In the second part of this series, registered dietician and nutritionist Katherine Zavodni answers questions from our Facebook group,Small Plates: For Parents Who Cook. Check out Part Tworight here.
I talk a lot with other parents about what we feed our kids. When my children were babies, my friends and I gabbed obsessively about introducing new foods, our fears about possible allergies, andfinger food recipes. As the kids became toddlers, we started commiserating about how they had suddenly gotten so picky, and we swapped tips on getting them to sit still at the table long enough to actually consume anything. And as our kids have grown older, a lot of our concerns have shifted to either logistics—how to get meals on the tabledespite busy work, school, and extracurricular activities—or recipe ideas that accommodate each of our children's particular likes and dislikes.
At each of these stages, there are always certain questions that come up over and over, like: Is it okay to have a one-bite rule with new foods? Should I withhold dessert if my child doesn't eat enough dinner? And what do I do if lunch comes home barely touched day after day?
I certainly have a lot of my own opinions about some of these matters (particularly about dessert, asI've mentioned before), but I also struggle with many questions about the right way to feed my kids. So I reached out to registered dieticianKatherine Zavodni, a nutritionist who specializes in child and family feeding concerns, including non-diet intuitive eating nutrition therapy and eating disorder treatments.
Zavodni, who has had a private practice for over 10 years, works with kids and families every day not only on nutrition issues but also on the emotional and social factors that so frequently overlap with food. Read: she's the kind of nutritionist who isn't just focused on grams of fiber and phytonutrients—she delves into family attitudes about food, too.
I had asked the members of our Epicurious Facebook group,Small Plates: For Parents Who Cook, to share some of their concerns about feeding their kids, and I discussed the first of those questions with Zavodni, who had many smart, fascinating insights to share in response.
The first question comes from a parent who asked, "How much should I worry about protein for my kid who loves fruit, veggies, and carbs, but hates dairy and is very picky about meat? Should I be enforcing some protein at every meal, or a once-a-day rule?"
People worry a lot about having an actual dedicated protein source in each meal, like meat or cheese or nuts. But protein deficiency in a child is relatively rare. And they are getting some protein from other foods—there's protein in many foods you typically think of as a carbohydrate. Maybe they don’t drink milk, but they consume other iterations of dairy, like ice cream or cheese—you could certainly offer those on a regular basis.
But I wouldn’t worry too much about intake at every single meal—it’s totally fine for kids to have some eating occasions when they're not getting a dedicated protein source. Generally speaking, as long as your doctors are not concerned about poor growth, then protein deficiency is not likely an issue.
So if a lack of protein were a problem, it would probably manifest itself in growth issues?
Yes. You would be looking at growth issues. The other day-to-day thing you might see is that they're not staying full for very long. It's harder to stay full on a purely carbohydrate meal or snack. But if you've got some fat source in there, that will help.
Whenever parents want their child to eat more of a particular food, I always encourage them to just continue to present those foods and allow your child to see you enjoying them, without pressuring them. That’s the best way to encourage their intake.
When you say that kids don’t need a dedicated protein source at every meal or snack, what about every day? Would you say they need that once a day?
There are certainly going to be some kids who just really don't prefer those foods. It's not uncommon for a kid's diet to come from mostly carbohydrate foods. Generally they outgrow that. If we stay committed to a pressure-free, consistent presentation of a variety of foods, eventually they'll come to the point where they are interested in some of those things, whether it’s nuts or peanut butter or different dairy foods or meats.
And in the meantime we can be cognizant of not getting too caught up in diet culture–type messages. If it never occurred to us to offer hot dogs or hamburgers, we could do that. Or even pizza. Maybe your child doesn't drink milk but will eat pizza—you're getting some protein there. I recommend just keeping an open mind about different foods we can offer without pressure until they naturally develop a little bit more of a varied palate, which can happen over time—not always on our timeline, but at their own pace.
I’m so interested in the evolution of kids’ palates. Some kids just have a really varied, adventurous palate early on and they stay with it, and with other kids it seems like it really progresses and changes. I think people would be reassured to hear that that's somewhat normal.
Yes, the regression is totally developmentally normal. A nine-month-old who's willing to try all kinds of different finger foods—that's how they express their independence. Whereas a two-year-old expresses independence by saying,No, I don't want that!
But then you also have personalities and eating temperaments that have implications for how quickly kids pick up affinity for new foods. The other thing I always say is that every food is new to a child at some point. And we don't know which foods are the ones that they're just wary of because they're new, and which foods are foods that they don't prefer, even into adulthood. Because as adults, we have things we don't like the taste of, and we just don't eat them.
Right, right. It's so interesting. My younger daughter can’t stand eggs because of their smell. If anyone in the family's eating eggs, she can smell it from two floors away in the house. It's amazing. She has always been like that, very sensitive to all sorts of smells, and it affects which foods she eats.
What I always tell people is that we experience food with all five senses. That's five different opportunities for us to be wary of something and to feel kind of averse to something.
You're talking about she doesn't like the way it smells. A lot of kids don't like textures, how it feels or how it sounds. The crunch or the slithery sounds that foods make. That's a lot of different reasons to not want to try something, right? We can let that be an authentic experience for them.
