Picky eating can be bothersome to parents and may damage a child's nutritional intake. Learn how to curb picky eating in children with this parenting video.
Don't buy unhealthy food
Buy low fat foods
Offer 3 choices
Offer healthy choices
Mix health foods
Charles K. Bens, Ph.D. | President of Healthy @ Work, Inc., author of Healthy at Work: Your Pocket Guide to Good Health and The Healthy Smoker: How To Quit Smoking By Becoming Healthier First . Educational specialties include nutrition, smoking cessation, wellness and mental challenges. He is also the team leader for wellness consulting assignments.
DR. CHARLES BENS: Hi. I'm Dr. Charles Bens, president of Healthy @ Work. I'm here to talk to you for a few minutes about picky eaters and how to get them to eat the foods they should. I have five grandchildren and I see this picky eating stuff all the time. And mostly, what I see is it's about control and about strong preferences. They want what they want when they want it. So I think one of the best advice I can give is don't buy the unhealthy foods in the first place. Buy whole foods, buy unprocessed foods, buy low-fat foods, buy foods with no sugar in them. Then when you are planning the meal, whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner, offer them three choices and say these are the three things we have available today. And make sure they're things that they have eaten before but make sure that they are healthy things. Giving in to these children only causes you to have more problems later. Another thing you do is mix healthy foods like veggies with foods they like. If they like cheese and they like turkey, then make a wrap, make a burrito, put some vegetables in it, put a sauce in there that they like. This is going to make it taste very acceptable. In the morning, maybe they don't want to eat that whole-grain cereal but you can give them Cheerios and you can put some nuts in it and some cinnamon and some fruit and make it a very, very interesting bowl of Cheerios. In a crunch, tell them the doctor said that they shouldn't be eating certain foods and that these healthier foods are really the best ones for them. And actually, you can tell them it might help them to be a better gymnast. It might help them to be a better athlete, a better player of some kind in any sport that they're playing. So you want to play to what their perceived needs are. I think it's really important to do this because their future depends on it. You don't want these children coming back to you in their 20s with diabetes, and you being part of the blame for it because you didn't feed them right. It's very important. So in summary, you want to make sure you shop for the best foods, give them some choices. And make sure when you put the foods together, you're putting some of the foods that they like with some of the foods that they really should have. Thanks so much for your time.
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