pick a peck of picky eaters
Filed Under Tips & Tricks | October 12, 2010
Does anything get a parent’s goat like a picky eater? You carefully prepare nutritious and delicious meals only to have your picky little one turn up their nose at best and have a meltdown at worst. Despite our Ellyn Satter fuelled attempts to raise adventurous eaters one of our tots was sinking deeper and deeper into a picky rut. So we decided it was time to call in the professionals and we turned to Leah Perrier from Vancouver’s Perrier Nutrition for help.
A registered dietitian and a mother herself, Leah consults part-time and is also works a Pediatric Dietitian at Children’s and Women’s Health Center of British Columbia working with sick kids who need specialized diets. She offers nutrition counseling and family and infant and toddler nutrition packages and she started off by having us keep a three day food journal of exactly what our PE (picky eater) was actually ingesting – if anything inspires you to prepare healthy snacks for your kids it’s knowing a dietitian’s going to scrutinize what you’ve been feeding them.
After sending the good journal off for her to review we met with Leah, feeling rather trepadacious about being judged on how we feed our kids. But her considered, thoughtful review of our PE’s food journal and answers to our concerns about everything from vitamins to our philosophy around feeding our kids helped put our minds at ease and we left feeling as though we were doing better at this feeding thing than we’d thought, not worse. We also took away realistic, sensible, easy-to-incorporate solutions and ideas tailored to our situation.
And just to prove the theory that if you offer your tots something enough times they’ll eventually eat it, our PE recently dug into a piece of salmon, which she’s successfully avoided eating for years now, exclaiming, “Oh, I love salmon!” Now if only we could get that response to the other 365 (or so) things she won’t eat.
Perrier Nutrition: perriernutrition.com
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I am a mother of a 41/2 year old. Kaleb’s situation is this; he got a bad fisher when he was first introduced to solid food, after a few months & a couple docs we finally got it resolved by a prduct called PEG. Then time went on and the ‘holding it in’ started again, we went back to a Dr. who again prescribed PEG. And although great remedy, it seems short lived. We got his poop to a ‘better size’ only to have it again creep up to size which makes him ‘hold in’ again. This is where you come in….I need your help. If I don’t fix his diet, this could be a constant rollercoaster, I consider his eating situation to be good, not a whole lot of unecessary junk (no w/bread/chips/choc./ any filler food, & only a small amount of jc) I am in tears with worry about him. He’s NOT a picky eater, but toooo many green (only grn)veggies, and he makes it quite clear ‘it ain’t gonna happen’ but other than that, and he’s great at eating. I need your help……… Please tell me a book or a meeting (I know-1st a recommendation thru gp) I don’t want him going thru this rollercoaster any longer. Please help!