007: Help! My toddler won’t eat vegetables

  (Believe it or not, this is Carys’ “I freaking love homemade spinach ravioli with broccoli” face!)   I was sitting in a restaurant recently with half an eye on a toddler and his parents at the next table. The parents were trying to get the toddler to eat some of his broccoli before he ate the second helping of chicken that he was asking for. All of a sudden a line from Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall” popped into my head: If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat? This is the way I was raised; you finish everything on your plate and you certainly don’t get dessert if you don’t finish your meal. But as is the custom with the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, I want to use this episode to question why we do this and find out what scientific research has to say about it all. We want our toddlers to eat a balanced diet, and we assume we have to teach them what a balanced diet means. But do we really? Or can we trust that our children will eat the foods that they need to be healthy? These are some of the questions we’ll set out to answer in this episode.   Jump to highlights 00:36 Introduction of episode 01:39 The first book to be published about children's eating behavior was 1939 by Clara Mae Davis 03:25 Current dietary guidelines from 2010, state that children with some specific age range should get an applicable calory supply 04:57 The children didn't have the availability of all kinds of food 07:37 What causes children to like fruits and vegetables 09:27 The more we control what our children eat, the less control we seem to have over it 12:59 How would parents deal with this discussion   References Benton, D. (2004). Role of parents in the determination of the food preferences of children and the development of obesity. International Journal of Obesity 28, 858-869. DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0802532 Birch LL. (1980). Effects of peer models’ food choices and eating behaviors on preschoolers’ food preferences. Child Development 51, 489–496. Birch, LL., Marlin, D.W., & Rotter, J. (1984). Eating as the ‘means’ activity in a contingency: Effects on young children’s food preferences. Child Development 55, 432-439. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1129954?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Birch, L.L., & Fisher, J.O. (1998). Development of eating behaviors among children and adolescents. Pediatrics 101 Issue supplement 2. Retrieved from: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/101/Supplement_2/539 Birch, L.L., Fisher, J.O., Grimm-Thomas, K., Markey, C.N., Sawyer, R., & Johnson, S.L. (2001). Confirmatory factor analysis of the Child Feeding Questionnaire: A measure of parental attitudes, beliefs and practices about child feeding and obesity proneness. Appetite 36, 201-210. DOI: 10.1006/appe.2001.0398 Davis, C.M. (1939). Results of the self-selection of diets by young children. Canadian Medical Association Journal 41, 257-61. Full article available at: www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=537465&blobtype=pdf Fisher, J.O., & Birch, L.L. (1999). Restricting access to foods and children’s eating. Appetite 32(3), 405-419. DOI: 10.1006/appe.1999.0231 Hughes, S.O., Power, T.G., Orlet Fisher, J., Mueller, S., & Nicklas, T.A. (2005). Revisiting a neglected construct: Parenting styles in a child feeding context. Appetite 44(1), 83-92. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2004.08.007 Jansen, E., Mulkens, S., & Jansen, A. (2007). Do not eat the red food!: Prohibition of snacks leads to their relatively higher consumption in children. Appetite 49(3), 572-577. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2007.03.229 Jansen, E., Mulkens, S., Emond, Y., & Jansen, A. (2008). From the Garden of Eden to the land of plenty: Restriction of fruit and sweets intake leads to increased fruit and sweets consumption in children. Appetite 51(3), 570-575. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2008.04.012 Newman, J., & Taylor, A. (1992). Effect of a means-end contingency on young children’s food preferences. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 64, 200-216. DOI: 10.1016/0022-0965(92)90049-C Pink Floyd (1979). Another brick in the wall – Part 2. London, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Lyrics retrieved from: http://www.pink-floyd-lyrics.com/html/another-brick-2-wall.html Savage, J.S., Fisher, J.O., & Birch, L.L. (2007). Parental influence on eating behavior. Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics 35(1), 22-34. DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2007.00111.x U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2010). Dietary guidelines for Americans: 2010. Full report available at: https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2010/dietaryguidelines2010.pdf Ventura, A.K., Gromis, J.C., & Lohse, B. (2010). Feeding practices and styles used by a diverse set of low-income parents of preschool-age children. Journal of nutrition education and behavior 42(4), 242-249. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S149940460900284X   Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello and welcome to episode 7 of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, which is called Help!  My toddler won’t eat vegetables!  I decided on the theme for this episode when I was sitting in a restaurant with half an eye on a toddler and his parents at the next table.  The parents were trying to get the toddler to eat some of his broccoli before he ate the second helping of chicken that he was asking for.  All of a sudden a line from Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall” popped into my head: “If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.  How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?”  This is the way I was raised; you finish everything on your plate and you certainly don’t get dessert if you don’t finish your meal.  But as is the custom with the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, I want to use this episode to question why we do this and find out what scientific research has to say about it all.  We want our toddlers to eat a balanced diet, and we assume we have to teach them what a balanced diet means.  But do we really?  Or can we trust that our children will eat the foods that they need to be healthy?  These are some of the questions we’ll set out to answer today. Perhaps you might be as surprised as I was to find that the single study that grounds virtually all current research on children and eating was published in 1939 by a pediatrician named Clara Mae Davis.  She convinced unmarried and widowed mothers who couldn’t support their families to place their children into an orphanage in Chicago.  Davis then recorded every single thing 15 children ate over the first 4 ½ years of their lives after they were weaned.  In addition she recorded their height, weight, bowel movements, bone radiographs and blood tests at various intervals during those years. But the really interesting part of the study is what she offered the children to eat and how she offered it.  She created a menu of 34 different foods, all procured fresh and minimally prepared.  Some of the foods were milk, apples, turnips, lettuce, oatmeal, barley, beef, bone marrow, brains, and haddock.  The 34 foods were selected because collectively they offered the complete set of nutrients needed by a growing person although of course they weren’t all served at once – about 10 were prepared and served at once to offer a wide variety of foods at each meal. The nurses feeding the children were not allowed to directly offer or even suggest that the children try a particular food.  Only after the child reached for or pointed to a dish could the nurse put some food on a spoon and, if the child opened his mouth, put it in.  The nurse wasn’t allowed to comment on what the child ate or didn’t eat, attract his attention to food or refuse him any food.  The child could eat with his fingers if he wanted and no correction of his manners was offered.  The tray of food was taken away when the child had definitively stopped eating, usually after 20-25 minutes. As Clara Mae Davis noted, the remarkable thing about the results in this study is that nothing remarkable happened.  All of the children had hearty appetites.  Constipation was never an issue and other than mild colds, they rarely got sick. Five children were malnourished at the beginning of the study and all were healthy by the end.  The children ate, on average, roughly the caloric intake recommended by both the nutritional standards in place at the time as well as the standards we use today.  Current  dietary guidelines published in 2010 state that children aged 1-3 should get 5-20% of their calories from protein, 45-65% from carbohydrates, and 30-40% from fat; the percentages shift slightly in favor of protein and away from fat for children 4-18 years old.  In Davis’ 1939 study the average distribution of calories per kilogram of body weight was 17% protein, 35% fat, and 48% carbohydrates.  Individual children might have had protein intakes as low as 9% or as high as 20% – all still within the dietary guidelines.  So the children in Davis’ study met dietary guidelines developed sixty years afterwards, with all of the knowledge we have...