Why Picky Eaters May Not Grow Out Of It

Why Picky Eaters May Not Grow Out Of It

If your preschooler pushes their dinner plate away or wages battles against taking another bite of a vegetable they don’t like, they may not grow out of it anytime soon, according to a new study.

By age four, children could be established picky eaters, the new study suggests. And the more parents try to control and restrict children’s diets, the more finicky they may become, according to the findings in Pediatrics.

“Picky eating is common during childhood and parents often hear that their children will eventually ‘grow out of it.’ But that’s not always the case,” says senior author Megan Pesch, a developmental behavioral pediatrician at the Michigan Medicine C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, part of the University of Michigan.

“We still want parents to encourage varied diets at young ages, but our study suggests that they can take a less controlling approach.”


 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

But there’s a silver lining for worried parents—while fussy eaters have a lower body mass index, most are still in the healthy range and not underweight, researchers say. They may also be less likely to be overweight or experience obesity than peers.

“We still want parents to encourage varied diets at young ages, but our study suggests that they can take a less controlling approach,” Pesch says. That being said “we need more research to better understand how children’s limited food choices impact healthy weight gain and growth long term.”

The study followed 317 mother-child pairs from low-income homes over a four-year period. Families reported on children’s eating habits and mothers’ behaviors and attitudes about feeding when children were four, five, six, eight, and nine.

Picky eating was stable from preschool to school-age, indicating that any attempts to expand food preferences may need to occur in toddler or preschool years to be most effective. High picky eating was associated with lower BMIs and low picky eating was associated with higher BMIs.

The pickiest eating was also often associated with increased pressure to eat and restriction on certain types of foods. This reinforces previous research suggesting that pressuring children to eat foods they dislike won’t lead to a well-rounded diet later in life or encourage better health or development.

Certain child characteristics, including sex, birth order, and socioeconomic status, also have been associated with persistence of picky eating.

“We found that children who were pickier had mothers who reported more restriction of unhealthy foods and sweets,” Pesch says. “These mothers of picky eaters may be trying to shape their children’s preferences for more palatable and selective diets to be more healthful. But it may not always have the desired effect.”

It is unknown if children who are picky eaters would have become even more selective if they did not receive higher levels of controlling feeding behaviors, Pesch says. She says future studies should investigate interventions around maternal feeding and child picky eating.

Original Study

books_food

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES

English Afrikaans Arabic Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Danish Dutch Filipino Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Malay Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

Thursday, 27 May 2021 05:24

Life, by its very nature is … alive! Because it is alive, it is not just responding in a set, mechanical way, but rather it is responsive to what is needed and helpful and useful. Cells might...

Sunday, 16 May 2021 14:24

The human body is an amazing thing, full of systems, organs, nerves, and vessels that work together in harmony. You’ve seen the body described as a machine, as a city, or even as a factory....

Friday, 14 May 2021 16:24

The chakras set the frequencies that give rise to every aspect of the human experience. The foods we eat have consciousness and provide an energetic blueprint that stabilizes and entrains...

Tuesday, 18 May 2021 16:15

In my blog posts, free resources, and courses, I talk a lot about the things that we can do to support and develop our inborn, natural interspecies communication abilities. In this post, I...

Wednesday, 28 April 2021 08:57

Replenishing antioxidants in the body may help protect against oxidative stress and lower the risk of cancer

Tuesday, 25 July 2023 16:09

Volunteering in late life may be more than just a noble act of giving back to the community; it could be a critical factor in safeguarding the brain against cognitive decline and dementia.

New Attitudes - New Possibilities

InnerSelf.comClimateImpactNews.com | InnerPower.net
MightyNatural.com | WholisticPolitics.com | InnerSelf Market
Copyright ©1985 - 2021 InnerSelf Publications. All Rights Reserved.