very picky. I only remember not liking squash, brussel sprouts, and onions on things. I like all of those things now.

I agree about the food issues and I would never force him to eat anything he didn't like,it's just that he doesn't even try things so I don't know if he likes them or not.It is partly my fault because after a while of trying to give him new foods and him not eating them I gave up and just gave him what I knew he would eat.But for the past week or so I have given him new foods and told him to try it and if he didn't like it he didn't have to eat it.Well,he ended up loving the burrito and foney baloney I gave him.So,we are making progress.Plus I just discovered all the kid friendly recipes on this website so I am going to try some out this week.

.I was also wondering why luna bars aren't good for kids.Is it because it is fortified or something? He loves them and I thought they were one of the better foods he ate.

Luna bars are impregnated with a ton of vitamins which are in adult dosages. It probably won't hurt him, but I would err on the side of caution. Some vitamins (like vitamin A and iron) are toxic in large doses. I would suggest regular old granola bars as an alternative.

on the lunabars website it says to give kids between 4-9 only 1/2 a luna bar a day, none to kids under 4, and kids over 9 can have whole ones.

I don't have kids, but when I was little, I was forced to eat food. Just going hungry was not an option, and mealtimes were often very unpleasant. I turned out to be the pickiest eater ever, and even though I am getting better as I get older, people always say they've never met a vegetarian (or anyone for that matter) who refuses to eat as many vegetables as I do. Since I was raised as a vegetarian, most of the food fights when I was little involved vegetables.